Find DARPA's Balloons, Win $40K

coondoggie writes "The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency today offered up a rather interesting challenge: find and plot 10 red weather balloons scattered at undisclosed locations across the country. The first person to identify the location of all the balloons and enter them on the challenge Web site will win a $40,000 cash prize. According to the agency, the balloons will be in readily accessible locations, visible from nearby roadways and accompanied by DARPA representatives. All balloons are scheduled to go on display at all locations at 10:00AM (ET) until approximately 4:00 PM on Saturday, December 5, 2009."

Comments

Floating?

[rossdee]

Don't weather ballons float around on high altitude winds?

Of course UFO's are often claimed to be weather baloons by the Govt. Is this a cover up?

Re:Floating?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Darpa is covering up its lack of innovation with balloon hunt - the successor program to duck hunt

Re:Floating?

[Fluffeh]

I wonder what the agenda here is. It's surely not something as simple as finding how many people jump in their cars and go driving.

The possible things come to mind:
Gather intelligence on how quickly people are able to come together to form a working group, and what the structure of the group is likely to be.

Find new and interesting ways for this sort of huge area recon. Can a geek use roadway cameras effectively? Are there other ways of gathering this sort of information?

Test some software that they have written to trawl the web searching for specific words among the randomness of the intertubez.

Any other ideas come floating to mind?

Re:Floating?

[davester666]

Obviously, this is just an attempt to use crowdsourcing to find a bunch of lost weather balloons. In this day and age of gov't budget cutbacks, every balloon saved is a slightly bigger performance bonus at the end of the year...

Re:Floating?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't weather ballons float around on high altitude winds?

Too bad for those DARPA representatives, accompanying the balloons. Oh well, that's what the interns are for.

Re:Floating?

[Skevin]

Or maybe each of the ten weather balloons may or may not have a live six-year-old boy riding in it, and DARPA full well remembers what happened last time with just *one*.

Solomon

Re:Floating?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no real point to it. Here's what they did: There are five balloons around, numbered from 1-5, and four balloons numbered from 7-10. Just like the prank where you release a 3 pigs, painted with a "1", "3", and "4" into a high school.

They're just 5 months early.

Re:Floating?

[TubeSteak]

I wonder what the agenda here is. It's surely not something as simple as finding how many people jump in their cars and go driving.

FTFA:

The DARPA Network Challenge is designed to mark the 40th anniversary of the Internet. "It is fitting for DARPA to announce this competition on the anniversary of the day that the first message was sent over the ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet," said Dr. Regina E. Dugan, who made the announcement at a conference celebrating the anniversary. "In the 40 years since this breakthrough, the Internet has become an integral part of society and the global economy. The DARPA Network Challenge explores the unprecedented ability of the Internet to bring people together to solve tough problems."

But honestly, this discussion would not be nearly as amusing without the paranoia of /. getting turned up to 11.

Re:Floating?

[Bob9113]

The possible things come to mind:
Gather intelligence on how quickly people are able to come together to form a working group, and what the structure of the group is likely to be.

Find new and interesting ways for this sort of huge area recon. Can a geek use roadway cameras effectively? Are there other ways of gathering this sort of information?

Test some software that they have written to trawl the web searching for specific words among the randomness of the intertubez.

Any other ideas come floating to mind?

I was going to post the same question and propose items 1 and 3. I was going to compare this to the intentional disinformation we sent in WWII using encryption we suspected to be compromised -- it gave us excellent intel on the ability of the axis to deploy a fighting force. It fits nicely with the idea that in sociological testing it is important to disguise the actual nature of the test, so that the respondents do not alter the outcome (consciously or subconsciously).

In that case, you've just broken their experiment.

But then, perhaps that is not what they are observing. Perhaps they figured out that we would figure out the actual meaning of the challenge, and what they are actually measuring is the rate at which we perceive the actual intent of the challenge... :)

Re:Floating?

[tomhudson]

This would have been a good stunt to get people to buy Motorola Droids so they can use the free google maps geolocation, etc.

Re:Floating?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just one, which is that they do this sort of thing all the time.

http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/index.asp

Re:Floating?

[Anonymous Coward]

The possible things come to mind:
Gather intelligence on how quickly people are able to come together to form a working group, and what the structure of the group is likely to be.

Find new and interesting ways for this sort of huge area recon. Can a geek use roadway cameras effectively? Are there other ways of gathering this sort of information?

Test some software that they have written to trawl the web searching for specific words among the randomness of the intertubez.

Any other ideas come floating to mind?

I was going to post the same question and propose items 1 and 3. I was going to compare this to the intentional disinformation we sent in WWII using encryption we suspected to be compromised -- it gave us excellent intel on the ability of the axis to deploy a fighting force. It fits nicely with the idea that in sociological testing it is important to disguise the actual nature of the test, so that the respondents do not alter the outcome (consciously or subconsciously).

In that case, you've just broken their experiment.

But then, perhaps that is not what they are observing. Perhaps they figured out that we would figure out the actual meaning of the challenge, and what they are actually measuring is the rate at which we perceive the actual intent of the challenge... :)

I was going to post the same message, but then realized that perhaps that is not what they are observing. Perhaps they figured out that we would figure out the actual meaning of the challenge, and what they are actually measuring is the rate of the rate at which we perceive the actual intent of the challenge... :)

Re:Floating?

[Anonymous Coward]

The possible things come to mind:
Gather intelligence on how quickly people are able to come together to form a working group, and what the structure of the group is likely to be.

Find new and interesting ways for this sort of huge area recon. Can a geek use roadway cameras effectively? Are there other ways of gathering this sort of information?

Test some software that they have written to trawl the web searching for specific words among the randomness of the intertubez.

Any other ideas come floating to mind?

I was going to post the same question and propose items 1 and 3. I was going to compare this to the intentional disinformation we sent in WWII using encryption we suspected to be compromised -- it gave us excellent intel on the ability of the axis to deploy a fighting force. It fits nicely with the idea that in sociological testing it is important to disguise the actual nature of the test, so that the respondents do not alter the outcome (consciously or subconsciously).

In that case, you've just broken their experiment.

But then, perhaps that is not what they are observing. Perhaps they figured out that we would figure out the actual meaning of the challenge, and what they are actually measuring is the rate at which we perceive the actual intent of the challenge... :)

I was going to post the same message, but then realized that perhaps that is not what they are observing. Perhaps they figured out that we would figure out the actual meaning of the challenge, and what they are actually measuring is the rate of the rate at which we perceive the actual intent of the challenge... :)

I was going to post the same message, but then realized that perhaps that is not what they are observing. Perhaps they figured out that we would figure out the actual meaning of the challenge, and what they are actually measuring is the rate of the rate of the rate at which we perceive the actual intent of the challenge... :)

Re:Floating?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to post the same message, but then realized that perhaps that is not what they are observing. Perhaps they figured out that we would figure out the actual meaning of the challenge, and what they are actually measuring is the rate of the rate of the rate at which we perceive the actual intent of the challenge... :)

We have the rate of the rate of the rate of ...

Now we can define a new measure for intelligence: the order of the time derivative in which some intent is correctly perceived. Hmm... maybe I am on to something, Measure of Intelligence 5, MI6, ehm, guys, I am typing here. What's with the sunglasses and the black suits? Why ar

Re:Floating?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just to celebrate the birth of the Internet by hosting an event that requires participants to utilize the Internet. Not everything DARPA does has a clear research objective. Also, considering the rates for research grants, this is a bargain basement price. Consider the fact that tuition + overhead + stipend for a single PhD student will cost over $80,000/year at many schools and that the average duration of a PhD is over 5 years, and you see that DARPA has no actual research agenda here. The real goal is publicity and a bit of fun.

Re:Floating?

[Ihmhi]

I'm sure one or two are near traffic cameras or other CCTV cameras. It would be interesting to see if anyone tries to break into them to find these balloons...

This is also an excellent social experiment. It would be impossible to find them all by yourself, so you would have to work together... but who do you trust?

Re:Floating?

[Dachannien]

the paranoia of /. getting turned up to 11

Frankly, I'm always paranoid about Slashdot getting turned up to 11.....

Re:Floating?

[houghi]

The idea is to get things posted on /. and then see what ideas WE can come up with as to why anybody would do this.

Kind of a brainstorming on a grand scale.

Re:Floating?

[yogibaer]

Obvious: Find and hide a number of crashed alien spacecraft. Remember Roswell! It's always just a "weather balloon"....

Re:Floating?

[Glock27]

Any other ideas come floating to mind?

Frivolous waste of government money at the worst possible time?

Our current administration is an idiocracy.

Re:Floating?

[Anonymous Coward]

neural-net networking, with real neurons!

They're probably going to follow how people get ever closer to the balloons and use those geo-spacial movements to create an algorithym(sp) to duplicate the "finding" process in computers. They want you to find the balloons but they're really interested in the process of finding them, not the find itself. It's the rat that's important, not the carrot.

Re:Floating?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's a lock-out competition for some relative who is a well connected long distance truck driver.

Re:Floating?

[jackspenn]

Either way we could have a lot of fun with this, we just need a few red balloons and volunteers to be "DARPA agents". Yes, of course we could just post disinformation, but wouldn't it be more fun to get participants to post disinformation with conviction and confidence be behind it? F'en with people is so fun.

Re:Floating?

[relguj9]

I think they just want to find out how fast someone can hack into their network at DARPA HQ and locate the coordinates of all the balloons.

Re:Floating?

[dosle]

TL;DR Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna jump in the car and make $40K!

Re:Floating?

[Austerity Empowers]

Clearly this is a coverup, everyone knows there are 99 red balloons.

Re:Floating?

[relguj9]

Test some software that they have written to trawl the web searching for specific words among the randomness of the intertubez.

