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?"
If you offered them $40,000 I bet they could.
Team Nerdfighter found 9/10 balloons
http://twitter.com/hankgreen/status/6392128271
:(
They asked Fark for help.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
9 hours? Is that fast?
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" umm.... what challenge again? What's DARPA? (It's not in TFA and what good is a FA when you have to click through three pages to find out?
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.
How many times has that guy had angioplasty?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Right. Get off slashdot. Now. Thank you.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
I sure do hope there's some irony in your post I'm not caching.
DARPA is an acronym standing for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
It is an agency of the US Department of Defense it develops tech for the army.
It's predecessor ARPA gave us the internet amongst other things(too condensed a statement).
They like to issue challenges and geeks of all trades either like to participate in them for the sport and/or are picked from the crowd and given jobs at DARPA to develop new cutting edge technologies.
Well reading the previous article about MITs solution to this challenge would be a good start.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
hacked into DARPA's communications?
Nothing to see here.
Come on, couldn't they have a least made it 99 red balloons? Was DARPA afraid they might accidently start a nuclear war?
So... they instituted an upside down Ponzi scheme?
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
Here's the answer. I was wondering the same thing myself. It appears that the solution was very low tech: just get a bunch of people, and when they see a balloon, send a message to the group. Instead of splitting the 40k among the group, they donated it to charity. Reward for MIT? Bragging rights.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
MIT is a school in the US btw. Err and the US is the United States of America... it's a country.
Funny that it doesn't seem to work on Bin Laden.
I sure do hope there's some irony in your post I'm not caching.
Irony typically has a short TTL; you're better off not caching it.
This may come as a surprise to you, but slashdot has readers that don't live in the United States.
+1 Funny Signature
You have made my day, thanks!
What's DARPA?? What was your previous question 'what's that big round thing between me and the couch?'
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
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
So that can't use Google?
It isn't exactly obscure.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Well, the title of the article has all of 9 hours, and the title of the post you responded to is That was pretty fast...
So, to summarize:
That was pretty fast...it took all of nine hours.
Their they're doing there hair.
At the moment, the grandparent post is showing 1 positive moderation and no negative moderation...
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Do you think I can claim any credit for getting it modded up from zero (which was what it was at when I posted)? I guess we'll never know - it might have happened anyway.
Mod the great-grandparent up some more!
And if you look at the ever lovely Slashdot FAQ you will see that it is a US based company with US based news. Just google any and all acronyms that are unfamiliar.
Is this some kind of bizarro version of the ignorance normally attributed to stupid North Americans (USians)? Stereotypically, US citizens are characterized as deeply ignorant of history and current events outside of the US. In this case people outside of the US, on a forum as technologically current as Slashdot, can claim justified ignorance of one of the entities that gave rise to the Internet?
The mind, it has to boggle.
blog
MIT used the pyramid scheme. You don't have to find a balloon, just get 5 people under you to find 5 people and so on.
It's not MIT tactics... It's AMWAY tactics...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
And obviously slashdot has readers who don't know about TCP/IP.
And obviously slashdot has readers who don't know about TCP/IP.
So that's how the Internet works! I always thought it was a series of tubes.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
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.
They asked Fark for help.
TeamFark got 8/10.
...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.
It's DARPA for deity's sake, previously known as ARPA, previously known as DARPA, previously known as ARPA.
You know ARPANET.
Does slashdot have to expand "FTP" and "HTTP" and "SMTP" whever it mentions them too?
Plus of course slashdot is an American based web siute aimed at Americans as the primary audience.
from http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1358997&cid=29323397
Hivemind harvest in progress..
sarchasm - the gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
- passion
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."
Worldwide notability of US government acronyms seems to be limited to 4 letters. When there's a story about the FBI or FCC or NASA nobody complains that it wasn't explained, but DARPA? how dare you assume people around the world using the internet know what that means!
Everyone is born right-handed; only the greatest overcome it
In this case people outside of the US, on a forum as technologically current as Slashdot, can claim justified ignorance of one of the entities that gave rise to the Internet?
You mean people outside the US don't know about Al Gore?
(and even fewer are aware he actually did invent the internet - at least from one point of view)
Irony posters (humans) have a slow response time. Better to cache than not receive.
It just so happened those "bunch" of people were the ones that launched the balloons and just all happened to be eating at Olive Garden afterwards.... :)
"Plus of course slashdot is an American based web siute aimed at Americans as the primary audience."
Then why does it carry so many UK stories?
Then why does it carry so many UK stories?
Because the UK is the 51st state /Ducks
SSC
Please show me the quote where he claims to have invented the internet. Seriously, just one quote form a legitimate news source. One teeny, tiny, little quote. Otherwise, stfu.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
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
What's an American?
Requiem for the American Dream
whooosh - the sound made by someone rushing like the wind along a sarchasm.
Hopefully without the really dull brainwashing sessions.
Requiem for the American Dream
This may come as a surprise to you, but slashdot has readers that don't live in the United States.
Yes, and when an American reader doesn't know something about something from outside the US, this is due to American arrogance, whereas when a non-American reader doesn't know something about something from the US, the fact that they were expected to is due to American arrogance. No matter who doesn't know something about what, the problem is American arrogance...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. http://www.darpa.mil/
Remember when Fark and Facebook people beat out Slashdot in that IQ test? I suspect many neck beards are still ruffled over that one. Nothing but posts about 'HAHA WE R SMERT' up until the law of averages kicked in and a million excuses flowed forth until the thread was eventually locked.
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.
You skilled formulated it as "one of the entities".
An other one from europe:
http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/en/About/Web-en.html
Most American residents will know CERN. They payed 500 million of the 10miljard (ten billion in US english) costs.
Hivemind harvest in progress..
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
That's pretty arrogant of you! (Assuming you're American of course)
At least you knew it's not a big truck.
A word with its own website:
http://sarchasm.net/
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
No problem.
Because primary!=only.
And Americans like to laugh at the English and their big brother/nanny state (while trying not to think about their own).
You're a fucking moron. Listen to what he said, not what you wanted him to say. He did, in fact, push to get it funded and yes, it wouldn't be here if he hadn't. At no point in time did he ever say he invented the internet. What's more funny is all the blathering conservative morons on youtube jumping on his case for saying something he never said after watching a 1.5 minute fucking video. Just shows you that the education system in this country is worthless, or maybe it's just that conservatives have so succumbed to group-think now, they will believe anything regardless of evidence right in front of their face.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
but some of those, like the European I am, still know Darpa :-D
Herve S.