France Opens Secret UFO Files

Radon360 notes that France has become the first country to open its files on UFOs. A new website lists over 1600 sightings dating back to the 1950s. "The online archives, which will be updated as new cases are reported, catalogues in minute detail cases ranging from the easily dismissed to a handful that continue to perplex even hard-nosed scientists. Known as OVNIs in French, UFOs have always generated intense interest along with countless conspiracy theories about secretive government cover-ups of findings deemed too sensitive or alarming for public consumption."

Comments

Moi

[Mipoti Gusundar]

Je, pour une, bienvenu notre nouvelle ONVI maitre!

Re:Moi

[jibjibjib]

How do you say "Mod parent up" in French?

Re:Moi

[macron1]

How do you say "Mod parent up" in French? Poorly translated: "Parent modéré vers le haut" (still learning)

Re:Moi

[Anonymous Coward]

pour commencer, c'est un OVNI (objet volant non identifié)
ou tu peux aussi utiliser "une secoupe volante" (flying saucer)

et le verbe est "acceuillir"

comment traduiser le phrase, je ne sais pas, je ne suis francophone non plus donc...

Re:Moi

[BlueTrin]

You say:
Donnez une bonne note au parent (there's no literal translation for mod up)

or

Votez pour le parent (implied that it is up)

*Waiting for the freedom fries lovers to mod me down* :)

Re:Moi

[dmayle]

<Offtopic>Ok, I won't go into how bad that French is...</Offtopic>

It's OVNI for Objets Volants Non-Identifié. But the reason I'm posting is that I wanted to point out that this has been released by CNES, which is kind of like NASA in France. Not quite, as it's more of an educational institution, but it's very similar nonetheless...

Re:Moi

[Mjlner]

Je, pour une, bienvenu notre nouvelle ONVI maitre!

You know, a "pardon my French" would be in order...

Re:Moi

[Anonymous Coward]

Dammit, it's not called "french fries" or "freedom fries", it's called "chips"! I fear we lost an opportunity to teach Americans real English...

Re:Moi

[aadvancedGIR]

CNES is much more than just an educational institution, they build satelites and interplanetary probes and run telescopes (and, yes, there is a lot of educational work there since there is a lot of pure academic research done there) beside their educational activities. The points NASA does and not CNES are launchers (handled by Ariane Espace) and experimental aircrafts (mostly handled by EADS).
Of course, on any of these activities, it is 10 to 100 times smaller than NASA.

Re:Moi

[kestasjk]

French fries are long and thin, chips (in England) are thicker and shorter.
Here in Australia you get a strange crossover between British and American English, and so chips can mean either crisps or fries depending on context.

Re:Moi

[jettawu]

I wonder how Fox Mulder pulled it off, does he even speak French?

Re:Moi

[Library Spoff]

What's french for cliché ?

Re:Moi

[Gr8Apes]

If you're really offended by those, call them Belgian frites (fries). The French apparently do.

Re:Moi

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, salute our new potato overlords. Which has nothing to do with the French, or UFOs, or for that matter, science. Being humble, I have already modded myself down -10 and tagged it "Food Nazi Bait"

Re:Moi

[o'reor]

Best. Google. Translation. Evar.

;-)

Re:Moi

[A.K.A_Magnet]

Tant qu'on y est.... (btw we'd translate grammar nazi to grammar fascist in french :P). Donc pour faire mon fasco, it is: traduire la phrase. :)

Re:Moi

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

>But wait, I "must be new here", right?

Well, judging by your user id#, you would seem to be relatively new here. :-)

Re:Moi

[Solol]

A fairly accurate translation would be "Je plussoie" and the corresponding abbreviation "+1". Not yet part of the french language, but fairly common on french forums.

Re:Moi

[rifter]

French fries are long and thin, chips (in England) are thicker and shorter.

Here in the US the thick ones are often called "steak fries."

Here in Australia you get a strange crossover between British and American English, and so chips can mean either crisps or fries depending on context.

Actually depending on where you go in the US chips can mean anything, within a restaurant context. Often, ordering "chips" in an Anglophile/English-style pub/restaurant will result in something like what other restaurants call "steak fries." Some restaurants will give you freshly fried "potato chips" which are basically what you call "crisps." Nevertheless, what you get when you order "french fries" varies widely as well. "French Fries" are supposed to be fried julienne potatoes which is where the name comes from ("frenched" being slang at one time for julienne), but most fast food places serve what used to be called "shoestring potatoes" instead (incidentally, shoestring potatoes also are, or at least were, available dried and canned).

It gets even more confusing when you throw in "home fries" and "hash browns." To some people the two are the same, and in any case ordering either could result in a heap of grated, fried, salted potatos, a heap of diced fried potatoes, a fried potato patty with the consistency of a "tater tot" (often oblong shaped), or some variation on the theme. I am sure someone else will point to a variety of "tater tot" interpretations. At least we're consistent enough to almost always use potato in these dishes, unlike with some other foods (like Caesar Salad, which is a whole other contentious discussion which may or may not involved anchovies).

Food in the US is weird, partially because of the many influences, immigrants, and rampant individualism coupled with inventiveness. As an aside, when hosting dinner for mobsters from New York and Boston simultaneously, don't serve clam chowder unless you want to clean up blood. Then again, I guess serving the Manhattan style would do nicely for that problem.

Re:Moi

[rifter]

I, for one, salute our new potato overlords. Which has nothing to do with the French, or UFOs, or for that matter, science. Being humble, I have already modded myself down -10 and tagged it "Food Nazi Bait"

But because you called yourself a Nazi your post cannot be published in France, you insensitive clod!

Re:Moi

[virgil_disgr4ce]

This is one of those rare instances where a post should be able to be overmodded up to at least 10.

Re:Moi

[onemorechip]

Je ne sais quoi.

Re:Moi

[jythie]

Heh. Actually I have heard that British English has actually diverged further then American English... so maybe America needs to take English back to England?

Re:Moi

[capnchicken]

One could really Karma-whore it up in here translating all the French that a lot of us all slept through in High School.

Re:Moi

[Auntie Virus]

"Cliché" is already a french word...
Ok what's French for "whoosh!"??

Re:Moi

[fbjon]

It seems to be what usually happens. The breakoff population tends to keep older forms and grammar, while the "host" country moves forward faster. I've seen it in several languages.

Re:Moi

[Merdalors]

Nope: it's "acceuillir".

Re:Moi

[Merdalors]

I take that back: checking my dictionary, you were right in the first place. Sorry.

French Response

[oldwindways]

Honestly, if the French government though there were UFOs, they wouldn't bother to cover it up, they would just surrender.

Re:French Response

[Anonymous Coward]

Then the US would invade wherever the UFOs came from, only to retreat several years later when no WMDs are found.

Re:French Response

[Anonymous Coward]

And then either forget to mention they ever did it until some inconvinient comedy show sets itself there (MASH and korea)

Or write in the history books that they won despite everyone outside the US kowing they got their asses kicked (viet nam)

Re:French Response

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, ha ha. Someone mentions the French and then the next thing you know someone responds with a surrender joke. Quite original.

French bashing was so 2002/2003. We saw how the other items in the American gung-ho mindset worked out for that time period: French bashing, invading Iraq, Guantanamo Bay prison, restrictive anti-terror laws, waterboarding, extraordinary rendition for torture, etc. Most people recognize that the French were right in 2002 and 2003 and that the rest of the items above were grave mistakes. Why continue to bash the French then? It isn't like they haven't helped out fight against the Taliban and al Qaeda--in fact the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaule is heading out to the Arabian Gulf for another tour. The French were against a war than most Americans are now against (Iraq) and support a war that most Americans still continue to support (Afghanistan). Continuing to bash the French is worse than pointless. It is like a jock beating up the smart kid because he was right and the jock was wrong. The main reason people continue to bash the French is to hide their own shame.

Re:French Response

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

Or write in the history books that they won despite everyone outside the US kowing they got their asses kicked (viet nam)
Please, we were just middle relief after the stupid french(the starters of the war) had gotten themselves deep into a hole.

Re:French Response

[geoffrobinson]

Good response. Let me retort/clarify.

When they stand up to a country they are afraid of. The United States isn't going to do anything to France. They weren't going to sever economic ties.

But good retort. I'll have to clarify how to explain it more in my head.

Re:French Response

[o'reor]

Come on, I am french myself and find the parent funny :)

Which, to some extent, proves his point :-p

Oh, well...

Re:French Response

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't the French been called surrender monkeys since WW2? I know that Iraq is what folks want to focus most recently when it comes to France, but certain reputations have been around for a lot longer.

Re:French Response

[4D6963]

lol. Funny tho how "UFOs" seems to mean to you "alien spaceships" as it really means "thing in the sky that we don't really know what it is". But yeah, I get your point, we would surrender.

Re:French Response

[TheRaven64]

Now, speaking as a Brit, we've been bashing the French for a good thousand years or so (and they have been bashing us for at least as long). We see no reason to stop just because the Americans have started to join in (although, we do find that pretty funny, since the main reason that they are not still a colony of ours is that the French fought for their independence).

Re:French Response

[Deadstick]

If it weren't for the Marquis de Lafayette, Admiral de Grasse, General Rochambeau and a million livres of French money, we'd be speaking English today...

The money France spent winning our revolution for us bankrupted the court of Louis XVI and set off their revolution. Lafayette aligned himself with the moderate Girondist party and asked George Washington to return his favors; Washington replied that we were having a really poor year and maybe some other time. The radical Jacobins hijacked the French Revolution and France collapsed into bloody chaos; the Italian-born Napoleon rode into the breach to restore order in France and spread the bloody chaos clear to Moscow, bankrupting France again.

1914-18: Twice our military participation for three times as long, 12 times the casualties.

1940: Care to guess who was holding the German Army back from Dunkirk while the British Army took to the boats?

Damn slackers just aren't up to a good fight.

rj

Re:French Response

[famebait]

The Americans, on the other hand, wouldn't bother to wait for aliens to actually be observed.

They'd just declare war on spacewar, draw som red and yellow boxes on a map of the moon, go all grumpy when noone else agreed that this means we absolutely we need to invade the moon, and go occupy it anyway, at enormous human and economic expense, tha latter somehow ending up in the hands of the president's friends.

Re:French Response

[WinterSolstice]

I disagree - while the US has aided "France" 3 times (Revolution, and 2 wars IIRC) we always did it from self-interest. Once to pay off a debt, twice to prevent a war. If Germany had held France, then that little island country off the coast would have fallen. The US would eventually fall as well.

That's totally self-interest.

Re:French Response

[Anonymous Coward]

Twice in recent years (one still in living memory) we went over and save them from their own incompetence, even though it was not directly in our self interest to do so.

Bullshit! Do you think that the Russians would have stopped at Germany if allied troops hadn't already liberated their empire in the West? It was only when the Nazis started losing on the Eastern Front that the US realised they had to act before communism overran the whole of mainland Europe. You were acting purely from self interest - not that there's anything wrong with that, but don't think there was anything different between US actions in WW2 and French actions in the 18th century.

Re:French Response

[NeutronCowboy]

Funny AND true! France wouldn't be able to function without being able to make fun of the British. Someone please mod the parent insightful.

Re:French Response

[dthx1138]

Thank god we aren't speaking Engligh!

Merci beaucoup, amies Francais d'Amerique!

Re:French Response

[spidkit]

As a Canadian, I suggest that asking nicely for one's political independence can work just fine. We did in 1982. We repatriated our constiution via the signing of the agreement by Pierre Elliot Trudeau and Queen Elizabeth II. It can be civilized, when people are of the best in themselves.

Re:French Response

[badasscat]

Actually, from every source I've ever read/watched, etc. militarily we were winning the war (read: kicking some serious ass).

We were "militarily" winning the war by our standards, which were not the same as either the Viet Cong's or the NVA's standards. They were also winning the war by their standards. Their military goal was to kill as many of us as possible and eventually drive us out. Which they did.

Military is strategic as well as tactical. What you're forgetting is the strategic element, which is different from the political element. Tactically, we were running rampant all over the battlefield, and that convinced some that we were winning. But our military strategy was fatally flawed in the face of an enemy whose counter-strategy was to feign retreat and then infiltrate and kill using sneak attacks. We thought we were winning; they knew we weren't. It was in fact their strategy to convince us we were winning in order to provide them with easier targets, and they were pretty successful at it.

The "we would have won if not for all the hippies" argument is not one that has ever held any water. We could have stayed there forever and we would have never secured that country. Imagine Iraq today, only around 10 times worse (and statistically, it was), and actually devolving rather than improving the more years went by, the more troops we poured in and the more bombs we dropped. After 30 continuous years of escalating conflict, what military strategy would have changed that result?

Read your history.

Indeed.

Re:French Response

[0111 1110]

The US would eventually fall as well.

That's a pretty big leap of logic. There was a whole big ocean in the way. No way could the Germans have pulled that off. In any case, just like with an individual, a country is usually acting for its own self-interest. Clearly, it was not in our interest to have the entire European continent controlled by Adolf Hitler. Although I don't think his regime would have ultimately been much more successful than the USSR in terms of tech and manufacturing. People aren't going to work for some theoretical 'common good'. They will only work (with any enthusiasm) for their own interest. The US would have left a NAZI Europe in the dust in terms of tech and manufacturing due to the difference in our political systems. Germany was just living on the momentum of its scientists and thinkers from the old days.

Re:French Response

[drachton]

Your ignorance is really appaling. I can't comprehend how someone can be a techie, which you'd think entails a respect for knowledge and the ability to tell facts apart from falsehoods, and yet spout bullshit about stuff that they've clearly never read about. It just blows my mind.

True, France didn't help the US in their war of independence out of the goodness of the king's heart. But the US intervention in WWII has nothing to do with benevolence either. Come on! Stalin begged the Allies to open a western front in 1942. He demanded it in 1943. In 1944 it was almost *irrelevant*, Allied victory was virtually assured by the Soviet onslaught. In simple terms: *the United States invaded Western Europe not to defeat Nazi Germany, but to prevent a Soviet Eurasia*. Not out of good will. Self-interest.

Your implication that the US saved France in WWI is laughable and pathetic. The United States did not especially distinguish themselves in that war, they totally failed to learn from the British and French experience in the first 3 years of the war and repeated their mistakes to the same result. They fought for a very short period of time, in much smaller numbers than the cumulative war effort of either the UK or France. In the end, the US' entry in the war served one main purpose: to convince the German command that victory was impossible due to the Allies' superior strength of numbers. In any case, the French fought from beginning to end, had the most soldiers on the ground and suffered the most casualties among the Allies.

