22nd September 2011, 2:33 PM
It's not as crazy as it sounds. Keep in mind it's not like it's ONE geek, it's billions of them around the world simultaneously trying to solve the problem, possibly working together online and trading information on what they did. When you put it into that perspective, it sounds entirely reasonable to expect a solution to eventually pop up that only a few (by comparison) military research personal could come up with.
In fact this sort of "crowd sourcing" has already proven useful to NASA. They have been getting help from amateur astronomers for years in sorting out massive databases of images that their personnel alone would take decades to go through.
In fact this sort of "crowd sourcing" has already proven useful to NASA. They have been getting help from amateur astronomers for years in sorting out massive databases of images that their personnel alone would take decades to go through.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)