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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.
... welcome our new missing adventurer overlord ... oh, wait.
If I find him...
:)
How much do I get?
What's he wearing red and white stripes? Seriously though, this is a pretty cool tool even if it is a bit ridiculous considering all the missing persons there are out there who get no attention...
Get a web developer
but I found Waldo!
Never forget 1-click.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
CATS/Diebold '08- All your vote are belong to us!
we normally reserve this type of effort for cute, young, white women
... five cents. Though you do get twice that if you happen to find him and Madeline McCann the same day.
Spending all my spare time at Galaxy Zoo. Now if he were visible from the SDSS, maybe.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
In related news, no Slashdotters posted a "First Post" response for a matter of several hours. This never-before seen phenomenon was tentatively attributed to the entire Slashdot community immediately joining the virtual search.
*grin*
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
I suppose there are already trained people looking at the images. From the Police, Fire-Department, or whatever organization handles these kinds of emergencies in Nevada. I stress the word trained because the satellite data definetely needs experienced eyes to look out for the right stuff.
The article starts by explaining what to look for on these images. This is good, but to substitute for experience in looking at such images.
To be fair, most missing persons are hiding in bus terminals and seedy motels. Even if it sadly takes someone of celebrity, even someone whose personal hobby is to put themselves into ridiculous danger, to develop a new form of distributed wetware computing, it's still for the better.
Maybe if someone had thought of this earlier, that unlucky family in Oregon wouldn't have been stranded in their car for a week. Or maybe, now there's a new option for the next time that does happen.
Forget SETI-at-Home. I'd much rather play "FindTheLostPeople-at-Home".
It's not absurd for that reason, but because finding him is literally like finding a needle in a very large haystack. Just ask anyone in search and rescue. Even in the middle of the ocean with a bright orange life raft it's hard to find someone.
Cool, can i get some of my neighborhood? The stuff on google is a good 5 years old, if not older. The resolution is pretty poor too.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Well, then, any novices who join in here may gain some experience!
If only we channel this energy into solving real problems, such as the disappearance of Natalee Holloway or the latest gossip concerning Paris Hilton.
1/2
One day we'll be telling our children, "When I was your age, we actually had people comparing satellite imagery to find lost people!"
Seriously, though, can't computers do this sort of thing more efficiently? I'm no expert on the state of image recognition research, but you think it would be good enough that a computer could pick out potential "hits" for further review by trained professionals, perhaps by searching for what looks like man-made objects in remote areas or comparing old imagery with the current, updated samples.
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
...put it on photobucket, and link it here.
We'll tell you you're seeing things.
-Steve
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Talentless showoff. A Paris Hilton for the nerd demographic.
The area of Nevada where he is missing is actually rugged and mountainous ( I have some proerties in those parts myself ). Look on Google earth if you don't believe me, the name 'Nevada' means ',mountains. Also area 51 is now where nearby. There's a lot of rugged and inaccessible terrain he could've gone down, unfortunatley, and 5 days is a long time without water, its dry and hot out this time of year. I'd say the situation doesn't look good at this point, but we can always hope for a miracle, best of luck to the SAR and CAP people.
I'm surprised the search and rescue teams haven't called on the one man fit for this job...
...it's time to send in LEEEEEEEEERRRROOOOOOOOY JEEEEEEEENKINS!
More like Steve Fossil! I thought the search for this man was a cover for the US Govt to search the desert their recent missing nuke from that B-52?
Google Earth images appear to be seriously outdated. I did a search for my business and the image shows our building as it was in 2005 prior to a second floor addition. Did Google Earth update the images for the region where Steve's plane may have crashed? If not, there isn't much point to viewing that area using Google Earth.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
.,.
(cat does not got my tongue)
they should take a page out of galaxyzoo's book and make this easier you have to like... sign in, then figure out what a HIT is then accept it, then click yes or no, then remember to click auto accept hit, then randomly it goes "hey wait aren't you a bot?" and you have to enter in letters thanks for impeding the search for this guy amazon
I would like to help, but it does not work in FF on Linux...
All Fossett had to do was install a locater beacon in his private aircraft and he would have been home the same night he disappeared.
Hmm. I found something that was interesting that is of correct sizr and somewhat airplane shaped. Probably nothing, but there's still the possibility. However, the frigging site doesn't accept my clicks on either of the radio buttons under the sample image. The browsers I'm using are Safari, Camino and Firefox
Am I doing it wrong or is the page really picky when it comes to peoples' browser choises?
"No Windows, no helping"?
Anyone got it working?
Where have your banknotes been?!
KML files can be used to overlay external data. There are KML files for "live" cloud cover images, for example.
Yes, Google Earth has updated images of the region. You can tell because they are obviously satellite photos and not overflight. Notice that everything is shot from straight up instead of the normal angle and also note the lack of color.
Read the article, and you'd see that they explain how authorities helped facilitate new images.
"Seriously, though, can't computers do this sort of thing more efficiently? "
Maybe we can use this image technology in cars and trucks, and hold a contest to see who can cross the desert first?
