Slashdot Mirror
MIT and the DARPA Network Challenge
mit_team writes "As you might have heard, DARPA has announced a network challenge in the vein of the DARPA Grand Challenge. In this challenge, participants are tasked with finding 10 red weather balloons distributed throughout the continental US for 8 hours on December 5. The idea is to get this to be a crowd-sourcing kind of activity, where people will use social media tools to solve this problem. Our group, the MIT Red Balloon Challenge Team, based out of the MIT Media Lab, has created a system where you get money not just for finding balloons, but for getting people to join the hunt who find the balloons, or for getting people who get people who find balloons, etc. First you have to sign up. Then you can send invitations to others to join through your own unique URL, crediting you with recruiting them. While our team is interested in winning the contest, we are also interested in studying information diffusion in social networks. Does Twitter spread information faster than blogs? Is your blog effective at spreading information? We could use your help in getting out the word. If you sign up and blog about us you will be able to see the impact that your blog has on getting out the word in real time. Win money, help science, and help charity! Kind regards, The MIT Red Balloon Challenge Team."
Dear esteemed Sir and Madam.
The University of MIT has lost its Identified Flying Baloons(IFB). We need you to locate them for us.
Join this work from home opportunity and you can earn part of $40,000 from your one bedroom apartment! *
If you don't forward this to 100 of your next best friends you will lose out on your chance to have a big enough Multi Level Network to get the reward!
Tetimonial:
"Once that happens, we send Dave $2000 for finding the balloon. Carol gets $1000 for inviting Dave, Bob gets $500 for inviting Carol, and Alice gets $250 for inviting Bob. The remaining $250 is donated to charity."
*(Chances not representative of all entrants. Some terms and conditions apply. See site for details.)
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Will there be a little boy trapped inside each one?
Of course, these charming folks would never dream of using the project to map out, in a loose but enlightening way, the contacts of some of the more net-savvy people around. And keeping that info for future reference, of course.
Vonnegut would loved it.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Although it sounds like fun, I can see some flaws in this approach. First off, I think that whatever you don't ask for and lands in your Inbox/IM windows is SPAM if it contains this kind of URLs. People don't ask if you want to participate, they simply assume you would love to participate and will endlessly spam you with mass messages, e-mails and even calls.
...and so on
Last time I have encountered such an URL sharing spree was no earlier than a week ago, due to a stupid site that promised that people would win whatever items if they get a certain number of clicks on an unique generated URL, just like it's the case here. All I can say is that I had to sign out from all my IM accounts because of that, and after things cooled down and I started my Yahoo messenger again, it froze due to the sheer amount of offline messages. Turned out that some people sent their bloody link over 1000 times via mass messages. So it's not funny at all, because people all get heated up about it and apply every dirty trick in the book to get an edge over the others:
- Make redirecting web pages and give you a false link by advertising other stuff.
- Threaten you to click on the link
- Beg you
- Send the link every 10 seconds or so
In this particular case, I'm safe (not in the US) but I've had my share in the past. And I don't like it.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Not every MLM scheme is a ponzi scheme. They do lend themselves to shadiness, but there are some distinctions (which is why Amway, or whatever they call themselves these days, doesn't get prosecuted into oblivion).
The major distinction is, the flow of money is linked to production of something that serves a goal outside the system. In Amway's case, that would be a sale; in this case, it would be knowledge of the location of a balloon.
It's not just spam, it's a spam pyramid scheme. If this doesn't say something about our culture, I don't know what would.
Nena..
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
MIT's strategy is very interesting. Several groups (like our team) have been forming their teams for weeks, but MIT appeared on the scene just today, and it's fascinating that they got a front-page Slashdot plug. I give them lots of credit for flooding the scene with mentions in such a short time. Whereas some teams give their winnings to charity (like ours), others entice balloon spotters with cash portions of the earnings, and MIT has decided to do a little of both.
DARPA is the sole decider of how difficult this competition will be. Will they place the balloons in dense urban areas, or will the launch them in small rural communities?
Best of luck to all the teams tomorrow, MIT included. I hope that the contest winner will write a paper describing their strategy, both in network-building and in launch-day data collection.