There will likely be several facebook groups, twitter groups and websites devoted to this where people will send in camera phone pics + coordinates (not that I have any fucking idea how to come up with the coordinates, someone will have to post a tutorial somewhere). The submission format is also very standardized (DDD-MM-SS).

I imagine someone could parse these groups and come up with probabilities based on match duplication, etc. on the day of the event.

My guess is nobody gets the 40k though.

Re:Floating?

[thejynxed]

Find new and interesting ways for this sort of huge area recon. Can a geek use roadway cameras effectively? Are there other ways of gathering this sort of information?

We already have this ability. It's called GPS, Twitter, Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google StreetView.

Re:Floating?

[steelfood]

Regardless of what their intentions are, they're gathering data on us. How we react, how quickly, how cohesively, whether we react at all, etc. That's the thing about sociological experiments; they always produce data.

The data will be useful. It won't help bring a man to Mars, or fight terrorists in Afghanistan, but it will be useful in some way, shape or form. What they may then do is, based on the responses or lack thereof to this challenge, modify their next sociological experiment to hopefully attain a different dataset.

Re:Floating?

[Keebler71]

ummm... maybe they want to know if we have any ideas on how to find red balloons.

Re:Floating?

[TimothyDavis]

So, which glass has the iocane powder?

Re:Floating?

[windex82]

>Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google StreetView.

These would work.... if they planted the balloons several years ago. The satellite photos aren't anywhere near current and I highly doubt the street view images are updated with any great frequency.

Re:Floating?

[JWSmythe]

    I think there's a lot more to this.

    What are they observing?

    * Establish a geographically diverse target (10 balloons somewhere in the US).

    * Observe how the organizers encourage people to work with them.

    * Observe how they communicate with the search teams, coordinate efforts, and disseminate data.

    This could be used to coordinate efforts between the military and civilians, should the need arise. In the sake of the great terrorism debate, what if a vehicle was known to be in the US, and it is expected to detonate a nuke on US soil. This kind of crowdsourcing would have a better chance of finding it than putting everyone in the law enforcement and intelligence communities on the road hunting.

    Unfortunately, this is probably organized towards the handling and neutralization of civilian unrest inside the CONUS. It would:

    * Identify civilians who can organize large groups to neutralize them.
    * Identify communications routes that would need to be neutralized.
    * Identify intelligence breaches that could be used by the dissidents.

    So, it's all in how much you trust our government. Would they recruit the civilian population to assist in a time of need? Would they neutralize dissidents during a period of civil unrest?

    I'm fairly confident I'm not on the stage 1 list (neutralize in the first hour), but I'm pretty sure I'm on the stage 2 list. I'd suspect the organizers who aren't LEO or government will be on the stage 1 list. The followers will be on the stage 2 list.

    Who wants to play the game now?

    If I happen to spot a red balloon, with a couple spooks camped out below it, I'm going to plink at it with a BB gun. :)

Re:Floating?

[cyn1c77]

But honestly, this discussion would not be nearly as amusing without the paranoia of /. getting turned up to 11.

Paranoia my ass! Can't you read man? They want us to help them develop methods to control us!!!

The best thing we can do is take those balloons out or put up a lot of extra red balloons on test day.

Re:Floating?

[JWSmythe]

    I always love this idea.

    CCTV cameras don't feed into a centralized computer somewhere. Hell, in many commercial buildings with more than one tenant, even they don't share camera feeds.

    Even traffic light cameras feed to the organization that installed them. Some news stations have their own cameras, and frequently city transportation offices have their own.

    I'd love to get access to "the place" that has all the cameras, but that's yet another myth created and reinforced by television, where they wrote themselves into a corner, and needed some slick way to get out of it. They're also the same crowd that makes you believe you can take a blurry distant picture of a vehicle, that may only be 8px wide, and be able to enhance it enough to read the license plate number, and see the dumb look on the drivers face. Nope, that doesn't happen either, but it helps the story on TV. Hell, I was watching NCIS the other night, and with a satellite image, they were able to enhance it to get a clear full screen view of just the license plate, from an event that happened days before. And for reference, the highest resolution satellite that they have is 0.41 meters. That is, you can see that there is a 41cm object, but you wouldn't be able to read the writing on it. You probably could read a large building sign, or large lettering on a billboard, except the letters are facing the wrong way. :)

Re:Floating?

[JWSmythe]

    Shoot 'em all down. You'll figure out which one had the kid when it hits.

Re:Floating?

[treeves]

If these weather balloons are visible on Google StreetView then something fishy is definitely going on.

Re:Floating?

[hoggoth]

> My guess is nobody gets the 40k though.

Of course not. The real purpose of this exercise is as a military training against widely dispersed terrorist cells. Anyone who gets close to winning will be killed and "disappeared".

Re:Floating?

[Anonymous Coward]

So we're just talking about jerks now?

Re:Floating?

[Bob9113]

HAHAHAAHAH -- I *love* the way you think. :)

Re:Floating?

[danwesnor]

The DARPA Network Challenge explores the unprecedented ability of the Internet to bring people together to solve tough problems.

Or maybe they're just trying to see how many people on Slashdot can't read a whole paragraph and can't digest all the info in it. Or who has some sort of magic teleportation machine that allows them to scour the entire country in 6 hours by themselves. Or what type of fight ensues when a bunch of people from around the country and who have never met before suddenly have to divvy up $40k.

Re:Floating?

[Bob9113]

Either way we could have a lot of fun with this, we just need a few red balloons and volunteers to be "DARPA agents". Yes, of course we could just post disinformation, but wouldn't it be more fun to get participants to post disinformation with conviction and confidence be behind it? F'en with people is so fun.

OK, good to go -- I've just ordered three red weather balloons on eBay. :)

http://cgi.ebay.com/3-Red-Weather-Balloons-3-ft-30-Gram-Meteorological-New_W0QQitemZ120480696030QQcmdZViewItemQQimsxZ20091015?IMSfp=TL091015191003r33317

Re:Floating?

[mikael]

This could be used to coordinate efforts between the military and civilians, should the need arise. In the sake of the great terrorism debate, what if a vehicle was known to be in the US, and it is expected to detonate a nuke on US soil. This kind of crowdsourcing would have a better chance of finding it than putting everyone in the law enforcement and intelligence communities on the road hunting.

This research would have been conducted empirically when there have been police alerts for stolen cars, 4x4s and trucks.

I'm guessing it is more "How willing will people be to give out information and share it, rather than keep it to themselves?" Much like that experiment with those little robots that would flash lights whenever they found food, but then realized that led to more competition while they were "feeding", so they only flashed their lights once they were close to being full, and would be finished by the time others arrived.

With a $40,000 prize reward, there is the temptation to just trawl the web looking for tips on road discussion groups. Search words would be fairly simple like "red balloon" and "guy in black suit".

When I first saw that balloon, the Flash game "Bloons" came to mind.

Re:Floating?

[JWSmythe]

  The "trawling for information" idea is an easy one. Set a Google News alert for it. You can specify it to provide notifications for other things like website updates. I've already gotten a few, but they were all talking about the contest, and how it could be subverted. :)

    I'm just trying to figure out where to buy an 8 foot red balloon. Since I already know the risks associated with being identified as a contestant, I'd rather play the other side, and give people a false target. I already have magnetic signs for DOD, FBI, DHS, and FEMA to put on my truck to allow easy movement depending on what the disaster is. :) The DOD sign should be close enough for folks to believe I'm DARPA. :) I'll taser any contestants who come close enough, so I can steal their lists (and wallets, and GPS devices, and laptops, etc, etc, etc). :)

    (just kidding, I don't own a taser.)

Re:Floating?

[Anonymous Coward]

It might well be part of this effort:

http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Mind_Your_Tweets:_The_CIA_Social_Networking_Surveillance_System

Re:Floating?

[mikael]

You get them at the party market in the UK. I might buy a dozen or so some day and go cluster ballooning

Re:Floating?

[awright69]

Flash the message "Somethings out there!" We all know what happens after that, too.

Re:Floating?

[thejynxed]

You can see plenty of things on StreetView you wouldn't normally think you can see, because it's supposed to be a street-level view.

People need to take into account reflections, space above low buildings, etc that appear :)

Re:Floating?

[Ihmhi]

I'm well aware of the absurdities of CCTV cameras as shown in the latest information of crime-solvin' shows. But surely there are many buildings (large corporate offices?) that do have such an interconnected system?

Re:Floating?

[JWSmythe]

    The original topic was using the cameras to find the lost DARPA balloons.

    Interconnected corporate buildings? Well, I suppose it's possible that an expansive corporation may (may) have an interconnected CCTV system. What corp can you think of, that has visibility of every roadway in the country. Ya, the DARPA rules specify "roadway" not "highway". Hell, even if Walmart piped all of their cameras back to Bentonville, that wouldn't provide complete coverage of all the highways. I don't even know that their cameras monitor the highways. All of their cameras that I have observed are internal to the building, or aim into the parking lot but not the adjoining roads. Unless they drop the lost DARPA balloons in Walmart parking lots, you'd be hard pressed to guess the corp that you might be able to hack to get their cameras and find them.

    I think you'll find in general, buildings have multiple isolated systems based on who's interested in putting the cameras up. Your best bet would be the building security cameras, which are usually piped to an inside room (and not to the Internet).

    That's just my opinion, and I'm a nosy bastard and ask lots of questions, and in that I've had a good look at a lot of corporate building security cameras and systems. It's amazing what a little social engineering can do, especially if you're sincere. :)

I sense. I sense...

[ColdWetDog]

An unholy mashup between Twitter and a bunch of cell phone cameras.

Re:I sense. I sense...

[sopssa]

OK, I'm happily joining in here from Germany!

Re:I sense. I sense...

