Slashdot Mirror
DARPA Network Challenge Lasts All of 9 Hours
stillnotelf writes "A team based at MIT has won the DARPA Network Challenge. DARPA notes: 'The Challenge has captured the imagination of people around the world, is rich with scientific intrigue, and, we hope, is part of a growing "renaissance of wonder" throughout the nation,' said DARPA's director, Dr. Regina E. Dugan. 'DARPA salutes the MIT team for successfully completing this complex task less than 9 hours after balloon launch.' PDF with (scant) details. Hit the first link above for a map with the locations. How many did your team find?"
But I bet that team couldn't beat me to first post.
how did they do this?
We found them all within fifteen minutes but we sold the information about this secret DARPA project to China for $400,000. I'm posting anonymously for obvious reasons.
But one of the balloons was a real b*tch to locate... and, in the end, it was very frustrating and lost time -- it was not a balloon... just an UFO.
How? That's really the only thing everybody cares about.
Does the Good Year Blimp count?
Come on, couldn't they have a least made it 99 red balloons? Was DARPA afraid they might accidently start a nuclear war?
Funny that it doesn't seem to work on Bin Laden.
This is great! Slashdot is reporting on the results, and all the news sites are getting really excited about the kickoff. Way to stay ahead of the curve.
So how was this a technical challenge, and not just a boyscout fox hunt ?
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
I was surprised that UPS didn't have a team and won. Seems they would have had the most people out and about and probably seeing the balloons.
I think it's more of a news story that DARPA is apparently terrified of the Dakotas, or perhaps Minnesota.
-Styopa
He would have made a great mascot for this event.
Am I the only one that sees how nefarious this experiment is? Someone in the US military saw the events in Iran a few months back and panicked. The Iranian military was able to censor official news but not social networks. DARPA is conducting this challenge to gather the real world information it needs to effectively censor social networks.
Daring fellow.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
...but wasn't this a joint DARPA/MIT project? And an MIT won the challenge? How does this apparent conflict of interest satisfy the "rich with scientific intrigue" tag? This is a non-starter, and I'm disappointed that DARPA would even have wasted their time with this.
As a teacher, my level of concern continues to rise with what passes for "science" these days, especially from institutions that should know better. This wasn't a science experiment. It was an advertising gimmick. Shame on DARPA, and shame on MIT. (No shame on /., because after 12 years, I've come to expect this type of editorial slackness.)
This is more like a radio station promotion. It would have worked if one of those blowhards on AM talk radio had announced a similar hunt with a call-in number. It didn't need the Internet.
Thanks, didn't know that. But that rule negates true crowd sourcing datamining for a project, because in a real non test situation it wouldn't matter, an org and corp, an ad hoc group, whatever, would be disseminating and collating information. As this is a defense department test, I wonder what the rationale was for the exclusions?
Going further, a google run group of volunteer balloon spotters might have done even better. Or an iPhone app, see balloon, mash button that uploads "I have seen it, here is the x-y" deal.
Today, MIT and the United States Department of Warxxx Defense are proud to report their joint discovery that spam email, when combined with a pyramid sales scheme, is an effective way to get people off their asses. This works best when your name is well-known and has not yet been sufficiently exploited that your email is ignored.
Note to editors: when referring to spam in connection with MIT, correct usage is "social network."
That was too fast . . .
I think they should use more balloons to make it harder
99 Red Balloons would have been better
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14IRDDnEPR4
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
Your comment was modded funny because the competition had ZERO affiliation with MIT.
https://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/FAQ.aspx
https://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/rules.aspx
Nowhere does it mention any MIT participation in administrating the contest. You could have verified this yourself in ten seconds. You are a retard.
I think it's a tossup between that and how people think it's faster to post "What is X" *And wait for the answer* than to use a search engine. It's that shift from how conversations used to work.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I was helping on the Nerdfighter team. Turns out we had 8/10... one of the 9 we thought we had was a fake (possibly planted by MIT). Not that we didn't plant misinformation too... we did.
Here's a video one of the team leads posted to light-heartedly recap our team's progress (and loss): http://bit.ly/7aZBbr
Were any other teams that close? The only results I've heard is from the team I was on (this one) and the winning team (MIT).