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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.
This is better than "Where's Waldo?"!
but I found Waldo!
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
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".
the name 'Nevada' means ',mountains. No, I think you've got your states confused. The word 'nevada' means 'snow-covered.' The word 'montana' means 'mountain.'
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!
Yo mammas so fat when she got lost and they found her on google earth.
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beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
I'd say that's a hit. The object matches the dimensions of a Super Decathlon, according to Google Earth.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
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?
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.
(no comment)
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.
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 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
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.