"perhaps by searching for what looks like man-made objects in remote areas"
Said by a member of the junkiest species ever.
It's possible that thousands of eyes will work better.
It's also possible it will just create a flood of false positives, but it's worth getting this stuff figured out.
I was just looking around the area myself with Google Earth, and saw this, which looks vaguely like a dirt-covered plane: 38.4198N, 119.2905W
Probably nothing, but who knows. Unfortunately, there's no way to flag arbitrary coordinates for review, just the random pictures it spits out.
That area looks strangely similar to what I always imagined the hidden capitalist's oasis would look like from Atlas Shrugged, where all the people who make the world go find refuge...
Tracking every call and email but STILL not properly tracking aircraft? Somebody remind Bush that we weren't attacked by email or phone on 9-11. Enjoy.
This ain't no upwardly mobile freeway This is the road to hell
38 29' 03.51" N
119 24' 21.64" W
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!
Agree on two points,
The One-click Mechanical Turk is highly inefficient as it requires loads of clicks and scrolling for each of the impossible small search areas provided.
While something is better than nothing - what's the point of a large community effort if not to advance the technology, and maintain the technology so that in future cases, it can be deployed more effectively.
If this is the best google can do - i'd sell their stock.
AIK
I press the "End" key to scroll all the way down. Look at the image. Click Yes or No. Click Submit Hit. Three interactions per image.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
"How much do I get? :)"
Depends on what body part you find.
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.
most OCRs for images other than text need to be trained on a sample image. This type of rough, broken terrain makes for really bad sample images- every photo is different. You'd spend more time teaching the computer what wasn't a plane than you'd save using the computer. We use an image recognition automated inspection tool at my workplace to inspect chips for defects and as regular as most of our chip features are, we still haven't gotten it down to a really usable level of false positives.
Uh, "if it looks roughly mouse-shaped according to my infra-red sensitive pit, eat it"? --Chris Burke 09-08-10
where is Bin Laden, or WMDs, or Waldo...
"Tracking every call and email but STILL not properly tracking aircraft? Somebody remind Bush that we weren't attacked by email or phone on 9-11. Enjoy."
We tracked them just fine, until they crashed into the two towers, and the ground. What's your point again?
These pictures are lousy - to really get useable images would require a fly-over.
Manned flyovers are expensive, slow, and often dangerous if a person is lost due to inclimate weather;
However Unmanned flyovers can be conducted in poor weather, at very low cost, and without pilot fatigue or airspace crowding concerns.
It is ironic that private pilots have been objecting to uav, and now their hero doesn't have the benefit of private UAV flights for search and rescue in his time of need.
Not to gloat, but this would be a fitting time for the private pilots associations to change course on elbowing out UAV's and giving another nascent industry to europe.
AIK
I'd say that's a hit. The object matches the dimensions of a Super Decathlon, according to Google Earth.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
I hit "End" and scroll all the way down. Look at the image. Attempt to click yes or no. It's grayed out. Hit Accept HIT. Hit "End" to scroll down. Now the radio buttons are working. I hit Yes or No and click Submit. I then scroll all the way down, look at the picture, don't see anything so go to click "No" - it's grayed out again. Close Browser.
This is a very good use of the technology. I hope this works if for no other reason than to bring closure to his family if he hasn't survived.
My problem is the way they've got the web page set up. Every time I submit a new "HIT", I have to scroll all the way down the page again to see the next image. It's great that they have a "primer" a the top, but I've done a couple hundred now... I don't need to keep seeing that over and over again. Just cut to the chase and show me the next picture to examine.
Also, looking at the Google Earth swath that this is covering, I can't help but think that he might be outside of that. Can anyone comment? Or do they know "if he's anywhere, he's in that area."?
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
But what exactly are you looking for?
Remember the "Face on Mars?" It is very easy to find significance in patterns that are pure chance. The computer can be no more rational and objective than its programmer.
In World War Two, instead of constructing elaborate wooden mock-ups, you could create a convincing illusion of a fighter base simply by painting abstract shadows of aircraft on the ground.
into a camoflouged mountain like john galt in Atlas Shrugged
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.
You're talking to a crowd who probably has no trouble differentiating between a size 34 C and a size 35 C.
It probably can't hurt, but you're right in that it can be difficult for even a trained observer to spot the wreckage of a small plane at that resolution - or even from 5,000 feet with your own eyeballs.
I spent a few years on the local search and rescue team and fortunately only got to see one serious crash up close. From the air, it looked more or less like a bunch of trash strewn across a 100-foot stretch of hillside. Nothing you'd identify immediately as an aircraft, though in this case the huge burn mark helped it stand out.
Was he wearing a red and white striped shirt and beanie?
"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 those police tip-lines really bother you then?
I recently lost my mobile phone somewhere in Wadham College gardens, Oxford, and I was wondering if I could get this kind of help to find it. Any takers?
Check "automatically accept next HIT" or whatever it is, enter anti-bot CATCHPA, then it works sort of as you want.
It still could be a lot better, but it's not horrible once you see that checkbox.
