IBM Targets UFOs, Ghosts, and Goblins With Search Tool

coondoggie writes "IBM wants to help you find out if UFOs are real. Well, sort of. With UFO sightings seemingly on the rise, Big Blue is teaming with The Anomalies Network to offer UFO Crawler, a new search engine specifically tuned to search for information about the paranormal, unexplained or just plain bizarre. The search tool employs IBM's OmniFind Yahoo! Edition enterprise search software and the UFO Crawler should help users precisely target and gather information from relevant sources, including thousands of documents and files collected in the vast Anomalies Network archive, as well as multiple global resources across the Web on topics such as such as ghosts, conspiracy theories and extraterrestrials."

Is this really a good use of resources?

[Tokimasa]

Sure, it might be interesting. But why isn't IBM devoting resources to actual space research? Or even something more earth based?

Re:How many people really believe in these things?

[morsdeus]

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:Military projects

[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 that the government would hide it, and try to take whatever they could for military advantage. Some of the reports I've read about secret budgets and groups seems highly plausible to me.

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

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

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

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

Re:Military projects

[thrawn_aj]

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 fuzzy) equation: Search for meaning + lack of scientific tools = significance junkie (religious or pseudoscientific). Of course, I personally encourage the UFO nuts to continue with their fairly harmless obsession. Keeps them out of trouble. I mean, really, it's no different from collecting stamps is it?

Re:Military projects

[db32]

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 the cold war era, spies everywhere. Something bad happens, there is a mishap, and now there are a bunch of people that saw it, and even more people (important ones, not just your average paranoid schmuck) that are terribly terribly interested in what you were doing. So you tell a weak story and then sow the seeds of alien/UFO conspiracy. Almost any form of HUMINT is going to be completely and utterly worthless as every man, woman, and child is talking about the alien spacecraft and not a top secret research project mishap.

Re:OK I give up Re:Found on google maps

[schnipschnap]

See here [googlesightseeing.com]

I recently got DSL ==\^_^/==

Re:We already KNOW there are UFOs

[UnknownSoldier]

> it's all fake and made up.

NASA begs to differ... [google.com]
and so do these government and military witnesses [google.com]

Google for:
- Evidence: The Case For NASA UFO's [amazon.com]
- The Disclosure Project [disclosureproject.org]

--
Why does C++ still suck with this 'short', 'long long', and 'double' garbage??

Naive

[spacemanjupiter]

The funny thing is, i see people here that laugh at the subject, when they are really the naive ones. I don't live in a box, or bubble. I welcome change, and i'm not afraid of it. Your bad jokes and unhealthy skepticism do not change the facts. These objects are real, and there needs to be a formal study and open discussion about it in the scientific community. It's not about little men from mars, and many people who lack research skills or the desire to solve the greatest mystery in the history of the human race love to categorize it as such. It's about solving the energy problems that are destroying this planet and thousands of lives each year. It's about learning the true history of this planet and of the nature of the human species. It's about turning the military industrial complex on end, and showing people that technology can also be used to further our species by revolutionizing the medical field and energy grid, instead of creating weapons for taking innocent lives and devising unjustifiable wars that only serve to make the government another dollar, and only serve to set our evolution back even more. You sit and watch CNN and debate over petty political problems, when disclosure of this information would solve many of these childish wars and scandals that you love to hear about on the nightly news. I won't touch on the Fisher Price physics that you learn in your public education systems, and the silly notions of comets with frosty tails and labeling stars as a nuclear furnaces. Wake up and smell the cardboard your life is conveniently packed and secured in. Or maybe you enjoy the security of what that cardboard keeps in, or Out of your life.

Re:When ya don't know, you look elsewhere

[PhxBlue]

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

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

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

I understand that it's a lot easier to turn off the thinking, rational part of your brain and say, "There are demons at work here." It's also throwing away the very same gift of reason that God gave you in the first place. I'm all for chalking something up to "mysteries of the universe," don't get me wrong--but the time for that is after you've exhausted the logical possibilities. Judging from the post you made here, I don't think you've done that.

For one thing, you never seem to have considered the possibility that you're hearing things. For another, you never gave thought to the possibility that somehow you were creating the noise. Third, you instantly label something "demon" when for all you know it was the Archangel Gabriel.

People should stay the hell away (no pun intended) from the whole concept of spiritual warfare unless they really know what they're doing. And you don't.