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Help Find Steve Fossett
An anonymous reader invites us to join in the hunt for the missing Steve Fossett using Amazon's Mechanical Turk. DigitalGlobe, one of Google's imaging partners, has acquired new high-resolution satellite imagery of the area where Fossett disappeared on Monday. The public can now go through this imagery and quickly flag any images that might contain Fossett's plane. Flagged images will receive further review by search and rescue experts.
For helping a fellow human being? A warm fuzzy feeling inside. And, if you believe in it, karma/brownie points with your deity of choice.
For helping a millionaire in his hour of need? Who knows, maybe 15 minutes of fame, a few opportunities that you would otherwise not had and maybe a modest reward.
For most, doing the former is enough.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Well, most missing persons aren't going to be visible from the air, are they?
If amateurs can find new meteor craters with google earth, why not airplanes? How trained do you really have to be to spot an oddly shaped bright feature in otherwise mundane terrain?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Most of us aren't SAR experts, and wouldn't know a burn mark from a ridge shadow. The SARs that will be sifting through the public's mostly incorrect identification of accident artifacts would be better utilized in direct search efforts (either in the air or using imagery), rather than being distracted by what could best be considered a somewhat morbid game of "Where's Steve".
The time to test this type of technology out isn't during a live SAR mission. Leave the search and rescue to the experts, and please don't tie up their time with your well-meaning, but ultimately time-wasting, suppositions.
So they have an infrastructure in place that can easily organize & manage a massive search like this and you want to bitch because you had to "like... sign in" and occasionally fill out a CAPTCHA? Jeez, dude. A man's life is likely at stake here and a company stepped up to try and help the cause and you're complaining because they didn't implement the solution exactly as you would've liked. Why don't you spend more time checking out HITs and less time posting stupid shit on /. if you care so much about the process being impeded?
We're all screwed unless the government can track small aircraft flying over entirely unpopulated land in the middle of nowhere near absolutely no valuable targets. So remote, in fact, that no one has noticed a plane go down in the last week.
/sarcasm
You're right - this is obviously yet another demonstration of our inability to defend against terrorism.
Note that "At least 6 old aircraft wrecks - including 3 previously un-charted - have already been found, adding to the confidence of the teams that their efforts can identify aircraft forced down in the rugged high desert." -- but it's still essential to report any plane sightings. I think I found one at 38.088913,-119.515457.
Loosk like it may actually be flying. It may even be a search plane.
(no comment)
Doesn't seem to be an old wreck as it doesn't show up in older maps. I looked before I downloaded the maps in the article and there was nothing there. Also, measuring the plane with the ruler tool shows 22 feet, exactly the length of Fossett's plane.
Unfortunately, the lack of north-west facing shadows around the plane (see the trees) suggests that this is a plane in the air, not on the ground.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
it is a bit ridiculous considering all the missing persons there are out there who get no attention...
Did you just make this up because it makes you seem like a Sensitive and Thoughtful Person? Or can you actually name someone who went missing in the wilderness and "got no attention"?
FYI, rangers and such take their jobs very seriously. So far as I know, everyone reported missing in the wilderness gets a full spare-no-expense search and rescue effort. They look for "nobodies" just as hard as they're looking for Fossett, and the dedicated folks who do those tough jobs would take great offense at your ignorant suggestion otherwise.
I think the insinuation that such a technology and effort would ONLY be made available to a rich white man is jaded and wrong.
I am sure that this technology and effort would be made, also, for any pretty white girl. Especially if she's blond.
And unless you're a white millionaire or a pretty white blond girl, who cares if you're missing? I've watched Fox News enough to know that nobody except pretty white blond girls ever go missing *anyway*.
What I don't understand is . . . who does some rich wealthy adventurer not have some sort of backup plan or beacon or something? And besides that, what has he ever done for society other than be rich? Traveling around the globe in a hot air balloon hardly benefits mankind. *shrug*
I'm not saying he shouldn't be found or that I wish any ill will on him. I just don't see what he's done to warrant such a high concern on an international level beyond any other missing person... except at least someone who was kidnapped is less responsible for their situation than some adventurer who puts himself in harms way for hobby.
I have just completed my 729th image looking for Steve Fossett on the Mechanical Turk. I guess thats a lot more than I originally intended to do, but my reasons for keeping going are:-
In the 729 views, I've reported one image that contained a feature that looked like a rock formation impersonating an aircraft. The instructions tell us to be conservative so I reported the hit.
