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IBM Targets UFOs, Ghosts, and Goblins With Search Tool

Posted by samzenpus on from the isn't-halloween-over dept.

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."

18 of 192 comments (clear)

  1. Military projects by electrosoccertux · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Military projects by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It only takes one incident to be extra-terrestrial to be some huge bombshell that shakes up our perception...

      There are probably a lot of sightings of stuff that are really just exotic aircraft and military projects. And then 80% of the reported UFOs are probably easily explainable as common stuff. I'm picking that number out of my ass but it's IIRC from some of the UFO documentaries I've seen.

      I think it is highly plausible that if there was some sort of contact with not-of-this earth beings and technology that the government would hide it, and try to take whatever they could for military advantage. Some of the reports I've read about secret budgets and groups seems highly plausible to me.

      I know there is so much noise and disinfo in this field that it is a nightmare to try and figure out what is going on. And I think it is intentional. It attracts the crazies. Then people who want to keep things secret or hidden (whether alien or military tech or whatever), run interference. Then most of the documentaries that hit History/Discover/Sci-Fi channel skip over some of the more hardcore info that can be found if one digs.

      I hate to say I disagree with the "mainstream" of this fringe group of UFO sorts. I don't really believe in spacemen from other planets visiting use in their saucer shaped tin cans at this point. I'm more for interdimensional entities, and something that is much more difficult to nail down with any definitive language. But then again maybe there are spacemen hanging out in some secret underground base. Maybe we are a genetic experiment conducted and managed by aliens. Maybe we are a genetic alien hybrid race seeded here and monitored. Etc etc. So many theories. I do think SETI is kind of wasting their time. I think contact has already been made, but I'm still not certain if the world is ready to know about it. One way or the other pressure seems to be building and this stuff seems to be getting more mainstream...

      Oh yeah and after the silly "terrorists are gonna get yah" nonsense for the sake of fear and control, next it's gonna be, "the ETs are gonna get us, we must defend planet earth". So of course we need a central one world government and space based weapons that will presumably be an effective defense against beings that could be millions or billions of years ahead of us technologically. Uhm yeah... : ) Back to our regular missile reseach program.. ahem *cough*

      PS: How about them alien moon bases and the censored NASA photos eh?

    2. Re:Military projects by eln · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Conspiracy theories don't work like that. Conspiracy theories employ a sort of reverse Occam's Razor: do not accept the simplest logical explanation if a needlessly complicated conspiracy can be made to fit the same facts.

    3. Re:Military projects by eln · · Score: 4, Funny

      Wow man, it's a good thing you aren't one of those "crazies" that you talk about or you would have posted some bizarre rant about one world government and interdimensional beings instead of this well-thought-out rational discourse.

    4. Re:Military projects by eln · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The problem with conspiracy theorists is they insist on sticking to their theory even when several aspects of it are empirically shown to be false. The 9/11 conspiracy theories are a great example of this.

      For example: you say the hijackers were uneducated, but that's demonstrably false. Mohammed Atta, for example, had a Master's degree.

      Also, the Boeing 747 is quite a bit larger than the Boeing 757.

      As for the Pentagon hit, there was tons of debris, and they DID hit plenty of other things on the way in, including several fences, cars, and a generator.

      As for the crack about the "most secure nation on Earth," maybe you missed all the news stories for years after 9/11 about how most of our highest value targets (power plants, water treatment, etc, etc) are still completely open and vulnerable to attack.

      So in this case, it's not a conspiracy that can be made to fit the facts, it's a conspiracy that will fit the "facts" that were made up to fit the theory.

  2. While... by Icarus1919 · · Score: 4, Funny

    While I understand that this is probably good for pageviews and thus revenue, do we really have to encourage these people?

  3. Don't click the link! by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's what they want you to do!

    --
    No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
  4. Re:Is this really a good use of resources? by MyLongNickName · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It is called capitalism. IBM has a service for "tuned" search engines. Some organization was willing to pay IBM to tune it for paranormal searches. IBM took their cash.

    I;'d argue it is a wonderful allocation of resources. Idiots gave their money away. Intelligent people will then get to use it for something more purposeful. What is wrong with that?

    --
    See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
  5. ufologist by BigHungryJoe · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  6. UFO's, Ghosts . . . Meteor Freaks? by e_armadillo · · Score: 4, Funny

    Hmmmmm, a searchable "Wall of Weird", cool.

  7. Re:How many people really believe in these things? by morsdeus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  8. Correction by ravenspear · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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."

  9. Re:Nothing New - A Real Yahoo! by JohnnyLocust · · Score: 5, Funny

    Maybe we could use it to find Duke Nukem Forever

    --
    Havoc Video
  10. Re:How many people really believe in these things? by eln · · Score: 4, Funny

    If it was shot down, it would also lose the F, and it would just be an O.

  11. ohh, look, I can be insightful too! by c6gunner · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  12. wow, me too! by c6gunner · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm a scientician with a BS in ufology! We should team up!

  13. Re:Nothing New - A Real Yahoo! by Mr2cents · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
  14. Re:We already KNOW there are UFOs by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 3, Interesting

    > 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??