In WWII, France was crushed, no question. But I still haven't seen a convincing proposal of what could have been done to prevent the deep penetration of French territory by the German armored forces, short of best-case scenarios requiring virtual prescience from the BEF and French army. And EVEN so. In 1939 the population of France stood at less than 42,000,000, that of the Nazi Germany at more than 76,000,000. Once the BEF fled at Dunkirk, there was no real alternative to surrender. Libery or death sounds good on paper, but that's not how things work in real life.

Re:French Response

[maxume]

If there ended up being a war fought across the Atlantic, the US would have had the advantage of much smaller numbers of opposition forces within their borders...it made a lot more sense to enter the war before Britain fell and use it as a rally point, but it seems to me that the chief factor that led to the Allied victory in the war was that the US entered it.

Re:French Response

[multisync]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't the French been called surrender monkeys since WW2?

Okay, you're wrong. The term "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" is from this episode of The Simpsons.

And that "joke" is getting pretty tired.

Re:French Response

[rifter]

If the people of this nation at the time would put down their bongs and annoying overly overt liberalism and grew some balls, we would have stayed in the war and kept South Vietnam free of the bullshit regime of the North Vietnamese.

And the same thing is happening in Iraq. Militarily we are winning a conflict that cannot be won militarily because at it heart the conflict is political. We will only lose in Iraq if we are brought down by liars who say we are losing and can never win (as the media did during Vietnam) and thus pull out before the enemy submits to a political solution (as General Giap said would have happened in Vietnam because of the failed Tet Offensive, had the US media not lied about it and the US government not responded by pulling out troops).

The problem we have right now is that we are getting involved in more and more conflicts specifically because our enemies and potential enemies are getting the idea that while a large standing army has no chance against us and an insurgency cannot militarily defeat us there is a large portion of the population that will claim we cannot win and that they have no clue why we are there no matter what the war is about, resulting in a withdrawal. It's strange but this is actually a major obstacle to peace. If our enemies think they can defeat us militarily they will choose to do so since violence is always easier. If they do not they will be forced to bargain with us diplomatically. As much as I hate violence I think we may have to show some balls as you say if we don't want to see the world implode in an inexorable flow of small petty conflicts that turn global and spawn infinite retreat.

Re:French Response

[rifter]

As a Canadian, I suggest that asking nicely for one's political independence can work just fine. We did in 1982. We repatriated our constiution via the signing of the agreement by Pierre Elliot Trudeau and Queen Elizabeth II. It can be civilized, when people are of the best in themselves.

Americans are too impatient to wait 200 years for independance, you insensitive clod!

Les Américains sont trop impatients pour attendre 200 ans l'independance, vous motte peu sensible !

Re:French Response

[Cadallin]

A certain middle eastern country backed by the monetary and military support of one of the most powerful nations on earth? Wow, that's impressive there. Kind of the Microsoft gaining a purchase in the console Marketplace, they're only running massive losses made possible through hugely profitable monopolies in Operating Systems and Office Software, What an impressive achievement!

Your comparison of France in World War II with Israel's situation is outright foolish, and your jingoistic fervor is quite troubling.

Re:French Response

[YodaYid]

You're absolutely right. I surrender.

Re:French Response

[Lovesquid]

That particular quote is from the Simpsons. The French being made the butt of jokes regarding their tendency to surrender (accurate or not) has been going on for a lot longer. Where do you think the Simpsons writers got the idea? From witnessing decades of international ridicule of the French. Yes, it's a tired joke - as in 50+ years tired. But it still got a laugh out of me today.

Re:French Response

[WinterSolstice]

I would say the chief factor was Russia switching to the Allied side, but that just my opinion :)

Re:French Response

[Castar]

Yeah, OK. So France in WWII brings up a couple immediate thoughts. First, of course, is the stunningly ineffective defense of the Maginot line - they were fighting the last war. Due to that, there's also the incredibly rapid invasion of the German forces and the subsequent surrender by the French government - an understandable move, when their main defense had just been subverted so entirely.

However, then there's the second thing that springs to mind: the famous La Resistance movement, that continued fighting an entrenched occupying German force. In some ways, that's a lot more courageous than standing up to an invading enemy toe-to-toe. It's also recognized as a major contributor to the eventual defeat of the Germans - without the French resistance, Hitler would have had a strong base in France when D-Day came about.

So it's very strange that the first part is the only part that's remembered on the Internet today. Especially since the Resistance was much more an expression of the French national character and less simply a reaction to strategic failure. I'm sure that the French commanders were spoken of unflatteringly, and the Vichy collaborators even more so, but the rest of the world absolutely recognized the French sacrifice and contribution to victory - at least, until relatively modern times.

Re:French Response

[drachton]

The US having never been invaded by a foreign power of course has nothing to do with being the sole great power in the Americas. Those two oceans on each side are sure great to prevent any land invasion.

Your conspiracy theories about the UN are hilarious and only discredit your position.

"My country" is Canada so suck it.

Re:French Response

[drachton]

Hahaha. Are you comparing Nazi Germany, a nation at the pinnacle of military technology in its day, to a bunch of quack regimes that usually go to war with weapons a decade if not more out of date?

Could have, should have, would have. Argue why invading Germany in 1939 would have been a sustainable strategy. Just saying "yeah, the defensive posture didn't work, so they should have tried some other plan" sounds great in hindsight, but that's just trial and error, solution X didn't work, let's try solution Y instead, but that's not the way war works, you can't turn back time and give it another go.

Re:French Response

[maxume]

I'm no expert. I stand by the idea that the US would have trouble losing a war across the Atlantic though, especially at that time.

Re:French Response

[RexRhino]

Actually, the French are pretty much the most militant European power. France maintains a nuclear arsenal, they have the largest military in Europe, and their Foreign Legion is pretty much always at war somewhere in the world (according to some people, Legionaries are more likely to be killed during a tour of duty than U.S. soldiers are in Iraq). Historically with the war in Algeria, in Indochina, etc., France has probably fought more wars since WWII than the U.S.. I mean, have you ever heard of Bob Denard or Jacques Foccart? The whole Francafrique policy?

You can call the French bastards if you want, but they certainly aren't surrender monkeys. France didn't avoid the war in Iraq because they were afraid to fight, they avoided the war in Iraq because they had spent 20 years supplying Saddam with weapons in exchange for oil rights, and getting rid of Saddam was not in their economic interests.

Re:French Response

[TrekkieGod]

Twice in recent years (one still in living memory) we went over and save them from their own incompetence, even though it was not directly in our self interest to do so. (Though it was in accord with our principles.)

Whoa, wait a minute. Principles? The United States remained neutral in World War II until it got attacked by Japan. Ever heard of Pearl Harbor?

We helped out in Europe because it was not in our best interests to let Germany take it over after the Axis Powers attacked us.

Re:French Response

[multisync]

Well, the comment I was replying to referred specifically to the French being called "surrender monkeys" since the second world war. If you have an example of the term being used prior to the Simpson episode I mentioned, then I stand corrected.

As far as a "50+ years tired" surrender joke getting a laugh out of you goes, if that's true then I have some knock-knock jokes that would probably have you in hysterics.

Re:French Response

[crotherm]

I would say the chief factor was Russia switching to the Allied side, but that just my opinion :) Ever heard of the Lend Lease Act? See Germany broke the deal with Russia because Hitler needed their oil. And they would have gotten it too, if it were not for all the resources USA gave them.

Re:French Response

[Anonymous Coward]

Wake up lads. 30 years of offensive in the North of Ireland by a huge occupying British Army couldn't win against the native guerrilla defence, Vietnam was an American failure and Afghanistan a Soviet one. Despite the propaganda of the victors that the popular media uses for history, home-grown freedom fighters often eventually win or force a favourable truce with the invading aggressors. Look at the Boers, the Maori, the Irish and the Indians in recent British history as examples.

Your Iraq problem isn't the waning support at home, it's a stupid strategy that, like Vietnam, has politicians overruling military professionals. You can't go to war and leave half your soldiers at home, pretending that your not actually invading a country to do serious damage to its population. Your soldiers are paying the price for your ignorant and arrogant politicians. If they didn't want a horrible and bloody war they shouldn't have invaded. As they did invade, they should have done it properly. They wanted the spoils of war without the price.

The opposite of peace isn't war, it's poverty, and you're doing fuck all about that. Don't start the Aid debate - giving back what you stole is hardly doing anyone a favour. Cancel the Third World debt that your private banks own and stop invading people or subverting their governments for their oil.

While I'm at it, a 'liberal' is a JS Mill-esque believer in the ultimate freedom of the individual over the interference of the state. Isn't that a US Republican Party stance? While you're in the library checking out some history books, grab some political philosophy too.

Re:French Response

[Comrade Kat]

I'm just going to toss this in, but I don't have any knowledge of the details of the war, so go easy on me... Does it matter, in an evaluation of whether the French people attempted to defend themselves, whether the army ignored a few orders? I think that the point made somewhere else, that, once their military defense failed, they responded with La Resistance makes this discussion slightly irrelevant... no offense to the fun that I'm sure you're having, rehashing 60-70 year old military history.

Re:French Response

[c6gunner]

The presidents friends? Don't you mean "the Dutch"? Sorry, but I don't think Shell would get any lucrative oil contracts on the moon. Ofcourse, at least the French wouldn't oppose such an invasion, since there's no oil-for-food program on the moon for them to skim off of.

Re:French Response

[R2.0]

Not quite. The US owes the Bourbons big time for using the Colonies as a proxy in their ongoing hostilities with the English branch of the Hanovers (Someone check my family names). However, shortly after that, the Bourbons were deposed, and the Republic took power.

And guess what - the Republic hasn't done Jack Shit for the US, or for anybody else, for the last 200 years. Sure, the US has gotten the rest of the world irritated at them lately, but France has a much longer history of pissing on the rest of the world and acting like they are doing them a favor.

Oh yeah - and in the past 200 years, the French haven't won a war on their own. Came close with Napoleon, but Britain took care of that. Got bailed out of WWI and WWII, and scooted out of Indochina. Military geniuses, they ain't.

Perhaps the reason the French are so scorned by the rest of the world is that they are so proud of their history with so very little reason.

Re:French Response

[Anonymous Coward]

France didn't avoid the war in Iraq because they were afraid to fight, they avoided the war in Iraq because they had spent 20 years supplying Saddam with weapons in exchange for oil rights, and getting rid of Saddam was not in their economic interests.

Actually, France stopped selling weapons to Saddam way before the US. It is the US (Rumsfeld, in fact) that sold Saddam his chemical weapons to fight the Iranians in the 80's. France had a tiny business with Iraq before this latest war (way, way, way smaller than the US). In fact, they stopped selling them stuff partly because Iraq stopped paying. Iraq owed France loads of money before the invasion (they officially gave up on it since then).

Re:French Response

[Wolvie MkM]

Not to mention PET would be about the only person on the planet who could get away with performing a pirouette behind the Queen of England...

Re:French Response

[DerekLyons]

If Germany had held France, then that little island country off the coast would have fallen. The US would eventually fall as well.

Only in some fantasy world where Germany magically had all of it's infrastructure and political problems fixed - and a couple of decades passed so that it's industrial capacity reached anything close to that of the United States. You've read too much WWII propaganda

Re:French Response

[DerekLyons]

Your ignorance is really appaling. I can't comprehend how someone can be a techie, which you'd think entails a respect for knowledge and the ability to tell facts apart from falsehoods, and yet spout bullshit about stuff that they've clearly never read about. It just blows my mind.

This has to be one of the single most laughable things I've seen written on Slashdot. *Especially* when it comes from someone as pathetically ignorant as yourself who seems to know zip point shit about WWII.
 
 

True, France didn't help the US in their war of independence out of the goodness of the king's heart. But the US intervention in WWII has nothing to do with benevolence either. Come on! Stalin begged the Allies to open a western front in 1942. He demanded it in 1943. In 1944 it was almost *irrelevant*, Allied victory was virtually assured by the Soviet onslaught. In simple terms: *the United States invaded Western Europe not to defeat Nazi Germany, but to prevent a Soviet Eurasia*. Not out of good will. Self-interest.

Someone who claims to know history should display a little better understanding of it. The 'Soviet onslaught' only occurred because they had someone providing with raw materials, machine tools, etc... etc... That someone was the US. If the US wanted to prevent a Soviet Eurasia - doing so would have been trivially easy, simply cease Lend-Lease to the USSR. Equally, Operation Overlord was not a creation of a moments work - it could hardly have beeen whistled up on short notice. In the real world, planning and preparation for Overlord took years.
 
 

Your implication that the US saved France in WWI is laughable and pathetic. The United States did not especially distinguish themselves in that war, they totally failed to learn from the British and French experience in the first 3 years of the war and repeated their mistakes to the same result. They fought for a very short period of time, in much smaller numbers than the cumulative war effort of either the UK or France. In the end, the US' entry in the war served one main purpose: to convince the German command that victory was impossible due to the Allies' superior strength of numbers. In any case, the French fought from beginning to end, had the most soldiers on the ground and suffered the most casualties among the Allies.

Ah yes - the US convinced Germany that it could not win, but somehow this did not contribute to actually winning the war and saving France. You are so busy spouting propaganda you don't even bother to think about what you write.
 
 

In WWII, France was crushed, no question. But I still haven't seen a convincing proposal of what could have been done to prevent the deep penetration of French territory by the German armored forces, short of best-case scenarios requiring virtual prescience from the BEF and French army.

Almost trivially easy to prevent being conquered. Spend the resources spent on the Maginot Line more wisely and don't spend twenty years ignoring your conventional forces. You'll still get deeply penetrated - but you won't be conquered with virtually no effort.
 
 

In 1939 the population of France stood at less than 42,000,000, that of the Nazi Germany at more than 76,000,000.

Raw population numbers are virtually meaningless. What matters is industrial capacity, military leadership and strategy, and will.

Re:French Response

[DerekLyons]

Twice in recent years (one still in living memory) we went over and save them from their own incompetence, even though it was not directly in our self interest to do so. (Though it was in accord with our principles.)

Whoa, wait a minute. Principles? The United States remained neutral in World War II until it got attacked by Japan. Ever heard of Pearl Harbor?

Yes, I've heard of Pearl Harbor. You, on the other hand, seem to be utterly ignorant of the political enviroment in the US in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. Sentiment to intervene in Europe was already growing - as was US involvement in Europe. (US neutrality was a sham by 1939.)

