Practical implication: If you are stranded on a desert island and you attempt to solicit a rescue by releasing a message in a bottle, you have about a 65% chance of a response (within ten years, I guess). In order to get that above 95%, you would need to release 3 or more bottles. 5 bottles gets you a 99.5% chance.
Of course, you'd better have a GPS device so that you can write down your coordinates on the message, or else you'd better hope the bottle turns up at an oceanography instutute that can trace the ocean currents back to where you're stranded.
Considering you can provide as many details on HOW you got stranded there (flight numbers, cruise ship name etc.) as possible and add details about WHERE you got stranded, I think that would help search&rescue to at least narrow it down... or maybe you are very lucky and the place has some pretty unique characteristics?
I think the biggest problem would be actually getting the people who find your message to turn it in to the police or so and then you got to hope they won't just throw it away or wouldn't even know where to forward the message to.
Cheap Cost of Acquisition, indeed :). I have a feeling the ocean is about to get flooded with bottles from internet entrepreneurs trying to acquire users.
Relevant enough... my brother was visiting me here in SF and found a message in a bottle, but we can't even identify the language. Some people have suggested Mongolian. Here's a high-res picture: http://andrewbadr.com/files/tmp/bottle.jpg
It was in a bottle of cheap California wine, so we figure they probably threw it from here. It's still fun though. Anyone out there who can read Mongolian?
I wrote about your message on my blog, and a commenter there, a linguist who knows Mongolian, confirmed it's Mongolian and translated it. His translation is in Russian (as is my blog), so I can only offer it to you re-translated yet again into English :)
"The first page says something like:
make 3 of my wishes come true
1. to go to New York and spend one wonderful year there
2. to all my relatives - good health, peace, success and something I can't make out :)
3. something about spending a good life with my beloved
the second page:
I would like to meet my true love, become famous throughout the world, and live a good live with my family."
It seems like the two pages were written by different people.
It's Cyrillic and this is the language of Kazakstan. It's very funny because it says he/she congratulates holy holiday of Muslims, Eid ul-Fitr (wiki it) and it is maximum a week old because it is now holiday of Eid ul-Fitr. I am not kazakh, I couldn't read & understand it fully. It says, he is from NYC, he wishes all the bests and so on...
I am a Bulgarian from Turkish descent. Cyrillic is the first alphabet I have learned, and this certainly contains words that do sound articulate when read "in Cyrillic". But it also contains letters that don't exist in Cyrillic. For example, at the second line of the "top" side of the message, I can with almost certainty say that this is a "w". A letter that doesn't exist in Cyrillic (and can't imagine some of the Cyrillic letters being written like that)
I can't read all of the message (because as is common with written text, you often need to know the language in order to be able to "make up" some of the letters), but I can certainly read maybe like 50% of it.
Mongolians do use Cyrillic. I have no knowledge of Mongolian.
But I will bring another suspicion to the table. I wouldn't exclude Turkic (and other) languages from within Russia (and the former USSR). Those peoples all (or most of them) know Russian (Cyrillic) and often use the alphabet to write their own languages. I can certainly identify Turkic (sounding) words like "сайхан"-sayhan(Seyhan), "амед"-amed(Ahmed) - which do sound like very common Turkish names.
Of course all of this is pure speculation from my side. It could very well be Mongolian. If it were in some Turkic language, I would expect to be able to make up the meaning of some parts, because of my knowledge of Turkish (which I can't).
I think Mongolian often uses a Cyrillic alphabet, and that doesn't look particularly Cyrillic to me, just smudgy and hard to read (but the latin alphabet).
Definitely Greek. I'm teaching myself koine Greek right now, and easily recognize the alphabet. Unfortunately, I don't know it well enough to even attempt a translation right now, but if you bump into someone Greek, you might be able to get a translation
Well, he has basically tossed ~2,000 plastic bottles into the ocean that have not been recovered (yet). That's not a small number of bottles.
It seems cool, until you try to consider the externalities he has casually handed off.
Now, if he had used glass bottles, it would probably work out a little better. Though it still takes a long time, glass can be broken down by the ocean and incorporated into sand, which is part glass anyways.
I find your response even more bizarre - just try to imagine replacing email with this method for just half a minute.
