DARPA Celebrates 50 Years of Pushing the Envelope 83
holy_calamity writes "The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency was founded in 1958 after the Soviets shocked the world by launching Sputnik. New Scientist recounts the history of the agency charged with protecting the US from 'technological surprise' and lists some of its most spectacular successes and failures."
Spectacular miss (Score:4, Funny)
Seriously, tohugh, sounds to me like someone wanted to build an AT-AT.
Sweet.
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http://bostondynamics.com/content/sec.php?section=BigDog [bostondynamics.com]
Watching the video, it actually looks alive.
http://bostondynamics.com/ [bostondynamics.com]
I wish this one wasn't killed.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I really wanted to see if it would work - grotesque or not. It intrigued me that a "market" could be formed for things that aren't being bought and sold. And I wanted to see if the market could predict things.
Re:I wish this one wasn't killed.... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is another example of how politicians screw up what could otherwise be a good idea.
One could introduce an idea of how a terrorist might attack the country. If others think it's viable/vulnerable/highly possible, they buy the 'share'. As the share price goes up, it gets more attention (and hopefully response). When the response negates the risk, the viability/vulnerability/etc. goes down and people start to want to sell.
Seems a good way to use market forces to address real issues. Politicians saying, "Gosh! You're going to be proactive and creative in addressing terrorism rather than using the politically expedient FUD?! We can't have that!"
Freakin' politicians!
Re:I wish this one wasn't killed.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The important point in all of this though is that, for all the pork and excess, DARPA does foster innovation. Bringing new ideas to important problems is a good thing. If only we could create a DARPA project to lead to a solution for cutting government wastefulness.
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With that in mind it is worth mentioning that Poindexter was right in the middle of this one without adult supervision. Whisteblowing about corruption costs you the chance of ever having a Federal Government job. Being the heart of the corruption apparently does not.
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Pork barrel (Score:1)
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Yeah, sounds like an interesting project. With a bit of work, I bet it would work at least as well as the futures banking & investment markets!
Um...
I mean, really, the bad guys would never think of trying to game the system, like buying shares towards a specific scenario, and divert security efforts from their real target!
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A market for medical knowledge gained unethically, for example.
This is one of those can/should discussions: the fact that an action is possible doesn't make it a bright idea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qs-ATG1AP3E [youtube.com]
Re:I wish this one wasn't killed.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Who would get hurt if there was a market of this type? If anything, it would save lives. I don't see anything unethical about it. If there was anything that was unethical it was the politicians killing this for political points.
There's a huge industry that bets on when people will die. Is it unethical? It's kept many families from becoming destitute after the death of the bread winner. I'm talking about life insurance.
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A market for medical knowledge gained unethically, for example.
Who would get hurt if there was a market of this type? If anything, it would save lives.
Right! Actually, Dr Mengele was saving lives when he took Auschwitz inmates and subjected them to the most outrageously inhuman procedures for medical insight (and a bit of sick pleasure, no doubt). Nothing bad could come of a system that would allow such people to even make a profit out of such practices!
And don't you try and tell me such things could only happen in a dictatorship. I'd bet you anything that somewhere out there is a CIA agent that enjoys waterboarding so much he'd be more than willing
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That's just incredibly Darwin Award-like. Wow!
Hopefully he has not passed his genetics along yet, and hopefully never does.
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Now you see why idiots love socialism?
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Hmmmm.....Nope!
P.S. I had to show that video to my 17 year old stepdaughter.
She sat there silent for a moment, then remarked:"Somehow I feel mentally violated by that. It makes me almost ashamed to be part of THAT human race."
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If you must post off-topic trolls, at least *attempt* to make an argument of some sort.
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http://www.biz.uiowa.edu/iem/ [uiowa.edu]
http://www.intrade.com/ [intrade.com]
http://www.google.com/search?q=political+markets [google.com]
Notice at Google that major media outlets are running them now. UIowa was pretty early if they weren't the first.
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FutureMap: This program hoped to use a kind of terrorism futures market to predict key developments and even attacks. It was thought market valuations of possible future events could reflect the probability of their occurring. However, FutureMap was scrapped in 2003 after the notion of betting on terrorist atrocities was called "ridiculous and grotesque" by US politicians.
I really wanted to see if it would work - grotesque or not. It intrigued me that a "market" could be formed for things that aren't being bought and sold. And I wanted to see if the market could predict things.
Um.. or maybe the idea didn't sell because there is absolutely no logic to it? If share prices go up for "terrorist incident in country X" does that mean that it becomes more likely that a terrorist incident occurs in said country? No. It just means that the share price went up. If Al-Qaeida says that they are planning to blow up something in country Y and that causes the share price to sky rocket, then yeah, the "market" worked. But you don't need a bloody stock exchange for that!
Plus, you would need th
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I really wanted to see if it would work - grotesque or not. It intrigued me that a "market" could be formed for things that aren't being bought and sold. And I wanted to see if the market could predict things.
Same here. It's really interesting to see the slashdot discussion from 2003 [slashdot.org] about the project, with plenty of commenters freaking out about it with various knee-jerk reactions.