Re:French Response

[mahmud]

I don't think his regime would have ultimately been much more successful than the USSR in terms of tech and manufacturing. People aren't going to work for some theoretical 'common good'. Nazi Germany was based on the common good of the Arian race, at least in theory. Also Hitler never abolished capitalism, everybody knows about all those companies that actually benefited from using slave labor in Nazi extermination camps.

Fascism had little to do with actual meddling with supply and demand mechanisms of the economy (except for massive subsidies for military-industrial complex and large infrastructure projects). The only valid point for eventual loss of momentum of Nazi war machine in case they managed to win WWII was the exodus/extermination of talented scientists. However, this point is still pretty weak, since by analogy USSR exterminated a kiloaircraftcarrierload of intelligent people during Red Terror and Stalin's purges, yet still managed to maintain military parity with USA well into 1970s and 1980s.

Re:French Response

[Kumiorava]

I think you captured the whole issue of Irak war as well. What are the standards of winning in Irak? Is it enough that there are no weapons of mass destruction? is it enough that Irak doesn't harbour terrorists? does it need to be stabilized? does it need to be democracy? does it need to be a democracy that supports US interests? does it need to be economically independent?

Where does the meaning of "winning" end? Obviously some of the goals have been already met, some haven't. All I hear is the rhetoric that says if we stay strong we will win, but there is no substance to the word win. No target no goal nothing.

Re:French Response

[mahmud]

Woohoo! Way to oversimplify history. There may be many different versions explaining why did Hitler made a fatal mistake of starting Operation Barbarosa in 1941. Certainly a dire (and obviously sentimental) need for Caspian oil is hardly among the sanest reasons.

My favorite is still the theory that USSR was preparing to strike at Germany first in 1941, and Hitler decided to make a gamble fully understanding that of two evils it's better to select the lesser one.

In fact there is a pretty interesting book trying to explain why it is likely that Stalin was about to attack in summer of 1941. While as all historical speculation it should be taken with a grain of salt, I have hard time disbelieving the basic premise. If you are genuinely interested in the subject, I advise you try to locate the book and read it. If nothing else, it will give a fresh vantage point for understanding complicated reasons behind WW II in USSR. And damn, this is soooo offtopic!

Re:French Response

[Lord Kano]

French bashing was so 2002/2003.

We've been bashing the French for at least 70 years. Come on now, those stupid little hates deserver to be made fun of.

LK

Re:French Response

[dryeo]

Twice in recent years (one still in living memory) we went over and save them from their own incompetence, even though it was not directly in our self interest to do so. (Though it was in accord with our principles.) I'd say it was in your self interest to fight after Germany declared war on you.
Of course you could of surrendered.

Re:French Response

[maxume]

Resources?

Re:French Response

[angel'o'sphere]

I suggest you once go to Vietnam for vacations.

Just look around and meet people ... probably that fixes your lack of insight.

angel'o'sphere

Re:French Response

[The Cydonian]

Someone mentions the French and then the next thing you know someone responds with a surrender joke.

Bullies are cowards. For instance, if there's an attack on a military convoy, they scramble:-

"We took food for them in 60-feet long trucks. But once inside the army camps, we were held captive at gunpoint by American soldiers and not allowed to leave. Their treatment was horrible.

"As far as their bravery is concerned, the less said the better. When a convoy was attacked, the escort vehicles would simply speed off in different directions and leave the hapless truck drivers to fend for themselves," he said.

Me? I wouldn't like to ascribe this to a national spirit or anything. I still think the United States is a great nation, that its core ideals are rock-solid. Just a few kids out of high school gone ashtray.

The problem is when the rest of the population starts to believe in this braggadocio.

Re:French Response

[drachton]

Hahahaha. I'm going to dodge most of the points of your reply, some of which I agree with, some of which less so, to concentrate one a single point, which I consider the main thrust of my original post.

You state in this post:
Twice in recent years (one still in living memory) we went over and save them from their own incompetence, even though it was not directly in our self interest to do so. (boldface mine)

I replied in this post, with regards to WWI:
Your implication that the US saved France in WWI is laughable and pathetic. The United States did not especially distinguish themselves in that war, they totally failed to learn from the British and French experience in the first 3 years of the war and repeated their mistakes to the same result. They fought for a very short period of time, in much smaller numbers than the cumulative war effort of either the UK or France. In the end, the US' entry in the war served one main purpose: to convince the German command that victory was impossible due to the Allies' superior strength of numbers. In any case, the French fought from beginning to end, had the most soldiers on the ground and suffered the most casualties among the Allies.

And you comeback with:
Ah yes - the US convinced Germany that it could not win, but somehow this did not contribute to actually winning the war and saving France. You are so busy spouting propaganda you don't even bother to think about what you write.

So tell me this, little internet troll: where the hell do I say the US didn't contribute to the war effort? Because that was clearly (IMO) not my point. My point was that the US did not, in any way imaginable, save anybody from their own incompetence, they merely provided more of the same, which was what was needed to convinced the Germans they weren't gonna make any progress against increasingly unfavourable odds. The US were not virile saviours there to pick the ball dropped by the incompetent Europeans (French, whatever), which is basically the gist of your original message. They were reinforcements. I'm not sure whether you grasp the difference between reinforcing a front and "saving [people] from their own incompetence", but it's there.

I'm not gonna contest that something was wrong with the French leadership in WWII, as that was pretty well documented to be the case. However I find your implication that demography is not a critical element of large scale warfare among nations of similar technological advancement to be hilarious, or an outright lie.

Re:French Response

[TrekkieGod]

You, on the other hand, seem to be utterly ignorant of the political enviroment in the US in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. Sentiment to intervene in Europe was already growing - as was US involvement in Europe. (US neutrality was a sham by 1939.)

I'm no history buff, but I'm not as ignorant as you think. The United States politically supported Europe, but the first truly significant US involvement in Europe was the Lend-Lease Act of 1941. It was before Pearl Harbor and as such it was also highly controversial. After all, public sentiment favored non-intervention at the time, or as wikipedia puts it, "the overwhelming desire of the American people to stay out of this second European war." Not surprisingly, public opinion changed overnight with the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Re:French Response

[TopSpin]

The "we would have won if not for all the hippies" argument is not one that has ever held any water.

I've heard a few "hippies" take credit for ending the very conflict you use to make your case. So either they are right and it holds water, or you are right. In latter case the "hippies" are either confused or misguided, because they certainly seem to believe it.

I have no claim to the truth. I suspect those who claim they have. You appear to have a collection of answers you've stumbled on. Please, continue.

Re:French Response

[RichardSP]

Actually, I think that we won the Vietnam War. I was convinced of this when the Prime Minister rang the bell at the NYSE . I also think that other people would agree. "One thing Sheikh Sattar keeps saying is he wants al-Anbar to be like Germany and Japan and South Korea were after their respective wars, with a long-term American presence helping ... put them back together," MacFarland said. "The negative example he cites is Vietnam. He says, yeah, so, Vietnam beat the Americans, and what did it get them? You know, 30 years later, they're still living in poverty."

Link seems broken

[atamyrat]

To visit the website: www.cnes-geipan.fr. The article points to website http://www.cnes-geipan.fr/, which I couldn't access.

Does anyone know the correct link?

Re:Link seems broken

[Anonymous Coward]

FTA:

"The website itself -- which crashed host servers hours after it was unveiled due to heavy traffic -- is extremely well organized and complete, even including scanned copies of police reports."

Re:Link seems broken

[Gordonjcp]

OMFG conspiracy! Either that or it's slashdotted already.

Re:Link seems broken

[cabinetsoft]

OMFG conspiracy! Either that or it's slashdotted already.

No, they surrendered.

Re:Link seems broken

[Comrade Kat]

Seriously, limit that lameness to the other, relevant, thread... (French Response, I think?)

"France has become the first country..."

[Anonymous Coward]

Radon360 notes that France has become the first country to open its files on UFOs.

Because Radon360 is a twat.

May 2006:
http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/FreedomOfInforma tion/PublicationScheme/SearchPublicationScheme/Uni dentifiedAerialPhenomenauapInTheUkAirDefenceRegion .htm

Re:"France has become the first country..."

[aadvancedGIR]

Yes, but France is the first country to do so only one mounth before a presidential election, maybe it is not a coincidence.

Since this is France we are talking about

[Anonymous Coward]

will the database contain a field on whether or not the aliens looked delicious?

Re:Since this is France we are talking about

[Plutonite]

These guys eat toads - I wouldn't land my green butt in France if I were an alien.

Re:Since this is France we are talking about

[o'reor]

Not toads (toxic) -- but frogs and snails, yup, definitely.

Re:Since this is France we are talking about

[inviolet]

[The French do] Not [eat] toads (toxic) -- but frogs and snails, yup, definitely.

What about puppy-dog tails?

Re:Since this is France we are talking about

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

[The French do] Not [eat] toads (toxic) -- but frogs and snails, yup, definitely.

What about puppy-dog tails?

Nope, you have to go to China for that.

Dup

[toonerh]

This has been out "en anglias" since 2003 French COMETA Report

Tag zis

[ootykumar]

Ze truth iz out zere

Re:Tag zis

[z0idberg]

Your French accent sounds very German.

UFO

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I wonder if this means that we'll finally find out what happened to SHADO?

Unknown Flying Object

[netdur]

It could mean some secret Russian or American military projects, not the aliens... got it?

Re:Unknown Flying Object

[aadvancedGIR]

it many cases, it was simply clouds or optical illusions, which are not even flying objects. And then you add all those drunk peoples and the jokers to that list...
Anyway, this base is nothing more than a list of police reports, even it there really was an alien origin in one of those phenomenons, the odds that this base contains anything usefull to prove it is almost nil.

Translation

[cabinetsoft]

Je, pour une, bienvenu notre nouvelle ONVI maitre!

I surrender to our new UFO overlords.

Re:Translation

[njdube]

More like... Je me rends à nos nouveaux suzerains non identifiés de vol. Yeah, my French sucks. Sorry.

Re:Translation

[cabinetsoft]

Yeah, because Napoleon was such a surrender monkey...

You mean Napoleone di Buonaparte? That's very french sounding name, riiiiiiight.

Re:Translation

[fishthegeek]

You are my hero today.

Re:Translation

[Adambomb]

Corsican indeed.

Unidentified Fat Object

[iendedi]

Funny, but quite a big letdown.

its a matter of point of view

[rucs_hack]

If you consider UFO to be what it actually means, that it is an object in the sky for which there is no current explanation, then that's fine. Ball Lightening was a 'UFO' till it was explained.

To believe that these unexplained things are extra terrestrials is a huge leap, and one I would tend to scoff at. Not least because the whole 'flying saucer' and 'greys' crap only appeared in the US during the early cold war, with greys not being named till later.

I will never believe that an advanced race can travel all the way across the inconceivable distance between stars, and be dumb enough to crash. Nor that they would travel that far and buzz people on their own, which is all that has supposedly happened.

Not once have they made proper contact and opened a dialogue, or established a visible presence. That's would be like Christopher Columbus landing in America, blowing a rasberry at a native American, jumping back in his ship and heading home without another word. It's just silly.

Most alien visitation theories read like children's stories, and most 'the aliens operated on me' stories read like early memories of visits to a dentist mixed with sexual fantasies.

And yet I do believe that other life exists, to do otherwise is to be a fool, given the size of the universe.

I do not, however, subscribe to the 'aliens are morons who can't steer a ship, and like to cut on us some from time to time' line of thought.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[Anonymous Coward]

I will never believe that an advanced race can travel all the way across the inconceivable distance between stars, and be dumb enough to crash. Yeah, humans definitely have the market on that particular brand of stupidity (RIP Beagle 2). :-P

Re:its a matter of point of view

[rucs_hack]

[koff] Well, being British I am given to ignore that particular event [koff]

Re:its a matter of point of view

[BlueTrin]

You might want to look at the Drake equation

Re:its a matter of point of view

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless visiting Earth and scaring humans is the alien equivalent of cow tipping...

Re:its a matter of point of view

[teslar]

I will never believe that an advanced race can travel all the way across the inconceivable distance between stars, and be dumb enough to crash.

I'm with you on the entire alien-free-planet-to-date argument, but you may want to reconsider that particular belief. Travelling distances between stars is a completely different thing from landing on a planet and this includes the mechanics involved. You may be incredibly fast in a vacuum but perhaps you've never encountered Earth-like gravity before or this Nitrogen floating around in the atmosphere so much. Looks harmless enough, but what do you know, it just happens to set the primary coil reactor on fire and corrode the entire fusion circuitboard in a matter of seconds, what an awkward time to find this out. Or maybe you just have no idea to compensate for 10 times the gravitational pull of your own home planet, maybe simply because your landing thrusters have nto been designed with that in mind. Either way, crash boom.

Basically you assume two things in your belief: (1) familiarity with the Earth environment and experience therein and (2) total absence of mechanical/electrical/whatever failures. Neither is a given.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[CmdrGravy]

We don't really know how Aliens thought processes would work but we do have a fair idea of the physical practicalities of manufacturing space ships and embarking on space journeys and based on that it's very hard to see why anyone would simply fly over to stick a few probes up the butts of dumb American farmers and fly off again.

However until we have any evidence that Aliens are behind UFO sightings, which we don't, we shouldn't really spend too much time trying to justify how it might happen.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[Yetihehe]

I would believe that a race can traveel entire galaxy and crash. Suppose they are like us. They WILL have "people" that are not really smart and can't understand ALL the technology they have properly (look at typical windows user). So if it's so easy to fly entire galaxy that anybody can do it, then somebody dumb will fly here to earth and crash.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[carvalhao]

I believe your analogy is a bit off...

An alien with a vast superior intelligence coming to Earth and trying establishing contact with humans would be similar to you going to the country side and trying to establish contact with an ant colony. The intelligence divide is just to great for you to care or for the ants to comprehend.

If aliens have visited Earth our great science achievements wouldn't amount to much more than our perception of technology in an ant colony's tunnel system

Re:its a matter of point of view

[tsa]

I don't believe that. I think with time and the political stability and the resources and determination that is needed, we can make a starship. And then years later we can find a planet with beings on it that are just as intelligent as we are, but still in their Medieval period.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[argent]

Basically you assume two things in your belief: (1) familiarity with the Earth environment and experience therein and (2) total absence of mechanical/electrical/whatever failures.

And (3) sanity. What you're describing is the equivalent of trying to land on Jupiter in a Cessna. And we have a lot less experience with the Jovian atmosphere than any people capable of intersteller travel would have with rocky planets like the Earth.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[linvir]

we do have a fair idea of the physical practicalities of manufacturing space ships and embarking on space journeys

No we don't. We know what it's like for us to do it. Another civilisation on another planet might be more advanced and have a much easier time of it. Based on that, it'd be perfectly plausible for adventurous adolescent aliens to joyride across the galaxy in a $300 used flying-saucer just to come "cow tipping" in a backwater rural solar system.