Get Amazon to upload hi-res pictures of Pakistan next.
(In sincerity, my warmest thoughts and most heartfelt prayers are given for Mr. Fossett and his family. Steve is a true explorer-hero to many people. I, for one, admire him.)
:)
> To be fair, most missing persons are hiding in bus terminals and seedy motels.
Oblig. Futurama -->
"Bigfoot populations require vast amounts of land to remain elusive in. They typically dwell just behind rocks but are also sometimes playful... bounding into thick fogs and out-of-focus areas."
(God bless Steve and his family, and return him home safely
sigfault (core dumped)
You need some feedback to learn what you detected right and wrong.
The correct Spanish word for mountain is montaña, not a plain n but n with ~ on top.
What, you thought there was no interesting CS research left to do?
I tried looking to see if the "Series of Tubes" Senator's house in Girdwood, AK had a small shadow or a long one, because it was jacked up two floors in 2000 as a favor from a local corrupt oil company. Unfortunately this is the best you can get from Google Maps- a fuzzy satellite view.
The map is different in Google Earth- there, you can see that each one of those short stubby little roads ends in a nice stately circle.
I was about to post how distorted the image is, when on a hunch I decided to unclick the "terrain" box on GE. The image becomes a LOT clearer, but I still don't think it is nearly clear enough to identify something as small as a 22" plane.
No, the Turk is for situations which computers CAN'T do well.
On the other hand, they're probably storing all the information to help train computers in the future.
I keep hearing people whine about the Mechanical Turk interface. Each image only requires one mouse click and two keyboard presses (no mouse movement at all required). Here's how:
1 - When you manually accept the first hit, make sure you check "Automatically accept the next HIT".
2 - Press the END key to scroll all the way down to see the image.
3 - Click the mouse on Yes or No.
4 - Press the ENTER key to accept the HIT.
5 - Goto 2
I've found two images that are really good candidates for a crash. One was at 38.020248,-119.368515. It looks like a line of tree damage, with a bright object at the edge of the tree line.
Next, I keep hearing people saying that laypeople aren't useful for something like this. This is simply to flag interesting images so experts can spend their time looking only at the most likely candidates. Also, this is free for them. So they could use an algorithm something like this:
Show each image to at least 5 people.
Each time someone says "Yes" to a specific image, show it to two additional people, up to a max of 20 reviews.
Sort the images by descending Yes vote count and show them to the experts in that order.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
If he crashed in Nevada, why are all the pictures I'm getting located in Yosemite National Park?
Uh, "if it looks roughly mouse-shaped according to my infra-red sensitive pit, eat it"? --Chris Burke 09-08-10
(no comment)
I hate to rain on this parade, it would be nice if we could help, but the imagery on such sites isn't updated in real time. I'm not sure about Google earth, but Google maps uses satellite images that are several years old. Unless by some chance a new image was taken since Monday and already sent to whichever system they are using, the best that we might be able to do is identify some of the older wrecks that they are finding during this search.
I think the airfield he used is at 3830'35.18"N 11913'0.68"W
This is approx 80miles SE of Reno as detailed on http://www.stevefossett.com/index.html
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.
What it meant to ME is that some people apparently warrant searches that other people don't warrant. Government officials apparently chose to search for ONE jackass who didn't file a flight plan, but I guess the others weren't worth it. We don't know whether THEY filed flight plans or not.
This space available.
What I wonder though is how hard would it be to do some image processing and find the differences between images before and after monday - would not be perfect but may really cut down on amount of searching
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
38°08'01.34"N 119°25'20.19"W
There is a strange rectangular object to the left of this coordinate. It doesn't seem like it would be a rock. I imagine if a plane crashed the wings would be gone and such. I dunno, just wondering because I thought it seemed odd.
Anything that could be improved an order of magnitude by a teenager in the time it takes to chug a mountain dew is horrible.
I submit that if reduced to a single keystroke - not carpel-inducing-mousing clicks, and enlarged 4 times,
one could expose the average user to 10 times the number of pixels in the same time; moreover, the pixels searched would go up 100 times as people would stay with it longer if it we're so tedious.
as is - it is embarrassingly horrid.
Ben
Too bad it's done by Amazon. It's an absolutely fantastic idea, and a really new technology application (getting the public to scan pictures). Unfortunately, I don't have, and won't have an Amazon ID due to their continued promotion of dog fighting
Fuck you, Amazon.
I don't respond to AC's.
The last time an effort like this was undertaken, it was for Jim Gray (Database researcher, Microsoft Fellow), who had disappeared sailing from San Francisco. I checked on that for a while, but never saw any more information.
Was anything ever found in the search for Jim Gray? No remnants of his boat, or other signs of what happened?
Ok, so what do we do if we find a plane just browsing in Google Earth? (way more efficient than refreshing the webpage).
38 7'34.00"N, 11929'4.81"W
Much more fuzzy than the AC plane, so this is probably nothing, but the size and shape is about right (a bit shorter, but of the plane is angled, it could easily show up shorter).
