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CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

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Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#101

Post by Geee »

meagain20000 wrote: post #83
hyperpallium wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like carrots. The British promulgated the belief that carrots improve eyesight to explain the effective of their aircraft spotters, instead of radar.

You mean to tell me they are not?!! I remember reading that carrots have some nutrient necessary for good eye sight, beta-catorene I believe. I don't think it improves your current eye sight so much as it keeps it from going bad from a lack of it.

Yup, actually carrots are good source of beta-carotene / Vitamin A which is necessary for good eye health and vision. Obviously carrots aren't the only source though.

"Vitamin A has multiple functions: it is important for growth and development, for the maintenance of the immune system and good vision.[2] Vitamin A is needed by the retina of the eye in the form of retinal, which combines with protein opsin to form rhodopsin, the light-absorbing molecule[3] necessary for both low-light (scotopic vision) and color vision."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_A

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#102

Post by Kucher »

actaeon169 wrote: post #68
sanoli wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's probably a lot of this going. Comes to mind right now the way the Navy had about two seal teams in the beginning, and then decided to name the next one 'Team 6', to make it look like they had more. I've read about other examples, but can't remember right now.

The CEO at a very small company I worked for not too long ago made me do this when assigning phone extensions because "Having 4 digit extensions makes us look like a big company." The only people this would fool would probably need supervision to use a phone.

I also worked for a megalomaniac CEO who would go through a sales rep every two months and insist on leaving their voicemail and extension enabled in the company directory for the very same reason.

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#103

Post by ocdtrekkie »

xupybd wrote: post #100
spydum wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as recently as last year when opening another checking account, the bank clerk told me to start my check numbers at atleast 500 (you can specify when ordering checks). I asked her why, and that was also the same reason given. I laughed at the silliness of the idea, but took her advice anyways.

Wow what country still uses cheques? Most stores won't take them anymore, here in New Zealand.

While no stores take checks here in the US either, it's far more common to use for settling personal debts. Also, many utility bills are most commonly paid by check here as well (for those who don't pay online), as people do not mail cash.

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#104

Post by Joeri »

T-hawk wrote: post #86
azernik wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem

This actually hit my previous company in a software context. We would number hotfixes sequentially. Customers would be notified when hotfixes were to be deployed to their sites. One savvy client noticed the hotfix numbering sequence and worked out both that we had a lot of hotfixes (tens per week) and that they didn't get them all right away (if you don't ask for it, it comes to you in the next quarterly trunk releas…

The solution should have been to append a random string to the hotfix number. Still sorts the same way, but unguessable.

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#105

Post by krapp »

Laaw wrote: post #99
krapp wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because (theoretically) the government knows (or can't discredit the possibility) of UFOs being alien craft, doesn't mean they know where they come from, what they want or how to stop them. Revealing that beings from an unknown origin were violating our airspace at will, with technology we can't comprehend, doing whatever they wanted to people, messing with our military hardware, etc, and that there was absolute…

Why would it create a panic and destroy a government's credibility? Obviously you don't make that announcement unless you have proof, but I've heard the "cause a panic" argument thousands of times, but never understood it. Why would it actually cause a panic, and what would this panic take the form of? Let me put it another way: we can imagine all kinds of horrible scenarios, but what evidence do we actually have tha…

I think there's a big difference between learning that they exist, and learning that they exist here.

If some alien force with incomprehensible power and an unknown agenda, has been acting at will on Earth for who knows how long, then humans are not the dominant form of intelligent life on Earth, and have possibly never been in charge of their own destiny. What are we, then? Animals in a zoo? Specimens in a lab? Playthings? Food? If a government admits there's nothing they can do about it, they're basically ceding their own sovereignty to this alien power. A state that can't police its own borders or airspace isn't credible. No one would trust it.

This is just assuming one particular scenario happens to be true. If alien contact turned out to be a unique event, then people's reactions might be different. Given how prevalent the topic is in science fiction and popular culture, it could be argued that humanity has been indoctrinated against the possibility. But even then, knowing that's just fiction makes it comfortable.

But the shock of actually learning we're not alone would be an event of such import, we would need to restart the calendar and consider it a new age, year zero Anno Contactum (or whatever). I think humanity would experience the collective form of a fight or flight response - a mortal animal fear at discovering the sudden gaze of a predator in the tall grass.