[Mattwolf7]

It's kind of the point: "In the 40 years since this breakthrough, the Internet has become an integral part of society and the global economy. The DARPA Network Challenge explores the unprecedented ability of the Internet to bring people together to solve tough problems."

Re:I sense. I sense...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to disappoint, but this is only 10 Luftballons.
I think you were looking for 99 of them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Luftballons

Re:I sense. I sense...

[lanswitch]

we'd better start in roswell, usa.

Re:I sense. I sense...

[KibibyteBrain]

That's probably the point. DARPA wants to demonstrate empirically that mobile communications have reached the point where ordinary people can coordinate using ordinary technology to achieve what would historically have needed to be a fine tuned professional intelligence operation.

Re:I sense. I sense...

[izomiac]

That has some interesting applications. Whereas it might take hundreds or thousands of UAVs/aircraft to locate these balloons, a sympathetic population might very well be able to do it for a fraction of the cost and risk. Who knows, maybe the next time we're occupying a country the military might give out free cell phones to generate a little good will and put the population to work finding our enemies.

Re:I sense. I sense...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who knows, maybe the next time we're occupying a country the military might give out free cell phones to generate a little good will and put the population to work finding our enemies.

Those phones better have some nifty apps, a camera with video and an unlimited free data plan. Otherwise, neither goodwill, nor those nice Osama-in-the-background wedding videos with GPS information for you!

Re:I sense. I sense...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's attempt at proving that the Internet can be used to overthrow governments. If people can spontaneously organise to find 10 balloons, then they can just as easily organise to stage a coup. What's the bet that all this month, DARPA is running a behind the scenes surveillance exercise to see if, in the lead up, they can predict who collects the $40k?

Re:I sense. I sense...

[Idiomatick]

It also could have been done in a period where each town had a telephone. Really, we could have done it during roman times, It would of course take longer to send messages when we found them. The only new advantage the internet gave is oddly enough getting the message to so many people at the same time.

Re:I sense. I sense...

[Anonymous Coward]

If this in the intent, it has some scary unintended consequences when you consider how it could be used to a manipulated society. To the extreme, consider how the Nazi's could have optimized their use of crowds had the internet been available in the 1940's.

Re:I sense. I sense...

[DerekLyons]

It's the same theory that " America's Most Wanted " has operated on for twenty years now. At least for them, it seems to work quite well.

Re:I sense. I sense...

[cnoocy]

Not 99! You'll destroy the world, you fool!

Re:I sense. I sense...

[Walkingshark]

Cue SPOOOKS from Charlie Stross' Halting State.

Oh great....don't fall for it everyone!

[VinylRecords]

Not another balloon hoax!

Re:Oh great....don't fall for it everyone!

[bennomatic]

Shhhh! It's for the TV show!

Re:Oh great....don't fall for it everyone!

[acedotcom]

the difference is that the Balloon Boy's family was doing it for attention.

This is probably DARPA 's first step to making a Weather Machine.

Re:Oh great....don't fall for it everyone!

[Anonymous Coward]

the difference is that the Balloon Boy's family was doing it for attention.

To quote my 12 year old son, "No shit Sherlock"

Why are they having people try and find them?

[areusche]

DARPA is just going to claim that the weather balloons are pockets of swamp gas.

Help me find them!

[PapiAlDente]

Come help find the balloons at a collaborative website--first to find each balloon gets to share in the prize money! http://balloonfinder.superfunhappy.com

Re:Help me find them!

[teeks99]

I posted this further down because I didn't see this one, but I wanted to start a group too...I was thinking google groups might be better than a wiki though. Thoughts?

http://groups.google.com/group/open-balloon-finder

Re:Help me find them!

[Anonymous Coward]

This type of site simply will not work. Any random person can take all the answer for themselves and post them on another site or attempt to collect the prize by themselves.

You need an actual collaborative effort and a single trustworthy person to manage everyone. That manager would need to be trusted by random people because they could simply get all the answers and collect the prize themselves. Someone well known and trusted (famous) might have better luck in this role.

Good luck.

Re:Help me find them!

[teeks99]

Yeah, you'd need some legally binding NDA like aggreement that people with access to the data need to sign

http://groups.google.com/group/open-balloon-finder

Re:Help me find them!

[pontifier]

I'm starting one too. Red40k.com
If you see a red balloon on December 5th, submit it there for a chance to win $3000 if we win.
It'll even be open to the operators of the other balloon search sites.
So if you find out where a balloon might be, go to Red40k.com ok?

Lets discuss a serious entry?

[CrazyJim1]

Anyone with access to satellite imagery? If you have a satellite camera, you could open a website,"FindDarpaBallons.com" and pay people who find the balloons 500$ each to report them to you. Then just use your Satellite to confirm it. Send in to Darpa, make 40k, pay out 5k, and be up 35k.

Re:Lets discuss a serious entry?

[Nanidin]

Most major roadways (at least in my moderately sized city of around 4 million) have traffic cameras all up and down them that are freely accessible. I'm guessing this would be a valid strategy - run image analysis on all of the traffic cams you can get your hands on for red balloons.

Wouldn't surprise me if this is what the purpose of the contest is - to get someone to develop this software for them.

Re:Lets discuss a serious entry?

[Achromatic1978]

Because of course everyone has access to a controllable camera on a satellite...

Not sure how you figured this as a 'serious' entry...

Re:Lets discuss a serious entry?

[bendodge]

True, but $40k is enough to make some folks who do have access curious.

Re:Lets discuss a serious entry?

[coastrman]

Well we don't have any satellite imagery, but we have set up a collaborative website to find all of the balloons. If you are interested in helping out and sharing in the bounty check out http://balloonfinder.superfunhappy.com/

Re:Lets discuss a serious entry?

[JWSmythe]

    Well, in my observation of the cameras in various cities, there are lots on major roads, but they don't have complete coverage. Also, they never said the balloons would be by major roads. That could actually be hazardous, depending on the size of the balloon. They don't even indicate that. Is the balloon a 1 foot diameter, or 100 foot diameter? What altitude are they flying at? 1 foot above the ground, or 200 feet up?

    For all we know, they'll all be down dirt roads in Nebraska and North Dakota. While "visible from nearby roadways", it doesn't mean that you'd spot it from a major highway. Someone mentioned truckers. They'd have great coverage for major roads, but what if it was at say 48.138857,-101.59873 or 25.745912,-81.035317 or 34.939317,-117.507614. Sure, those are roads, and sure you could see something by the road, but sure as hell no one is going to see it out there, unless they already know what they're looking for. I seriously doubt they're going to set up shop in the middle of major metro areas.

    BTW, those points were chosen arbitrarily from general locations that I know or presume to be rather unpopulated. Since I've now posted them, they're coming off my list of "places to hide when the zombie apocalypse occurs in 2012". :)

Re:Lets discuss a serious entry?

[pontifier]

If you are actually interested in the money, submit your found balloon to Red40k.com to get $3000 for a single balloon if we win.
It's easier to remember Red40k.com

One person?

[paul248]

So, only one person wins the prize, even though it will almost certainly require the effort of an online community? This sounds like a breeding ground for betrayal.

Re:One person?

[Yvan256]

Maybe that's the actual goal of that challenge. Not how people will find the balloons but how people will cooperate together if there's only a single prize to be won.

Re:One person?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like you could just agree up front to split the prize N ways with your team...

Re:One person?

[paul248]

Actually, I was thinking more about that. A public online community will help you find all the real coordinates quickly, but there will undoubtedly be a lot of *fake* coordinates mixed in.

I think the real challenge won't be in finding the balloons, it will be in validating and filtering out all the non-balloons.

Re:One person?

[polymeris]

It probably is some kind of social experiment to see who people trust over the Internet and under time pressure.

Re:One person?

[dynamo52]

I was thinking it is more to test their abilities to filter and monitor internet traffic patterns related to a particular event. How much do you want to bet Echelon will be scanning for the words "red" and "balloon" during the challenge?

Re:One person?

[BitHive]

Why would they need to manufacture an event to do that?

Re:One person?

[El Micko]

If the problem is who gets the prize..
And that's the stumbling block, preventing widespread collaboration..
Set up your collective to donate to a charity, or the EFF, or Cowboy Neal... or something worthwhile.

Go on.. it'll be more fun than a LUG meeting.

How hard can it be to mobilise tens of thousands of Nerds..

(Unless its really windy.. these suckers arent getting to Australia.. so I cant help..)

They should release 99 luftballoons! Sorry. Unecessary 80's flash back there..

Re:One person?

[dynamo52]

Possibly to determine if they are able to focus in on an unknown individual who has managed to acquire certain specific information in a timely manner. I could see many anti-terrorism implications in an experiment of this nature.

Re:One person?

[tdvaughan]

Actually, the real challenge will be stopping people from placing fake balloons that look just like the real ones. It's what I would do if I really wanted to win the prize.

Re:One person?

[Phat_Tony]

This contest absolutely is not about using technology to coordinate, as is roughly implied in DARPA's statement

The DARPA Network Challenge explores the unprecedented ability of the Internet to bring people together to solve tough problems.

That is, it's not about disparate strangers coordinating quickly, as might be useful in, say, a natural crisis like an earthquake or hurricane or missing child, but networks of social trust. If they just wanted to see how fast people could put together an ad hoc information network, I bet they'd get less wrong answers submitted and the right answer submitted much sooner if there were no prize involved - people would be free with the information because it would just be a game. There'd be no incentive for deception or secrecy.

I'm guessing DARPA doesn't care about that. That's why they've got $40k on the line- not to promote communication, but to promote disinformation. They don't want to know who can build a network with modern technology, they want to know how people will build a network of trust when there's a serious incentive for betrayal.

Re:One person?

[epee1221]

You'd still have to trust your teammates not to screw you over once the payment is issued. I might play this game for a 40k prize, but I'm not likely to play for a small share of 40k I might never receive even if I win. Given the time I'd have to spend on this, I probably get a better expected payoff just by going to work.