True, it could be a publicity stunt. But if it isn't intentional, then he's dead. He had enough experience to know to have an ELT/EPRIB on his plane. If he didn't activate it when he went down, it's because he was too injured to flip a switch to turn it on. Id the wreck was bad enough to break his ELT/EPRIB, then he didn't stand a chance.://www.nctackle.com/acraq406mhzg1.html http://www.avionix.com/store/elt.html
We are all just people.
I didn't RTFA so I'm at fault for that. However, the first section I looked at via Google Earth was in color...at least the trees were green.
In my defense, I was so anxious to start looking for Steve that I immediately jumped to Amazon to start looking rather than stopping to read the article. Who has time to read articles when there is a man out in the wilderness waiting for us to Amazon or Google him?
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
...as Steve Fossett originally set out to take this journey to find a flat and long enough place to do his world land-speed record. Now Google has high-resolution imagery of the whole place, which makes the whole undertaking a bit obsolete in retrospect ?
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Indeed. Because, God help us, if we aren't TRAINED into our incompetent boobery, our hundreds of thousands of eyes would be better wasted trying to find Waldo.
Sorry, but someone had to say it. The chances of Fossett surviving a crash but not well enough to light up his ELT or Breitling 121.5 MHz distress beacon watch are pretty fucking slim. The guy's hard core but still.
Note that the old maps are offset around 640feet to the North, compared to the new maps. Lakes and peaks show that pretty conclusively.
All that said, I've found several plane-shaped bright images (of roughly the right size) that were not in the old map data, but where do I alert someone to the coordinates? This was not done through the Amazon thingie, but directly in Google Earth...
Steve is ridiculously wealthy, and I don't mean this in a bad way. All of the expenses of searching for him can be recovered from him (or his estate), so there is basically a blank check on all of these costs. And yes, he's famous, so people will care and do more about finding him compared to some other schmuck - this is human nature and isn't going to be changing any time soon.
Don't forget the Civil Air Patrol's ARCHER system.
i ndex.cfm?fuseaction=display&nodeID=6192&newsID=347 5&year=2007&month=9
http://www.cap.gov/visitors/news/cap_news_online/
"My english is my first language and I'm barely literate. -- CmdrTaco"
I thought it was BEARLY literate.
Seriously, though, can't computers do this sort of thing more efficiently?
I'll have to disagree with the poster that claims this can't be done.
Yes, it can. It's known as "pattern recognition." The problem is that for the most effective recognition, you need either before/after images (which would be normalized and then overlaid at appropriate registration points), or a series of pics fed to the algorithm, one of which contains the artifact you're interested in (supervised learning). The former is often use to detect motion in astronomical image of the same area of sky. The latter is very accurate, but requires a prior training of the algorithm so that the algorithm can "learn" what it's looking for.
It's possible that there are no before/after images (of suitable quality and/or coverage) that can be overlaid for feature anomaly detection. It's probably a bit late in the game for use of a supervised learning model.
You do bring up a very good point.
Could have also filed a flight plan. Oh well.
That's only half of it. The second half is sticking to the plan. Flying, hiking, scuba diving, etc, its the second half that makes the first half work.
His plane could have gone down in water.
Well, it does help to be good buds with Richard Branson.
I assume that the authorities would spend some time looking for the crash site in any case. The only difference is, because Steve Fossett is Steve Fossett, some people outside the official investigation are pulling some strings to help make the search more efficient. If somebody came to a search and said, "We may have a faster way to search through your satellite data," it would be stupid to reject the help in the name of fairness.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Uh, if you RTFA, there's an overlay for Google Earth that you need to download to get the most recent satellite pics. Without that, you're not going to be finding any recently crashed planes.
You're supposed to open the provided KML file with Google Earth. That will add a "layer" with new image data which isn't normally in Google Earth.
Color would be a huge help--a Citabria is typically painted with a very vivid red, white and blue star burst pattern on the wings that would be very easy to spot against a mountainside.
This ain't rocket surgery.
An anonymous coward invites us to join in the hunt for the missing upper stripe on the U.S. Flag using our own damn eyes.
You most certainly did not.
Give me a break. Who are you trying to convince that some regular guy gets the "same" amount of attention and rescue effort as this "famous" fag?? What planet have you been living on? Get past your 12-year-old mentality and take a long hard look at the contemporary American society.
Why didn't they do this for James Kim? The CNET guy?
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
And your children will roll their eyes and tell their friends how big of a dork you are.
Trained enough to realize that Google Earth images are old and not up to date, for starters, and are henceforth generally useless.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Yes, I think much more efficiently. One of my collegues in grad school is using this technology to recognize archaeological sites. One big reason that even a rudimentary algorithm has an advantage on a mechanical turk is that most remote sensing data is dealing with a pretty thick matrix of wavelength bands. This Fossett data seems to only be one band, or maybe a composite. If you are working with even high-end multispectral data, software can much more easily differentiate types of material before recognizing a shape, however. In reality, I think this type of detection would be more useful in this circumstance, seeing as how the plane may not really look like a plane anymore. Change detection can be tricky; you can see by the data that there are some pretty serious shadows, which can confound change detection unless, like I say, you have a broader spectrum of data. I have to agree that anything a casual /.er is going to be able to pick out, a shape detection algorithm would probably be on top of.
