Saddam Hussein uses PlayStation 2 to conquer the world
Or not, probably...
One of the most ridiculous stories we've come across recently are reports on World Net Daily that Saddam Hussein has been buying up as many as 4000 PlayStation 2 consoles. As well as serving as a great source of entertainment for his elite Republican guard soldiers now that they are unable to rape, murder, and torture Kurds and Kuwaitis, they are apparently going to be "bundled together into a sort of crude super-computer and used for a variety of military applications". Yes, we were rather skeptical too.
In what sounds suspiciously like a Sony marketing ploy rather than the words of even the most unintelligent of military intelligence experts, an unidentified source is reported as saying that "most Americans don't realize that each PlayStation unit contains a 32-bit CPU every bit as powerful as the processor found in most desktop and laptop computers". He goes on to claim that "the graphics capabilities of a PlayStation are staggering - five times more powerful than that of a typical graphics workstation, and roughly 15 times more powerful than the graphics cards found in most PCs". Pull the other one, it has (jingle) bells on it...
With a remarkably straight face, WND add that "a single PlayStation can generate up to 75 million polygons per second. Polygons, as noted in the DIA report, are the basic units used to generate the surface of 3-D models - extremely useful in military design and modeling applications. Bundled PlayStation computers could also be used to calculate ballistic data for long-range missiles, or in the design of nuclear weapons. Iraq has long had difficulty calculating the potential yield of nuclear devices - a critical requirement in designing such weapons. Networking these computers might provide a method for correcting this deficiency."
Perhaps the most amusing claim is that "an integrated bundle of 12-15 PlayStations could provide enough computer power to control an Iraqi unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV". It all sounds rather fishy to us, and we somehow doubt that we can reasonably blame old Saddam for ruining Christmas for thousands of gamers around the world by buying up their consoles. Sony seem to have done a good job of fouling up supplies all by themselves, without any aid from third world dictators. Still, it's a funny little story for the silly season...