Re:One person?

[GameboyRMH]

Also this allows them to:

- Prepare, plan and hypothesize ahead of time - not really possible with a non-manufactured event.

- Create a unique situation, making the experiment easier by reducing the amount irrelevant information that will be turned up looking for info relating to the event.

- As others have said, this has a social experiment aspect to it as well - who will win with such a big incentive for betrayal? A small well-organized group, or an aggregator site that grabs loads of possibly useless results and assaults DARPA with random combinations of locations until it wins, and then gives the informants a pittance? (On that note, I wonder if it will be possible to "brute force" a win?). They can also test the level of public participation given a certain incentive. Replace "red balloon" with "terr'ist" and you're basically testing the effectiveness of a public manhunt given short notice, and since the rules say they may ask you about your methods, they'll also find out which methods are most effective. I like how they cutsied that up with all this feelgood stuff about social networking and team-building.

Re:One person?

[MikeBabcock]

Luckily for the project, both you and the GP are the rare members of society who, like myself, think of deviant ways to hack the system.

Most people are sheep.

Re:One person?

[4D6963]

RTFA, there's DARPA personnel holding each balloon.

Re:One person?

[DerekLyons]

I'm guessing DARPA doesn't care about that. That's why they've got $40k on the line- not to promote communication, but to promote disinformation. They don't want to know who can build a network with modern technology, they want to know how people will build a network of trust when there's a serious incentive for betrayal.

Betrayal is also a function of who makes up the ad hoc network, that is whether it is truly spontaneous and ad hoc among the general population or whether it arises within an existing network. My bet is that if the prize is won at all, it will be within a network that already exists. The general population is too diffuse and unorganized to gather all the data and organize and filter it.
 
Therefore you can examine various groups and their characteristics and determine the odds of betrayal. For example, if the B-tards decide to go after the prize, the odds of betrayal are essentially unity. (But their self generated noise level would probably prevent them from winning.) If the Boy Scouts decide to do so, the odds of betrayal go way down. (Bit I don't know if the Boy Scouts have the reasonably centralized and connected communications network need to make this work.)

Re:One person?

[hoggoth]

While the internet public at large is attempting to mobilize to find the red balloons, DARPA will be monitoring the 'net attempting to stay on top of an unknown number of organizations comprised of an unknown number of individuals coordinating using unknown protocols and communications channels. This will be valuable information similar to finding and shutting down terrorist cells. Expect the front-runner group to be infiltrated by a covert DARPA agent and some key people to "disappear" until after the deadline. (OK, did I go too far there?)

Re:One person?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect a lot of car dealerships may generate some false positives too. A lot of them fly large tethered balloons for sales event promotions and the such. Not sure if they'd appreciate the new traffic that only asks about their balloons. (And would Darpa locate at least one of their balloons at a car dealership, just so such locations can't automatically be ruled out?)

Re:One person?

[Phat_Tony]

That was exactly my thought- I started to put that sort of information in my previous message, but then realized I didn't have time to keep Slashdotting then and just cut it out and posted what I had.

I thought an existing charity network might have a great chance at this- say, The Salvation Army. Officially notify workers, plus put up a website to recruit volunteers, and they can help reduce sabotage because, come on, the money's going to The Salvation Army. How many people are going to actively sabotage charity fundraising in the hopes of taking the money for themselves? Probably not a whole lot.

I also think there's a "game-theory compliant" way to organize this with proper incentives through high-feedback Ebay accounts bidding on auctions for the information. I have the gist of it, but don't have time to type it out and haven't exactly worked out all the details yet. It leverages a huge, established, diverse network of trust to create a system with the right incentives to form a contest group where each person who is the first to correctly add the location of a balloon can feel reasonably certain that, if their team wins, they'll see their share of the $40k. One big remaining uknown in this method, though, is that I can't figure out whether or not DARPA's going to announce who the winner is. If they don't, if you can win anonymously, it may be impossible to build this sort of network, because the winner could always claim they hadn't won and not pay out.

Re:One person?

[DerekLyons]

If I had to put money on an existing organized network, my money would be on geocachers - they own GPSr's (which is an obvious prerequisite), they have a high degree of intercommunication on the national level, are habituated to cooperation in pursuit of a goal, and they have a web of trust already built... Plus they are used to individuals creating and leading spontaneous group projects.
 
Charitable organizations like the Salvation Army simply can't react fast enough, especially at this time of year when they are swamped with preparations for the holidays.

Re:One person?

[FailedTheTuringTest]

I think you've hit the nail on the head

Re:One person?

[dynamo52]

This is the same line of thought I was on. The prize is small enough to not be attractive to larger organizations and the rule that the prize will only be awarded to a single individual automatically makes that person analogous to the person actually tasked to commit whatever terrorist action they are modeling. The fact that they want to discuss the methodologies used by successful entrants after the fact suggests this as well. My guess is that they will likely be much more interested in those that didn't show up on their radar beforehand.

Indentifying the Balloons

[NuclearError]

Here's a handy chart for finding the balloons.

Re:Indentifying the Balloons

[jackb_guppy]

Now, that was funny!

robbiewilso

[robbiewilso]

well let the spam begin! here's my email: robbie.h.wilson@gmail.com i want to collaborate with others from around the US to win this as a team! if we get together as a team, then we split the prize amongst us all. i'm thinking that only the team members who contribute the coordinates would be in the pool, but there could be a dozen team members who found that particular ballloon- that's only fair! maybe this would be a great way to make friends and a small amount of cash! email me if you want to join up! and no if i end up winning then i won't be a jerk and not share the wealth. i just have these morals and an ethical compass that some have never heard anything about. it's a matter of trust!

Re:robbiewilso

[Culture20]

well let the spam begin!

Dear Robbie.h.wilson,
Hello, I represet a cosortum which has found nine of the baloons in question. If your baloon is the tenth baloon, you to win $5714.28 ! Please to visit this website and enter your accounts infomations for your electronic payment. http://balooncontest.darpa.gov.example.com/ We look forward to hearing from you. We all want to win our $5714.28

The first need for UFO nuts!

[Anonymous Coward]

All I need to do is find all the UFO nuts around the US and correlate all their recent sightings! PERFECT!

Finally

[allknowingfrog]

All of those red weather balloons I've been saving will come in handy.

Seriously though, how long until a bunch of assholes with red weather balloons start causing problems? Do the balloons at least say DARPA on them or something?

Re:Finally

[GameboyRMH]

I was thinking about that possibility, maybe they should put codes on the balloons and allow people to verify their sightings online, although that could cause the event to end faster than DARPA would like. Right now you presumably have to go to the balloon's anchor point and talk with the DARPA staff there to verify a sighting (and that's nothing that can't be faked with some social engineering, especially since with the balloons spread far apart to encourage online participation, one person will be unlikely to see multiple balloons first-hand).

Not Enough Red Ballons

[kaleth]

There should have been 99.

Re:Not Enough Red Ballons

[AdamInParadise]

I really wonder how many people on /. will get this one.

Re:Not Enough Red Ballons

[martin-boundary]

I really wonder how many people on /. will get this one.

Only 547,040. I'm the last one.

This can't end well.

[ipc0nfig]

A big red balloon with guys waiting around it all day, yeah, that's not going to freak anyone out.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/31/boston.bombscare/index.html

Hmmm - strategies and counter-strategies.

[KingJackaL]

Well, it's obvious why DARPA would care how quickly the internet can become aware of accurate and specific information such as 'where is unit X'.

What I'm curious about is how much mis-information could pop up. What if you mischievously set up your own balloon, that looks identical to the description, as a distraction to other teams/groups?

What if groups eventually find all the balloons - and there are 13 of them? Is it then time to unleash the perl scripts on DARPA's submission form? So many possible strategies and counter-strategies - but are they actually all just intellectual, or will they play a role in the challenge?

Re:Hmmm - strategies and counter-strategies.

[ErikPeterson]

A whole month to devise these strategies and counter-strategies aswell! Its obvious to me that there will be at least SOME fake sites in the country. Even in DARPA announced a last minute color change on the balloons or announced an image that would be painted on them it would be feasible for people to try and make them just as a prank if nothing else.

Re:Hmmm - strategies and counter-strategies.

[windex82]

Well, it's obvious why DARPA would care how quickly the internet can become aware of accurate and specific information such as 'where is unit X'.

Hmmm.... I can picture it now...

Internet! Find my keys!

Re:Hmmm - strategies and counter-strategies.

[PDX]

they are stuck between your bed sheets and are on their way to the floor.

Possible strategy

[ErikPeterson]

I think the best way to attack this problem would be to agree to donate the profits from the award to some worthy cause, letting people with the capability volunteer some time to a solution. Its a fairly complicated problem to solve for the amount of money given to solve it. Lets say a group of capable programmers united for lets say an open source project develop a website that takes in the coordinates in the format required for the contest. The trick is going to be figuring out who is telling the truth when it comes to submitted data... You may be able to assume that if a number set is entered often that it is a candidate to be the real location. The task obviously requires coordination of many life humans as I doubt anyone that can compete has access to satellite time to do an automated search. I am wondering how many people will attempt to put up fake balloon sites to either trick their competition or just get some publicity of tech people to come visit the site and take a GPS reading.

Re:Possible strategy

[ErikPeterson]

I meant to say live humans not life sorry for the typo.

Re:Possible strategy

[teeks99]

Yeah, I think to get real buy in from the community you'd need to agree to donate the money. Who is going to help you so that you can win $40k?

Also, if you're working as a team, you need to make sure that one of the team members doesn't run off with the answers and submit them on their own at the last second...thus a need for NDAs or something similar

One way to know (better) that you're getting legit data is to have people upload pictures of them looking up at the balloon and taking a picture of the screen on a GPS. I guess it could be photoshopped, but that sounds harder

http://groups.google.com/group/open-balloon-finder

Re:Possible strategy

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of giving the money to charity, let's use it to throw a RAGER!