As you say, though, it's all a bit silly without any proper evidence of actual little green men.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[rucs_hack]

1: Any race lacking in the ability to calculate the basic math of gravitational calculations would probably never get into space in the first place.

2: Any Race unable to enter the atmosphere of a planet safely in a crewed ship would also be unlikely to be inclined to do so, or they would have gathered experience. After all, we've barely got started and already we know the problems involved in landing on different planets.

Give aliens a little credit...

Re:its a matter of point of view

[psymastr]

What a load of crap. We're evidently at a hugely inferior technology point than those aliens and we can land spacecrafts on every planet on our solar system.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[BlueTrin]

Yeah it was more as a philosophical point of view that I pointed him to the Drake equation, it has no real scientific basis and when you look at it, it seems more written by some idealistic poet with alit bit of maths knowledge than a physician/mathematician ...

I find it quite interesting to look at it though ...

Re:its a matter of point of view

[Nefarious Wheel]

I would think a more plausable description of such behaviour would be -- analysis. Poke them, prod them, measure the results -- don't contaminate the experiment by introducing yourself into it. Pick a monkey and paint him green, see what happens (obligatory anthropology reference).

I just hope a better metaphor isn't bugs in a jar. Some kid's going to pick it up and shake it, just to get us angry...

Re:its a matter of point of view

[CommandNotFound]

2: Any Race unable to enter the atmosphere of a planet safely in a crewed ship would also be unlikely to be inclined to do so, or they would have gathered experience. After all, we've barely got started and already we know the problems involved in landing on different planets.

We might be their first try. Or if they aren't some kind of hive mind, they have a Capt. Zaph Branigan at the helm...

Re:its a matter of point of view

[Oligonicella]

Love the link. It reminds me of the dumb crap I bought into at age 12.

Equation: N = R* fp ne fl fi fc L

This is followed by an explanation of the 'variables' and the sentence "Most of these have not altered to any significant degree since that conference in 1961."

Wow! Talk about disingenuous. fp is changing as we get new pictures. Planetary systems are thought common instead of fairly rare as in '61. The rest are a joke.

ne (planets suitable for life) - unknown, we can't examine the small planets yet.
fl (planets with life) - unknown, we can't examine the small planets yet.
fi (those with intelligence) - unknowable.
fc (those with radio) - unknowable.
L (lifetime of advanced races)- unknowable.

Lessee, that's five of seven that are unknown and three of those cannot in any reasonable stretch of the imagination even be known. Great equation.

Well, they follow that with a lame caveat:
"Values for some of these parameters are, of course, open to considerable disagreement..."

Following that are the explanations for the current set of values. This is filled with such gems as (for fi and fc) "however many researchers of the topic agree 0.01". First, there are no researchers on this topic. Research cannot be done on this topic. What the author means is "however, many geeks during parlor talk fervently believe that 0.01". Not the same thing as science. Not a value to be used in anything but a parlor game.

L is another good example. They're just using the length of our civilization with nukes. That's right. They consider us to be the average for the lifetime of advanced civilizations. Our one known example is used to average a galaxies worth of possible civilizations. Utter drek.

This is what happens when dried scientists try to get sexy with parlor talk.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[Oligonicella]

So, adolescent aliens in junk cars can ignore physics? They come across light-years to cow tip and sacrifice seeing family and friends for the pleasure?

Re:its a matter of point of view

[Oligonicella]

So, instead of exploring orbiting bodies in their system, they leapt across the galaxy to ours first thing? Get a grip.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[OwnedByTwoCats]

Interstellar travel presents daunting problems. 186,282 piles per second. It's not just a good idea, it's the law. So travel times will be long. Life support requirements will be huge. Knowing much about what will be there when you get there will be impossible. I don't think we will be able to overcome these (and many other) problems in my lifetime.

On the other hand, I believe in UFOs. People all over the world observe phenomena that could be objects they can't identify in the sky. These reports from France are more recordings of observations. I do not believe that UFOs are extraterrestrial vehicles. Not enough evidence for that.

Either we are alone in the universe, or there are other intelligent, techological civilizations out there. Knowing either one is true would be profound.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[rucs_hack]

One can infer from the fact that we exist that others either do, or have. If other life has existed, then it's a pretty fair bet that it will again.

If you take into account the size of the universe though it's pretty easy to see that the overwhelming majority of such life would be out of reach anyhow.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[schon]

So thinks the gorilla: "We don't really know how Humans thought processes would work but we do have a fair idea of the physical practicalities of moving from one jungle to the another and based on that it's very hard to see why any human would simply come over to our group to watch us and then go away again."

Re:its a matter of point of view

[Kjella]

You may be incredibly fast in a vacuum but perhaps you've never encountered Earth-like gravity before or this Nitrogen floating around in the atmosphere so much.

Well, you wouldn't even have a snowflake's chance in hell unless you can calculate the gravity pull from all the other objects like say the sun on your entry trajectory to our solar system, so they'd have the theory of gravity pretty much nailed down. If it's a very primitive probe it might only be designed to reach earth, in which case it'd crash like an asteroid. If it's an advanced craft designed to land, it would probably enter orbit, scan the atmosphere and everything before doing anything silly. Chances are pretty good we'd spot them unless they have stealth. Also, it assumes they'd take the whole ship down the gravity well. Maybe a lander craft? Maybe send out some signals "Hey, anyone down there?". Even if we assume that they could crash on entry, I find it very unlikely they'd do it without revealing their presence first.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[zome]

"Not once have they made proper contact and opened a dialogue, or established a visible presence."

If you go study animals in the forest, you don't want those animals to see you. So you can observe their natural habits, and somehow I don't think you want to make proper contact with, say, mountain lions.

Even if they want to talk to us, they might just can't. We human are a lot smarter than those animals in the forests, we know many of them communicate, but we just can't exactly understand the messages.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[rucs_hack]

If you go study animals in the forest, you don't want those animals to see you. So you can observe their natural habits, and somehow I don't think you want to make proper contact with, say, mountain lions.

Even if they want to talk to us, they might just can't. We human are a lot smarter than those animals in the forests, we know many of them communicate, but we just can't exactly understand the messages.

That sir, if you are impplying an extension to extraterrestrial contact scenarios, is what we in the scientific world like to call an unprovable conjecture.

You must first provide some proof to initially support your idea, then we can talk....

Re:its a matter of point of view

[eclectic4]

"Not once have they made proper contact and opened a dialogue, or established a visible presence."

How do you know such things?! Are you one of "them"?

Seriously though, consider the prime directive... if a dialogue had been established, do you think they would choose Chester from the West Virginia hills on his pig farm, or an established, secretive authority to handle any contact. I wonder...

And, until you can dismiss every one of these guys and their witness testimony without one ounce of repercussion outside of complete ridicule, then we must consider this case open. In our courts of law, alien visitation would be able to be easily proven, but to the scientist, one that has not read the wealth of highly credible testimony across thousands of texts, it would be extremely difficult to convince. Ergo...

Just because fantastic claims require fantastic proof doesn't make it not true.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[mpe]

If you consider UFO to be what it actually means, that it is an object in the sky for which there is no current explanation, then that's fine. Ball Lightening was a 'UFO' till it was explained.

Many many UFOs are only UFOs for a short time (possibly seconds) until they become IFOs e.g. aircraft. In other cases it can take longer. There are also photographs and video footage which are likely to remain "unidentified" simply because of poor technical quality.

To believe that these unexplained things are extra terrestrials is a huge leap, and one I would tend to scoff at. Not least because the whole 'flying saucer' and 'greys' crap only appeared in the US during the early cold war, with greys not being named till later.

It also makes a very good cover story for any secret aviation going on. Including that involving unusually shaped experimental aircraft. Not showing up on radar and being able to move in unusal ways are very desirable attributes in military aircraft as is "not looking like an aircraft".

I will never believe that an advanced race can travel all the way across the inconceivable distance between stars, and be dumb enough to crash.

Even if they were "dumb enough to crash" you might expect something more like the Columbia breakup. The only thing likely to crash would be a robot probe. It's hard to conceive of any intelligent beings going on a one way trip from orbit to the surface of an alien (to them) planet. It would make far more sense for a vehicle intended for a crew to explore the surface (or near surface) of a planet to have multiple redundent systems to get the crew back to their main craft if anything went wrong.

Nor that they would travel that far and buzz people on their own, which is all that has supposedly happened.

"Buzzing" members of an agressive, intelligent, alien species qualifies as stupid behavior.

Most alien visitation theories read like children's stories, and most 'the aliens operated on me' stories read like early memories of visits to a dentist mixed with sexual fantasies.

Any intelligent alien species capable of getting to Earth could learn a lot about the planet simply by observation. Together with quite a lot about humans the same way, including interception of video signals (it's not necessary to understand the language). Even if they did feel the need to start investigating terrestrial organisms there are plenty of non sentient species to choose from (including the same ones we humans use). Kidnapping sentients has the problem that it tends to be noticed, returning them with strange stories tends to be noticed even more.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[mpe]

Yeah, humans definitely have the market on that particular brand of stupidity (RIP Beagle 2). :-P
BR>There's a slight difference between crashing a robot probe on an unihabited planet next door and crashing a crewed ship on an alien planet, which you know full well has intelligent natives (with an industrial society) on it, in an alien star system...

Re:its a matter of point of view

[KDR_11k]

But if you saw an ant hill for the first time, wouldn't you try poking it? It's more interesting to see reactions towards unusual events than just watch animals do their normal thing.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[rucs_hack]

I dismiss them for one simple reason. There is not one shred of scientifically viable proof. Not one single bit.

People can wax lyrical or appeal to my compassion all they want, without proof of Aliens I will never accept that they have visited Earth.

You mention fantastic proof, but that's not what is needed. Anything at all, even the meanest verifiable piece of alien material, organic or artificial would do, no matter how small, but no such evidence has ever been produced.

And another thing 'Prime directive'? Oh come on. What the ferk would an alien Race be doing following a set of rules proposed by Gene Roddenberry to go along with a television SF series? No really, are you serious?

Re:its a matter of point of view

[pnewhook]

will never believe that an advanced race can travel all the way across the inconceivable distance between stars, and be dumb enough to crash.

Bring a caveman (or even someone from as recent as a thousand years ago or so) to our society, and they may think the same thing about us and our ability to make advanced technology like planes and cars. Basically every form of transportation we've ever created we've managed to smash into something or each other on a regular basis.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[rucs_hack]

Bring a 'caveman' of even tens of thousands of years ago into the present, and educate him for a couple of years, and he would be indistinguishable from a great many people alive today.

We don't evolve that fast....

Also, if you look at the failure rate of technology over time you will find that it reduces as time progresses and the technology is improved. That applies to every form of technology.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[drinkypoo]

I'm not going to argue that aliens exist (odds say they probably do, but I like proof) or that they don't. I just don't agree with some of your arguments...

The only thing likely to crash would be a robot probe.

You don't explore this idea; is there any reason that the supposedly crashed alien ships can't be probes?

Here's another possibility, stolen straight out of sci-fi but I forget what book; let's say that interstellar travel is only possible (on a reasonable time scale) by folding space. Then let's say that there's something special about our solar system that causes problems with their ships. Someone used to being able to travel around the galaxy wouldn't send a probe first, they'd just jump into the area and check it out. It's of course just wild wankery to even think along these lines, but then, science fiction has turned out to be remarkably prescient in some areas. Every idea is worth considering, and it's not just to discard it until you can come up with a reason why it can't be true, leaving it within the realm of possibility until then.

"Buzzing" members of an agressive, intelligent, alien species qualifies as stupid behavior.

Maybe they don't consider us all that intelligent.

On a scale whereon one end has "no clue about environment, does not use tools" and someplace in the middle is "interstellar travel" we're a fuck of a lot closer to the tool-less part of the scale than the other end.

We're no threat whatsoever to anyone with interstellar travel.

Any intelligent alien species capable of getting to Earth could learn a lot about the planet simply by observation. [...] Kidnapping sentients has the problem that it tends to be noticed, returning them with strange stories tends to be noticed even more.

Again, we are not a threat. Who cares if we know they're there? Maybe that's part of the experiment.

And finally, to recap, I don't particularly believe in UFOs or earth-visiting aliens. I just don't think that there's substantial evidence against it. But since I haven't seen any compelling evidence for it, I just have to withhold judgment.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[drinkypoo]

Interstellar travel presents daunting problems. 186,282 piles per second. It's not just a good idea, it's the law.

You are aware that Einstein's view of the universe is both correct at a certain scale, and incorrect at others? Just like Newton's laws of motion, which are quite useful and can be used to model physical reactions in a quite reliable and accurate way; but they break down in certain conditions.

As we are lesser than the universe, we must make models to represent it. These models are necessarily inferior to the real thing.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[drinkypoo]

So, adolescent aliens in junk cars can ignore physics? They come across light-years to cow tip and sacrifice seeing family and friends for the pleasure?

Please, stop repeating this ignorant tripe. No law of physics says that faster than light travel is impossible. It says only that we currently know no way of accomplishing it.

Science doesn't separate the possible from the impossible. It separates the known from the unknown. Along the way we make a lot of pronouncements about what is and is not possible, and sometimes it turns out that we are wrong.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[EchaniDrgn]

Keep in mind you also assume that the aliens that are coming here would _want_ to make contact with us. Perhaps they are a little less invasive than you would think.

To study a species/planet prior to first contact is something that has been hashed and re-hashed time and time again in Sci-fi ( I understand that looking to science fiction for backing is fallacious, but very few other mental exercises are made to contemplate this phenomenon ).

If I wanted to turn a world into a profitable trading partner then I would try to make sure my first impression would be greeted rather than seen as an immediate threat.

Besides, we all know that the Roswell aliens were Ferengi. :-)

Re:its a matter of point of view

[mpe]

I'm with you on the entire alien-free-planet-to-date argument, but you may want to reconsider that particular belief. Travelling distances between stars is a completely different thing from landing on a planet and this includes the mechanics involved.

If these aliens evolved on a planet with an atmosphere they'd have had to work the mechanics out in order to get into orbit around their own planet. Even if an alien species could evolve in some completly different environment gravity is a fundermental universal force.

You may be incredibly fast in a vacuum but perhaps you've never encountered Earth-like gravity before or this Nitrogen floating around in the atmosphere so much.

