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IBM Targets UFOs, Ghosts, and Goblins With Search Tool

Posted by samzenpus on Thu Mar 08, 2007 02:34 PM
from the isn't-halloween-over dept.
Sci-Fi IBM
coondoggie writes "IBM wants to help you find out if UFOs are real. Well, sort of. With UFO sightings seemingly on the rise, Big Blue is teaming with The Anomalies Network to offer UFO Crawler, a new search engine specifically tuned to search for information about the paranormal, unexplained or just plain bizarre. The search tool employs IBM's OmniFind Yahoo! Edition enterprise search software and the UFO Crawler should help users precisely target and gather information from relevant sources, including thousands of documents and files collected in the vast Anomalies Network archive, as well as multiple global resources across the Web on topics such as such as ghosts, conspiracy theories and extraterrestrials."
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IBM Targets UFOs, Ghosts, and Goblins With Search Tool 50 Comments More /

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  • Military projects (Score:3, Insightful)

    by electrosoccertux (874415) <electrosoccertux.gmail@com> on Thursday March 08 2007, @02:38PM (#18279796)
    Presumably the most stealthy plane form is a saucer. The idea of many is that these flying saucer sightings are nothing but X-projects. I don't see why this isn't likely to be the case.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

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

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

      I think it is highly plausible that if there was some sort of contact with not-of-this earth beings and technology

      • Re:Military projects (Score:5, Funny)

        by eln (21727) on Thursday March 08 2007, @03:19PM (#18280276) Homepage
        Wow man, it's a good thing you aren't one of those "crazies" that you talk about or you would have posted some bizarre rant about one world government and interdimensional beings instead of this well-thought-out rational discourse.

    • Re:Military projects (Score:5, Insightful)

      by eln (21727) on Thursday March 08 2007, @03:15PM (#18280224) Homepage
      Conspiracy theories don't work like that. Conspiracy theories employ a sort of reverse Occam's Razor: do not accept the simplest logical explanation if a needlessly complicated conspiracy can be made to fit the same facts.

        • Re:Military projects (Score:4, Insightful)

          by eln (21727) on Thursday March 08 2007, @04:17PM (#18281048) Homepage
          The problem with conspiracy theorists is they insist on sticking to their theory even when several aspects of it are empirically shown to be false. The 9/11 conspiracy theories are a great example of this.

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

          Also, the Boeing 747 [wikipedia.org] is quite a bit larger than the Boeing 757. [wikipedia.org]

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

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

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

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by thrawn_aj (1073100)
      Somehow, the idea of "top-secret" government projects (called X-projects for some strange reason *roll*) that can do the things that people claim they do seems as much of a conspiracy theory as the whole UFO paranoia. I think people are taking that old bromide about there being a kernel of truth inside every legend a little too seriously :P. People are foolish enough, or attention-starved enough or diseased enough, or naive enough to get there on their own. One can summarize this lunacy in a simple (albeit

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by db32 (862117)
        I typically hear them refered to as black projects, and skunkworks type stuff, and the only place I have seen X anything is in regards to eXpierimental aircraft. The X-2 for example was the 1st plane to break the sound barrier, X-15 is in that realm of sound barrier breaking research as well, the X-35 is just the Joint Strike Fighter thats all the rage in the news.

        Aside from that, I have often wondered if the 'conspiracy' is government supplied. Think about this, you are doing top secret research during

    • ohh, look, I can be insightful too! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by c6gunner (950153) on Thursday March 08 2007, @04:00PM (#18280802)
      Presumably the Flying Spaghetti Monster's appendages are saucer shaped. The idea of many is that these flying saucers are nothing but the ends of his noodly appendages. I don't see why this isn't likely to be the case.
  • The search tool employs IBM's OmniFind Yahoo! Edition enterprise search software

    Nothing new here, you always had to be a real "YAHOO!" to believe in UFO's anyway.

    • Correction (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ravenspear (756059) on Thursday March 08 2007, @03:14PM (#18280210)
      UFOs exist, that is a fact. A UFO is by definition an unidentified flying object. Hundreds of cases of aerial objects that can't be immediately identified have been reliably documented (and by qualified observers).

      What you choose to "believe" or not believe is what UFOs represent. If your position is that it would be irrational to assume these represent alien spacecraft, then the correct statement would be "you always had to be a real "YAHOO!" to believe UFOs were alien spacecraft."