NOT cool

[Anonymous Coward]

The point of this test is to watch the social networking sites, specifically Facebook and Twitter, and chart how the information flows as far-flung groups work together to share their data with each other.

The gathered intelligence should help them tremendously when dealing with the next group of protesters.... :-/

Re:NOT cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point. I remember reading about how the cops were having trouble containing the protesters at the G20 in Pittsburgh this year because the protesters were staying one step ahead of the cops by sharing intel very quickly. The fact that a group of citizens can wield an intelligence advantage over the police/military would certainly scare the shit out of any government - if those protesters really knew what they were doing (a single, stationary "base of operations" was probably their biggest mistake, but they were also unprepared to face the sonic weapons) they would have been MUCH harder to stop and it might have come to a point where deadly force would have to be used. Notice how soon this challenge comes along after those events...

Social media test?

[icebike]

Since nobody drives everywhere in the country this has got to be some sort of social media test, to see how fast something like twitter could track down any given item/phenomena.

Defense research angle?

Nothing to do with the balloons is my bet.

Not even measuring how long this might take, or how people do it, because they already know the only way is via the internet.

I suspect they want to watch the internet and see what happens when people start organizing spontaneously into communities.

This is an exercise in traffic analysis. Pure and simple.

The scary part, is they have the hooks into the net deep enough that they can pull this off, apparently without warrants. Yes They Can.

Re:Social media test?

[topham]

I was thinking exactly the same thing.

Otherwise is seems so completely fucking pointless.

Project Luft Balloon.

Re:Social media test?

[spleen_blender]

I was following you until the part about warrants. What are you thinking could possibly require one that is related to this?

Re:Social media test?

[epine]

The beauty of this is that it could be a lot of things. If some American official someday leaks "this is why we really did this" the odds that I would discount spin can't be over 50%, which relegates this to a quasi-permanent bucket of unknowability. It's a rare thing when a lightening bolt momentarily catches the men behind the curtain with a ruse in flagrante. The Soviets had their washer microphone. The Americans had the thermohaline undersea acoustic channel (where I live, a couple of decades ago, an undersea microphone research project was shut down precipitously).

Reputedly, the Americans had a telecoms satellite with the electronics compacted to such a spectacular degree, they managed to fit a spy telescope where the Russians believed it was technologically impossible. As the story goes, this flew over open Russian nuclear missile bays until some Russian mole tipped them off, and that was the last silo with exposed cleavage it ever flew over.

Another story is that the Americans pulled off a deep undersea splice of an unencrypted fibre optic cable connecting Moscow to one of their satellite states. This cable was unencrypted because 1) the Russians didn't believe a silent optical splice was technically possible, and 2) the Russians probably didn't think an American submarine could into position to do this undetected. I think there was once a big piece in Wired about this.

The final case that comes to mind is the Siberian pipeline sabotage. This one, especially, works almost as well as propaganda as fact, but it appears to be rigorously documented. I love the image of the CIA analyst popping up over his cubicle wall going "nobody panic, we know about this" as ever other analyst in the facility fumbles to get to the red phone.

A scenario I sometimes wonder about is a conversation between no such agency and the ghost of Alan Turing that goes like this:

Dr Turing's ghost, we've got this molecular-perfect crystal of gallium arsenide the size of a dinner plate (at some staggering cost to the space program), an experimental electron beam lithography apparatus able to draw a million logic units per day (the anti-vibration table alone is staffed with a team of twenty full time Black Mesa technicians), and more liquid gas than NASA. What kind of pretty picture do you think you could draw on this thing given a few months to think about it, and a year for the etching?

The one question I've most wanted to find out is this: what was the state of the art in 1970 for one-off half billion dollar chips? Lightening rarely strikes twice, and 99 times out of a hundred you never find out.

Re:Social media test?

[slimjim8094]

Bullshit. Any jackass can search for #darpaballoon on Twitter, and graph the traffic, without needing wiretaps. The rest of this is all necessarily public as well.

Chill out a bit. This is DARPA; they're cool. And this is an awesome idea.

Re:Social media test?

[icebike]

What is an awesome idea? You have no idea what they are doing.

And who precisely told you it was twitter related? Please be specific to names and web sites.

Yes, they do need warrants to look at your email traffic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Communications_Privacy_Act

Just because you are ignorant of the law is no excuse for DARPA to be.

Re:Social media test?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hokay, I've read this post twice and I still can't figure out two things:

1) What this guy is talking about

2) How he got modded to 3

Re:Social media test?

[Anonymous Coward]

how quickly can slash dot analyze the test?
how quickly will fredom of information requests find the true motave if ever?
can methods be discovered that croud sourcing cant detect?
could this be aplyed to off/on shore intorgation?
could guessing what the test relly is be the test or will the best guess be the "real" reason they blew millions on this!
the comunication will be around for some time to look at do all of the above, for a small fee.

Re:Social media test?

[bradorsomething]

Since nobody drives everywhere in the country...

Truck Drivers. If you can find your way into the CB bands, you'll get a lot of info.

Nothing better to use $40,000 for?

[kheldan]

The economy still sucks, DARPA; why are you wasting taxpayer money on bullshit like this?

Re:Nothing better to use $40,000 for?

[FooAtWFU]

If they're going to just hand out a lump sum of money to a bunch of random people, at least they're not making them destroy perfectly functional automobiles to do so this time.

Re:Nothing better to use $40,000 for?

[BitHive]

I'd say it's a bargain. Think about all the driving and snacks, hell, maybe even consumer gadget purchases this contest will inspire. Those have gotta be worth something to the economy. Maybe the next stimulus package should be a scavenger hunt.

Re:Nothing better to use $40,000 for?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they're going to just hand out a lump sum of money to a bunch of random people, at least they're not making them destroy perfectly functional automobiles to do so this time.

I say screw this crap with the military running experiments where you have no idea what's up.

Instead, if you find one of the balloons and no one is around, pop the sucker and toss it in the trash.

Let them figure out how a bunch of their balloons went missing.

Re:Nothing better to use $40,000 for?

[blankinthefill]

The average person may think that $40,000 is a lot... but it's nothing in terms of operating budgets for even medium sized companies. From the Darpa site, looking at their unclassified budget for 2010 ( http://www.darpa.mil/Docs/2010PBDARPAMay2009.pdf ) (That's a PDF, by the way, and also has numbers for 2009 and 2008), you can see that the budget easily runs into the billions of dollars. For a comparison, forty thousand dollars is 0.004 PERCENT of one billion dollars. To someone with a salary of seventy five thousand dollars a year, the equivalent percentage would be 3 dollars. That's barely pocket change, and it assumes a budget much lower than the actual operating budget of DARPA. Taking this into consideration, that's pretty cheap. Especially if they're planning to study anything by doing this (and if you think they wont get SOMETHING useful out of this, then you're even denser than I am), that's a relative bargain. Even if they DON'T get anything worthwhile out of this contest, the publicity alone is probably worth it when you consider possible recruits that they attract because of increased interest. Your claim that they are 'wasting taxpayer money' is pure FUD, and, to be honest, even if it wasn't, $40k isn't even a drop in the bucket of the 2.3 TRILLION dollars that was collected in taxes in 2008.

Re:Nothing better to use $40,000 for?

[kheldan]

*facepalm*

Re:Nothing better to use $40,000 for?

[Culture20]

They're spending more than $40,000. The balloons, the people manning the balloons, the people organizing the contest, this all costs money.

Re:Nothing better to use $40,000 for?

[polymeris]

Keynesian balloons?

Re:Nothing better to use $40,000 for?

[steelfood]

Well, at least those guys actually were doing something to earn their money. Some others got money handed to them and it went into a big black hole.

Re:Nothing better to use $40,000 for?

[ajlisows]

And AIG only wasted $440,000 sending their employees to that resort after they received the bailout money. Why the outrage? It is only a couple hundred thousand a year to station a soldier in Iraq. Why complain and want to bring that soldier home. The Government spends Trillions, what is another $40,000?

I understand the point you are making but that mind set is how we end up with such rampant spending. Compared to the budget as a whole, not many things are going to make a significant dent. It is a lot of different things that tax money is going to.

That isn't to say that I disapprove of this project. Perhaps this method of doing whatever study they are doing is $1 Million cheaper than the alternative. Research is not cheap so I could see this being a real bargain actually. If this is the case, it is a good thing. If the head of Darpa just wants to see a bunch of plebes chase balloons around for his amusement, then it isn't.

People need to start up some large teams

[mysidia]

And offer $3500 to the first person to submit each unique balloon's coordinates and a photograph of the location to a team organizer, provided the team wins.

8% to the team organizer for handling all the work involved in coordinating the team.

And $150 to the person who agrees to go confirm the location of balloon submitted by someone else, by getting a report of its general location, going there, and reporting its coordinates for confirmation.

Noone can cheat, provided everyone has an ironclad contract, if only the team organizer receives the actual coordinates reported, and processes them in order received.

Sending all reported ballons to be confirmed by someone else. Requiring a deposit from everyone reporting a balloon in the amt of $100, forfeit only if it turns out there was no balloon there.

Re:People need to start up some large teams

[eclectro]

>Requiring a deposit from everyone reporting a balloon in the amt of $100, forfeit only if it turns out there was no balloon there.

I have problems with the deposit angle - it may too expensive for many (even if it was just a deposit), and confusion over supermarket balloons may be an issue. Otherwise your proposal is perhaps the most fair. There are not going to be many people with the resources to locate ten ballons in a few hours.

The balloons are going to be "moored" for a single day (Dec 5). So the contest is definitely designed around cooperation.

