The Game Boy Is Running Our National Defense
I had heard a lot of crazy stories about how some of the U.S. Defense Departments and sections of so called “intelligence” within our government use old computers still running Windows 3.1 or even DOS, but I never thought it would go this far. Apparently, the United States government now sees it fit to use the decade and a half old technology of the original Game Boy as a platform for some sensor technology to be used in the near future.
The technology is called STAP-BOY, and the military describes it in a way that only it can by saying that “STAP-Boy will develop innovative geometric algorithmic approaches in order to leverage the revolutionary teraflop signal processor architecture from personal computer gaming chips to enable this vision.” Basically, it’s a low tech GPS handheld coupled with signal sensors. Take that as you will.
Obviously, my knowledge of the technology and its purpose only goes so far. If you are interested, you’d probably be well advised to check out the details for yourself straight from the military. But in the meantime, we’ll just have to wonder why they chose not to go with the DS. It seems as if it would have been a perfect fit.
gameboy, nationaldefense, dumbideas
June 8th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
They didn’t use the DS because soldiers would spend too much time playing “Brain Age”.
Covert ops could be jeopardized by someone screaming “Blue. Black. Red. Red. Yellow.” at their equipment.
June 11th, 2007 at 11:47 am
This reminds me of a young adult novel that my daughter read recently. It was about a teenage spy who used a GameBoy as one of his spy tools. In the movie version it was upgraded to a DS.