To paraphase Agent Kay, "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it."

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#106

Post by jack9 »

lsadam0 wrote: post #51
samstave wrote: post #48

My first UFO story: I was ~13 years old in The Civil Ait Patrol, this occurred in Truckee, Ca at the Truckee Airport. We were doing standard marching exercises and our troop leader was a former SR-71 mechanic/maint person... It was a full moon - and as our gatherings typically started after 5PM - it got dark fairly quickly. We were marching and then looking to the mountain line in the horizon, we saw a light come up…

Kinda sounds like the long rumored TR-3B ( http://www.darkgovernment.com/news/tr-3b/ ). I love UFO mythology, and that around the TR-3B is wild, to say the least.

During a summer break jaunt to see the American Flag Art Exhibit in 1996 (found it! http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/08/us/art-or-trash-arizona-ex...), I was coming back down the 10 just past Wiley's Rest Stop, in California and pulled off the road into the desert about 500 yards from the highway. It was me with my best friend (from kindergarten) and 2 sisters we were mutually involved with. No drugs, no alcohol, no cell phones, and some remaining film in a disposable did nothing in a pitch black night. Playing truth or dare around a makeshift fire, one sister saw 3 lights moving toward us. It took awhile to wrap our heads around what it was, till it was blocking out stars. I have been on aircraft carriers and cruise ships prior. This thing blocked out a lot of the sky, as it passed silently overhead. It was either equivalent (but larger in surface area) to an aircraft carrier or larger than a couple city blocks if it was higher (impossible to tell how high it was in the pitch black desert). We killed the fire pretty quick, but it just passed silently overhead without further incident. It flew on toward the southeast over a the mountains in the distance. Unlike a lot of other videos and reports, there was no center light (red or otherwise).

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#107

Post by seanp2k2 »

sanoli wrote: post #87
sanoli wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's probably a lot of this going. Comes to mind right now the way the Navy had about two seal teams in the beginning, and then decided to name the next one 'Team 6', to make it look like they had more. I've read about other examples, but can't remember right now.

Not the same thing but similar, a programmer wrote once how he made his software delay the answer to some user action to make it look like the program was hard at work. The process was actually very fast, almost instantaneous, so he added some message like " working - x seconds left ". Maybe it was on HN some years ago...

Reticulating splines...

I've also done this in some programs I wrote as a teenager to solve math / physics homework to make it seem like it was doing more than it was.

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#108

Post by headcanon »

sanoli wrote: post #87
sanoli wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's probably a lot of this going. Comes to mind right now the way the Navy had about two seal teams in the beginning, and then decided to name the next one 'Team 6', to make it look like they had more. I've read about other examples, but can't remember right now.

Not the same thing but similar, a programmer wrote once how he made his software delay the answer to some user action to make it look like the program was hard at work. The process was actually very fast, almost instantaneous, so he added some message like " working - x seconds left ". Maybe it was on HN some years ago...

I had to do this for a program I wrote for a study - basically it pretended to be a networked game with other users, which meant I created fake "Loading" screens that had a random-ish delay.

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#109

Post by azernik »

T-hawk wrote: post #86
azernik wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem

This actually hit my previous company in a software context. We would number hotfixes sequentially. Customers would be notified when hotfixes were to be deployed to their sites. One savvy client noticed the hotfix numbering sequence and worked out both that we had a lot of hotfixes (tens per week) and that they didn't get them all right away (if you don't ask for it, it comes to you in the next quarterly trunk releas…

The canonical solution that the Wiki suggests (which seems like a fairly good idea to me) is to make your "serial" number an encryption of the actual serial number; that way your tooling can still get the real ordering, but customers will find it computationally hard to get that information.

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#110

Post by jtolmar »

Joeri wrote: post #104
T-hawk wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This actually hit my previous company in a software context. We would number hotfixes sequentially. Customers would be notified when hotfixes were to be deployed to their sites. One savvy client noticed the hotfix numbering sequence and worked out both that we had a lot of hotfixes (tens per week) and that they didn't get them all right away (if you don't ask for it, it comes to you in the next quarterly trunk releas…

The solution should have been to append a random string to the hotfix number. Still sorts the same way, but unguessable.

That doesn't help anything. You can't guess the next hotfix number, but you can still tell what order they were in and, after seeing a few examples to figure out how long the non-random part is, tell how many were skipped.
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