Capital Furs

DARPA, a military organization in the US, is hosting a competition that I think the furry community has a good chance of winning. Here's the website but the summary is: There are 10 stationary red weather balloons spread across the continental US. Find the latitude longetude of every one, and win $40,000 USD!

Anyone with good connections want to help out?

We need to free the DARPA chief!

Also, that's one hell of a contest. Open to anyone, or just US citizens?

Also, how on Earth will we accomplish that?

Its open to anyone, and I think we can win because furries seem to have LOTS of out of town (or in this case country) friends.

So everyone, ask all your american friends to tell you if they see a red weather balloon :)

yes. besides the fact Metal Gear Solid demonstrated we should stay away from DARPA if we have the chance, this sounds like fun.

we'd need to be really god damned clever to get that money. we can't just wait for people we know to bump into them. that'll take forever. we need a way of searching.

i dont' know if it would work, but my brother and one of my friends are into GIS. Its a geography related computer skill thinger. We could pay them to run certain searches or whatever on their aerial data. exceptt we would need to provide them the very latest data as of Dec 1st for the whole continental US, which would cost more than 40K anways.

there has to be a way.

Okay, we could divide up the area into a grid, then identify people in each area that we know, and get them to search for them.

Ten balloons that could be anywhere reachable from roads in the continental United states... Would $40000 USD be enough to cover the gas costs?

I just realized I had a blog post in my feed reading list on the DARPA challenge, with analysis of how to win and how to keep others from winning. Check it out.
How to Win the DARPA Network Challenge | Mssv

... so if doing it for the money is not worth it, maybe it would be possible to do it for the lulz. Like, send fursuiters to all 10 balloon locations and take pictures with DARPA reps...

Edit: clarify wording

XD If someone could pay for me to go, I'd be down there in a flash, BUT it's in th USA, and frankly, they have issues with immigrants.

no, $40k is not enough gas to drive on all the roads in the continental united states. there's just no way.

i don't even think one man in one car could do it in five years. maybe ten. there's alot of god damned space out there man. and they don't have gigantic uninhabited portions like we do. its impossible.

the key is getting tons of people to work together, obviously.

BUT:

"The purpose of the competition is to ‘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.’ Without the internet, it’d be impossible for all but the very largest organisations – the government, the military, Google, etc. – to win this competition; but with the internet, it’s possible for millions of people across the world to collaborate on a single goal."


sounds exactly like they're TESTING US TO SEE HOW WE WOULD COLLABORATE AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT. how long it would take. what technology gets used. where to look first to track this happening. who's capable. who's leading. who's following.

this is very clearly a test to see HOW the internet could be used to collaborate and create that vague revolution so many rock songs talk about.

Ramses wrote:no, $40k is not enough gas to drive on all the roads in the continental united states. there's just no way.

i don't even think one man in one car could do it in five years. maybe ten. there's alot of god damned space out there man. and they don't have gigantic uninhabited portions like we do. its impossible.

the key is getting tons of people to work together, obviously.

BUT:

"The purpose of the competition is to ‘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.’ Without the internet, it’d be impossible for all but the very largest organisations – the government, the military, Google, etc. – to win this competition; but with the internet, it’s possible for millions of people across the world to collaborate on a single goal."


sounds exactly like they're TESTING US TO SEE HOW WE WOULD COLLABORATE AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT. how long it would take. what technology gets used. where to look first to track this happening. who's capable. who's leading. who's following.

this is very clearly a test to see HOW the internet could be used to collaborate and create that vague revolution so many rock songs talk about.

They should just come to AC or something and see an internet-driven meeting in motion.

No wait, then they'd be sickened and probably declare war.

War on drugs.
War on terror.
War on furries!

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