    • Re:Nothing New - A Real Yahoo! (Score:5, Funny)

      by JohnnyLocust (855742) on Thursday March 08 2007, @03:19PM (#18280284) Homepage
      Maybe we could use it to find Duke Nukem Forever

    • Nothing new here, you always had to be a real "YAHOO!" to believe in UFO's anyway.

      Why, UFO's most certainly exist. All they have to be is unidentified and flying.

      Now, wether or not they're aliens is a different story. But, 'UFO' doesn't directly imply that.

      Cheers
      • So, if you can't identify it, it's flying, and you are sure it is from a foreign nation, can we start assuming aliens then?

  • While... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Icarus1919 (802533) on Thursday March 08 2007, @02:40PM (#18279816)
    While I understand that this is probably good for pageviews and thus revenue, do we really have to encourage these people?
    • I'd type up a witty reply, but the Government is watching me.

    • do we really have to encourage these people?

      Unquestionably there's a lot of crap out there on these topics. But what we can probably all agree would be nice is if there were some site which organized such things with the ability for user moderation to raise the better material above the crap.

      (Unfortunately this does not seem to be what Yahoo has in mind...)

  • Don't click the link! (Score:5, Funny)

    by $RANDOMLUSER (804576) on Thursday March 08 2007, @02:41PM (#18279828)
    That's what they want you to do!
  • Sure, it might be interesting. But why isn't IBM devoting resources to actual space research? Or even something more earth based?

    • Re:Is this really a good use of resources? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MyLongNickName (822545) on Thursday March 08 2007, @02:45PM (#18279884) Journal
      It is called capitalism. IBM has a service for "tuned" search engines. Some organization was willing to pay IBM to tune it for paranormal searches. IBM took their cash.

      I;'d argue it is a wonderful allocation of resources. Idiots gave their money away. Intelligent people will then get to use it for something more purposeful. What is wrong with that?
  • I'm sitting here on the couch watching X Files thinking that this may have made Mulder and Scully's job a bit easier...
    • Scully, I've received another report of spontaneous human combustion. Quick - to the IBM's OmniFind Yahoo! Edition enterprise search software with UFO Crawler!

      With any luck, we'll find a few geocities pages documenting this bizarre phenomenon. If we're extremely lucky, we might even come across a few poorly animated gifs of the combustion process.

  • ufologist (Score:5, Funny)

    by BigHungryJoe (737554) on Thursday March 08 2007, @02:50PM (#18279946) Homepage
    I'm a trained Ufologist and I'm thinking I would NEVER trust a search engine from IBM - that would be like giving me a UFO search engine written by the US gov't. I *KNOW* where the files I need to see are - they are in gov't bldgs at Area 51 and I don't need a search engine to tell me that.

    • I *KNOW* where the files I need to see are - they are in gov't bldgs at Area 51

      At what point in your investigation did you become certain the files were at Area 51?

    • I'm a trained Ufologist

      What exactly is a "trained Ufologist"? As far as I'm aware, there are no degrees or otherwise officially recognized courses that would lend themselves to being referred to as "training" Ufologists. Which means that most Ufologists are of the self-taught persuasion.

      Not that I'd mind being proven wrong. I'm just not aware of such a thing as you describe.
    • So what accredited university has a degree plan in unidentified flying objectologoy?

      I mean, really, wouldn't xenology sound better?

    • wow, me too! (Score:5, Funny)

      by c6gunner (950153) on Thursday March 08 2007, @04:04PM (#18280848)
      I'm a scientician with a BS in ufology! We should team up!

  • UFO's, Ghosts . . . Meteor Freaks? (Score:4, Funny)

    by e_armadillo (14304) on Thursday March 08 2007, @03:03PM (#18280088)
    Hmmmmm, a searchable "Wall of Weird", cool.
  • IBM is sure getting word of mouth advertising out of this for their 'tuned search engine' services.
  • My faith in humanity is restored, temporarily.

    For the first time in my life, I'm seeing a crowd that doesn't wonder if Egyptian hieroglyphs, crop circles, and the Xbox 360 all have the same origin. (link [cropcircleconnector.com])
  • Good luck, IBM. I don't think even Blue Gene could beat that video game.