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FutureMap: This program hoped to use a kind of terrorism futures market to predict key developments and even attacks. It was thought market valuations of possible future events could reflect the probability of their occurring. However, FutureMap was scrapped in 2003 after the notion of betting on terrorist atrocities was called "ridiculous and grotesque" by US politicians.
Robin Hanson (one of the pioneers for using futures markets to predict this sort of activity) has a really interesting post-mortem analysis of the project and the media reaction to it:
http://hanson.gmu.edu/innovations.pdf [gmu.edu]
Here's an excerpt:
The past few years have seen an explosion of interest in prediction markets. We ...
have long had speculative markets in gold, currency, pigs, and other commodities,
which as a side effect do a remarkable job of aggregating information. Prediction
markets turn this side effect into the main effect: if you want to know more on a
topic, create and subsidize betting markets on that topic to elicit more accurate
estimates. I have long been interested in how prediction markets can be used to
improve decisions in the public arena. From 2001 to 2003 I had the opportunity to
guide research on such markets that was sponsored by the U.S. government. The
project, run by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), showed
that general acceptance is still a long way off.Yet the academic support for the concept
of prediction markets is old. In addition to the large literature on the information
efficiency of financial markets (see Text Box 1), for several decades economists
have been creating markets in the laboratory, showing since 1988 that markets
with just a few traders trading for a few minutes can aggregate trader-held
information.1 Also since 1988, researchers at the University of Iowa have used a
special legal exemption (which no one else has obtained) to run a series of real
money betting markets on U.S. elections. Although these were far from the first
election betting markets,2 the added researcher-control they allow has led to new
insights and academic attention.
On July 30, seventy-eight media articles on PAM appeared, even more negative.
Newspapers reported that Poindexter resigned that day, and two months later
all IAO research was ended. Over the following days, weeks, months, and years,
more than 600 more media articles have mentioned PAM, many at first, and then
gradually fading in frequency. Interestingly, the coverage gradually became more
positive, and the most recent fifty articles on average give readers a positive impression
of PAM.
In a statistical analysis, eleven indicators of how informative an article is--
including time from the events until the article was published, citing someone with
firsthand knowledge, article length, a news or an editorial style, author anonymity,
and the awards, circulation, frequency, and topic specialties of the periodical--
individually predict that more informed articles give readers a more favorable
impression of PAM. In a multiple regression model using six additional control
variables, including media types, political leaning, and the author's gender, all six
of the statistically significant variables predict that more informed articles favor
PAM more.14 The more informed articles were more favorable, and eventually the
average article was favorable, but the political decision to cancel PAM seems
unlikely to be reversed anytime soon.
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And Bush Says... (Score:2)
Global warming, what global warming? (Paper shredder noises in the background)
Summary for those who don't RTFA (Score:5, Funny)
Failed projects: Hafnium bombs, the mechanical elephant, telepathic spies, FutureMap futures market for terrorism, Orion nuclear-bomb-propelled spacecraft
Conspicuously missing:
Successful Projects: Slashdot
Failed Projects: CowboyNeal Dating Service
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STOP BUILDING THE METAL GEAR, By Solid Snake. (Score:4, Funny)
STOP BUILDING THE METAL GEAR
By Solid Snake
Hello. My name is Snake. You probably know me from the first time I destroyed Metal Gear. Or, you may remember me from the second time I destroyed Metal Gear. Or, the third and fourth times I destroyed Metal Gear. Perhaps, instead, you may be familiar with me as we eagerly await the fifth time I'm going to destroy Metal Gear, due for release in June 2008.
Sometimes people ask me -- a renowned Soldier of Fortune and virtually invisible stealth operative -- how we can best keep the increasingly global threat of terrorism at bay. Time and time again the united governments find themselves at the mercy of elite squads of terrorists who, often during sweeps week, hijack indestructible robots armed with nuclear strike capability and -- for reasons that even I can't fathom -- one lone operative (me) always has to stop them against all odds. Well, I have an answer to your little terrorist problem, Mr. four-star general and united world government military advisers.
STOP BUILDING THE METAL GEAR!
For heaven's sake, it seems like every couple of years some pathetic spongecakes in suits are sitting around a conference table and one of them says, "Hey, let's build the Metal Gear again." Then they say, "Certainly those pesky terrorists won't attempt to hijack the Metal Gear this time." Then when all the hell and the hurting happens, they're not the ones strapped to a table getting electrocuted by some pony-tailed punk who looks like Colonel Sanders.
I mean it. Certainly we can figure out something else to do with giant robots aside from using them as mobile platforms for 20 megaton nuclear warheads, although offhand I can't think of anything. Why do we need giant robots at all? Why can't we all just raise dogs, like I do when I'm not silently killing people from behind? I like dogs. Dogs are always happy to see you. They jump up and lick your face. Rarely do they don invisible Predator-esque stealth outfits and gang up on you in an elevator. Hardly ever have I seen a group of dogs pre-meditate a global holocaust by assaulting a giant robot stronghold. Primarily they spend their time smelling one anothers' butts.