Hence you'd probably want different vehicles for travelling through intersteller space vs looking around planets vs descending into planetry atmosphere.

Looks harmless enough, but what do you know, it just happens to set the primary coil reactor on fire and corrode the entire fusion circuitboard in a matter of seconds, what an awkward time to find this out.

Hence you could use these useful things called "robot probes". Also "seconds" is plenty of time for an autopilot to select "abort to orbit", unless the pilot has reaction times several times slower than humans it is also plenty of time for them to do something about the emergency.

Or maybe you just have no idea to compensate for 10 times the gravitational pull of your own home planet, maybe simply because your landing thrusters have nto been designed with that in mind.

The only thing any aliens need to know is the mass of their own craft. From that they can work out the mass of every object in the Solar system.

Basically you assume two things in your belief: (1) familiarity with the Earth environment

Actually "familiarity of a planet gas around it".

(2) total absence of mechanical/electrical/whatever failures

Or using multipally redundent systems. Especially of a a vehicle you intend taking into an alien environment.
The idea of intelligent aliens who are capable of intersteller travel, yet ignorant of the basic mechanics of the universe and incapable of the engineering needed to stay alive is just incredible.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[CmdrGravy]

In our courts of law, alien visitation would be able to be easily proven I doubt that's true be it's definitely irrelevant. All that is required to prove your theory is one single bit of physical evidence. To date no such evidence has ever been discovered.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[TheRaven64]

I agree, crash-landings are quite improbable, however there are a few things to consider:

Firstly, most planets appear to be gas giants. Looking around our own solar system, those that are no have very thin atmospheres. A life form evolving on a planet like mars, in a system without planets like earth, might thing of planets as falling into two categories; the big ones with turbulent, thick atmospheres, and the small ones with thin atmospheres. A logical approach would be to observe the weather patterns and calculate the force of the wind, but it is feasible (although somewhat anthropomorphic) to imagine that they would have a cultural blindspot preventing them from considering the possibility of a rocky planet with an atmosphere much thicker than theirs. They would probably learn after the first few crashes, but this would require news of the crashes to make it home (which would require FTL communication, as well as travel) and assumes that Earth-like planets are fairly commonly encountered by them (they may only be interested in systems with Mars-like planets, for example, just as we would be likely to prioritise systems with Earth-like planets for exploration.

The second thing is that crashing might not be caused by entering the atmosphere. If you are in a ship, and the engine room (or mast, for an earlier era) catches fire, then you are likely to head for the nearest island, because you are more likely to survive there than in the sea. Similarly, if your FTL drive experiences problems, you are likely to head for a system and then planet that could support your crew's life. Finding it populated by humans could be quite inconvenient...

Re:its a matter of point of view

[rucs_hack]

You make a good point, and it's one I ascribed too in my youth. The idea that Aliens might watch us without interfering is something I find appealing. However without proof it remains pure conjecture, even if a good topic for philosophising after a bottle or two of Jack..

One other thing though. I disagree that SF is not a good place to look to for inspiration when pondering the existence and behaviour of Aliens. After all, it is human to wonder at the unknown. Many early SF writers who submitted stories to Hugo Gernsback where no doubt inspired to speculate on the nature of alien life. What I object to is the trumpetting of fiction as fact.

I trashed another guys mentioning of aliens adhering to a 'prime directive' in another reply. Mostly because that is a rather silly idea. Not least because character in the idealised star trek world can't even adhere to it. It's a 'three laws' type of thing, sounds nice, but in reality it is too restrictive to be practical.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[pnewhook]

Bring a 'caveman' of even tens of thousands of years ago into the present, and educate him for a couple of years, and he would be indistinguishable from a great many people alive today. We don't evolve that fast.....

I'm not talking about evolution, I'm talking about body of knowledge. And read more carefully - I never said it was a caveman of tens of thousands of years ago - I mentioned two examples of two people from different eras.

Someone from those eras would look at our technology with wonder and amazement. But yes the person from a thousand years ago could probably be taught given time.

Also, if you look at the failure rate of technology over time you will find that it reduces as time progresses and the technology is improved. That applies to every form of technology.

Yes the technology gets better, but no matter how good the technology gets there will still be stupid people that will manage to smack it into something, which was the point I made that you seemingly missed.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[mpe]

And (3) sanity. What you're describing is the equivalent of trying to land on Jupiter in a Cessna. And we have a lot less experience with the Jovian atmosphere than any people capable of intersteller travel would have with rocky planets like the Earth.

Even if such a species evolved in an environment very different from Earth they'd still know about rocky planets with gas atmospheres because such planets are common.
Of course any alien from an environment unlike the Earth's surface would probably have to wear some kind of "hostile environment suit" in order to leave their craft. Any alien which could "walk" on the surface of the Earth with minimal or no artifical life support must have originated from a planet similar to the Earth...

Re:its a matter of point of view

[rucs_hack]

No I didn't miss your point. Mine was valid too, the human brain hasn't changed in a long time, I probably wasn't very clear, this is slashdot, after all, It's not where I do my most diligent writing.

I'm just assuming (perhaps errantly I admit) that anyone smart enough to cover the distances involved would be smart enough not to crash on arrival. Besides which, you can't tell me that an interstellar spacecraft wouldn't even leave a crater on crashing? Because I see no reports of any such thing. That's one tidy alien race...

I just don't buy the alien crashing thing. Not least because it arose not from a scientific analysis of debris after a verified impact, but from newspaper reporters and sensationalists out for a quick buck.

Conspiracy theorists have lots to say on the subject of cover up, but any alien dumb enough to crash once would crash again, so far as I can tell, and I have seen no accounts of alien crashing and wreckage appearing in the news. Therefore I go with my original idea, that its bunk.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[Forrest Kyle]

This reminds me of a quote: "One of the surest signs that there is intelligent life in the universe is that they haven't contacted us."

I'm not sure who said it originally.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[lawpoop]

"1: Any race lacking in the ability to calculate the basic math of gravitational calculations would probably never get into space in the first place."

What if they started in space, evolving in an interstellar dust could? They might have mastered 0G vacuum flight, but still have problems with landing.

And if they evolved without gravity, they may not have any intuitive ability to understand gravity, thus hampering their ability to do research into gravity phenomena, just as we have trouble understanding floating in a space station, or quantum physics. Sure, we can eventually figure out the math, but we figured out gravity first because we have a hard-wired understanding of it.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[rucs_hack]

Ok then, let me give you an example.

Up until I was 34 I had never studied Calculus, and yet I was able, in three months to grasp gravitation and devise a model of the solar system which was accurate enough to replicate the motion of spacecraft in the solar system.

And I haven't even got a pilots licence, hell, I can't even drive a car.

You *cannot* get involved in space travel of any kind whatsoever without understating at the very least, gravitation, period. as for inter stellar travel? Well that requires considerably more understanding.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[lawpoop]

"If these aliens evolved on a planet with an atmosphere they'd have had to work the mechanics out in order to get into orbit around their own planet. Even if an alien species could evolve in some completly different environment gravity is a fundermental universal force."

If they evolved in space, say like in an interstellar dust cloud, they wouldn't need to know much about gravity. Other forces, such as electromagnetism, would have a much greater effecting in their everyday life. Because we evolved on a planet, we have a hard-wired, native understanding of gravity. Only relatively recently have we begun to understand the other fundamental forces. Perhaps for a dust-cloud being, they understand electromagnetism quite well, but gravity, not so much ;)

Re:its a matter of point of view

[lawpoop]

Well, if you've never driven a car for a serious amount of time, perhaps that's why you can't imagine someone having an accident.

There is a great difference between doing equations on paper and piloting a moving vehicle in real-time. Did you ever make a mistake in calculating your equations? On paper, you can just erase it. In real life, there is no 'rewind'.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[Skreems]

I will never believe that an advanced race can travel all the way across the inconceivable distance between stars, and be dumb enough to crash.

Who said "dumb" had anything to do with it? We don't always wait until our technology is 100% perfect to do something (see: Apollo 13, Mars rovers, ISS). Technical malfunctions are just a fact of working with technology. Something can always go wrong, and sometimes it's not fixable, especially if you have limited resources on hand.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[rucs_hack]

oh come on.

I know all about accidents, and errors in calculation. Ever wrapped and tagged someone because they misjudged an overtake? I have, and they were 17, it wasn't fun..

Anyone so incompetent as to make a trivial error like that would be unlikely to be trusted to such a complex task as inter stellar travel. Did we allow idiots to go to the moon? Or was it serious, professional pilots with years of proven track record...

Re:its a matter of point of view

[rucs_hack]

Let me call you attention to the distances involved my friend.

Think fucking vast, then multiply up a bunch....

Seriously, unless their error rate was almost non existent, they couldn't reach us in the first place.

Not that I think they have.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[tsa]

I don't think we will be able to overcome these (and many other) problems in my lifetime.

OK maybe not in our lifetime, but mankind didn't invent and develop the MacBook Pro in Babbage's lifetime either. Many things take more than one lifetime to achieve. But that doesn't mean they're impossible to achieve with our limited intelligence.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[lawpoop]

We have everyday, average joes driving cars. Perhaps interstellar travel is so common-place in other civilizations that everyday, average joes are piloting saucers, flying straight into black holes and stars, crashing into meteors and planet.

On what basis would you assume that any aliens who would be visiting us would be 'professional pilots'? Why not cow-tipping joyriders?

Re:its a matter of point of view

[lawpoop]

"Did we allow idiots to go to the moon? Or was it serious, professional pilots with years of proven track record..."

Isn't NASA manned by serious professionals? Yet NASA is not free of mistakes and accidents. Did you ever hear the story of Apollo 13?

Why would you assume that aliens are better than us in any way? They could be just like human beings, emotionally and intellectually; maybe they just had a few centuries headstart and figured out interstellar travel.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[IamTheRealMike]

Not least because the whole 'flying saucer' and 'greys' crap only appeared in the US during the early cold war, with greys not being named till later.

When an entire cultures view of extra-terrestrial life changes as quickly as we went from green-tentacled-martians to greys, isn't that an argument for it being real?

Re:its a matter of point of view

[rucs_hack]

Nice try at a point. However the error that caused the problem in appollo 13 had already happened before the mission was even started.

And I am not saying in any way that we are equivalent to a race that could travel between star systems. We aren't.

Nor would I say they are better. As Picasso observed in first viewing the Lascaux paintings 'we have invented nothing'. I say not that they might be better then us, only that they couldn't cover the unbelievable distances involved without knowing far more and being a lot better at not failing.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[0111 1110]

Firstly, most planets appear to be gas giants.

Based on what evidence? Most planets that we can detect are gas giants. It is much harder to detect the teeny tiny little rocky planets. Like finding a sand grain compared to finding say something the size of the moon. Our solar system has five gas giants and four rocky planets. But then there are all of the large moons. If you count those, then they outnumber the Jovians.

Looking around our own solar system, those that are no have very thin atmospheres.

Two out of the four rocky planets have very thick atmospheres. If we want to extrapolate, we could say that about half of the rocky planets possess a thick atomosphere.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[lawpoop]

"Nice try at a point. However the error that caused the problem in appollo 13 had already happened before the mission was even started."

So you think that whatever alien organization that backed "Project Earth" would be free from all of the problems organizations face here?

"And I am not saying in any way that we are equivalent to a race that could travel between star systems. We aren't."

How could you possibly know that? Are you and alien-contactee yourself?

" I say not that they might be better then us, only that they couldn't cover the unbelievable distances involved without knowing far more and being a lot better at not failing."

I don't see why you think interstellar travel as a project or technology would be any different than any other human project we have developed here on Earth.

Time was, about 100 years ago, very few people believed that humans could fly. It was something totally impossible, like time-travel or eternal life. It just could never happen. Turns out, it's actually not that difficult, once you know the particulars.

Certainly if aliens can do instellar travel, they must know more than us, but I don't see why they have to be 'perfect'. Instead of failing less, they just try more often? Maybe flying to Earth is more like a Tourist off-road adventure in the Serengeti than a "Put a man on the moon before the end of this decade" project? I see no reason to believe one over the other.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[Skreems]

You assume a slow mode of travel (relative to those distances). IF aliens are really here, it's pretty obvious that they're not riding in generation ships, which would indicate FTL travel in some capacity. Not that I think they have either, but from common reports you can state a few reliable hypotheticals.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[argent]

Um, yes, that's the point. Read the message I was replying to. :)

Re:its a matter of point of view

[rucs_hack]

Actually I don't assume a slow mode of travel.

I assume that the distances are so large that any race capable of devising a means to cover that distance, or bypass it, would be advanced enough to not crash in the Arizona desert and leave nothing but a few fragments of sticky take and some balsa wood as evidence.

also, what 'common reports' are those of which you speak?

Re:its a matter of point of view

[0111 1110]

I don't think we will be able to overcome these (and many other) problems in my lifetime.

Well that's putting it mildly. The understatement of the year. We don't even have a model in science to figure out how we might be able to do it, at least at reasonable time scales. Even antimatter drives wouldn't do it, and even if they somehow could, we have no theories on how we might make antimatter in sufficient quantity to use as a fuel. Any civilization that could make a true space drive has an understanding of physics that we can only dream of. They would have to have a way of pushing off of the very 'fabric' of space-time itself, the very idea of which is basically nonsensical to us at this point.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[0111 1110]

No law of physics says that faster than light travel is impossible.

What about special relativity?

Re:its a matter of point of view

[rucs_hack]

How could you possibly know that? Are you and alien-contactee yourself?

Well there was this one time during my Nurse Training many years ago when I was sideways motivated on old speckled hen and got all confused as to the date, does that count?

Re:its a matter of point of view

[lawpoop]

I don't claim to know anything about aliens or their technologies. Therefore, not being in a position to judge, I will take your word for it ; )

Re:its a matter of point of view

[Skevin]

> Our solar system has five gas giants and four rocky planets.

Dude, your math is off. 5 + 4 = 9, and everyone knows there's only eight planets, as of three months ago. :)

Solomon

Re:its a matter of point of view

[thrawn_aj]

I will never believe that an advanced race can travel all the way across the inconceivable distance between stars, and be dumb enough to crash. Certainly, but what do your beliefs (or anyone else's for that matter) have to do with what's true? I presume people still maintain that the question of whether aliens have visited Earth is a serious scientific question and not another of those loony Gallup poll deciders :P. Simple matter of examining the evidence and evaluating whether "aliens" are the most probable explanation for the observed phenomena.

