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Help Find Steve Fossett

Posted by kdawson on from the spare-wetware-cycles dept.

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.

3 of 439 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Obligatory question in capitalist America by WIAKywbfatw · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  2. Re:Found a plane... by clarkkent09 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  3. Re:Obligatory question in capitalist America by Fullerene · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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:-

    • If Steve isn't found immediately, there probably won't be much point in looking anymore. We have to help today.
    • I admire his approach to life. We just passed Steve Irwin's anniversary here in Oz and this sort of guy is all too rare.
    • This isn't a lottery - you help almost as much by your work in eliminating the useless images as you do by escalating the significant ones so you can always feel a sense of satisfaction even when you don't see a plane.
    • I've got nothing else better to do with a lazy Sunday.

    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