Plenty more to go around folks! How often are you given the chance to personally save the life of a billionare? Sounds worthwhile even in capitalist America to me.
-F
I'd just like to point out a couple things:
I consider my right to travel anywhere I want freely a part of my right to privacy.
I frequently fly a small plane over rural (very flat) Minnesota, and there is no radar coverage at lower altitudes. I assume filing a flight plane for a local flight at low altitudes in mountanous terrain would be very similar and there would be little benefit over telling someone at the airport about where you are headed and about when you'll be back (which he did). If he was flying low there's a good chance he wasn't even able to make radio contact with any controllers.
Unlike most missing persons searches, Steve vanished with a 20' x 20' plane as a marker, which hasn't been spotted in nearly a week of searching. Good luck finding the more common single person using satellite (well, any satellite that the public gets access to, anyway). I don't think he's really being treated that much differently than anyone else.
I fly with the Civil Air Patrol, and think it's awesome that I can sit at my desk and help with the search without having to burn gas or worry about hitting a mountain.
I think you guys are awesome for pitching in - keep up the good work!
(back to searching...)
I've had a quick skim through the replies.... How recent are these images? C:\>
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a thumb.
I can't believe your post is +5. It's disgusting and racist.
According to this article, Steve Fossett is "a skilled survivalist who has scaled some of the world's highest peaks and survived several failed attempts to circle the globe in a balloon." So he's been in similar situations before and come out okay. I think that's why there's so much activity -- there's actually a chance he survived. Then there's the fact that he knew a lot of people who were also aviators. In that same article it says a lot of the planes involved in the search are privately owned -- it's the aviation community coming together. So what you're insinuating in your post is that if he were black, still widely known in aviation circles, still a famous survivalist, that there wouldn't be any attention given to him? That's just stupid.
As for your point about pretty white girls, it's even more ridiculous. Use your common sense... what makes a more interesting story, a young child kidnapped by a stranger or a teenager "kidnapped" by her divorced dad when they cross state lines on the way to Disneyworld without permission? I hope you said the stranger. Now who is more likely to be kidnapped by strangers, a pretty young girl or an ugly young girl? Probably the pretty one, so statistically the stories that do make it to the news are going to be about pretty people. Okay now if the parents are poor or middle class, is that more interesting than millionaire parents who are publicly offering a huge reward? Hmmmmmmm I wonder which one makes a better national news story. Okay now statistically are most rich families white or non-white? So put those pieces together and you can explain 90% of the "racism" you see in the situation.
You are actually implying that if the pretty 5 year old daughter of a respected and well-known black millionaire was kidnapped by a group of white Satanic cult members, then the story would be brushed aside because nobody cares about black girls. That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard, but you seem to mean it because you purposely put "white" in front of every description.
I think you're blinded by anger over racism so strongly that you can't see the obvious facts and causes for any situation that involves race.
Bah...replying to my own message.
Now I'm slightly annoyed. "F*ck it all" would be slightly too harsh but close to my current feelings. Looks like they're pouring more and more pics to that system. Most likely there's a reasonable and even obvious explanation for that. No need to point them out, but...
This implementation is depressing. Seeing the counter go down kept me motivated. There was a feeling of progress. I thought we'd be ready soon and I could go and do my own stuff. Suddenly thousands of new pics appear. Are we getting anywhere? Have they found anything? Are they making us browse through the very same images over and over again, just because it's free? The last scenario is unlikely but it still disturbs me. Look, they have money to spend. They decided to make this a $0.00 task. It's OK to me but how about SOME KIND OF STATUS REPORT, goddammit? Or even a tiny thankyou message? Or any feedback at all?
Now I feel like THIS is the most pointless thing I've ever done in my free time. I'd like to be proven wrong. Oh well, keep those 1360 units. I did it voluntarily and that's fine. Anyway, I won't spend any more time on a seemingly infinite task.
If I sound grumpy, it's because the caffeine is wearing out and I've got nothing else done today.
What do you think about
38 27'2.88"N 119 25'25.17"W
as possible wreckage of another plane, from some time ago?
I think this is a great chance to go back and bring closure to those families of people missing in unrecovered crashes in the past, in the area. I hope they go ahead and let the survey complete, even if they find Fossett soon.