They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!
Gonna lose a shitton of mod points from replying to this thread, but is there an IRC channel up for people working on the Turk searches?
I'm reluctant to do this, but I've sort of gone all out tonight to alert people searching for Fossett because of a white plane I found. I know people will say, "Well give us the coordinates so we can verify" but I'm not going to do that until the Mono County Sheriff and whomever else has a chance to go out there in the morning when it's light and see what it is.
I did a post about it leaving out the coordinates but you can see the screengrab I did from Google Earth: http://www.iconnectdots.com/ctd/2007/09/is-this-st eve-f.html/
If anyone knows how to contact the Mechanical Turk folks at Amazon, email me please.
Doh...thanks!
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
Fuckers like you would be happy if a mediocre and inadequate search effort were made for everybody, but as soon as one guy gets something a little better than average you hear howls of injustice. Inequality is not a disease, and mediocrity is not a cure.
Most of the regular satellite imagery in Google Earth is resampled to look like it's from straight up. In areas with buildings, you can sometimes see the buildings "lean" because the original shot was actually at an angle and so saw the sides. And Ikonos and Quickbird imagery is usually in color. But panchromatic imagery has higher resolution, so I'm guessing that's what this is.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=3576072& page=1
No, unfortunately they don't look for them just as hard.
38 3'24.02"N 11914'56.55"W It looks like a plane, it's about 20 ft in length and has a 23-24 ft wingspan. I don't know how to contact them but if anyone here can communicate with them, please do. Don't forget to credit me if it turns out to be his plane.
If you've got imagery from before and after the crash (if there was one), why not let the computer do the searching? It would make for an interesting software project.
This is the second or third time I've seen where people (geeks) can view satellite photos and help locate a person. Each time I thought there must be some sort of automated search application that spots a straight edge or a debris pattern, wouldn't it be obvious to detect a non-natural shape in a wide open area without any man made structures around?
I was thinking of some sort of diff application for photos but you'd need a before and after, and the app itself needs to be written.
An intact airplane should be easy to find compared to a boat since an airplane has a distinct shape when looking down on it from above, a boat wouldn't stand out as much.
Anyway Slashdot being technology oriented website I just thought it would make more sense to use computers and applications rather than eyeballs, if it worked better that is and not just for the sake of using a computer.
If you're using firefox you can do this using only the keyboard...
1 - When you manually accept the first hit, make sure you check "Automatically accept the next HIT".
2 - Press the '/' to search then type 'no,'. This highlights the "no" text adjacent to the radio buttons.
3 - <shift>-<tab> takes you to the radio buttons
4 - up/down arrow to select yes or no
5 - Press the ENTER key to accept the HIT.
6 - Goto 2
Gosh, you have me pegged all right. Smart guy, you are.
This space available.
Well, if you've got good before and after images you can do a pretty good "stenographic" diff on them with a computer, then put them in the "should get looked at with eyeballs" pile.
Not that we officially have that frequent satellite image coverage yet or anything, but I bet you'd find most images don't change all that much from week to week, and the ones that do have something interesting in them.
At the resolutions they are making available on Google Earth and Google Maps it may be impossible to find anything important in this case and in this manner.
The article explains that the complete plane would be approximately 21 pixels in length in the image given. If the plane crashed and broke up in pieces, each piece would be so small that it would be extremely hard to locate it on these images. A white spot is probably a reflection of light in that area of the terrain. But it would be a little hard to distinguish it from a small piece of a plane.
What, you thought there was no interesting CS research left to do?
...so it does look like all the interesting CS research has been done.
Well, I can already turn on my computer, do some typing and clicking, and get any variety of pornography ever created instantly delivered to my home...
paintball
Well, we aren't looking for burn marks - given that we're still hoping to recover him alive, it's likely the aircraft will be at least largely intact. Hopefully, this is still rescue, not recovery.
It would be very useful to see any photo with the exact plane - painting, layout, different angles.
IMO, the map should be rotated in several directions to be sure nothing is missed.
p.s. Excuses about my English.
I started cruising around in Google Earth and I found something interesting at 3815'31.05"N,11918'59.08"W . It's about the right size and is not on older maps. How do I report it? The Mechanical Turk interface has no method for reporting except to flag one of the random tiles.
Mturk was nice back when it first came out and you could run scripts to cheat it. made several hundred dollars in amazon gift certs last december :)
How often does that happen with light aircraft? Do they vanish entirely very often?
I see a small arc of white dots just south of 3811'36.37"N, 11922'54.31"W
never spent much time in the southwest, have you?
the terrain ia not that simple. light and shadow give objects odd, illusionary, shapes and colors.
it is a much tougher problem then spotting a road, a riverbed, a townside. something that may have shaped or re-shaped terrain, ecologies, for hundreds or thousands of years.
This might have been said already but I'm too drunk and tired to check the posts.