If you still feel aliens are here already, well, they'll contact us when they're good and ready. Meanwhile, have a beer and relax dude :P. The Government is too incompetent to govern well, you think they have the intelligence to cover these things up? No wonder they don't deny these things, it lends them an aura of secret abilities =D.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[Wyrd01]

I will never believe that an advanced race can travel all the way across the inconceivable distance between stars, and be dumb enough to crash.

So from this can we assume that beyond a certain level of technological advancement mistakes no longer occur?

Re:its a matter of point of view

[Paperweight]

Hold on... weren't the alien pilots drunk?

Re:its a matter of point of view

[eclectic4]

"I doubt that's true be it's definitely irrelevant. All that is required to prove your theory is one single bit of physical evidence. To date no such evidence has ever been discovered."

Really? You could get convicted for murder just because a few people saw you do it, wihout a body, without a murder weapon, etc... The ease of which it could be "proven" in our courts of law would be a slam dunk, as they say.

"To date no such evidence has ever been discovered."

Again, how do you know this? Seems you guys have some sort of crystal ball that I would really love to have! And still haven't responded to the disclosureproject... Interseting...

Re:its a matter of point of view

[SupremoMan]

Obivously they weren't that smar tto begin with. Or else they would have sent alien chimps first! Then again maybe they did....

Re:its a matter of point of view

[Tablizer]

I will never believe that an advanced race can travel all the way across the inconceivable distance between stars, and be dumb enough to crash.

Why wouldn't ET's be subject to resource constraints and "budgets" just like any other large organization. Perhaps this is human-centric arrogance to think we deserve the Rolls Royce of saucers to probe us, when in fact they are used Hyundai's.

Not once have they made proper contact and opened a dialogue, or established a visible presence.

Perhaps they just don't want to interact. I don't find that farfetched. If you want to observe a culture without changing it, then you keep out of sight.

As far as wether UFO's are from ET or not, your arguments against it here are weak. I don't think we could successfully second-guess what ET explorers would be up to if they came.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[angel'o'sphere]

Basically you assume two things in your belief: (1) familiarity with the Earth environment and experience therein and (2) total absence of mechanical/electrical/whatever failures. Neither is a given.

Well,

as soon as you are in our solar system you only need half a day from far away to figure:
a) atmosphere of earth, via the spectrum
b) gravity of earth, via the moon orbit
c) average temperature etc. via the sun distance

etc.

A ship advanced enough to reach us, needs to have a lot of failures to crash, certainly it does not crash because it tries to land and is surprised by anything, like nitrogen or gravity.

angel'o'sphere

Re:its a matter of point of view

[angel'o'sphere]

So thinks the gorilla: "We don't really know how Humans thought processes would work but we do have a fair idea of the physical practicalities of moving from one jungle to the another and based on that it's very hard to see why any human would simply come over to our group to watch us and then go away again."

Uh, well, gorillas are vegetarians ... so indeed they would conclude: they come and go again, like we (the gorillas) would, after all they are not (don't look like) leopards.

angel'o'sphere

Re:its a matter of point of view

[zippthorne]

Even if he was counting pluto as a planet, that doesn't explain why it was in the "gas-giant" category.

Re:its a matter of point of view

[eclectic4]

So, when the people cited in the disclosure project tell you that the reason is because it's being covered up, and that they have seen it, this means absolutely, positively nothing to you? You do realize that these people have had their credentials checked, and knew they were going to be ridiculed and punished for their actions, right? Considering the sources, I just can't throw out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak. Seems counterintuitive, and lacking any critical thought. Ah well... they've been doing a great job of it for over 50 years (as evident by your utter skepticism), so I guess there's nothing more to be said.

Oh for heavens sake

[KlausBreuer]

Why do people keep wanting to babble on about this idiocy? I want them to keep quiet about it - if you have to be a UFO-nut, I am certainly not interested in it.

Sheesh, ACC offered my this planet for a nice quiet vacation, but everywhere I see people babbling about UFOs...

Comment servir l'homme ?

[jmmerliot]

Never forget,

"Comment servir l'homme ?" (How to serve man ?)

is a cooking guide....

Juste loved this old TZ episode

-- a true frog from France ^^

Re:Comment servir l'homme ?

[frogstar_robot]

http://www.cfproductions.com/projects/LongPork/scr ipt.htm

Re:Comment servir l'homme ?

[NeuroManson]

For French Cuisine no doubt.

You mean...

[FedeLebron]

France surrenders to secret UFO files?

A better translation and masters

[Lord Satri]

Surprised by the bad translations in the comments, here's a more appropriate one (no, online translation tools are not as good as humans): Je, quant à moi, souhaite la bienvenue à nos nouveaux maîtres OVNIs.

Additionally, it's not "secoupe volante" pour rather "soucoupe volante" (flying saucer) (see other comment on parent). And if they wanted to be our masters and already made contact, since they would have the technology to reach us, I guess they'd already be our masters. (well, looking at our politicians' behavior, maybe they already are! ;-)

Re:A better translation and masters

[qazsedcft]

Surprised by the bad translations in the comments, here's a more appropriate one (no, online translation tools are not as good as humans): Je, quant à moi, souhaite la bienvenue à nos nouveaux maîtres OVNIs.

Yeah, except that in French a subordinate clause right after a personal pronoun is not very grammatical. Quant à moi, je souhaite la bienvenue ... would be more correct. Also, I think O.V.N.I. requires proper punctuation and can't be made plural.

Re:A better translation and masters

[ChameleonDave]

Je, quant à moi, souhaite la bienvenue à nos nouveaux maîtres OVNIs.

"Je" is very seldom separated from its verb.

Here's a better stab at it: Moi, je souhaite la bienvenue à nos nouveaux maîtres extraterrestres.

Or better still: Comme je suis complètement con, je passe mon temps à répéter des clichés hyper-chiants sur Slashdot.

Re:A better translation and masters

[an.echte.trilingue]

Yeah, except that in French a subordinate clause right after a personal pronoun is not very grammatical. Quant à moi, je souhaite la bienvenue ... would be more correct. Also, I think O.V.N.I. requires proper punctuation and can't be made plural.

Yeah, except that "quant à moi" is not a subordinate clause, which consists of a subject and a predicate. Also, in English, "grammatical" is an adjective, which usually requires a noun or a pronoun to modify. I do not know the grammatical rules for acronyms, but for what it is worth, the French wikipedia page does not include punctuation and has several instances of OVNI in the plural:

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/OVNI/

Personally, I would just go for "Pour ma part, je souhaite la bienvenue à nos nouveaux maîtres OVNIs", but I am not a native francophone and my English sucks too.

Take care,

-mat

Re:A better translation and masters

[o'reor]

Or better still: Comme je suis complètement con, je passe mon temps à répéter des clichés hyper-chiants sur Slashdot.

We have a winner!!! ;-)

Though personally I would edit s/hyper-chiants/débiles/ but it's only a matter of taste, I think we agree overall...

Re:A better translation and masters

[rifter]

And if they wanted to be our masters and already made contact, since they would have the technology to reach us, I guess they'd already be our masters. (well, looking at our politicians' behavior, maybe they already are! ;-)

Anyone advanced enough to develop interstellar travel would probably be smart enough to come up with better plans than our politicians; if anything the Earth would be much better regulated than it is now. Then again they would also probably be smart enough not to bother ruling a backward planet filled with suicidal primates bent on taking the world with them.

There is the interesting possibility of an interstellar society which regresses much like our own in that interstellar vehicles and other similar tech are so ubiquitous and education so inadequate that pilots/users actually have no idea how the equipment works or how to maintain it. Then stupid, sadistic fools with far more money than brains could cruise the universe in giant spaceships that deliberately waste energy in search of amusement and happen upon our planet. It would be much like some of the early European settlers and the games they played with natives (which weren't so much fun for them -- see the Yaqui and Tasmanians ), and not unlike that of a small boy molesting a pile of ants. It would require neither wisdom nor intelligence and as unlikely as it is would be more likely than the scenario you describe.

Unless our planet's resources are more rare than we think, or there is some property of our location that makes it more important than we now know, it just doesn't seem that our planet would be that interesting to your average spacefarers except for the curiousity. If we were to be ruled by some spacefaring race you'd think the first thing they'd do is get rid of us since we are screwing up the planet they want.

Incidentally, the fact we know of no other planet like ours and no other life than this makes it even more important that we do not mess this one up and start working on finding other systems in which to plant life while we still can. Even if there is life elsewhere this is still a good idea; I am actually pretty glad that Stephen Hawking agrees because people will listen to him before they will listen to anyone else on an issue like this.

Re:A better translation and masters

[Comrade Kat]

I wish that people would listen to Stephen Hawking more than anyone else, but the truth is that if Paris Hilton said something about it, more "people" would know... There's our lovely media for you.

I'm glad you modified your initial statement, because I was going to say that the assumption that any kind of extraterrestrial life would be "smart enough to have better plans" is a little faulty. I have to agree with the second paragraph. And add that I doubt any level of intelligence would make an entire species wise enough to understand what they're doing in their world, any better than we understand what we're doing in ours...

Re:A better translation and masters

[cwis42]

Personally, I would just go for "Pour ma part, je souhaite la bienvenue à nos nouveaux maîtres OVNIs", but I am not a native francophone and my English sucks too.

For anyone who cares, acronyms never get plurialized in french, so it's more "à nos nouveaux maîtres OVNI".

(Yes, I'am french.)

Re:A better translation and masters

[gobbo]

Then stupid, sadistic fools with far more money than brains could cruise the universe in giant spaceships that deliberately waste energy in search of amusement and happen upon our planet. It would be much like some of the early European settlers and the games they played with natives (which weren't so much fun for them -- see the Yaqui and Tasmanians ), and not unlike that of a small boy molesting a pile of ants.

Hey, crop circles! Like doing spins in the parking lot.

Re:A better translation and masters

[pipingguy]

...it just doesn't seem that our planet would be that interesting to your average spacefarers except for the curiousity.

Yeah, but what if said spacefarers feed on stupidity instead of raw brains and nubile females? That might explain a lot of things.

Re:A better translation and masters

[OriginalArlen]

Personally, I would just go for "Pour ma part, je souhaite la bienvenue à nos nouveaux maîtres OVNIs", but I am not a native francophone and my English sucks too.

For anyone who cares, acronyms never get plurialized in french, so it's more "à nos nouveaux maîtres OVNI".

(Yes, I'am french.)

That explains your outRAAAYJJEOUS accente!

Re:A better translation and masters

[hr raattgift]

Comme je suis complètement con, je passe mon temps à répéter des clichés hyper-chiants sur Slashdot

Je passe mon temps à répéter des clichés hyper chiants chez Slashdot, car je suis un con total.

Subordinate phrases should not be hoisted in front of principal ones in French.

Comme is used for "as in" or "like", as a comparative.

Car is synonymous with and substitutable for parce que ("because", causal linkage), whereas comme is not.

In your principal clause, Je passe mon temps à + inf. is OK idiom, but a rearrangement feels more natural: Je passe mon temps sur Slashdot, à répéter les clichés ...

hyper chiants (no hyphen). Nice if you're into science fiction, role playing games, Lisp Machine keyboards, or greek affixes in common use in American English but seen relatively rarely in French, but in itself is a cliché in francophone forums similar to Slashdot. I don't know if you are using irony deliberately, but if that is not your intent then perhaps something like clichés crasseux or perhaps clichés débiles which is much more common idiom, but much less forceful.

How about:

Je passe mon temps sur ce Slashdot,
à répéter ses clichés crasseux,
malgré qu'ils sont très biens connus.
Car je ne suis qu'un ididot,
j'ignore tout ce que le destin veut:
mes idées seront revenues.

Re:A better translation and masters

[ChameleonDave]

Subordinate phrases should not be hoisted in front of principal ones in French.

Hmmm, that doesn't seem to be true to me. In both languages they can go before or after. After may be more common, but I wanted the emphasis gained by putting it before.

Comme is used for "as in" or "like", as a comparative.

Indeed it is. But are you unaware of its other uses? At the beginning of a sentence it can be causal, translated as "because", "since" or "as".

Car is synonymous with and substitutable for parce que

Yep, car is the equivalent of comme, the difference being that car introduces following subordinate clauses, whereas comme introduces preceding subordinate clauses.

In your principal clause, Je passe mon temps à + inf. is OK idiom, but a rearrangement feels more natural: Je passe mon temps sur Slashdot, à répéter les clichés ...

What I put seems the most natural to me. If I have a look on Google, stuff like Je passe mon temps sur le net à surfer get far fewer results than stuff like Je passe mon temps à surfer sur le net. And certainly what I wanted to say was "I spend my time repeating clichés on Slashdot", not "I spend my time on Slashdot repeating clichés".

hyper chiants (no hyphen).

Yeah, I am a bit non-standard with my hyphen usage. I can't bear to completely separate it from the noun when I know it is a prefix in origin.

greek affixes in common use in American English but seen relatively rarely in French

I don't speak American English, but I did live in Bordeaux a few years ago and chat online with young French people; and I observed that super and hyper were common slang intensifying adverbs. One could also say très or vachement. They've probably totally fallen out of fashion now, and I am probably out of date, but my use of them has nothing to do with science fiction, American English, French Slashdots, or anything similar.

clichés crasseux or perhaps clichés débiles I don't think it really matters whether I said chiant or débile. The main point was to correct stuff like "Je, pour une, bienvenu notre nouvelle ONVI maitre!" or "acceullir" or "secoupe", which was way, way off.

How about: ...

Bah, that just showing off!

wow!

[minus_273]

I didnt know people were even listening to the former canadian defense minister. Looks like the first concrete step towards solving global warming! al gore should be happy.

And that's not the worst part...

[jpellino]

The French are looking to prosecute any UFOs who aren't using open standards for their communications.

Re:And that's not the worst part...

[ericlondaits]

Like those nefarious aliens that used AppleTalk in Independence Day!

Re:And that's not the worst part...

[o'reor]

The French are looking to prosecute any UFOs who aren't using open standards for their communications.

/me shudders to the thought of aliens using Minitels to control their spaceships...

Informative? Try 'Misinformative'

[dreamchaser]

This has not been out since 2003. You're talking about a report...this is a website FULL of reports, photos, etc.

Two very different things. RTFA next time before you go karma whoring ;)

The first country?

[mangst]

I wouldn't say that the French are "the first country" to do this. The Brits seemed to have done something similar months ago by having the Ministry of Defense release all UFO reports it received from 2002-2006 under the Freedom of Information Act. Though I have no links to back me up, I believe Brazil has also freed up its UFO information, or at least is in the process of doing so.

Raelians...

