OT: DARPA red balloon challenge

[Adam N]

All,

In case people hadn't heard, DARPA just announced what I think is the
coolest competition ever:

http://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/

On December 5, DARPA will raise 10 red weather balloons somewhere in
the US. The first person to get the location of all 10 balloons and
submit them will be given $40k.

I'm proposing that if "I" win, half the money ($20k) will be given to
the Django Software Foundation. The other half ($20k) will go to the
Python Software Foundation.

I've set up a StackOverflow site for coordination for anybody who
would like to join:

http://darpa.stackexchange.com/

I think the first thing that needs to happen is to get a critical mass
of users on the site and to use the Q&A capabilities of the site to
figure out what tools we should use next.

Cheers,
Adam Nelson

 

[Mensanator]

All,

In case people hadn't heard, DARPA just announced what I think is the
coolest competition ever:

http://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/

On December 5, DARPA will raise 10 red weather balloons somewhere in
the US.  The first person to get the location of all 10 balloons and
submit them will be given $40k.

I'm proposing that if "I" win, half the money ($20k) will be given to
the Django Software Foundation.  The other half ($20k) will go to the
Python Software Foundation.

Uh...didn't read the rule about "Tax treatment of prizes will be
handled
in accordance with U.S. Internal Revenue Service guidelines", eh?

 

[Albert Hopkins]

]

On December 5, DARPA will raise 10 red weather balloons somewhere in
the US. The first person to get the location of all 10 balloons and
submit them will be given $40k.

Hasn't the U.S. had enough weather balloon-related publicity stunts?

Well, hopefully this one won't turn into 10 "missing" little boys

-a

 

[John Nagle]

All,

In case people hadn't heard, DARPA just announced what I think is the
coolest competition ever:

http://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/

On December 5, DARPA will raise 10 red weather balloons somewhere in
the US. The first person to get the location of all 10 balloons and
submit them will be given $40k.

You're thinking of doing this with people running around? Nah.
The right way is to get some successive images of the earth from
Digital Globe. They just launched their WorldView-2 satellite.

http://www.satimagingcorp.com/satellite-sensors/worldview-2.html

They image the whole planet at 0.42m resolution in color every
two days. Upload that to some cloud system and find all red dots
in the continental US that weren't there before the event.

John Nagle