Take several detailed pictures and look for the diffs; there he is; if he's alive.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
I suspect that comment meant nothing to your average pimple-face. But it made me laugh.
"We tracked them just fine, until they crashed into the two towers, and the ground. What's your point again? Say what? The first thing the Terrorists did on 9/11 was to turn off the IFF (Identify Friend or Foe) transponders, effectively blinding the FAA controllers. They don't rely on raw radar "paints" anymore for most Commercial stuff."
They don't seem particularly blind. Your claim is also addressed here as well. So at best you're telling half-truths. The FAA air traffic controllers were blind to attitude, but not location. The primary radar return is your "raw radar paints", although you are correct in implying that it's not solely depended upon in modern aviation.
Steve Fossett passed out at high altitude (as he did once before). His plane has a 563 mile range, which from his take-off point in Nevada includes seven states, Mexico, and the Pacific Ocean. He ran out of gas without waking up, which is why nobody had any radio contact and there are no rescue beacons. It's a loss.
I will create a sig when innovation restarts in the U.S.
Often, that imagery is shot from an airplane, which is why the angles are much more severe. You can tilt to the angle the plane was from and it becomes obvious.
It's time for "help bury Steve Fosset". Bulk submit images!
I have a small problem: there are no control pictures. Every so many pictures they should put a control picture with a known but unrelated crash site. The example they give in the instructions is not a crashed plane, it's a MSPAINTED plane.
Please use digg.com to raise awareness of this story - thanks!
t _by_searching_NEW_satellite_imagery
http://digg.com/world_news/Help_find_Steve_Fosset
Whoever he was, he's hovis. Forget about him.
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.
Seriously, are you are jealous because a bunch of clever people decided to help with this search? You think that the SAR people should have said, "Sorry, no. It wouldn't be fair to other missing people if we let 20,000 geeks help one of their own on this search."
Jeebus. Even the Marines are allowed to go back and make a special effort at recovery that would not be normally attempted; why not nerds?
--GMS
It's a good thing that the flight sim doesn't actually show the planes of all the people using it, otherwise we'd be trying to find a real plane amongst the crashes of all the mouse and keyboard pilots.
People who are searching for Steve Fossett should update to the latest colo(u)r images for google earth from the latest data refresh.
http://s3.amazonaws.com/fossett/geoeye-color.kml
(Please mod up. Posted as AC to prevent karma-whoring. Editors please consider for article update.)
Jep, the images are far too low-quality to find a plane broken into small pieces. however, if it's broken into pieces there's hardly any chance Fosset's still alive. If there's a severed wing or the body of the plane lying somewhere, we might recognize it.
Ideally, he made a crash landing out there due to lack of fuel or whatever and all means of communications are also broken down, and he's sitting next to his almost-complete aircraft waiting for rescue... but that's not very probable.
Based on the reported coordinates...
0 69/
7 63/
Before image:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/83092173@N00/1349787
After image:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/83092173@N00/1349786
I read in the news that anywhere from 10,000 to 17,000sq. miles is being searched for Fosset's plane. This Google Earth tool only has updated images covering an area of about 500 square miles. I wonder if they plan to expand the area with new images.
Remember... ZG9uJ3QgZm9yZ2V0IHRvIGRyaW5rIHlvdXIgb3ZhbHRpbmU=
Anyone knows how to turn off the "before" layer ? Viewing both layers at once makes the picture very dark and features are hard to figure out. Thanks.
3828'55.68"N 11924'18.17"W
If that's him, it only took me an hour or so to find.
-- My Weblog.
You realize that those six crashes would not have to be reported missing, right?
If they had searched for anyone with the same intensity as now, they would likely have found some of them. Since none of those crashes were found until now, grandparent is wondering if this means that other people have been missing in the area, but search efforts to find them did not only not find the person, but also fail to find the crash sites that were found when searching for Steve fosset.
I lost my sig.
What's the saying you have? "Perfect is the adversary of good"?
Those trained people would probably have to skim thousands of images each, or spend so much time that any hope of finding him alive would have been gone.
While the individual skill of untrained people is lower, they would probably make it up with the amount of time they take per picture. Especially if you have enough to set 5 people on each picture and combine the results.
I lost my sig.
The imagery is quite dark in many places. I found it useful to copy & paste the image into Photoshop (or GIMP or whatever) and apply an auto levels to it. This often blows it out too light, so if you can blend that 50% with the original, it looks about right. In Photoshop I do this by creating an Adjustment Layer of type Levels (above the original image in the Layers list), setting it to Auto, then setting the layer opacity to 50%. This allows me to paste in a new image right below it in the layer stack and have it take effect immediately.
- google-maps.html) but I can't seem to get this to work with this KML. It is sometimes nice to see a little context to see if the white blob you're looking at is Steve, or just a typical white landscape feature.
Too bad the image quality is compromised by JPEG compression.
Somewhere I thought you could load a KML (with Overlays) into Google Maps for viewing (http://googlemapsapi.blogspot.com/2006/11/kml-on
-- There is no truth. There is only Perception. To Percieve is to Exist.