[Notquitecajun]

Oh, great. Thanks, France, for giving the Raelians a chance to get some publicity. Bet they won't be long in coming out with some claptrap about this...

Does anyone really believe this...

[sarlos]

You'll have to excuse me for going all tinfoil hat here... but how hard would it be to say "We're releasing all our UFO files!" and only really reveal the ones that won't cause "public panic." I'm usually not the conspiracy theory type, but any time a government says they're releasing "all" the information on something, a part of me wants to cry "bullshit."

Quit with French bashing already !!!

[unity100]

especially you, americans !

you should remember that the freedoms you are enjoying now were put forward in their current forms mostly by french intellectuals in 18th century, matured in this country and then were accepted by your founding fathers and incorporated into your constitution and the consequent revolution. not to mention french aiding you against the british, lafayette and all.

and i dont even need to mention the french revolution, which is the social movement that set the way to the modern civilized society by overthrowing aristocracy not only in france, but in most of europe. it was eventually messed up by a short megalomaniac who is known as napoleon, but eh - revolution still did its thing.

french are ok.

the only problem is that, they hatch on stuff TOO long, only to put the stuff into action in 100-200 year intervals. and then, major things happen. all in the meantime they sleep, ruled by egotistic megalomaniacs.

Re:Quit with French bashing already !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The French,

By Gary Brecher

The new big thing on the web is all these sites with names like "I Hate
France," with supposed datelines of French military history, supposedly
proving how the French are total cowards. Well, I'm going to tell you guys
something you probably don't want to hear: these sites are total bullshit,
the notion that the French are cowards is total bullshit, and anybody who
knows anything about European military history knows damn well that over the
past thousand years, the French have the most glorious military history in
Europe, maybe the world.

Before you send me more of those death threats, let me finish. I hate Chirac
too, and his disco foreign minister with the blow-dry 'do and the snotty
smile. But there are two things I hate more than I hate the French: ignorant
fake war buffs, and people who are ungrateful. And when an American mouths
off about French military history, he's not just being ignorant, he's being
ungrateful. I was raised to think ungrateful people were trash.

When I say ungrateful, I'm talking about the American Revolution. If you're
a true American patriot, then this is the war that matters. Hell, most of
you probably couldn't name three major battles from it, but try going back
to when you read Johnny Tremaine in fourth grade and you might recall a
little place called Yorktown, Virginia, where we bottled up Cornwallis's
army, forced the Brits' surrender and pretty much won the war.

Well, news flash: "we" didn't win that battle, any more than the Northern
Alliance conquered the Taliban. The French army and navy won Yorktown for
us. Americans didn't have the materiel or the training to mount a combined
operation like that, with naval blockade and land siege. It was the French
artillery forces and military engineers who ran the siege, and at sea it was
a French admiral, de Grasse, who kicked the shit out of the British navy
when they tried to break the siege.

Long before that, in fact as soon as we showed the Brits at Saratoga that we
could win once in a while, they started pouring in huge shipments of
everything from cannon to uniforms. We'd never have got near Yorktown if it
wasn't for massive French aid.

So how come you bastards don't mention Yorktown in your cheap webpages? I'll
tell you why: because you're too ignorant to know about it and too dishonest
to mention it if you did.

The thing that gets to me is why Americans hate the French so much when they
only did us good and never did us any harm. Like, why not hate the Brits?
They're the ones who killed thousands of Americans in the Revolution, and
thirty years later they came back and attacked us again. That time around
they managed to burn Washington DC to the ground while they were at it. How
come you web jerks never mention that?

Sure, the easy answer is because the Brits are with us now, and the French
aren't. But being a war buff means knowing your history and respecting it.
Well, so much for ungrateful. Now let's talk about ignorant. And that's what
you are if you think the French can't fight: just plain ignorant.

Appreciation of the French martial spirit is just about the most basic way
you can distinguish real war nerds from fake little teachers'pets.

Let's take the toughest case first: the German invasion, 1940, when the
French Army supposedly disgraced itself against the Wehrmacht. This is the
only real evidence you'll find to call the French cowards, and the more you
know about it, the less it proves. Yeah, the French were scared of Hitler.
Who wasn't? Chamberlain, the British prime minister, all but licked the
Fuhrer's goosesteppers, basically let him have all of Central Europe,
because Britain was terrified of war with Germany. Hell, Stalin signed a
sweetheart deal with Hitler out of sheer terror, and Stalin wasn't a man who
scared easy.

The French were scared, all right. But they had reason to be

Re:Quit with French bashing already !!!

[kazade84]

However, we British can continue bashing the French as we always have done :p

Re:Quit with French bashing already !!!

[Plutonite]

That was a great piece. But posted by an Anonymous Coward? Surely there's some irony in there somewhere ;)

Re:Quit with French bashing already !!!

[unity100]

eh ?

while jumping on all the new fashion trends from france in the last 600 years ?

Re:Quit with French bashing already !!!

[o'reor]

Bon, les gars, on passe aux choses sérieuses. Fetchez la vache !

Re:Quit with French bashing already !!!

[noddyxoi]

Great post. I wish i had mod points... stupid voting system.

Re:Quit with French bashing already !!!

[unity100]

Maybe half of the world intellectuals were educated in france back then.

Re:Quit with French bashing already !!!

[SpeedyG5]

Get out! France was not altruistic, nor have they ever been, they are about France, if England had won the war about the only difference would be that we would drinking more tea. That said I am mildly happy they weren't giving up at the time.

Re:Quit with French bashing already !!!

[unity100]

Well,

half of frenchmen then were altruistic, as they were following on voltaire, rousseau and others' ideas, half of them were just seeking revenge from english. percentages may vary.

Re:Quit with French bashing already !!!

[serbanp]

Hey, you're mostly correct, but come on, you're painting the French as they had won every damn brawl since anno domine 1000 (I'm glad you didn't start with Clovis).

The thing is, prior to Napoleon Bonaparte (who was, bar none, one of the best, if not THE BEST, military commanders of all time), the French were defeated many more times they won. Azincourt pops up to mind, a very embarrasing defeat. Also, let's not forget the first Franco-German war of 1870-1871, miserably (pun intended) lost by the French army (WWI was sort of a revenge to this one).

Anyway, national slur always was a popular pass-time. People get more idiotic all the time and the broadcasting helps the scum have a stronger voice, hence all this mindless bashing.

Re:Quit with French bashing already !!!

[unity100]

you do not have an adequate knowledge of history on that matter.

french revolution did not just pop out of the blue.

the ideas and dynamics that created it were well underway in france even in 1750s. the works of people like rousseau, voltaire and such have propagated the ideas of equality, freedom, self-governance in the period between 1750-1789.

actually they were the 'hot' writers of the time - kinda like bestsellers of today. not only your founding fathers read them, but even some absolutist monarchs have read and followed them (catherina of russia, frederick II of prussia).

by 1776, those ideas were already on the go in many countries, including the british colonies. the reason that your revolution had found that immediate and whole hearted support from french is that french people actually were sympathizing with the revolutionary ideals in the colonies, which were directly taken from 18th century enlightenment. actually, after the french-indian war (where colonies and britain fought french and indians), france was exhausted. if it wasnt for the public participation (countless volunteers had come forth to fight with the colonies under people like lafayette - not counting lafayette himself) and the public pressure (which resulted in french state resources being tied to this new war despite not 20 years having passed from the end of the war, like navy which was battered in the last), colonies wouldnt stand a chance against the british.

1776 was like a rehearsal of french revolution ideals (you, by now are probably aware that french revolution ideals are a term applied to all principles of equality, freedom, self-governance etc that are put forward in the enlightenment age's period between 1740-1789) that were to be put to practice in the 1789 revolution, this time against a government WITHIN.

UFOs exist

[jonwil]

Aliens and flying saucers may not exist but anyone who has seen something flying in the sky (bird, airplane or anything else) and cannot identify what it is has seen a UFO. More to the point, many secret "black" aircraft (both projects like the SR71, B2, F117 and U2 that have been revealed already and projects we don't know about) would be considered UFOs to anyone who doesn't know what they are.

All those people who have reported UFO sightings near Area 51 are probably right, they most likely DID see UFOs. Since the prime use of Area 51 is to test secret aircraft in a way that makes sure that no-one finds out about them, most of the air operations out of the base would have appeared as UFOs to anyone except the few people working on whatever top secret project it is.

As to why countries like America have not released their "UFO" files, its more likely to be because said files could contain information about "black" projects (those of the US, those of allied powers and those of enemy powers such as the Russians). Some of those aircraft are still flying (and some may well still be "top secret") and the US probably doesn't want information about aircraft that may still be used now or in the future to be made public.

Re:UFOs exist

[ajpr]

Yeah I agree with this. It's hard to imagine how much R&D the US spends on black projects. I'm still quite in awe of the Stealth Fighter which was on the drawing board in the 70s. Surely by now there is something else the money is being spent on? Maybe a nuclear pulse powered aircraft similar to Orion?

Also even if some UFO's are aliens, the reason they might not contact us is that we are too stupid. We're unlikely to go to Mars and try conversing with any bacteria, and even on Earth we don't spend much time trying to talk to earthworms etc. Perhaps with computers in the future, intelligence will be on a completely different scale, something we can't even begin to comprehend, nevermind actually understand in any meaningful way.

Re:UFOs exist

[unity100]

There are no technology on earth capable of making any aircraft do 90 multiple degree turns while going with a 3000 km/hour speed, or disappear from naked eye.

Re:UFOs exist

[drinkypoo]

There are no technology on earth capable of making any aircraft do 90 multiple degree turns while going with a 3000 km/hour speed, or disappear from naked eye.

90 multiple degree turns? I can make ninety turns of two degrees each at 3000kph! If I could go that fast.

There are however technologies that could apparently create that effect.

On THAT note, I wonder if HAARP's localized heating of the atmosphere ever produces visible effects.

As for disappearing, it wouldn't be very hard at night, or near dusk. We have paint that changes color with temperature, and paint that changes color with an electrical charge. For that matter, the entire skin of an aircraft could be covered with an e-Ink-like paint that would, were it multichromatic, permit you to change it to any color you liked. We have long been able to make aircraft that have the radar signature of a small bird. I think you lack imagination.

Re:UFOs exist

[K'Lyre]

Do a search for The Disclosure Project. Absolutely fascinating stuff backed by pretty high-level government people. It goes into detail about what they saw, what they know, and when they were told to NOT know it anymore.

Re:UFOs exist

[unity100]

it is not a matter of 'creating effects' individually as per se - these 'effects' commonly exist in many mass ufo sightings all at once. and not at nights or dusk either.

also note that quite a high percentage of those sightings documented pertain to earlier decades, where things resembling 'e-Ink-like' paints were not even mentioned in sci-fi works or comics.

Re:UFOs exist

[oGMo]

If there is no technology on earth that could make this happen, then, on earth, it hasn't happened.

What's funny is, once 3D projection is widespread... seeing this sort of thing will just be "one of those things," much like special effects in movies were once spectacular, but now with CG you can do just about anything, and most things are yawners.

Re:UFOs exist

[unity100]

"If there is no technology on earth that could make this happen, then, on earth, it hasn't happened."

explain recorded evidence then

Re:UFOs exist

[Harry Coin]

You, sir, underestimate the power of Jack Daniels.

Re:UFOs exist

[lawpoop]

I'm open-minded about UFO sightings. However, I grew up right next to a small airport and saw several "UFOs" that I shortly realized was an airplane.

As far as objects disappearing from the naked eye, I can think of an easy explanation offhand. This is something I've witnessed personally: When an airplane is reflecting sunlight in the evening, it shows up as a bright metallic object. Because both the sun and the airplane are in motion, there will be a point in time, a single instant, when the light goes to a different angle. At this point, the bright, shiny airplane becomes totally dark. If the plane is far enough away, it just disappears. It's like someone using a mirror to reflect sunlight right into your eyes, and slowly turning it away. There will be a single moment when it just stops shining.

At this time, I'm not aware of any well-understood phenomena that explains multiple 90* turns at high speeds -- so good point there.

Re:UFOs exist

[unity100]

And you, sir, overestimate it.

2-3 years ago tens of thousands of people have watched ufos for hours over a span of days in mexico.

if all those people were on daniels, than jack daniels would as well do better off by closing down its marketing department since there would be no need for it anymore.

Re:UFOs exist

[unity100]

This is something I've witnessed personally: When an airplane is reflecting sunlight in the evening, it shows up as a bright metallic object. Because both the sun and the airplane are in motion, there will be a point in time, a single instant, when the light goes to a different angle. At this point, the bright, shiny airplane becomes totally dark.

only for individual cases.

in cases like mexico sightings, or phoneix sightings, where tens of thousands of people scattered in around tens of kilometer square areas, reflections do not suffice as the light angle would be different for any other observant located far from each other.

Re:UFOs exist

[lawpoop]

That's a valid point. I hadn't considered that.

Good piece pal

[unity100]

thank you for posting it

Wouldn't they send -probes- ahead?

[*weasel]

While I agree that aliens aren't going to master interstellar flight, just to crash on Earth - I also don't think they're going to plow into our own atmosphere willy-nilly without sending probes in or running earth's gravity through their systems to ensure they have the proper equipment to land safely.

Interestingly, if they were sending in probes, it wouldn't be at all surprising if several of them failed.
So we see that the question of: "would little green men crash?" is too narrow. Stepping back, the question becomes: "would anything built by little green men crash?".

Clearly, this is more plausible, and pretty close to likely if little green men were indeed observing us, and launching probes with any regularity.

Disclosure Project

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.disclosureproject.com/

Re:Disclosure Project

[0111 1110]

Huh? That's just another UFO crank website. The UFO crazies have got to be some of the most insane people on the planet. Only the people who think they are God or Napoleon are worse. Still it's fun to listen to them. It's the kind of stuff I would like to be true because its all so exciting and dramatic. I'd like to believe in ghosts and werewolves as well. Too bad that damn reality (i.e. evidence, facts) has to get in the way of all our fun.

Re:Disclosure Project

[BobSutan]

While I admit some of their people do seem pretty nutty, some also appear to be quite sane and have impeccable credentials--and have evidence (i.e. radar logs).

Look at the video floating around on Youtube and actually listen to what the former FAA crash investigator has to say. There is definitely something to it, but as for the free energy/little grey men slant, yeah right.

Surrender Monkeys

[WED Fan]

The files show that between 1949 and 1972, France surrended a total of 122 times to suspected UFO invaders. There was another incident in which they negotiated a collaboration with alien grays, only to find out they were Basque shepards in ultra-lights, the language difficulty causing the misunderstanding.

