Subject: [extropy-chat] T-Rex vs Bin-Laden

From: Dan Clemmensen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 21:13:43 -0500

Al Brooks wrote:

>I would hope a T-Rex would chew bin Laden up and then
>spit him out.
>
>
>
>--- Gary Miller <[email-masked]> wrote:
>  
>
>>I vote we make T-Rex border patrol and station them
>>on the Al Qaeda
>>infested Pakistan/Afghanistan border.
>> 
>>It might give Osama BinLaden something new to think
>>about. 
>>    
>>
>
>  
>
This is truly ridiculous on so many levels that it actually becomes 
interesting.

The Mountainous Afghan-Pakistani border region is one of the most difficult
pieces of habitable terrain in the world. There might possibly be a 
worse place in the
world for a T-Rex, but I'm not sure where.

Has the list examined the hunt for Bin-Laden? I was not paying 
attention. There is
no obvious way to use  ordinary technology to good effect in this border 
region,
and I cannot think of a way to use more manpower. Perhaps if we had 
concentrated
on Bin-Laden instead of distracting ourselves in Iraq, we could have 
thought of
something. About the only approach I can think of would be to:
   1) offer a truly enormas monetary reward
and
   2) make make a convincing argument that the recipient of the reward 
and his
family will live to take advantage of it.

A cynic might conclude that it is not in the strategic political 
interest of the
leadership of the US to actually capture Bin-Laden.

Is there a way to use emerging technologies to find Bin-Laden in this 
hostile
environment? How about a automating a Bin-Laden-specific PCR sampler and
testing damn near every site that the searchers look at? Of course, any such
technology can subsequently be used everywhere else: welcome to the 
transparent
society.

What about coupling continuous infra-red satellite surveillance with
pattern-recognition software? For a mere $100 million, I suspect you 
could track
every inhabitant of the region: then, you only need a human searcher  to 
contact each
identified inhabitant (i.e., each track) once.

How about carpet-bombing the region with WIFI-enabled cameras? Unit cost 
of $1000,
camera, solar panel, WIFI system. The units establish a WIFI mesh. $1000 
per sq Km.
Especially useful in conjunction with the above-mentioned infrared 
tracker. I would
deploy the cameras in lines with a 500m spacing, but an operations 
researcher might
prefer something more random.

How about cheap UAVs? the problem here is that training and paying the 
pilots is expensive.
a super-cheap UAV might cost $5000, with a life expectancy of (say) ten 
flights when the
pilots are non-professionals. But you can probably recruit a million 
enthusiastic unpaid
volunteers  to pilot these UAVs from the comfort of their homes here in 
the US: the ultimate
video game. Build a decent sim trainer and let the millions of 
volunteers compete to become
pilots of REAL bin-laden seekers. The reward is to pilot the real thing. 
You cold probably
make the whole thing self-funding by actually charging the participants 
to join the challenge.
let's see: a million participants with a $10.00 fee. chance of piloting 
a real mission: one in
1000. $5000/UAV and an overhead of 100%, we can pay for 1000 real 
missions. Mission parameters:
100Km search path, photograph all suspicious persons along the path. 
This has tremendous
synergy with the above two approaches.

OK, that's it for me. any other approaches?

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---

From: Adrian Tymes <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 18:05:34 -0800 (PST)

> How about cheap UAVs? the problem here is that training and paying

Or not.  Especially if they're not aerial, and the pilots are paid more
in patriotic feelings than in cash.  See
http://www.e-sheep.com/spiders/02/index.html
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