3816'50.20"N
11927'8.74"W
WTF is that?
Does anyone know what happened with the radar data they were supposedly looking at?
Did it turn out they didn't spot him at all? Did they not have any data?
Just curious....
I submit that if reduced to a single keystroke - not carpel-inducing-mousing clicks, and enlarged 4 times,
one could expose the average user to 10 times the number of pixels in the same time; moreover, the pixels searched would go up 100 times as people would stay with it longer if it we're so tedious.
It is a single keystroke. You check the "automatically accept" box and it is one yes or no click on every page.
As for enlarging the images, the whole point is that the larger the image, the more likely something important is to be missed. Researchers have known about this forever, and it's a pretty common and accepted practice to break down "QA" (for lack of a better term) processes into manageable chunks. An untrained layperson is not going to take the time and care required to properly check an 800x600 image for tiny chunks of airplane. Even a trained person can miss things if the sample is too large.
In other words, stop your whining.
For the crater thing, you'd be wrong: The data is old, yes, but not out-of-date.
For the Steve Fossett (as distinct from other craters) thing: They provide data from after Steve's disappearance, specifically for the reason you cite. Being able to compare old vs new is handy there.
Anyone know of an easy way to turn the background color of the page to black? The images aren't too bright, and a bright white background doesn't help.
I'll find it for you, and then keep it. Happy? :)
The US is not at war. Stop spreading that lie. It is engaged in military activity, but not at war with anyone.
Granted, though, people who fly planes in the wrong places have bad things happen to them. I do believe that those events are significantly logged, and someone would make the connection to a missing airman in their neck of the woods. If it was legitimate, it is regrettable and no more.
So why don't you actually READ the page in question and follow the instructions? Then you'd realise the silly mistake you're making. The original poster is correct - 3 interactions per page.
Googles images arent realtime. Their photos may have been taken YEARS ago. The ones on Mechanical Turk have been taken since the crash. Forget what you find on Google - it's a waste of effort.
www.sjbaker.org
When I started to help this morning there were 32,000 work units (called hits, images to be reviewed) available. They were disappearing at a rate of 5-10,000 per hour, meaning that all things being equal there were 50-100 people looking at them.
:) I'm guessing that although from the side it's mostly blue, that the top of the wings are white.
However over the past half hour the work units available have been *increasing*. Currently 12,000 and increasing. Clearly they are adding more to be done faster than we're doing them. So anyone who helped out at the beginning - don't assume the hits are "all done". There could be more at any time.
In my old version of IE I couldn't see the scale bars or the example image, looking at the same coords of a unique scene in google maps I estimated the image was 125m x 125m - which would be half meter resolution. Now I see they claim the images are actually 85x85m, which would be 1.08ft resolution.
Based on that and that I've done 400 units, that mean's I've searched one full square mile.
It also means the 32,000 units I saw when I started is only 10 miles x 10 miles, 100 square miles. I heard someone else say that they only have 500 square miles of imagery. Looking at Google Earth, assuming the new imagery is the kinda-rectangular patch that is all the same color/brightness - they have approx 1700 square miles. That means there is approximately 600,000 work units in total that need done. If everone does a square mile (shouldn't take more than an hour) then we need 1700 people helping.
But as someone else noted - they're really artificially limiting the search area, considering the range on his plane. Assuming he went certain places or crashed on his way back to the ranch. That doesn't bode well.
PS: It'd be way way more effective if they showed a "image before crash" so that people could self-discover their false positives, without forcing people to download google earth and figure it's before/after out, and/or be smart enough to copy/paste the coords into google-maps satellite view.
PPS: If they were really smart, they'd have a second private pool of the public's false positives being reviewed by amateurs or employees whom they know have much much smaller false positive rates, whom they know are comparing the two available before images (google maps and google earth) against the current images.
BTW: Here are images of the actual specific plane he was flying. http://www.airport-data.com/aircraft/N240R.html (Aviation buffs take pictures and index online everything that flies, apparently
Please look for Peter J. Winston while you are at it.
For about an hour, I was using mechanical turk, as well as just flying around using google earth - and found what appear to be a couple of planes already. One of them I flagged using mturk, but the other I just stumbled upon - so I reported it against an mturk image that had nothing interesting in it, but gave the coordinates in the comment box.. Now apparently there are a few plane wrecks in the area.. but is there a list somewhere of coordinates that have already been flagged? The ones I found are at: Lat 3828'55.83"N Lon 11924'18.20"W and Lat 3827'2.65"N Lon 11925'25.48"W
http://ispmaster.net/ccc/plane.jpg This plane has been reported on B&W maps, but here is what I want to know- are the new color overlay just color version of same pictures as B&W - or is this a new set of pictures? Because if it is not same pictures, that completely changes the going theory that its a plane in the air.
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
3822'30.29"N 11920'44.72"W - very bright spot.
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.
I actually see the plane at these coordinates:
38 28'55.76"N
119 24'18.15"W
That is about 900 feet southeast of where your mark is. I'm using the Linux version of Google Earth. Just wondering if your coordinates are a little off or if there is a difference between versions of the app.