Re:Surrender Monkeys

[Tablizer]

I wonder what the French people think of all these "surrender" jokes. What's their side of the story?

Re:Surrender Monkeys

[WED Fan]

They've given into them.

What this means...

[Brian Cohen]

What this says to me, is that the French government acknowledges the fact that such information contains no threat to national security, contains no secrets, and will cause no panic. Back when we kept our investigations into UFOs confidential, the cold war was going on, and the US government thought that such UFOs could be top-secret Soviet weapons. And the US government could not release what information we have on UFOs, because that would provide the Soviets with information on how much we know about UFOs. By releasing such information to the public, France has done a good thing, and this data could possibly be used for actual science for finding out what exactly are UFOs, and may be a catalyst for other governments to release what they have investigated.

Gee, Thanks.

[Radon360]

I didn't realize that submitting a story made me a "twat".

That's great that you brought the fact that the UK government has released some similar information to the public, long before France had done so. Perhaps the reporter of this article should be labelled a "twat" for not researching the topic further and bringing up that point, or at least not make the bold comment about France being the first.

Which brings up another point. If you ever have submitted a story to Slashdot, you'd recognize that the editors tend to take quite a bit of liberty on rewriting the story summaries (for better or worse). I didn't "note" anything...the summary was just rewritten to say I did.

Re:Gee, Thanks.

[chebucto]

Don't worry about it. Anyone who has been on slashdot long enough knows that the submitter's content is just the part that appears as a quote; the mini-introduction is always done by the editors. _My_ first story that was accepted to slashdot had a glaring typo in the title; the first 50 comments were devoted to making fun of that mistake!

Regardless, I, for one, welcome this news about France releasing UFO documents. It reminds me of the heady days of X-Files and the fun people had in speculating, semi-seriously, about the existence of UFOs and government conspiracies.

Re:Gee, Thanks.

[jahudabudy]

I didn't realize that submitting a story made me a "twat".

Well, there you go: lesson learned. If you want to get ahead on /. just stick to making snarky comments about the other users, karma whoring, and OCD refreshing of the front page to get that elusive first post. Submitting interesting stories and making interesting or informative comments about said stories is sooo ... huh, I wanted to make a joke, then got all sad b/c I realized I honestly couldn't come up with a board where that is the norm. I think I'll go bump up my filter a notch or two now.

Re:Gee, Thanks.

[Heir Of The Mess]

I didn't realize that submitting a story made me a "twat".

It's an inside secret. Welcome to the inner sanctom. At least you got "Accepted". Now you can look down all the "Rejected Twats". You don't even want to know what we call the people who actually read the article.

all your base are belong to us

[jerryodom]

toute votre base sont appartiennent à nous

May be a UFO?

[AeroIllini]

From the sidebar next to the article:

'Phoenix lights' a UFO?
A former governor now says an event in the sky may have been a UFO. CNN's Gary Tuchman reports. Hey, Arizona! UFO != Flying Saucer with Little Green Men!

UFO stands for Unidentified Flying Object. How can you be unsure whether an object is unidentified? Either you've identified it, or you haven't.

Maybe they'll know what I saw ...

[mvea]

Signs of an Alien Invasion http://www.omninerd.com/2007/02/25/articles/71

Apparently

[multisync]

that's your only joke.

If the server keeps crashing from traffic...

[KincaidKMF]

How are we supposed to conduct our search for anything hinting at a new hyperspace bypass?

Bill Watterson

[paladinwannabe2]

It comes from a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon.

EMP and severe thunderstorms

[mcoletti]

I will never believe that an advanced race can travel all the way across the inconceivable distance between stars, and be dumb enough to crash.

There was supposedly a very severe thunderstorm for the infamous 1947 Roswell crash. Also note that there were upper atmosphere nuclear tests in the '50s and '60s, some of which knocked out power and otherwise disrupted electronics for hundreds of miles. It's conceivable that either of these scenarios could play havoc with avionics leading to a crash.

Re:EMP and severe thunderstorms

[rucs_hack]

but, and I want to make myself exactly clear here THERE WERE NO BLOODY ALIENS!!!!!!111one

ok?

Re:EMP and severe thunderstorms

[mcoletti]

I see that you enjoy "proof by all caps and 133t exclamation points."

Re:EMP and severe thunderstorms

[rucs_hack]

of course :)

Especially the pretend mistaken typing of 1's

It's a long trip...

[Shark]

... maybe they just fell asleep at the wheel.

Re:It's a long trip...

[rucs_hack]

I am undone, you've beaten me, wow how could I not have thought of that :-)

How do we know?

[anubi]

Weird optical effects occur when media at different densities interact. Commonly known ones are magnifying glasses and the shimmering mirage effects around heated objects.

If I only get a visual, I can not write off the effects of air at different densities causing optical effects to appear, maybe thousands of feet up, reflecting and refracting light from possible far off sources.

In a similar vein, radio amateurs will use anamalous atmospherics which will randomly open up communication windows to far off places and people can open communication links to far off reaches of the world on milliwatts of power ( aka "QRP" ).

When I was a kid, it was fun to sit for hours in front of a little homebrew 1 watt transmitter (made with old radio tubes, no less) and see how far away I could talk to someone, then later we would both exchange postcards (QSL cards) to confirm and serve as proof the communication occurred. We collected these cards much like a baseball enthusiasts collect baseball cards. It was a bragging point to have a wall full of cards from people all over the world, that you talked to ( often just long enough to exchange QSL information before your link died ) to show your friends.

Ahhh, so much for the 50's, and early 60's.

The fun died for me when all the manufacturers got into the game and the whole thing began to hinge on wealth instead of creativity.

Anwyay, I digress... We all know that air of different temperatures abutting can cause weird optical effects, and before I go off claiming some entity traveled light years to get here, I had better be damned sure what I was seeing wasn't air pockets of different temperatures optically mimicking a giant mirror/lens that was giving me the optical illusion of something in the sky which is really something else on the ground, far far away.

Re:How do we know?

[unity100]

the fact is, atmospherical/natural phenomenon, does not happen twice in a century. given the right circumstances, they are bound to occur regularly, even if in different places of the world.

additionally, atmospheric phenomenon cannot follow plotted courses - they just unfold as the nature allows them to.

and atmospherical/natural phenomenon suggestions are too weak to explain countless sightings of different nature around the world.

if atmosphere/nature has been that lively, 'atmosphere watching' would be another form of entertainment.

Re:mod up in french

[neutrino38]

I would choose Votez pour le parent

because in French you vote for something, this is impliclty up as in English. The term parent might be kept as is even if non-geeks might be a bit disoriented (but who reads /. excepts (potentially francophone) geeks?

As above. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

Anyone advanced enough to develop interstellar travel would probably be smart enough to come up with better plans than our politicians; if anything the Earth would be much better regulated than it is now. Then again they would also probably be smart enough not to bother ruling a backward planet filled with suicidal primates bent on taking the world with them.

You are thinking too human-centric.

Consider the following possibility. . .

Aliens exist in a higher state of reality than we can perceive; that is, they are with us right now, all the time. They function and exist in a state where time does not exist for them in the same way it does for us. That is, the thousands of UFO reports are not of nuts and bolts technology, but of bits of reality poking through into ours.

Second. . . What if these aliens are to us what we are to cows. That they are here to eat us. What if they consume the energy from negative emotions such as fear and pain. This would explain our high population, our constant state of screwed up religion, war and general suffering around the globe. It also explains our media's and our education system's aversion of looking at sciences which would help explain the alien presence. That of being living on the "spirit plane", (so to speak). Of chi and magic in general.

This explanation, as distasteful as it sounds, nonetheless answers all the puzzles presented to us be the short-sighted Carl Sagans of the world. Sci-fi wants us to think in terms of other humans from space. It doesn't look at the idea that aliens are far more intelligent and have no interest in communicating with us beyond manipulation and control.

Look at our cattle industry. --We breed an entire race of animals totally controlled for our consumption. Aliens need to eat too.

As above, so below.

-FL

Re:As above. . .

[mahmud]

Right, first you accuse the parent of being too human centric and then you go and spill your heart out about how suffering and negative emotions are something more than just mechanisms that help humans interact with their environment.

And then you go on to complain about how media and schools have an aversion to science while posting gibberish which flies in the face of every even slightly credible scientific worldview.

I could go an and refute every single one of your points in detail, but I bet you are not in it for discussion, judging by your casual dismissal of Carl Sagan.

Guess I am getting all worked up about nothing, really. You'll probably feel mildly amused and somewhat ashamed about your post once the effects of the LSD wear off.

Anyway, sorry for bothering you and have a nice trip and comedown...

Re:As above. . .

[nido]

I don't think your 'aliens are here to eat us' thing works very well - It seems rather confrontational to me, like you're only giving half the story.

What if these aliens are to us what we are to cows. That they are here to eat us. What if they consume the energy from negative emotions such as fear and pain.

Robert Monroe uses a cow analogy too, but he said it's more like the milk cow at the end of the day - its udder hurts, and it knows to go to the barn where the farmer will relieve the discomfort. Thought it was in Far Journeys, but after a bit of a search I think it must be in Ultimate Journey. Both are excellent books, if you're not familiar...

Also, I'm not particularly well read in the alien thing, but I understand that there are different groups. Some feed off the negativity; others are helping to advance the human condition.

Re:As above. . .

[WilliamSChips]

I'm not sure how accurate what you're actually saying is but that sounds like a damn-good jumping-off point for a science-fiction story.

Re:As above. . .

[Bloke down the pub]

Sounds a lot like those bloody thebans that Jehova's witnesses believe in. So 100% true, then.

John Keel figured this out back in the early '70's

[Master of Transhuman]

And everybody still talks about "aliens" thirty five years later.

My personal theory is based on two simple facts: evolution and the inevitability of nanotechnology. My theory is that UFOs are merely Transhumans who arose from a species (proto-human, probably, given the number of different proto-humans running around) on this planet which got intelligent marginally faster than the species that ended up being human. They got technology first, they got nanotechnology first, and did all this probably before humans got written civilization (you'd only need a thousand years or so head start, maybe less - a blink of an eye in historical and evolutionary terms). The nanotech enabled them to leapfrog technologically thousands, scores of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years into the future technologically over the last ten or twenty thousand years of human cultural development.

At this point, they literally could be everywhere here and be doing anything, and we wouldn't know about it - except for the oddball events we call "UFO"s, They could have the technology to edit all human perceptions in realtime, and we'd never know it. As Professor Michio Kaku once said, humans would be like an ant colony living next to a superhighway - the ability to perceive the situation just isn't there.

It's like the Oracle said in "Matrix: Reloaded": "Anytime you've heard stories about vampires, werewolves or aliens, it was some program doing what it's not supposed to."

Even with Drexler's level of nanootech (let alone the possibilities of speculative femtotech or picotech), Transhumans could imbed a Pentium-level processor in every cell in the human body (trillions) which operate as one massive parallel system which could control every perception and reaction of the human brain. In fact, nothing would stop them embedding such processors controlling Drexler's little "cellular robots" into EVERYTHING on the planet - giving them total control of the entire environment humans exist in.

"The Matrix" ain't squat compared to that capability.

Personally I doubt Transhumans would bother. It's merely a speculation to make the point that a Transhuman species with sufficiently ubiquitous nanotechnology and the advanced physics resulting from that capability of accelerated technological development basically could easily behave in a manner that would explain the UFO phenomena and a lot more oddball phenomena besides.

The "alien" explanation is a result of lack of imagination, nothing more. Especially if you believe that the speed of light limits interstellar travel (which I don't, but many UFO skeptics do).

What I think is really happening here is: we're not the top of the food chain. They are. And we're lucky because if they wanted to, they could exterminate the human species in hours.

DUH

[Lord Kano]

I meant, "stupid little hats".

LK

You all of Earth...

[hike2]

You all of Earth are, IDIOTS!

One phrase comes to mind...

[sethstorm]

moralement en faillite?

From the declassified 1958 file...

[Zhe Mappel]

Zees morning, UFO lands in Paris outside Montmartre. Leetle green hommes, they ask to be taken to leader. Unfortunately, zey ask Sartre. Jean Paul he says there ees no such thing as leader, "leader" ees fantasy we are creating to deny zee eesential notheengness of our absurd lives. Green hommes ees crushed. They get back in ship. Bon voyage, mes amis.

Re:For want of a nail...

[drachton]

I did not in fact engage in any America-bashing, as far as I can tell. I reacted, somewhat vigorously perhaps, to what I believe is an unwarranted insult -- that ungrateful France laid down without a fight in two world wars only to be rescued by the US. That is not how things happened, and it is my opinion that it's outrageous to let such falsehoods be uttered without a challenge. If my remarks regarding the US participation in WWII were percieved as an attack on America, know that this was not my intent. It is well documented that an atmosphere of fear and defeatsim permeated much of the French political, and some of the military, elites during the run-up to WWII, and, in my opinion, not surprisingly so considering the position they were in. However, I do take issue with people who bundle up WWI right along with WWII as examples of "French cowardice". At a time such as this, when it is considered an affront to the memory of the 3200+ American dead in Irak to question the handling of military operations over there, I believe it is an affront at least as despicable to tax the almost 2,000,000 French citizens, military or civilian, who died fighting what was, after all, a war of survival.

Intent

[Fantastic Lad]

Right, first you accuse the parent of being too human centric and then you go and spill your heart out about how suffering and negative emotions are something more than just mechanisms that help humans interact with their environment.

Negative emotions are certainly tied to behavioral mechanisms, but they nonetheless have an energetic quality. This is not human-centric. It's life-centric. Since aliens are also alive, it's a common denominator which we share with them. Our technology and perceived limits of physical reality are not. The original poster was making a false assumption with regard to this.

And then you go on to complain about how media and schools have an aversion to science while posting gibberish which flies in the face of every even slightly credible scientific worldview.

You only think I'm talking gibberish because you happen to be ignorant. Your concept of a 'credible scientific worldview' is limited by the media you watch and the education you received. Circular logic, I know, however it also happens to be correct.

I could go an and refute every single one of your points in detail, but I bet you are not in it for discussion, judging by your casual dismissal of Carl Sagan.

You could try, but seeing as you still believe in the orthodox explanation of reality, it means you probably don't know how to challenge conventional thinking and thus have little in the arsenal of your mind beyond the regular canned nonsense most sleepers come pre-installed with. For instance. . . Carl Sagan is an astrophysicist. Why do you believe this gives him any authority in the matter of UFOs? What does stellar chemistry and gravity modeling have to do with understanding alien intent?

-FL