How to find out the hidden men in the jungles?

In the american chavinstic movie The Tears of the Sun,
http://www.sonypictures.com/homevideo/tearsofthesun/index.html

Whenever the African followers are close on the Americans, the computer guy
would find some green dots on his computer, what is the theory behind
detecting
the hidden men and their location? How do they differentiate men from wild
animals?

"Sea Squid" <Sea.Squid@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:424273e0$1@news.starhub.net.sg...
> In the american chavinstic movie The Tears of the Sun,
> http://www.sonypictures.com/homevideo/tearsofthesun/index.html
>
> Whenever the African followers are close on the Americans, the computer
guy
> would find some green dots on his computer, what is the theory behind
> detecting the hidden men and their location?

I believe it's called Fiction.

"CWatters" <colin.watters@pandoraBOX.be> wrote in message 
news:2Cu0e.44583$sR6.3899451@phobos.telenet-ops.be...
>
> "Sea Squid" <Sea.Squid@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:424273e0$1@news.starhub.net.sg...
>> In the american chavinstic movie The Tears of the Sun,
>> http://www.sonypictures.com/homevideo/tearsofthesun/index.html
>>
>> Whenever the African followers are close on the Americans, the computer
> guy
>> would find some green dots on his computer, what is the theory behind
>> detecting the hidden men and their location?
>
> I believe it's called Fiction.
>
>
It could be the old magicians "forcing" trick where the "bad guys"  are 
somehow forced to take up whatever positions the green dots indicate?

"Mike Yarwood" <mpyarwood@btopenworld.com> wrote in message
news:d1u9ul$3kd$1@titan.btinternet.com...

> It could be the old magicians "forcing" trick where the "bad guys"  are
> somehow forced to take up whatever positions the green dots indicate?
>

I guess if you wanted to build such a system you would use a satellite
fitted with a state of the art IR camera that could detect their body heat
through tree and cloud cover. Then transmit the info down to a ground based
handheld unit. The first part might be a little hard but who knows what the
military can build these days.

CWatters wrote:
> "Mike Yarwood" <mpyarwood@btopenworld.com> wrote in message
> news:d1u9ul$3kd$1@titan.btinternet.com...
>
> > It could be the old magicians "forcing" trick where the "bad guys"
are
> > somehow forced to take up whatever positions the green dots
indicate?
> >
>
> I guess if you wanted to build such a system you would use a
satellite
> fitted with a state of the art IR camera that could detect their body
heat
> through tree and cloud cover. Then transmit the info down to a ground
based
> handheld unit. The first part might be a little hard but who knows
what the
> military can build these days.

You need to ask tj Frazir how it's done, because if it's impossible to
build a gadget, then he's already done it, got bored with his incessant
success, and moved on to his next accomplishment of mythic proportions.

-Mark Martin

In article <424273e0$1@news.starhub.net.sg>,
Sea Squid <Sea.Squid@hotmail.com> wrote:
>In the american chavinstic movie The Tears of the Sun,
>http://www.sonypictures.com/homevideo/tearsofthesun/index.html
>
>Whenever the African followers are close on the Americans, the computer guy
>would find some green dots on his computer, what is the theory behind
>detecting
>the hidden men and their location? How do they differentiate men from wild
>animals?

It seems a little far-fetched the way the movie described it.  But to try 
to give an explanation, infrared imaging from orbit.  They can be 
differentiated from wild animals because they're looking at a bunch of 
green dots with bulk motion in a tactically important direction.  A troop 
of monkeys wouldn't travel so consistently fast and in the same direction.
-- 
"Not that there's anything wrong with just lying around on your back.  In 
its way, rotting is interesing too... It's just that there are other ways 
to spend your time as a cadaver."  -- Mary Roach, "Stiff", 2003.

On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 08:10:38 GMT, CWatters <colin.watters@pandoraBOX.be>
wrote:
> 
> "Sea Squid" <Sea.Squid@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:424273e0$1@news.starhub.net.sg...
>> In the american chavinstic movie The Tears of the Sun,
>> http://www.sonypictures.com/homevideo/tearsofthesun/index.html
>>
>> Whenever the African followers are close on the Americans, the computer
> guy
>> would find some green dots on his computer, what is the theory behind
>> detecting the hidden men and their location?
> 
> I believe it's called Fiction.
> 

It's important to control the Ficton Flux through the subspace
interface.  Otherwise, all bets are off.

Fictons are fairly easy to detect.  It's controlling them that's the
trick.

Sea Squid wrote:
> In the american chavinstic movie The Tears of the Sun,
> http://www.sonypictures.com/homevideo/tearsofthesun/index.html
>
> Whenever the African followers are close on the Americans, the
computer guy
> would find some green dots on his computer, what is the theory behind
> detecting
> the hidden men and their location? How do they differentiate men from
wild
> animals?

First the device would need some objective way to distinguish the
jungle from the mammals. Just taking a realtime optical image would be
like looking with the naked eye. So it'd be taking thermal images,
because the mammals would be at higher temperatures than the plants.
The most efficient method then of picking the people out would be for
the technician to just look at the image, because the human eye/brain
is already hardwired to recognise anthropoids. It'd be
counterproductive to artificially convert the hot spots to abstract
dots.

It's possible to circumvent the human eye and just photograph the
jungle and process the image in real time with a cutting edge computer
algorithm to recognise the shapes of humans wandering between the
trees. But I don't think that such algorithms are yet reliable enough
to be betting the lives of the whole platoon, and once more, Why would
it convert the people to dots? It'd probably just artificially change
the iamges of the people to make them more visible to the tech'.

It could conceivably use some other sophisticated method. Instruments
might be sweeping the jungle for other signatures of human behavior
that have to be processed by a computer algorithm. In that case it
might have to represent the people as spots on a screen. But such a
system would probably find the layers of trees too much of a source of
noise in the signal from just one vantage point; they'd need at least
one other tech' way off to one side, pointing another identical sensor
in at a right angle to the first one. The two instruments' data would
then have to be linked in real time by radio and corelated rapidly by
computer. It's not unthinkable, but I don't think such a gadget is
really available at this time. 

-Mark Martin

Mark Martin wrote:

   ...

> It's not unthinkable, but I don't think such a gadget is
> really available at this time. 

How discouraging!

Jerry

P.S. Can photon torpedoes be used in jungle warfare?
-- 
Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
�����������������������������������������������������������������������

Jerry Avins wrote:

> P.S. Can photon torpedoes be used in jungle warfare?

...I suppose that depends on what a photon torpedo is.

-Mark Martin