Facebook Group Setup

[Anonymous Coward]

Split the pot evenly, per balloons submitted. http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000420924265&ref=name

On Twitter

[Anonymous Coward]

@FindRedBalloon

Zehn Luftballoons?

[Scienceman123]

DARPA digs through its allocation / Buy some weather balloons so they can have some fun. / Set them free at the break of dawn / 'Til one by one, they were gone. / On Slashdot, nerds in underwear / Read the message, MONEY out there. / Floating in the autumn sky. / Ten red weather balloons go by. /

In Kentucky today...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ten balloonist in red balloons were shot down.

My guess: half of a high-tech vs low-tech contest

[goodmanj]

My guess is, we're seeing half of a contest pitting high-end defense technology vs the "stupid cheap easy" solution.

SCENE: PENTAGON STAFF ROOM
Mil Contractor: "And so you see, with our latest satellite imaging systems, we can search and pinpoint the location of a human-sized target object within 10 days for a nation the size of the US or Russia."
Dumb General: "Wow. We need to spend some billions on this."
Smart General: "Pff. I bet you could do better by plain old "boots on the ground" spywork. You'd need a pretty big network of observers though..."
Smart 5-star general: "Well, boys, let's find out."

at least, this is a good enough story that I *hope* it's what's going on...

Put your "ohh ohh" in my "ohh ohh."

[Anonymous Coward]

Put your "ohh ohh" in my "ohh ohh."

The Purpose

[ral]

The purpose of this exercise can be found here:

To mark the 40th Anniversary of the Internet, DARPA is hosting the DARPA Network Challenge, a competition that will explore the role the Internet and social networking plays in the timely communication, wide area team-building and urgent mobilization required to solve broad scope, time-critical problems.

Re:The Purpose

[dynamo52]

The publicly stated purpose of this exercise can be found here: [fixed that for you]

Re:The Purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

If they really wanted to see effects of social networking and timely communication. They should have left out the money factor.

I don't think driving people with money necessarily works towards a "community-oriented" goal, rather than a self-centered objective. I think there's more to that, and they should have spent those $40,000 in marketing/advertisement to attract people into playing the game.
With money in the middle, there would be more competence than cooperation.

Re:The Purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

A social experiment would have some bias in the results otherwise...

Wow, who drew the short straw?

[Anonymous Coward]

and accompanied by DARPA representatives

There's going to be 10 or more unlucky bastards standing around by these balloons, in all kinds of weather, until the fifth of December.

But hey, on the bright side, your tax dollars at work.

Bloons

[blavallee]

Do I get an extra bonus if I pop them all?

Re:Bloons

[PDX]

Bursting clouds isn't as much fun.

Using satellite imagery

[Animats]

Here's a sample image. Yes, that's from orbit.

Each satellite images about 1 million km^2 per day, so in 250 days, they can image the entire planet at high resolution. But they'll do the populated parts of the US more often (they can aim the cameras for each pass), so they will pick up many of the balloons.

Microsoft Bing is buying all the data, so it's going on line. The data rate is about 50GB/hour. Start programs looking for red dots.

Re:Using satellite imagery

[Anonymous Coward]

Your intuition sucks. The balloons will be up for only 6h. According to your number that's 0.25 million km^2 randomly distributed on the Earth, so about 250000/510072000 = 0.05% of anything, in particular 0.05% of the U.S. And no, pointing toward the U.S. while you're flying above Mexico won't help nearly enough to turn this into a meaningful number. So you're totally wrong, unless you consider 1/200 chance of seeing a balloon to be "many".

Re:Using satellite imagery

[The_Duck271]

Hmm. Looking at those sample images suggests to me that it's impossible to do something like this with satellite imagery. No one could write a program to distinguish ten red balloons from the tens of millions of red cars in the US.

Re:Using satellite imagery

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention that it would be impossible to distinguish a random round red object from a contest balloon (accompanied by a DARPA agent). It's a social network experiment. Wouldn't be surprised if it is intended to study how people work together in order to stop them if they work against the government; for those pesky things like liberties, civil rights and such.

Re:Using satellite imagery

[Anonymous Coward]

there are 3 red dots in that picture, none of them are balloons. you're an idiot

Re:Using satellite imagery

[wvmarle]

It will narrow it down very much from near infinite places to go look, to some tens of thousands of places.

And cars are quite easy to filter: they are on roads. Not likely those balloons are going to be on top of a road. Give those red spots lower priority.

Re:Using satellite imagery

[Genda]

So pray tell... how are you going to filter out every single red VW bug from your data without filtering out your balloons too??? This is a way bigger problem than a satellite can handle... you have to shoot your cameras up, not down.

Although heavy on subterfuge...

[jkyrlach]

I'd be willing to bet that it's actually an attempt to encourage probing/attacks on it's website /network. $40k is a pretty good incentive to try and find the answer sheet. Possible goals range from your traditional smoke-out-the-troublemakers-by-having-an-archery-contest to using it to identify skilled individuals for recruitment.

Men who stare at goats. Jedi warrior training...

[PDX]

I thought that the mind / clairvoyance study had been axed. I see they are reviving it.
http://movies.apple.com/movies/overture/themenwhostareatgoats/themenwhostareatgoats-clip1_480p.mov

Step 1. Set up a website

[mbuimbui]

Step 1. Set up a website: Go to Darpa Balloon Challenge Group
Step 2. Get lots of people organized and figure out who gets how much
...
...
...

Step N. Profit!!!!!

Re:Step 1. Set up a website

[coastrman]

A different team is at http://ballonfinder.superfunhappy.com/

Re:Step 1. Set up a website

[mbuimbui]

OK Better idea. Use the DARPA funds to promote peace.
Balloons for Peace

Re:Step 1. Set up a website

[teeks99]

One more entry....built around social network tools ;-)
I'd be up for joining forces with you other guys, I had just set this up quickly before I saw the other ones.

http://groups.google.com/group/open-balloon-finder

Re:Step 1. Set up a website

[pontifier]

Red40k.com is the only domain you need to remember remember the 5th of December!
$3000 for the first submission of each of the 10 balloons if we win!

Go Red40k.com!

Psych/Mob experiment

[Toonol]

I bet it's a social experiment, not tech. There are all sorts of obvious ways to get people to work together, but how can you eliminate bad actors and false data?

If you have a central clearing house, the data can be stolen by others. If the submitted data is kept private, then the participants need to have a high level of trust in the central organizers. You also need to be resistant to spoofing from other parties, including potentially organized efforts by other groups trying to win the prize.

My best idea would be that the contest needs to be taken up by a web site that already has a large web of trust; large enough that they can be trusted, and that they can get enough data that anomalies and deception become evident. The prize money could be redistributed among the first N people that accurately reported a balloon... or, a lottery could divide the prize among N number of people who submitted accurate information. The second makes more sense to me.

Google Earth?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, would the balloons show up on Google Earth?

Re:Google Earth?

[Archon-X]

Absolutely, 6 months later.

Red40k.com

[pontifier]

So I just registered a website, and will set it up in a few days... if you are the first person to submit a correct balloon location, and if we get the 40k, I will paypal $3,000 to the first email address on the submission.

Re:Red40k.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweet! so I get $3000 tax free and you get to pay all the taxes.

sorry you spoke too soon, you cant renig on your $3000.00 number. You will likely end up losing money over it.

Re:Red40k.com

[pontifier]

You are always responsible for reporting income on your taxes, even gambling winnings and gifts. I just said that I would send it. I do believe that on my end the payouts could be considered a business expense.

Go Red40k.com

Kudos, DARPA

[Qubit]

With all that money you've appropriated, what better way to waste^H^H^H^H^H spend it then on a tribute to Lamorisse.

Would an airplane be of any use?

[Tracy Reed]

If some folks want to pile into a 172 and go flying around San Diego County/Southern California/anywhere else we can get to from here armed with binoculars and split the cost 4 ways I'm game. I'm not sure what our chances of actually spotting anything would be though.

Re:Would an airplane be of any use?

[Tracy Reed]

A few more datapoints here: We can reasonably fly anywhere between 1000 and 12,500'. We can fly anywhere between 60kts and 180kts depending on what airplane we want to fly (those are just the ones I reasonably have fast access to).

Bring good binoculars, fly high, and scan as much ground as possible as fast as possible? Fly just high enough that we can recognize weather balloons?

Anyone got a red weather balloon or red object of equivalent size we can set up in a field somewhere soon and experiment with? We can fly over it at various altitudes and distances and see how easily recognizable it is.

Any clues as to what kinds of areas these things would be placed in? Major city areas? Freeway corridors?

The balloons will be on display for 6 hours.

The Cessna 210 cruises at 160kts and carries 90 gallons of fuel. Fuel burn rate is between 10 and 15 gallons per hour depending on altitude/power setting etc. A 172 is cheaper but quite a bit slower. The 210 split four ways over 6 hours of flight time comes to about $315/person which isn't too unreasonable. Depending on altitude/power setting ultimately chosen it is quite possible to fly the whole 6 hours without refueling and have adequate VFR reserves.

6 hours at 160kts is 960 nautical miles. It may be possible to cover the entire I-5 route from the Mexican border south of San Diego to Portland, Oregon.

I imagine anyone participating in such a scheme would want to team up with other aircraft based teams combined with ground based teams. Sure, lots of people will see the balloons from the freeway (I bet that is where they would be placed to increase the chances of someone interested in this contest seeing them) but what are the chances of someone from YOUR team seeing each of the balloons? Especially since nobody can drive that whole route in that amount of team. Send a plane up the freeway and then send your ground based teams in other directions such as eastward.

But...really, would anyone want to look at the ground from an airplane through binoculars for 6 hours? And could you really see a balloon from a plane?

Your best bet may just be to get as many people driving around all over the US onto the same team as possible. This whole thing may well coalesce into one big team somehow.

