Re: [GZG] [HIST] Military Hackers

gah! teach me to reply without reading the whole post.

On Sun, 25 Oct 1998, Adrian Johnson wrote:
> I guess that depends on the assumptions you make about how the tech
works
> in your universe.  How about a situation where the tech becomes so
good,
> the measures/countermeasures so complex and capable, that the military
> forces resort to using lower-tech equipment simply to keep it from
being
> spoofed

more millenium bug panic - the national grid, the guys who pipe the
electricity from power station to consumer in the uk - have a big
digital
data system with optical fibres linking the substations and the hq. it's
computer controlled. therefore, they're reactivating the old telephone
landlines on the quiet so that when the whole thing falls over on the
morning of the 3rd millenium, they'll still have comms.

motto: the enemy isn't other nations, it's the passage of time. fight
the
future!

> Also - in this future universe of ours we shouldn't, I think, assume a
> universal penetration of super-high-tech - what about colony worlds
which
> have a low-tech local militia fighting another low-tech militia.  The
FSE
> invades a NAC allied colony, but the FSE and NAC forces deployed are
only
> Battalion size.  Lots of local allies on both sides, and limited
high-tech.
>  The locals scout on horseback.  They have ordinary radio
communication
> nets.  Their military forces are run "the good old way" ah la 20th
> century...  etc.  

this is, of course, utterly true (unless you opt for the Standard
Template
Construct approach ...), but i think less so of electronics than other
things. digital has become such a vital part of life no colony would go
without it; i wouldn't want to manage a million-acre farm on a raw
planet
on my own without a fair amount of info tech. also, processors and
optical
fibre are nice and light and compact, and so quite easy to ship out to
your colony.

Tom