In Conclusion, I cannot stress enough the problems associated with giant robots. One minute they're secure on a military compound quietly protecting the free world, the next thing you know there's a floating bald dude in a gasmask convincing your girlfriend to blow her own brains out. I'm drawing the line! Next time you jackholes build the stupid Metal Gear, I'm not going to save your asses. I'm gonna hang out in Alaska, munchin' cheetos on a bearskin rug while some husky licks my face.
You hear that, DARPA chief? The next time you build a Metal Gear, you, your advisors, and your giant robot can collectively suck my stealthy ass. Just try to find me! Hah hah!
Thank you for your time.
-Snake, Solid.
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!
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This is so bogus! Everyone knows Al Gore invented the internet.
And, without the internet, we wouldn't have Slashdot. Therefore, Al Gore also invented Slashdot.
Yes but who invented Al Gore? (Score:1)
DARPA's continued importance (Score:5, Insightful)
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Interesting "Failures" (Score:5, Insightful)
"FutureMap: This program hoped to use a kind of terrorism futures market to predict key developments and even attacks. It was thought market valuations of possible future events could reflect the probability of their occurring. However, FutureMap was scrapped in 2003 after the notion of betting on terrorist atrocities was called "ridiculous and grotesque" by US politicians." Politicians. No further comment required.
"Orion: Set in motion shortly after DARPA was created, Project Orion aimed to drive an interplanetary spacecraft by periodically dropping nuclear bombs out of its rear end. The entire craft was designed like a giant shock absorber with the back covered in thick shielding to protect human passengers. Concerns about nuclear fallout and the signing of the Partial Test Ban Treaty ended the project in the early 1960s." Fallout - OK. Test ban treaty? More like political cover for killing a program disliked by the No Nukes folks.
3 of 5 were not technical failures, but political ones. Another, the "telepathic spies" project, is listed as a failure even though it did produce something important - evidence that telepathy is bullshit. The Halfnium bomb is another one. So it didn't work - BFD. are they saying that NO important research data was gained?
hear hear (Score:4, Interesting)
And calling the exoskeleton a "current" project? There has been ongoing research into this before RAH ever dreamed of the Mobile Infantry.
Re:hear hear (Score:4, Interesting)
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May not be a success for DARPA yet, but it's been huge for Marvel Entertainment. Not to mention various manga artists.
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Excellent point.
Is'nt this a basic keystone of Good Science (tm) and research.
Every time you fail to get your expected results, then investigate why/how/what the causes, you learn something about it.
'Hmmm....can't get there from here like that-well,back to the drawing board!'
Lather, Rinse, Repeat. Sooner or later you narrow it down to what works, then test and refine. Or maybe you get lucky because your SWAG (Scientific
Re:Interesting "Failures" (Score:4, Informative)
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Orion overlapped a non-DARPA project called SNPO [atomicinsights.com] (pronounced "Snow-Poe") which was concerned with practical nuclear-powered space vehicles. For some reason, spewing radioactive material into the atmosphere became unpopular and the project was shelved, but not until working engines had been built and tested.
They definitely picked some idiotic names for their project. Snow Poo is just one of them, another is from the article you linked:
I know it's probably the public anti-nuclear sentiment that stopped them from getting off the ground, but their name choices were really unlucky.
BFD. (Score:1)
Newman out.
I'd never heard of Project Orion but... (Score:3, Interesting)
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Politically, though, we can't even use breeder reactors to reduce our nuclear waste stockpiles, more less start trying to launch satellites full of nukes. The inevitable EMP would cause problems near earth as well.
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DARPA and open source (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:DARPA and open source (Score:4, Funny)
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Oops, yup, must have killed it... ah well, at least the PMD link lives on
Proving liberals wrong... (Score:1)
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Failure =/= Mistake (Score:5, Insightful)
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The main issue, as noted, is something to do with the fallout and the like. For some reason it was considered unfriendly.
Go have a read of Freeman Dyson's book "Disturbing the Universe" which, among other things, contains some accounts of his work on the project.
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Personally I think the problem with the futures exchange is that it would push the envelope into Poindexter's wallet. Where you have rewards for failure you will see a lot of failures.
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(I must admit pro-DARPA bias, our contract monitor once bought me a really nice hamburger!)
Very impressive (Score:3, Funny)
Remote Viewing (Score:2)
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Heh. Right. And there are "academic studies" which supposedly disprove evolution. The thing is, as soon as you start to examine these studies you generally find that either the researchers involved
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Ah, yes, the typical response of the fraud: "I really DO have powers, but I don't need one million dollars!".
What a load of crap that is.
Tell ya what, how 'bout you go win the challenge, claim the prize, and then donate it to charity? Maybe you don't need the money, but there's plenty of sick kids and ho
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FutureMap (Score:2)
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It couldn't because it relied on a lot of people making bets so would need a lot of suckers for the bank to get a decent cut. To make the situation even more bizzare - John Poindexter of embezzlement and Iran/Conta fame was behind it.