The real reason this isn't a concern is because of the absolute cost of his experiment, not because of the relative expense of his communication method in comparison to others.
I wonder how much his location comes into play. Would he have the same success rate throwing in the same # of bottles from anywhere by the ocean, or are we reading about this because of a unique set of circumstances? Either way, it is a cool story :)
Bandwidth depends on the size of the thumb drive, and error rate depends on the find/open rates of the bottles, as well as perhaps whether or not the thumb drives fail over time or are even used...
A perfect example of how the media is complicit in spreading half truths.
They show no more than 20 examples of letters and expect you to believe that he has received thousands because they are numbered. There is no evidence to prove that he sent out 4,800 letters and even less to show that he received 3,100.
Not to mention that the return ratio defies common sense.
Edit: My comments are based on watching the video where it would be typical to substantiate a claim like this with more images of boxes of replies along with some random checks of the actual large quantity of replies.
[+] [-] rcthompson|14 years ago|reply
Of course, you'd better have a GPS device so that you can write down your coordinates on the message, or else you'd better hope the bottle turns up at an oceanography instutute that can trace the ocean currents back to where you're stranded.
[+] [-] gibybo|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kahawe|14 years ago|reply
I think the biggest problem would be actually getting the people who find your message to turn it in to the police or so and then you got to hope they won't just throw it away or wouldn't even know where to forward the message to.
[+] [-] nobody3141592|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] earbitscom|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rokhayakebe|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bdr|14 years ago|reply
It was in a bottle of cheap California wine, so we figure they probably threw it from here. It's still fun though. Anyone out there who can read Mongolian?
[+] [-] anatoly|14 years ago|reply
"The first page says something like:
make 3 of my wishes come true
1. to go to New York and spend one wonderful year there
2. to all my relatives - good health, peace, success and something I can't make out :)
3. something about spending a good life with my beloved
the second page: I would like to meet my true love, become famous throughout the world, and live a good live with my family."
It seems like the two pages were written by different people.
These are the comments on my blog with these translations: http://avva.livejournal.com/2378561.html?thread=81649985 http://avva.livejournal.com/2378561.html?thread=81650241 http://avva.livejournal.com/2378561.html?thread=81650497
[+] [-] zeynalov|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loxs|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] biot|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkjones|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JoeCortopassi|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bobbles|14 years ago|reply
This would have cost the man $960,000 if he did it in NSW, Australia
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JoshTriplett|14 years ago|reply
I'd love to see a map of all the responses; I suspect it would have quite an interesting geographical distribution.
The sad thing: someone will read this and go after the guy for littering rather than saying "awesome!".
[+] [-] sliverstorm|14 years ago|reply
It seems cool, until you try to consider the externalities he has casually handed off.
Now, if he had used glass bottles, it would probably work out a little better. Though it still takes a long time, glass can be broken down by the ocean and incorporated into sand, which is part glass anyways.
[+] [-] melvinram|14 years ago|reply
Join Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Match.com or even GrubWithUs if you/he wants to meet random strangers.
But please don't throw trash in the ocean unless it's biodegradable.
<stepping off my soap box>
[+] [-] pitdesi|14 years ago|reply
Original video: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14859116
[+] [-] electic|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VonLipwig|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrew1|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VMG|14 years ago|reply
The real reason this isn't a concern is because of the absolute cost of his experiment, not because of the relative expense of his communication method in comparison to others.
[+] [-] amorphid|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patrickgzill|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bmelton|14 years ago|reply
What really kills you though, is the latency.
[+] [-] arnoldwh|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huhtenberg|14 years ago|reply
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14859116 or at least to http://www.tecca.com/news/2011/09/26/harold-hackett-bottle-m..., but Yahoo! of all places? Y?
[+] [-] joshfraser|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] khakimov|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lloeki|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] larrys|14 years ago|reply
They show no more than 20 examples of letters and expect you to believe that he has received thousands because they are numbered. There is no evidence to prove that he sent out 4,800 letters and even less to show that he received 3,100.
Not to mention that the return ratio defies common sense.
Edit: My comments are based on watching the video where it would be typical to substantiate a claim like this with more images of boxes of replies along with some random checks of the actual large quantity of replies.