Slashdot Mirror
IBM Targets UFOs, Ghosts, and Goblins With Search Tool
coondoggie writes "IBM wants to help you find out if UFOs are real. Well, sort of. With UFO sightings seemingly on the rise, Big Blue is teaming with The Anomalies Network to offer UFO Crawler, a new search engine specifically tuned to search for information about the paranormal, unexplained or just plain bizarre. The search tool employs IBM's OmniFind Yahoo! Edition enterprise search software and the UFO Crawler should help users precisely target and gather information from relevant sources, including thousands of documents and files collected in the vast Anomalies Network archive, as well as multiple global resources across the Web on topics such as such as ghosts, conspiracy theories and extraterrestrials."
Presumably the most stealthy plane form is a saucer. The idea of many is that these flying saucer sightings are nothing but X-projects. I don't see why this isn't likely to be the case.
While I understand that this is probably good for pageviews and thus revenue, do we really have to encourage these people?
That's what they want you to do!
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Sure, it might be interesting. But why isn't IBM devoting resources to actual space research? Or even something more earth based?
--Thomas J. Owens
I'm sitting here on the couch watching X Files thinking that this may have made Mulder and Scully's job a bit easier...
I'm a trained Ufologist and I'm thinking I would NEVER trust a search engine from IBM - that would be like giving me a UFO search engine written by the US gov't. I *KNOW* where the files I need to see are - they are in gov't bldgs at Area 51 and I don't need a search engine to tell me that.
Hmmmmm, a searchable "Wall of Weird", cool.
I think the distinction is that while intelligent, civilization-forming extraterrestrial life may be not only real but abundant on cosmic scales, the likelihood that any intelligent lifeform smart enough to develop an economical method of traveling interstellar distances within a reasonable timeframe would have any desire to come to Earth is exceedingly low. And even if they did, it further stands to reason that they would either interfere with us outright, or be completely undetectable, that any experiments they performed would not be half-assed jobs that left people running around with partial memories chatting about it, and they would certainly not be allied with, much less occasionally overpowered by, the US government/military.
UFOs exist, that is a fact. A UFO is by definition an unidentified flying object. Hundreds of cases of aerial objects that can't be immediately identified have been reliably documented (and by qualified observers).
What you choose to "believe" or not believe is what UFOs represent. If your position is that it would be irrational to assume these represent alien spacecraft, then the correct statement would be "you always had to be a real "YAHOO!" to believe UFOs were alien spacecraft."
Maybe we could use it to find Duke Nukem Forever
Havoc Video
Disclaimer: I'm just continuing the logical argument and not expressing my own beliefs.
By the same token, you could consider our wildlife tagging and study methods to be half-assed. I mean, after all, we aren't undetectable to the animals in question. The people doing the studies just don't think the animals are intelligent enough to be phased by the actions being performed on them.
Who says we aren't experiencing the same thing from the animal's point of view?
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
If it was shot down, it would also lose the F, and it would just be an O.
My faith in humanity is restored, temporarily.
For the first time in my life, I'm seeing a crowd that doesn't wonder if Egyptian hieroglyphs, crop circles, and the Xbox 360 all have the same origin. (link)
Actually, proving something is possible is a large step on the way to proving something exists. That doesn't cause confusion unless you don't realize that the two are in fact, connected.
The words Necessary but not Sufficient come to mind.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
When you shoot one down, you tend to lose the "F" as well. Which pretty much just makes it an object.
Good luck, IBM. I don't think even Blue Gene could beat that video game.
Rob
Presumably the Flying Spaghetti Monster's appendages are saucer shaped. The idea of many is that these flying saucers are nothing but the ends of his noodly appendages. I don't see why this isn't likely to be the case.
I'm a scientician with a BS in ufology! We should team up!
I recently got DSL ==\^_^/==
To quote the Simpsons: We have reached the limits of what anal probing can teach us!
Want a a business plan?
1. Attract gullible people around paranormal search engine.
2. Use advertisement space to sell magnetic healing jewlery, talismans, tin-foil hats and other crap.
3. Profit!
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
> it's all fake and made up.
NASA begs to differ...
and so do these government and military witnesses
Google for:
- Evidence: The Case For NASA UFO's
- The Disclosure Project
--
Why does C++ still suck with this 'short', 'long long', and 'double' garbage??
The funny thing is, i see people here that laugh at the subject, when they are really the naive ones. I don't live in a box, or bubble. I welcome change, and i'm not afraid of it. Your bad jokes and unhealthy skepticism do not change the facts. These objects are real, and there needs to be a formal study and open discussion about it in the scientific community. It's not about little men from mars, and many people who lack research skills or the desire to solve the greatest mystery in the history of the human race love to categorize it as such. It's about solving the energy problems that are destroying this planet and thousands of lives each year. It's about learning the true history of this planet and of the nature of the human species. It's about turning the military industrial complex on end, and showing people that technology can also be used to further our species by revolutionizing the medical field and energy grid, instead of creating weapons for taking innocent lives and devising unjustifiable wars that only serve to make the government another dollar, and only serve to set our evolution back even more. You sit and watch CNN and debate over petty political problems, when disclosure of this information would solve many of these childish wars and scandals that you love to hear about on the nightly news. I won't touch on the Fisher Price physics that you learn in your public education systems, and the silly notions of comets with frosty tails and labeling stars as a nuclear furnaces. Wake up and smell the cardboard your life is conveniently packed and secured in. Or maybe you enjoy the security of what that cardboard keeps in, or Out of your life.
So throw your stones, call me an unenlighted bigot homophobe misanthrope...but these things are true.
Unenlightened? No. Bigoted? No. Homophobic? No. Misanthropic? No.
Delusional? Almost certainly, and as equally as the "occult" that you oppose so vehemently.
I understand that it's a lot easier to turn off the thinking, rational part of your brain and say, "There are demons at work here." It's also throwing away the very same gift of reason that God gave you in the first place. I'm all for chalking something up to "mysteries of the universe," don't get me wrong--but the time for that is after you've exhausted the logical possibilities. Judging from the post you made here, I don't think you've done that.
For one thing, you never seem to have considered the possibility that you're hearing things. For another, you never gave thought to the possibility that somehow you were creating the noise. Third, you instantly label something "demon" when for all you know it was the Archangel Gabriel.
People should stay the hell away (no pun intended) from the whole concept of spiritual warfare unless they really know what they're doing. And you don't.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.