DARPA Network Challenge

[bedlamite]

Has anyone seen this:

http://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/

To mark the 40th anniversary of the Internet, DARPA has announced the DARPA Network Challenge, a competition that will explore the role the Internet and social networking plays in the timely communication, wide area team-building and urgent mobilization required to solve broad scope, time-critical problems.

The challenge is to be the first to submit the locations of ten moored, 8 foot, red weather balloons located at ten fixed locations in the continental United States. Balloons will be in readily accessible locations and visible from nearby roadways.

Of course, if I was rich and bored, I might just buy a couple dozen of of these and have them put up all over the country.

[AZRedhawk44]

Our government is spending money on this?

Sigh.  Borderline anger and frustration.

Our government has no respect for its citizenry as a national defense invasion deterrent.  It sees us more often as a force to be controlled, corralled or combated against than an ally for strategic collaboration.

The information gathered from this glorified myspace treasure hunt will not aid the security of the American people... but it may have the potential to aid the American government against its people since it will attempt, no doubt, to monitor the speed of social networking to accomplish a goal important to its adherents.

For all we know, this is a wargaming scenario by NSA or a similar agency to see if they can suppress mention of red balloons and collaboration to report the location of all ten of them.

I posit that the above scenario is 100x more likely to be the real motivating factor for such an experiment than the lame "real" stated objective of the balloon hunt.

[zahc]

I have to agree. Although I hate to shout OMG conspiracy, the afore-described canine's hunting ability is questionable.

[Gewehr98]

Dunno. It's geocaching on a new level, IMHO.  I doubt it'll boost the Single Integrated Ops Plan much, but it sounds fun.

I'll make certain to look for the missing roll of tinfoil while I'm keeping an eye peeled for one of the 99 Luftballons. 

[tyme]

How is this geocaching?  Instead of trying to figure out what's at a particular set of coordinates, this challenge is about finding the coordinates for a particular set of things.

I think it's a really cool project.

Sigh.  Borderline anger and frustration.

Why?  This is dirt cheap, and it has potential to illuminate how networks of concerned citizens may easily or not-so-easily collaborate to discover things about the environment.  Although the prize might be a bit much, I have a hard time getting riled about it.

Just because this is about investigating social networking rather than harder science remote sensing and route planning like the DARPA grand challenge doesn't mean this is not worth funding.

[Perd Hapley]

You evangelical statist golem shills for the neo-cons are missing what's really going on.  No surprise there. 

Obviously, SETI put them up to this.  These weather balloons will be mistaken for UFO's, the public gets all in an uproar, and SETI gets more funding as priorities change in Washington. 

Do I have to draw you people a diagram? 

[tyme]