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CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

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Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#151

Post by andyjohnson0 »

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.

Still widely used in the the UK for person-to-person transactions. Also for paying single-person businesses like plumbers, painters, etc. Almost all shops and larger businesses refuse to accept them.

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#152

Post by lsadam0 »

jack9 wrote: post #106
lsadam0 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

A "stealth blimp" has been sighted numerous times for at least 20 years now. It is said to be very large, just as you describe. The assumption is that it's an observational aircraft of some sort.

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#153

Post by golergka »

dkersten wrote: post #146
golergka wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel, for long-term monthly payments, mostly rent. Thanks to checks, I pay rent every month, but see my landlord once a year.

I pay monthly rent but see my landlord once a year too, but because of internet banking :)

If local banking market wasn't under oligopoly of a couple of banks who lock down regulation to forbid any new competitors, it would've happen a long time ago :( Sadly, although the start-up scene here is second only to SV, all of them are targeting world markets first, local just isn't big enough to grow.

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#154

Post by mkingston »

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.

Unsure if it's totally related to cheque acceptance, but as I understand it NZ fares much better in the card payments realm because of EFTPOS [1] adoption. EFTPOS in NZ is independent of MasterCard/Visa/other credit card companies (but processes transactions for them). For a very long time in NZ bank-issued debit cards on the EFTPOS network have required PIN identification. The cost to a merchant of accepting a bank-issued (read: not MasterCard/Visa/Amex/Diners etc.) debit card on the NZ EFTPOS network is much lower than the cost of accepting a card from one of the big credit card companies. I presume this is because fraud is lower as card-not-present transactions are not allowed. I further presume this is the reason for the far greater rate of acceptance of card payments in NZ than in any other country I've visited.

I thought cheque books were a relic of the past until moving to the UK.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFTPOS

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#155

Post by forgetsusername »

antidamage wrote: post #62
jimrandomh wrote: post #22

I'm surprised they're continuing the misdirection so many years later. "Unidentified flying object" means an aircraft, usually a military one (because civilian aircraft are easier to identify). A UFO over US soil would usually be a USAF plane, but the CIA ran (runs?) a reporting hotline because they might occasionally be foreign spy planes instead. But of course, the Soviets were very interested (or the US believed t…

I doubt the CIA were gaming Google in the 60s. It's also beyond ridiculous to think that a superpower like the USSR couldn't completely evaluate any material that came their way. The fake aircraft seems more reasonable though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamov_Ka-50#Development > The first two Ka-50 prototypes had false windows painted on them.[19] The "windows" evidently worked, as the first western reports of the…

>It's also beyond ridiculous to think that a superpower like the USSR couldn't completely evaluate any material that came their way.

Communist Russia was coming apart at the seams, and it took the US many years to realize it. There's a lot of complexity.

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#156

Post by wrboyce »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #151
xupybd wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Still widely used in the the UK for person-to-person transactions. Also for paying single-person businesses like plumbers, painters, etc. Almost all shops and larger businesses refuse to accept them.

Widely? I'm pretty sure that it's one of the least used methods for person to person transactions in the UK. If I had to guess I would put Cash, Faster Payment/BACS, and PayM (the mobile number thing) as more commonly used these days.

I used to pay my milkman with a cheque, but he's online now.

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#157

Post by varjag »

golergka wrote: post #142
noobermin wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, I can't speak for their military leaders, but I've read Soviet physics papers and they had (funded and educated) some solid scientists.

Physics as a field doesn't have the same pressures and people aspiring to it as intelligence military analytics.

Also in physics, you can't get away with politicking and reading the Party plenary speeches alone. That nuke better has to work and is easily verifiable: Beria, the head of Soviet secret police, personally compared the mushroom cloud photo of the U.S. test to the Soviet one, to ensure the bomb was copied correctly.

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#158

Post by elboru »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #107
sanoli wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I used to do the same, I remember adding labels saying "Processing" inside a while and then adding a dot for every loop, just to make it look like a "real" program. Good old times.

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#159

Post by chippy »

sandworm101 wrote: post #60

How much money does it take to get a US agency to issue a blog post in support of a TV series? Granted, those in charge of the CIA blog are probably the right age to be die hard Xfiles fans, but after the StarWars promotion at the white house I'm seeing lobbyists everywhere.

CIA is there to support the country overseas. To actively promote a major TV Series which will lead to jobs, money coming into the company, potentially increased goodwill to the country is exactly their mission.

One thing to remember with spying these days is that the nation spy agencies these day spy for corporations, because if the companies do well then the country does well.

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