Re:Would an airplane be of any use?

[snorris01]

You can really limit down the search area by doing some research first. If these are traditional cabled weather balloons, near areas of high population density, and at altitudes visible to the ground, they will be a flight hazard. Based off those assumptions, they should either be in restricted areas or NOTAMed. Too bad that idea alone isn't worth any money.

Re:Would an airplane be of any use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely 4 slashdotters at the same time must exceed the weight limits of a Cessna.

Re:Would an airplane be of any use?

[Tracy Reed]

Not at all. The Cessna 210 I usually fly has a useful load around 1500lbs. 90 gallons of fuel weighs 540lbs. That leaves 960lbs left for flight crew and passengers. I weigh 165. That means I could take myself plus 3 265lb slashdotters. And that's just a Cessna 210. There are much bigger planes.

Re:Would an airplane be of any use?

[EmagGeek]

Do you have a commercial rating? I imagine since there's $40K at stake, you'd have to have a commercial despite taking careful steps to make sure you pay your pro-rata share of the costs.

Re:Would an airplane be of any use?

[EmagGeek]

A 210 and a 172 are very different animals. A 172 has a useful load of about 900lbs, and with 300lbs of fuel and 100lbs of equipment, you're talking about four starving anorexic slashdotters.

You're comparing a 6-seat high performance aircraft to a dinky little 4-seat trainer. That's not really a fair comparison.

Why all the marketing?

[zenwarrior]

Anyone else noticed DARPA's recent major marketing/publicity campaign? There is now this well-publicized balloon hunt. There was the televised robotic vehicle challenge. Even very recently, DARPA was central to the plot of an episode of NCIS: LA. Its research efforts have been given very visible press in magazines such as Scientific American. (Look here for another recent SA article about DARPA research.) DARPA has also been featured twice on 60 Minutes in the past few months. And, it now has quite a following on Facebook.

All of these somehow involve or inform the general public--not exactly par for the course given DARPA activities historically have been kept very much under wraps. What's really going on here? Why the recent publicity barrage? Two years ago, or less, I'm willing to bet 98% of Americans had no idea DARPA even existed. Might it be the old magician's trick of having us watch one hand while the other hand is actually performing the "magic?" For example, have you seen iRobot's shape-shifting Chembot recently developed with DARPA funding?

Re:Why all the marketing?

[DerekLyons]

All of these somehow involve or inform the general public--not exactly par for the course given DARPA activities historically have been kept very much under wraps.

Just because something isn't/wasn't widely known by the general public doesn't mean it is/was 'under wraps'. DARPA projects have been widely (and openly) discussed, for example, by those interested in space access and space travel for decades. DARPA projects have been featured for discussion here on Slashdot since about Day One. (Or at least since I started hanging about here in 2000 or so.)

Re:Why all the marketing?

[hansamurai]

Two years ago, or less, I'm willing to bet 98% of Americans had no idea DARPA even existed.

The other 2% played Metal Gear Solid and remembered the DARPA chief dying in his cell.

Decoys

[slasho81]

What happens if people start setting their own balloons as decoys?

Re:Decoys

[Arimus]

From the sumary:-
and accompanied by DARPA representatives

Which means unless you have a few spare DARPA staff hanging around you might have problems with the authenticity part...

Re:Decoys

[slasho81]

A decoy doesn't have to be perfect. If it's good enough to distract, it's a good decoy.

Re:Decoys

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you know that someone in Maryland has actually gone to the trouble of setting up a decoy MUSEUM?

It's true. But some fool at the highway department ruined it by putting up signs on I-95 pointing out that it's a decoy.

(Why someone would would to distract visitors away from the real museum...that's a mystery I've yet to resolve.)

Re:Decoys

[GameboyRMH]

Which means unless you have a few spare DARPA staff hanging around you might have problems with the authenticity part...

"I am government man, come from the government, the government has sent me." - random decoy dude

Now prove he is not DARPA staff.

Re:Decoys

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure also, that if you start sending stuff as big as weather balloons to the air, someone from the government will show up soon enough.

Re:Decoys

[Lumpy]

http://www.scientificsales.com/8233-Weather-Balloon-100-Grams-Red-p/8233.htm

They are also really easy to get. that was with 6 seconds of searching, 500 gram red weather balloons would be even more distracting as they will be seen from longer distances.

The Helium will be pricey though.

2 teams spending a few hundred bucks with a pickup truck can launch 20 of them the day before tethered at a 200 foot mark will be very visible for a distance. it will throw off a LOT of reports, BUT the reports will be clustered within areas that will be easy to filter out. you need to get a group of 20 or more people scattered all over the USA that are willing to launch only 1 balloon.

There is actually time to do this if someone start's now.

Re:Decoys

[steelfood]

Better yet, what happens if a lot of people start setting their own balloons as decoys? I.e. how quickly can people coordinate a network of disinformation?

Re:Decoys

[Anonymous Coward]

'dan & ron's party accessories' is going to wish they picked a different day and means of advertisement for their grand opening though.

Simple Winning Coalition

[logicnazi]

Unless a technological approach using sattellites, automated analysis of flikr photos etc.. quickly wins out then presumably the ballons will end up being seen by some people aware of the contest. So suppose you have seen a balloon and wish to use that knowledge to claim part of the prize. What do you do?

Well what you want to do is find a group of other people who have located the other balloons and agree to pool your info in exchange for shares of the prize. Importantly nothing in the rules prevents you from drawing up legal contracts with other participants and if you are clever you might even be able to make delibrately feeding you false information into criminal fraud. So it seems straightforward to ensure there are big incentives to only agree to join such a coalition if you do indeed have valid data. Moreover, your claimed data can be verified relatively quickly for low cost by paying close friends and associates who live nearby to go out and check.

In short it seems to me the optimal strategy is simply to hope you stumble upon a balloon and then creating a legally binding contract with others who claim to have complimentary information.

Re:Simple Winning Coalition

[Lumpy]

How do you filter out the people screwing around and staging a fake darpa balloon.

There is enough information in the rules for me to set up fake ones that contestants will NOT be able to distinguish from real. also no judge on the planet will hear a lawsuit against someone signing a unenforceable legal contract and feeding bad information. In fact the "organizer" has more legal danger than the helpers as having 10 angry people suing you has a far higher chance of winning in court than you suing 10 people.

P.S. it's not illegal for me to fly a red balloon and have a white rental car with a magnetic sign on it that says DARPA. If I am vague and say "YUP you found this red balloon! congrats!" I never lied.

Re:Simple Winning Coalition

[logicnazi]

This is a contract with real money and the signatures are exchanging something of real value (their knowledge of the locations). It's a nice clean example of a contract, nothing weird or fishy. Moreover, contract law doesn't work like computer code. You simply include a clause requiring them to accurately disclose their knowledge about such and such a balloons location. If they know or have reason to suspect that it was a fake and they don't share they are violating the contract.

That may be...

[pontifier]

but perhaps you could find a single red balloon and win $3000...

Red40k.com will be setup to take balloon location submissions and paypal $3000 to the first email address associated with a correct balloon location, if we win the $40k.

Re:That may be...

[lowrydr310]

So where does the remaining 10K go? If it's to the person setting up red40K.com, you can count me out. $3000 for a balloon, $10K for the person organizing the website?

Re:That may be...

[pontifier]

So what will you do if you happen to be driving along on December 5th, and see one of these balloons?
Will you actually drive past it without stopping, or will you whip out your [insert connected device] and try to get $3,000 from Red40k.com?

yes, I will get $10k from DARPA if we win.

One balloon has NO value to an individual without what I (or someone else) offers.

Go Red40k.com!

Altruism

[Anonymous Coward]

All you need is a sufficient number of altruistic individuals in the neighbourhood of the balloons. If you don't care about winning the prize, just publicise the co-ordinates of your local balloon. All that's needed is 10 altruists, in the right places.

Windows 40K

[Hal_Porter]

Sounds like a particularly disturbing dystopian universe.

Time to panic!!!!

[clickety6]

It's obvious now that the government not only knows that aliens exist, but that it also knows they are large, rotund, crimson and warlike - and they're on their way!!!

Quick!! everybody get a Red Balloon

[Anonymous Coward]

(Not my own joke, so posting as an AC) But quickly everybody put a red balloon in the air and see how we can derail the militairy/industriial complex, we will not slaves to their mind control!!

Re:Social media control test?

[backwardMechanic]

Maybe the real game is to try to disrupt those groups searching for balloons. Does DARPA still have enough control to stop groups forming and co-ordinating via twitter/mobile phones/etc? For every civilian team searching for balloons, there is a military team trying to stop them communicating? Watch this message disappear in a minute or two... BTW, balloons make the perfect symbol because DARPA love The Prisoner.

Realtime Search

[JerryQ]

If I were going to try to understand how to analyse Twitter in real-time, then I would want a 'planted story' (and this seems like a perfectly reasonable candidate), and then I can read the firehose (later, *I* don't have to do it realtime) and from that start to develop programs that can help me understand the stream (realtime) in later cases of distributed crises, e.g. 9/11.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Don't you love paying taxes?

[geekmux]

You know, at first, I thought this was going to be some valid balloon chase, where we would be finding balloons that had actually been released into the atmosphere, until I read "...and accompanied by DARPA representatives.". Er, how is this a balloon "hunt"?!? What the fuck is the point in finding balloons DARPA already knows the location to?

Gee, I just love paying taxes for shit like this. Makes paying thousands for finding the gazillionith obscenely-large-prime-number(EFF) look like a Warren Buffet investment.

Game over!

[Anonymous Coward]

A certain Pavel Ivanovich Korotkov has already found all ten ballons and claimed the prize. He wishes that the 40k USD be sent to GRU Space Command Headquarters, Volokalamskoe Prospekt 27, Floor minus 11, District 5, Moscow.

