Perhaps we already are utilizing their technology for military purposes? Or maybe what Bob Lazar has been saying is true that they are powered or controlled by some sort of exotic element that is exceptionally difficult for us to produce at this time? Or maybe both, and because we can't produce much of this material maybe we can only take the craft out on very short stints. If either of these cases is true, then we would still be exploring chemical rockets as either isnt usable by us yet or is kept too tightly wrapped in military circles. It could also be that the tech is still so far beyond us we are only still decades later chipping away at an iceburg of knowledge. I read in another post about giving a Victorian a CPU and seeing what they could make of it. I'm sure eventually they could figure it out, but it likely would take a lot of chipping away for a long long time. The case for people seeing UFOs goes back a long long time in human history and can be seen all throughout the world. There IS a stigma attached to them because its easier to explain away someone as crazy than to believe they truly saw something so extreme that it shakes our understanding of the universe. Reports of these also continue to this day all throughout the world. I don't necessarily think there are little green men flying all over our planet, but maybe its possible UFOs are just alien AI drones with no occupants?

IF there was an intelligent species somewhere else in the universe that existed at some point, it is not hard to imagine that they might have created an AI mothership that explores the universe on their behalf and sends out drones that self-replicate. When you think about it, that kind of general (low quality version of) tech already almost exists for us as humans. A massive mothership doesn't even need to necessarily be FTL.. it just needs to have AI smart enough to plan its traversal through the universe and some sort of self-repair or self-healing technology. The most efficient way for an advanced civilization to explore the universe is through self-replicated drones/proves. If that technology did exist in the universe, given enough time, it would self-replicate to a substantial enough degree that maybe the answer to if we are alone in the universe has been right in front of us for a long long time.. we just refused to believe it because it is easier to explain away people as being crazy or it being swamp gas. If above hypothesis I've put here is correct, you are right that it would mean that likely we would never directly communicate with whatever intelligent being created this AI.. if they even exist any longer. self-replicating machines would be more likely survive a species.

http://www.homeofpoi.com/ There are regular meetups all over and likely one near you.

After reading this, I felt compelled to compile some of the similar thoughts from here and put together a short blurb on what it's like for me, being a programmer.

Programming is Mental Sprinting
Written by: Maxwell Rathbone
Pieces Compiled from: http://ask.slashdot.org/story/10/04/14/1925218/How-Many-Hours-a-Week-Can-You-Program

I do find myself writing code in a sprinting fashion. I can always code when it's time, but sometimes I get a burst of speed and clarity that I might not have every single day. I sprint ahead and make up for the days when I'm not so sharp. Many programmers do this. Programming is hard, and it's easy to get distracted. As a programmer, I have honed my ability to focus, almost in a meditative state, while I write code. While I'm in this meditative state, I'll have dozens of pieces of my code visualized in my head, potentially solving multiple 'problems' at once related to the project. I'll also have the overall path of the project and the various smaller tasks I could potentially be working on visualized. Getting distracted while in this state is the equivalent to someone walking up to my mental whiteboard and erasing everything on it. For this reason, when I'm distracted it takes additional time to regain my previous state of concentration and clarity. It takes time to reload into my active thought process all the pieces to the project I'm working on. For this reason, it is imperative to retain my focus while coding.

I do believe this 'mental sprinting' changes with age. Years ago, coding 12 hours a day for weeks on end was not difficult to pull off. The catch was that a very high percentage of the code I wrote, was either poorly written or bug-ridden and easily could have been written in far less time had I spent more time thinking about the code before I wrote it. As I've gotten older and gained more coding experience, I've found that it's easier to spend a large amount of time contemplating the code, and then writing the code in shorter bursts. The difference is that when I write code this way, far less hours are wasted.

Our minds naturally work in a cyclical nature. Sometimes I'll get excited about a project or idea and I'll want to work sixteen hours a day on it. Other times, nothing seems interesting. To write quality code and keep my efficiency up, I take these cycles into account. I've discovered they're affected by how I react to them. I keep a cache of easy tasks that are part of the larger project, so that when my mental cycle is at a lull, instead of trying to force difficult code out, I can give my mind a rest and perform easy tasks. Debugging code is great for this. Debugging is as straightforward as most people think programming is. The problem is completely constrained, and all I have to do is troubleshoot it. It's almost relaxing. When my mental cycle is at a peak, I'll perform coding bursts up to 16hrs a day. Generally this does not last more than a few days before I start feeling mentally 'burned out.' By working with these mental cycles, I'm able to keep my coding efficiency as high as possible.

I do find that with some projects, I can write code like a mad man much more easily. Others are painfully slow dredging, and I have great difficulty focusing on them. There are also times where I'll spend hours looking at a problem and just can't seem to make any progress on it because I have a degradation of clarity in visualizing the problem or best solution. Because of this, it can vary greatly how productive I am when I write code. I could spend 40+ on one of those mad man sprints, or a much more painful 15 hours of slow dredging.

I've taken all of this knowledge and experience into account and now my plan is, that when I reach 90, I'll just wake up in the morning and fart. My very lengthy and heavily customized script will analyze the fart and translate it into C++. "Oh, boy, I wrote another new Operating System this morning!"

by Anonymous:
"If a programmer were a mere implementer, turning specification into code, then he could just work his way through it, from one end to the other, like someone digging a ditch. But if the programmer is a creator, we have to take inspiration into account. In programming, like painting, work comes in cycles. Sometimes you get excited about a project or idea and you want to work sixteen hours a day on it. Other times nothing seems interesting. To do good work you have to take these cycles into account, because they're affected by how you react to them. When you're driving a car with a manual transmission on a hill, you have to back off the clutch sometimes to avoid stalling the engine. Backing off in programming, can likewise prevent ambition from stalling. In both painting and programming there are some tasks that are terrifyingly ambitious, and others that are comfortingly routine. It's a good idea to save some easy tasks for moments when you would otherwise stall. In programming, this can literally mean saving up bugs to fix. I like debugging; it's the one time that programming is as straightforward as most people think it is. You have a totally constrained problem, and all you have to do is solve it. Your program is supposed to do x, instead it does y. Where does it go wrong? You know you're going to correct the problem in the end. It's as relaxing as painting a wall."

I'm the Senior SysAdmin for a large datacenter in Florida. We currently employ over 50 people in our building. We recently migrated from Pidgin+OTR(Encryption) to OpenFire+Spark with ActiveDirectory Integration. I had the server installed and pulling down a list of accounts from the AD server in a matter of minutes. The server has worked flawlessly for us for months and has tons of options. It supports the ability to either allow or lock out 'other' clients(AIM,YIM,etc). This coupled with ACL or Firewall restrictions will ensure that your users are ONLY using the Spark client. It also has chatrooms built into it which you can force your users into when they log on. It's pretty neat stuff.. oh.. it supports SSL connections, and will provide LiveChat for your website as well. It also support logging of all chat conversations if you have a need for that. The only downside that I've run into.. there's a bug on the linux client that has to be fixed manually(associated with the tray icon not showing up). The Windows client has a tendency to run slightly slow. While I read that it runs slow under Windows, in practicality I have not received even one complaint regarding the use of Spark. Oh.. while there is a history in the Spark client, it shows it all as one realllly long page so it's a little clunky having to hunt through your own personal chat history. Look no further. OpenFire+Spark is your answer.