Win $40K by Finding 10 Weather Balloons

Terry Olaes

Terry Olaes

I Used to be the [H] News Guy
Joined
Nov 27, 2006
Messages
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If you spot a red weather balloon floating around, take note because you’re part of a social experiment being conducted by Darpa (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency). The first individual or team to locate all ten of the red weather balloons will get $40K. The contest/experiment is looking at how “information spreads and propagates and becomes viral.”

The value of the contest, however, is serious business. The lessons learned from it could help Darpa understand how a social network can be used by foreign enemies to gain information, or how fast-breaking information can best be organized on the battlefield.
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So why does the DoD want to know how quickly citizens can organize themselves and the methods they would use? I might sound paranoid, but this could be a bad thing.
 
With the Obama administration chomping at the bit the take over the internet, in the interest of "public safety" in the event of a "national crisis", this doesn't surprise me one bit. Stay away from this crap, let darpa do it's own dirty work.
 
B2BigAl said:
With the Obama administration chomping at the bit the take over the internet, in the interest of "public safety" in the event of a "national crisis", this doesn't surprise me one bit. Stay away from this crap, let darpa do it's own dirty work.
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Oh, my, fucking, God.

Please tell me this is sarcasm. It is making me feel physically sick. Literally.
 
Glad to see some of you guys ready to don your tinfoil hats for even the most trivial stuff.
 
The contest stated the balloons were only to be up for a couple of hours on 12/5.
 
Wow, you guys are really being dumb, almost to the point of doing it intentionally. Have you ever considered what the military wants to do with this? No, it's not so the government can control your lives or suppress a rebellion. Rather, the military probably wants to study how to more effectively share information. With command and control pushed down the ranks so much in counterinsurgency operations, being able to share information quickly both horizontally and vertically is important. At West Point, cadets sometimes use it to coordinate things like summer training since the Army doesn't have anything better than normal e-mail to assist in C2. Other officers use it to send out general messages.

You can remove your tinfoil hats now. :rolleyes:
 
"Rather?", "probably?"

Stuff like this is not safe.

wake up.....
 
Enduring_Warrior said:
If you "think" spending 40k is trivial stuff. Well, you should relearn to talk.
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I was talking about how it was a freakin' find-the-balloon contest.

And we're talking about the DOD here. They can probably wipe their ass with 40K.
 
Enduring_Warrior said:
If you "think" spending 40k is trivial stuff. Well, you should relearn to talk.
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For "you" 40K is a lot money, you forget that it's DARPA that's spending it, and for DARPA, it's pocket change.
For your information, DARPA's FY2010 budget is: $3,248,054,000 That's 3.2 Billion dollars.
http://www.darpa.mil/budget.html

You should "relearn" to LOOK SH*T UP before telling people off.

I bet DARPA has paid for bolts that cost more that $40K a piece.
 
CMD said:
"Rather?", "probably?"

Stuff like this is not safe.

wake up.....
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I'm making an educated guess based on my knowledge and experience. I'm a cadet, so I'm pretty sure I would have a better idea than many people on this forum based on classes, training, experience, and simply talking to officers and NCOs. Not saying I'm absolutely right, just to not be ultra paranoid about every little study, experiment, and prototype that comes out of the military.
 
I wish I knew this was going on the other day or I would have took pictures of it. One of the balloons was right outside my work in a park. I just figured it was something setup for the SEC playoff games and never went over to ask them what it was about. The guys were greybeards however so I should have figured it was something geeky.
 
Ummm... wow... it only took 9 hours to find all 10?!
 
You only THOUGHT they were finding weather balloons. It really was a live testing of a Government mind control device that made them think they were seeing red balloons. :D
 
g1tigi said:
looks like MIT has pulled off a sucessful bribe and already won the contest!

https://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/default.aspx
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Headcase said:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/dec/07/darpa-challenge
There goes the fun in it.
Seriously, how can they find those so quick?
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Bribe? MIT could have easily won that contest legitimately. Realize we're talking about a bigass red balloon floating in the air here, not a rock buried in the side of a cliff.

There are probably some people who could have found them just by sending a message to all of the FB friends asking to look our your window and tell me if you see red. :p
 
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