DARPA Celebrates Internet Anniversary with Bizarre Balloon Challenge
Most DARPA challenges serve some sort of obvious military or intelligence purpose. But the agency has us scratching our heads over its latest competition, the Network Challenge: a $40,000 cash prize will go to the first person who finds the correct latitude and longitude of ten weather balloons located within the continental United States.
The DARPA Network Challenge kicked off on Thursday to commemorate the Internet's 40th anniversary, and marked four decades since the first message was sent over the Department of Defense's ARPANET.
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Technology, Jeremy Hsu, arpanet, balloons, darpa, defense, intelligence, Internet, internets, social networking, wtf darpaEach of the 10 red balloons will be placed in hidden but publicly accessible locations during the daylight hours of December 5. Would-be balloon hunters can start registering for the challenge on December 1, and have until December 14 to submit balloon locations to the contest website.
DARPA has left only the vaguest clues as to its intentions, but it's clear that the mad science lab has a strong interest in leveraging the power of online social networking. The contest rules note that the agency "will compute aggregate statistics," and may contact contestants "to discuss the means and methods used in solving the challenge."
We're used to DARPA reaching for the stars on schemes such as space debris cleanup and creating cyborg beetles. And who wouldn't get behind self-regulated morphine delivery for wounded warfighters?
Still, this particular challenge can't help but remind us of the CIA's recent investment in a firm that monitors social networking. Perhaps the Department of Defense has even hit upon a more cost-effective approach for just $40,000 (and there's no prize for second place).
In any case, DARPA clearly hopes to mine useful surveillance or tracking techniques based on existing Internet tools. Future intelligence analysts and field agents might gather intel and communicate in ways that ape how social networks already find news nuggets, gossip tidbits and the latest hot spots. Which leads us to this question -- tweet much, Jack Bauer?
President Obama takes bold step in Health Care System
Washington: August 13, 2009 –IR Summary/NYT - President Obama has determined to put forward the broad principles in the area of health care system, among them is the creation of a strong, government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers and press for lower costs,;his team is working hard to achieve the results desired by the President, by negotiating deals with utmost wisdom and care.
As per NYT, the hospital officials last month were poised to appear at the White House to announce a deal limiting their industry’s share of the costs of the overhaul proposal when a wave of jitters swept through the group. Senator Max Baucus, the Finance Committee chairman and a party to the deal, had abruptly pulled out of the event. Was he backing away from his end of the deal?
Not to worry, Jim Messina, deputy White House chief of staff, told the lobbyists, according to White House officials and lobbyists briefed on the call. The White House was standing behind the deal, Mr. Messina said, capping the industry’s costs at a maximum of $155 billion over 10 years in trade for its political support.
Some Democrats and industry lobbyists now argue that, in negotiating deals through Mr. Baucus’s panel with powerful health care interests, the White House was tacitly signaling as early as last spring that it might end up accepting something more modest than the government insurer the president has said he prefers.
The Finance Committee, for example, appears to be coalescing around the idea of nonprofit insurance cooperatives instead of a government-run plan. It is a proposal the health care industry prefers, but many liberal Democrats oppose, in both cases because cooperatives are likely to have less leverage over health care prices.
Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, disputed that the administration had elevated the work of the Senate finance panel above the four other committees that have all approved strong government insurers.
