DARPA "balloon hunt" could win you $40K cash

I know *I* need $40k... I just don't have a clue how the heck to begin this.

of course, this could be some sort of cute Govt scam, and I'd find myself in a deep dark hole somewhere.

reply to post by wylekat


HINT:

weather data

maps

time and location of origin.

Yay!! So this game and our love for money helps advance war. Peace is a carrot on a string. We don't stand a chance against destroying ourselves.

"Up s#!*s creek with a turd for a paddle"
-Ween

So, today its Red Balloons.

Tomorrow, it's "Ron Paul Supporters".

Let's figure out how citizens, motivated by greed, can organize over the internet to identify enemies of the state.

Or am I just being cynical?

my 'greed' only goes so far. And it's more of a need than greed.

Just a friendly piece of advice. Certain balloon have a path which should not be that easily or near impossible to locate. If and who ever locates them, then i can assure you a question form will follow along with a person to person contact purely for profiling purposes.


Message in disguise.


Are you the type of person who believes in what he see's ?
or
Are you the type of person who see's in what he believes ?

Is it me or is there something very Albert Lamorisse-like about this?

I bet they'll film everything from the sky with there neat little satellites and laugh at the whole thing.

PS....maybe the main purpose of this is not so much finding the balloons...but to get you to look up and then go to that location to bathe in swine flu pathogens, unbeknownest to you?

One never knows.

I am getting the impression the balloons are tethered, and wont be 'going' anywhere. One has to figure out ow to 'find them', what- using the internet, Google maps (like they update? I found the place I am living in now, and my next door neighbor's old car is STILL out front on Google!)?

Like I said- I need the $40k- so some of this is 'picking brains'. Some of it's plain and utter confusion because of how the contest's worded. 'at specific locations with DARPA personnel on hand' sounds tethered to me.

I also have some theories, some questions, and some other things that dont make sense -But I wanna keep my BIG mouth shut about them until after the contest...

reply to post by JIMC5499


LOL love your signature we are the same.

Yup- I was right. moored balloons:

TextTo 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.

Da balloon, boss! Da balloon! Da ballon!

reply to post by harrytuttle


Better yet....have the money go to ATS to support the site and the one's that spot the balloons receive a VIP status.

just a thought......

My guess is it is going to be used to see how social media and word of mouth networks will pass the info. This info will help fine-tune the filters used to mine the huge databases used by DARPA. Run the simulation in a virtual environment until you have some good guesses. Then run the real world and compare.
This might be a way to test the public sector access to satalites and imaging.

Someone at the NRO PM and I will split the prize $$

just a wild thought, what if they won't be putting up just 10 balloons .. what if they'll be floating a couple of hundred? but in different shades of red, just to figure out which ones are less visible.

you Americans and your KERRAZEE ideas, what ever will your Government depts think of next?
World peace?
Climate Control?
Space exploration?

Maybe you you should all complain on what a monumental waste of resources this pointless exercise is?

methinks DARPA is using this stunt to cover-up some buddies of theirs who will be arriving on that day. and they're gonna get all of you to help them locate where their buddies will be landing.

[edit on 12.3.09 by toreishi]

*bump*

so nobody wants to win $40K?

[edit on 12.4.09 by toreishi]

I'm in! A large web site full of folk in all areas does have the best chance to win. Since there are virtually no clues given this is a very interesting experiment. It would cost them a lot more and you could never get as many folk to participate even if they paid each one a small amount. This way, lots of different types of people with different resources and cognitive styles all competing in a zero sum game (only a group could possibly win, but only 1 person can claim the prize). Learning how people create social alliances and the spread of information would be a very useful thing, and a bargain at twice the price!

So be out and about on the 5th, and maybe scan your local papers/websites for any mentions?

Long-time ATS reader, first time poster.

The problem is, you need to have a large enough team to make it work. Team DeciNena has the team and technology and organization to make this "fly", and we are recruiting other teams to join with us. A small team can't win, but a large one (made of smaller teams) can.

Team DeciNena (think of the 80's song about 99 Red Balloons) is one of the best-organized and fastest growing, and we are now incorporating other teams into our web site and recruiting teams to join us if they feel they are too small to compete alone.

We are offering to share part of the prize money with all particpants who are active on Dec 5th, not JUST the actual balloon finder (who will receive a larger reward).

Join us, and tell all your friends. That's what the whole goal of the challenge is -- to build large teams quickly.

decinena.com...

If you study the marketing tactics for social networks, they say they like to find opinion leaders/ hubs of the target network to convert to their "point of view". They say 10% influences the other 90%.

I suspect they want to find the superior hubs of Facebook/ twitter and befriend them/ turn the hubs to the dark side.