Red Balloon

McCracken

McCracken

Logan Can't See This
Joined
Jul 9, 2005
Location
With your mom at a nice seafood dinner
If anyone sees a large red balloon off the side of the road today accompanied by a crew please let me know ASAP! This is not a joke and we as wheelers need to pull together to find them. Like I said any information will be helpful. Thanks.
 
They looked to be about weather balloon sized. I too figured it was west coast so I didnt bother reading the whole thing.
 
Linky????
 
Here's teh messege sent out by Lance to PBB users....

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.
Let's win $40,000 to keep our trails open. Saturday challenge!

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Hello everyone! I wanted to let you know about an event that is going down tomorrow (Saturday) called the DARPA network challenge. What is it, you ask?

First, what is DARPA?
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is the central research and development organization for the Department of Defense (DoD). The Agency manages and directs selected basic and applied research and development projects for DoD and pursues research and technology where both risk and payoff are very high and where success may provide dramatic advances for traditional military roles and missions.

About the DARPA Network Challenge

To mark the 40th anniversary of the Internet, DARPA has announced the DARPA Network Challenge, a competition that will explore the roles the Internet and social networking play in the timely communication, wide-area team-building, and urgent mobilization required to solve broad-scope, time-critical problems.

The challenge is to be the first to submit the locations of 10 moored, 8-foot, red, weather balloons at 10 fixed locations in the continental United States. The balloons will be in readily accessible locations and visible from nearby roads.

So What Does This Have to do With Me?!?!?
Pirate4x4 wants to win this challenge! We have some of the most resourceful people in the USA, so let's all put our resources together, and try and win! All you need to do is drive around tomorrow and look for red balloons in the sky! It doesn't get any easier than that...

What Do We Win?
The winner takes home $40,000!!!!
So why would you help us win $40,000? Well that's easy. We will donate it ALL to Blue Ribbon Coalition, to help keep all of our trails open. Now think about that. $40,000 is a lot of money for our war chest. Even if you have allegiances to another website over Pirate4x4, we are asking for your help with this challenge. If all of the off roading community could get behind this, I am confident we could succeed in this challenge.

What do I need to do?
Go to our DARPA Challenge forum. You MUST BE LOGGED IN to the Pirate Bulletin Board to have access to the forum! If you do not see it, please log in and then click this link -

http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=123

Again, all you need to do is look for red balloons on Saturday. If you find one, then you need to report it to us.

We prefer that you contact your listed area team leader if you see a balloon. But if push comes to shove, you can contact me directly.

Please provide the following:
Your name and contact info (cell, home phone, etc)
The exact location of the balloon (address, GPS coordinates)
We request that you verify with the person(s) at the location that it is indeed a DARPA balloon.

In the forum posted above, there are area coordinators listed. I would prefer you contact your area coordinator first. If that is not possible, please contact me. My contact information is as follows -

You can email me at lance@pirate4x4.com or call my Google Voice number at (951) 254-3367. You can leave me a voice mail or text message. Leave your contact number, and I will call you back ASAP.

Here is a photo of what the balloons look like -
https://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/Photos/Balloon2.jpg

If you have any other questions, please feel free to post them in the DARPA forum.

Let's win $40,000!!!!

Lance Clifford
President, Pirate4x4.com
 
Here's what it coems down to.

No 1 person will possibly find all 10 balloons.
However, between thousands of people all overt he country, it's possible for word about all of their locations to end up in teh same social netowrking place - e.g. PBB, FB, etc.
This is what DARPA is counting on.

The winner will NOT be a person, but some LARGE group.
So really, all you have to do IF you see one, is post up about it - but keep it relatively hush-hush.
 
yeah sorry I didn't get back to this. I went riding around and didn't find any. If I'd been riding in VA I might have. It's typical that the smart guys figured it out. There's been lots of rumors about how exactly they found them all. One team even had a DARPA employee on it and he had his hand on the list. It was taken immediately though by his supervisor.

Oh well, there's always next time. It's hard to believe these nerds had friends all over the US in all thr right places.
 
rockcity said:
Damn MIT nerds
Click to expand...
orangecherokee said:
yeah sorry I didn't get back to this. I went riding around and didn't find any. If I'd been riding in VA I might have. It's typical that the smart guys figured it out. There's been lots of rumors about how exactly they found them all. One team even had a DARPA employee on it and he had his hand on the list. It was taken immediately though by his supervisor.
Oh well, there's always next time. It's hard to believe these nerds had friends all over the US in all thr right places.
Click to expand...

The key was their prep work and incentive program - they offed $2k to the guy that "finds" one, $1k to his referral, $500 to his, referral, and $250 to the 4th leg.

So from a "participants" viewpoint, LOTS of chances to be involved to get some cold hard cash - you don't have to find one, just report information you got from a FOAF.
AND - they started getting the word out very early, pretty much as soon as the program was announced. This gives it time to spread around.

Lance, in contrast... notified all of PBB the day before.

Best part is - even after handing out all that cash to the "finders" - the MIT group STILL walks away w/ good change in pocket.
While it soudns lie ka lot - they only gave away $3750 per baloon found, so they get to keep $250 per, $2500 for the team + (more importantly if you're an MIT nerd) the notoriety.
 
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