Example of the size of object to look for. The white plane shown above (30 pixel wingspan by 21 pixels by length) is approximately the size of Steve's plane.
Why is the sample image that's supposed to show Steve's plane all black? Does anyone else see this?
"Hint: If you're using GEarth, and not seeing a black and white photo, you're doing something wrong."-An Onerous Coward
Um, no. The images are not black and white in Google Earth. I opened the http://s3.amazonaws.com/fossett/geoeye-color.kml file, and turned off all of the layers as described, including "terrain". My images are definitely not black and white. They're not day-glo green and red, but they're defintely not just black and white and shades of gray.
38 26'51.07"N
119 16'51.55"W
Should be directly under the cursor (uncheck the coordinate so the cursor doesn't cover the object). I counted it as a positive hit.
Remember, in this case, it is the PUBLIC that is helping out, not the government in particular. They're helping out simply because the guy is well known, and the technology is there. The government didn't create the technology, the people did. After this case, the technology will still be there, and there will still be people helping out. Remember, the glass is half-full, and maybe Fosset's (possible) death will help some unfortunates in coming years.
Ok, I noticed that the amazon link now has some updated (color) maps. NOTE: These are offset from the old (b/w) maps, so you need to look around for identifying landmarks to pinpoint the same location.
For example, my best bet a hit was:
38.1309, -119.462
The plane-shape is still there in the new color maps, but the contrast is lower (so it's probably a plane-shaped clearing or rock). The new coordinates, however, are:
38.127, -119.461
or about 1450 feet offset.
This offset fits perfectly with the landmarks in the area (which are also offset by that amount).
I know this is a new system and that the operators will learn a lot this time around. I would like to make a couple of suggestions from a completely uneducated position.
For me it would be easier if you started with a big image of where the updated photos were taken.
If the big image was divied into sections (indicated by dotted lines) which fit my screen at the colsest possible altitude then I could search vertically or horizontally in a straight line starting at the location of my choice.
Have a main page with each and every image listed. Each time someone searches an image it is marked. There is also an indication of how many times that area has been searched.
Show me where Steve took off from and let me choose an image which either has not been searched yet or has a low number of searches completed on it. I can then go over that area (at the closest resolution) in a vertical and or horizontal line to cover that area.
A color on the main map could also indicate areas searched and the number of times they have been searched.
If possible use colored lines to show where search aircraft have passed over.
If possible use different filters to take the image which would show things like heat, metal, etc.
Onward through the fog.
Five minutes at a time
Does anyone know if they published the coordinates of the other half dozen old crash sites that were found while searching for Fossett? It would be interesting to see what an actually crash site looks like in this imagery.
True, most missing persons don't leave giant scorch marks behind, but the search for Steve Fossett has apparently lead to the discovery of 6 other missing aircraft, so there's that...
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr. Seuss
No other explanation really. He was getting too close to commercial spaceflight so the Reptilians have taken him. It's the logical conclusion.
Since the plane is apparently mostly blue, and the search area appears to be mainly scrub and rock, would it be possible to automate a grid search over the area via Google Earth, and have the system automatically tag any significant areas of blue for later examination?
If I ever go missing I hope my loved ones "arrange" for a rich person to go missing in the same area.
For those nay-sayers that whine "But we aren't trained SARs experts. We won't know a shadow from an actual plane.":
We do not need to. If it looks like a plane, like somthing plowed through the trees, or (let's hope not) a big crater - Flag it! I spend some time looking at what I can only describe as "only lots of bloody landscape and even more bloody landscape", sometimes roads, sometimes a couple of trees or even a forest, but nothing that even remotely looked like a plane or remains of a plane. And thus the real SARs experts don't have to spend maybe 1/10 of the time looking at the same boring landscape and conclude, "nope he aint here". Of course we are far less efficient, but in the end we save the SARs experts time, because, ya know, they don't have to waste their time looking at nothing, but can concentrate at more promising pictures.
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
Post your findings on RescueSteveFossett.com.
I've found Steve Fossett (the missing cruise missle from the recent incident involving a B-52) everyone's looking for. I want a reward of £1 billion, I may be willing to negotiate.
email: newalias at hotmail dot com
In the past few days they went looking for this guy they found the wreckage of about six other planes of varying ages. Let him walk out if he's still alive. If this guy really wants to be known for breaking records here's his opportunity.
Armchair record breaking in baloon chair pods and fancy planes is one thing beating the elements in a real situation is another.
Sounds like publicity to me.
I've found Steve Fossett (the missing cruise missle from the recent incident involving a B-52) everyone's looking for. I want a reward of £1 billion, I may be willing to negotiate.
email: newalias at hotmail dot co dot uk
38 15'54.84"N, 119 29'56.87"W
Found and tagged this on mturk.
It's roughly plane-shaped and -sized, doesn't quite fit in with the surroundings, and wasn't there on the old imagery (though it's difficult to compare because the old and new images don't align properly).
What do other people think?