    Rob
  • you could just go to a reputable source and do your own research:

    http://www.bluebookarchive.org/ [bluebookarchive.org]

    No zombies or esp, just government docs about ufo's.

    Tom Caudron
    http://tom.digitalelite.com/ [digitalelite.com]
  • We've seen them:
    • They are (U)nidentified;
    • They are (O)bjects;
    • They (F)ly.

    Who wouldn't agree that people frequently see flying things that they can't identify? Only CRAZY people wouldn't agree.
    • Well, it's been said that a fool and his money are soon parted... and it occurs to me there's more than enough people who believe in UFO's, angels, haunted houses, etc. Search-engine-wise, it's an untapped market.

    • Am I the only skeptic or do people actually believe in this ish?
      You're not the only skeptic, and there are people who believe in this "ish."
    • Okay, time to play devil's advocate as it were.

      You don't believe in some invisible entity being responsible for life on this world. That means that you believe in evolution, yes?

      Now, let's say that, theoretically, that this is not the only world out there capable of sustaining some form of life. Say there's one in every three planatary systems just for the sake of argument.

      On some subset of those, there must be some form of life. On some subset of *that* it must have evolved into intelligent life. It th

      • Re:How many people really believe in these things? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by morsdeus (1059938) on Thursday March 08 2007, @03:12PM (#18280186)
        I think the distinction is that while intelligent, civilization-forming extraterrestrial life may be not only real but abundant on cosmic scales, the likelihood that any intelligent lifeform smart enough to develop an economical method of traveling interstellar distances within a reasonable timeframe would have any desire to come to Earth is exceedingly low. And even if they did, it further stands to reason that they would either interfere with us outright, or be completely undetectable, that any experiments they performed would not be half-assed jobs that left people running around with partial memories chatting about it, and they would certainly not be allied with, much less occasionally overpowered by, the US government/military.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by bladesjester (774793)
          Disclaimer: I'm just continuing the logical argument and not expressing my own beliefs.

          By the same token, you could consider our wildlife tagging and study methods to be half-assed. I mean, after all, we aren't undetectable to the animals in question. The people doing the studies just don't think the animals are intelligent enough to be phased by the actions being performed on them.

          Who says we aren't experiencing the same thing from the animal's point of view?

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by bladesjester (774793)
          Actually, proving something is possible is a large step on the way to proving something exists. That doesn't cause confusion unless you don't realize that the two are in fact, connected.

          The words Necessary but not Sufficient come to mind.
    • I imagine the number of people in the world who don't hold some sort of irrational belief based on no evidence whatsoever is so incredibly small that we may as well call it 0. I like to think that my own superstitions or irrational behaviors are slightly less crazy than believing that there are extraterrestrials flying around in Earth's atmosphere all the time who only ever make contact with random nutjobs out in the boonies and the whole thing is covered up by a really good conspiracy, or that there's some
    • Am I the only skeptic or do people actually believe in this ish?

      I believe in UFOs but not the other stuff. Why? Because there are UFOs. There are many things we see in the sky and record which, after exhaustive analysis and investigation, cannot be explained. Thus, they are Unidentified Flying Objects.

      Even Project Blue Book, for the scam that it was, had a small percentage of cases which could not be explained.

      Does this mean that these are crafts from another planet? Maybe, maybe not. All

    • Of course for all of the above a wise saying bears repeating:

      Absence of Proof, is not Proof of Absence.

      And of course, we cannot find anything if we do not seek it. Which is exactly what this is. I suppose you don't believe in the higgs boson either [wikipedia.org]?

      Now you *can* logically argue that we are unlikely to find these things, or its not economically in our interests to devote resources to the search for them. But Please, if you're going to be a "skeptic" at least base your skepticism in something more "sci

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by PhxBlue (562201)

      So throw your stones, call me an unenlighted bigot homophobe misanthrope...but these things are true.

      Unenlightened? No. Bigoted? No. Homophobic? No. Misanthropic? No.

      Delusional? Almost certainly, and as equally as the "occult" that you oppose so vehemently.

      I understand that it's a lot easier to turn off the thinking, rational part of your brain and say, "There are demons at work here." It's also throwing away the very same gift of reason that God gave you in the first place. I'm all for ch

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