By the way, if you want to be a runner-up, I suggest stealing an SR-71 from NASA, that can do 300k square kilometers per hour, if you have the backgrund infrastructure to evaluate truck-wheel sized film rolls by the dozen.

Red balloon orphanage needs you

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Sir or Madam, I have recently come into possession of a number of very valuable red balloons. I am connected to the super secret US spy agency DRUPA and for obvious reasons I must act with extreme discretion and stealth. These balloons were left to me by my great uncle who unfortunately passed away without leaving any heirs and he left strict instructions for their disposal. I will be placing the balloons at various locations where ordinary passersby would not think to note their presence. However, if you can find one of these balloons and report it to me, I will pay you a generous commission of USD 1,000.00.

Because these balloons are very much sought after and valuable to all persons, I expect them to be in high demand. In order to ensure that you are treated with the utmost fairness, please submit your bank details to my agent, the Honorable Great Mucky Muck, Esquire, 3rd underpass from the swamp, Lagos, Nigeria and he will ensure that you receive your rightful due.

I trust that God and Jesus will bless your efforts and reward you in heaven for your good deeds. The proceeds will go to my new orphanage to be established in an undisclosed location. We are currently recruiting orphans for this project. If you know of any orphans or are willing to become an orphan, also please send your bank details to Mr. Muck.

Balloons for Peace

[mbuimbui]

So my girlfriend and I had the idea that people would really get motivated to help if they new it was for a greater cause. $40k divided 10 or 11 ways only goes so far. Think however how much impact $40k, the publicity of winning the DARPA challenge, and the power of social networks can go in terms of helping various peace initiatives in the world. Being a /. nerd I quickly set up a site and threw up a forum so people could post their ideas to help this project out. Any help any other /.ers could give in spreading the word for this good cause would be appreciated.

Decoys anyone?

[Ignatius]

Strange that nobody has mentioned it yet, but I guess it's a good bet that there will be hundreds of red balloons rising on Dec 5. Besides the obvious "because we can" motive, if you are after the prize money, it makes sense to launch a few decoys the location of which is only known to yourself. Even a few of those and the contest is no longer about spotting the balloons, but about picking the correct 10 out of the confirmed sightings.

It would have made a lot more sense to launch the balloons before announcing the challenge.

Winning the Prize - Open Balloon Finder

[teeks99]

I'm going to try to start a group that can work together to win the prize (and donate it to charity).

http://groups.google.com/group/open-balloon-finder

The idea is to do things in an open manner, similar to an open source project...however there will need to be some secrecy when the results come in, but the idea is to be open.

Hopefully we can use some of the web tools like google maps to help out the team, and general just have fun on Dec 5. Check it out :-)

Hacked intelligence satellites?

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly, someone has hacked their intelligence satellites, and with this challenge they hope that the hacker outs himself.

Let's be honest...

[Anonymous Coward]

It has nothing to do with finding the balloons or how the data is shared among social networks.

DARPA doesn't need us to find those balloons. There's a small handful of agencies with 3 letter names that have software sufficient to troll the intertubez for all chatter about red balloons, filter said chatter, then train local traffic cameras or CCTV cameras on the balloons to verify.

It's probably a gimmick to see how far behind the government agencies that the private sector is.

Re:Let's be honest...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe it's just because unlike the various Three Letter Acronym agencies, DARPA personnel are allowed to have a sense of humor and/or whimsy. After all, there is usually a high correlation between creativity and having fun.

Wiretapping? So what?

[professorguy]

Yeah, why would you think warrants are required for the government to listen in on your conversations?

The fact that they can "monitor network traffic" and still have people ask what could possibly require a warrant is the real news here. Maybe DARPA is just trying to see if people no longer care if their information is wiretapped by the government. Responses like above should provide plenty of comfort--no one gives a good god damn.

Bingo!

[professorguy]

This is my hypothesis as well.

Re:Wiretapping? So what?

[TaggartAleslayer]

Warrants aren't really necessary when you're dealing with freely available public API's for the services in question. It's public speech, not private property.
 
If you were coordinating the information on your personal website behind a secure login, you would probably have a valid argument, otherwise you've really got nothing to get riled up over.

Geek license suspended!

[GameboyRMH]

Er, how is this a balloon "hunt"?!? What the fuck is the point in finding balloons DARPA already knows the location to?

Your geek license has been suspended, please hand over your card at the door. You will be eligible to regain your license in 8 weeks upon passing a new Imagination Test.

Only 10 Balloons?

[aquatone282]

Shouldn't it be neunundneunzig?

Bin Laden

[Anonymous Coward]

So why doesn't this work for Bin Laden?

1 Down, 9 To Go:

[Anonymous Coward]

Morons

Yours In Yaznogorsk,
Kilgore T.

Not really spontaneous

[DerekLyons]

My bet is this won't be won by a truly spontaneous group - the noise level and odds of betrayal are too high. You need a group that is a) national in scope, b) owns a GPS, c) is already reasonably organized and possesses a web of trust, and d) already has an existing communications network.
 
My money is on geocachers.

Re: to find a bunch of lost weather balloons

[rnturn]

And, it seems, to find the wayward DARPA representitives who are accompanying the balloons.

the crux of the issue

[Anonymous Coward]

the crux of the issue i believe, is-- are you willing to share the location of the balloon you found, in trusting that you will be awarded part of the prize money? Or are you going to withhold your information about the location of your balloon and try to find out where the other balloons are? and other people could be withhold their information and waiting for leaked information of the other balloons in order to win the 40k prize all for themselves...

if all information of the balloon locations are leaked, then it just becomes a race to see who can enter the submission form in time.

this is actually really interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Urban warfare where we rely on the social networking of the population to alert us of threats/ events. Best way to organize this data. Methods people will use to create false data and how to filter. Can we take advantage of twitter ect like rioters in other countries have used twitter ect to organize and accomplish tasks.

i imagine they began discussing how they could use twitter after rioters used twitter. then they decided they were wasting tons of money talking about it, might as well throw up a $40thou prize for tons of people to do the work for them.

I think that this is a coverup for something else

[turtleshadow]

I think that this is a ruse to coverup something else. DARPA, "We need to fly 10 balloons for over a month to calibrate/check out our secret targeting/tracking system but everyone will notice 10 big balloons hanging out at visible places and know we are calibrating/checking our tracking system -- what do we do?"

Answer: Make up a stupid contest to find them and then also skim out data from it.

OR

See if anyone detects the cloaked UAV flying between each balloon

You could make a lot more than $40k

[istartedi]

Earn money tracking government weather balloons. Send $30 to PO Box 666, Slimetown, CA to find out how.

Place this ad all over the place. Snail-mail back a printout of the PDF to the suckers.

Re:Find J.delanoys micropenis, lose your dignatiy

[Veggiesama]

Large hard-on collider?

I smell a movie deal!

poverty-crime reasearch or new recruit competition

[Anonymous Coward]

(1) How poor can we get them before they commit crimes?
For $40k, how much effort will these guys put into it?
And how many will try?
There's a lot of stats out there on this, so they might just be cross-checking.

(2) Because we just have one prize up there, the top contestants are the next potential recruits to be our future TLA staff.

(3) We can test our shiny new Googlebot killer DARPA web crawler for this data.
Just like we crawl "Britney Spears", "Al Qaeda", everything Twitter, VOIP packets, Windoze botnets and stuff.
This one becomes relevant given the high-speed internet thing going around for some time now.

Re:My guess: half of a high-tech vs low-tech conte

[hoggoth]

So while we are searching for the red balloons, a crack military team is searching for the blue balloons with every high tech resource at their disposal. Let the better metaphor win!

Re:My guess: half of a high-tech vs low-tech conte

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Smart 5-star general: "Well, boys, let's find out."

I realize your story was a bit tongue-in cheek and the ranks were listed for humor purposes, but someone might find it interesting that there currently are no 5 star generals currently active in the United States military as a 5th star requires service as a General during a time of war (a real fuck-em-all war, not the police actions we've been involved in perpetually since the 60's). Anyways, pedantic, but worth noting.

Can you hack DARPAs mobile team communications?

[Anonymous Coward]

This contest is a job posting: hacking DARPA's "newest-mobile-com-thing"? Is the network secure? The social network example is ridiculous. They are fishing for blackhats.

Good luck trying to submit your winning entries

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess would be that DARPA's servers get sacked hard by DDOS/DOS on Dec. 5th. (In fact, I am actually secretly hoping the brainiacs behind Storm, Kraken, Srizbi, and conflicker all unload on DARPA at once. That way DARPA is taught once and for all who owns the internet and controls web traffic.)

Re:My guess: half of a high-tech vs low-tech conte

[guyminuslife]

I didn't know that. That's bad. Imagine all the four star generals sitting around twiddling their thumbs going, "If only we could bomb Russia, we'd get that last fucking star!"

Pretend it is real life

[Raven_Stark]

If you find a balloon, hide it and talk the people accompanying it into splitting the prize with you. Wait until the locations of the other balloons leaks. Collect prize. If people accompanying it won't play, kidnap them.

3-2-1... Lawsuits!

[BBF_BBF]

I smell a bunch of lawsuits coming up... can you imagine 10 or more people all over the US trying to split the "reward" without issue?

On it

[Anonymous Coward]

Like stank on shit

http://3dstoneage.com/?page=DARPA

pass the tupperware, i have to barf again.

[vicstevens]

pass the tupperware, i have to barf again.

Strategy

[Anonymous Coward]

See http://darpa-network-challenge.blogspot.com/ for discussion on strategy for the contest.

DARPA Balloon Test Flight

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a craigslist ad in DC from someone claiming to be selling the location of a test flight, and a description of the balloon.

Team SlashDot

[zummit]

OK - Who is going to head up Team SlashDot?