multipage .tiff files
My format of choice for OCR image files... you can do a whole book in one go that way.
natch. --->
The CIA's 'entire' collection of UFO records has been made available for you to sigh at
Everyone needs a hobby, and for one John Greenewald Jr that's archiving declassified US government documents on his website, The Black Vault, which has this week published what the CIA claims is everything it has on UFOs. Though Greenewald is quick to point out there's no way of verifying that assertion, the collection is …
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Wednesday 13th January 2021 14:01 GMT Down not across
Re: multipage .tiff files
Talking to Motherboard, Greenewald blasted the CIA for making it "INCREDIBLY difficult to use their records in a reasonable manner" due to the documents' "outdated" format (multipage .tif) and "text file outputs, largely unusable, that I think they intend to have people use as a 'search' tool. In my opinion, this... makes it very difficult for people to see the documents, and use them, for any research purpose."
Oh FFS. You got what you wanted and now you're complaining they didn't format it the way you wanted?
Not to mention multipage .tiff sounds about right for original scans so surely better than some other format. It is not exactly rocket science to convert formats.
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Wednesday 13th January 2021 17:02 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: multipage .tiff files
I fail to see what's "outdated" with using an open image encapsulation format which can support the vast majority of image formats and compression mechanisms along with big or small-endian hardware. TIFF is far from dead or outdated.
Let me guess, he would have preferred the scans as PDF files? Something that is far less friendly or flexible than TIFF.
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Wednesday 13th January 2021 13:34 GMT Mike 137
A matter of interpretation
I remember a neighbour once telling me she'd seen "a genuine UFO". I'm still not sure whether she meant she genuinely couldn't tell it was a flying object or that she knew it was a flying object but couldn't identify what kind it was, but I couldn't help feeling that "genuine" and "unidentified" were somewhat contradictory.
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Wednesday 13th January 2021 15:56 GMT Steve Kerr
Re: A matter of interpretation
Being a little pedantic she was right, she did see a genuine UFO.
It was a flying object she genuinely couldn't identify, doesn't necessarily mean it was an object from another world not of our own.
I know most people would think of a UFO as coming from somewhere else but it's fun to argue semantics
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Wednesday 13th January 2021 22:34 GMT Trigonoceps occipitalis
Re: A matter of interpretation
Years ago I knew one of the air accident investigators sent to the MU Munich air crash. In part of the report he recorded that the tail-plane had hit "an unidentified flying object". Of course he meant that the plane had hit something not on the ground, he knew not what.
He changed it on the grounds that he was just asking for trouble.
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Thursday 14th January 2021 11:22 GMT Mage
Re: A matter of interpretation
Maybe they meant human sized.
Greek and Assyrian deities were depicted with wings.
I think Cherubim and Seraphim are described as having wings.
The bible mentions Angels: (a) Looking like men, (b) Not being sexed, no male or female, (c) No mention of wings. (d) Occasionally create feelings of terror. Read about visits of Angels to Abraham and Lot.
Mediaeval depictions of Angels are very like those of Nemesis and related Greek entities as well as Sumerian and Akkadian 3D relief wall sculptures.
So while there may be UFOs mentioned in the Bible, none are Angels.
UFOs may be variously electrical phenomena, metrological effects, weather or other research balloons, meteorites, mirages of distant aircraft, actual known aircraft, secret aircraft, drones, rockets etc. Or deliberate fakes. Sometimes lens or radar artefacts. You can get a bunch of UFO shaped objects on many cameras if the lens is a certain angle to the sun or some other object much brighter than the desired view.
Reports start about the time of publicity about balloons, increase with airship deployment and peak at the time of each Cinema or TV new release of related content. The reports of crypto-zoological creatures and UFOs have dropped with widespread phone cameras and dash cameras, but verified sightings of rare birds or animals (in that locality) or Meteorites have increased.
Previously rarely reported electrical phenomena include earthlight, ball lightning and sprites. Sprites are common and regularly seen now by satellites. Earthlight and ball lightning are not understood, except they are natural events.
Even one UFO being actually an Alien visitor is extremely unlikely. If a Flying Object has no explanation it's Unidentified, not automatically an Alien craft.
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Wednesday 13th January 2021 14:18 GMT Disgusted Of Tunbridge Wells
Re: If there is nothing there ...
Just speculating, but maybe they were worried they'd accidentally recorded secret military test flights.
Another possible reason is that they didn't want to go to the expense and hassle of digitising something so useless.
But well all know the real reason...
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Wednesday 13th January 2021 14:29 GMT Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
It's all real I tell ya...
“Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around looking for planets that haven’t made interstellar contact yet and buzz them.”
“Buzz them?” Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult for him.
“Yeah,” said Ford, “they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor unsuspecting soul whom no one’s ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennas on their head and making beep beep noises.”
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Wednesday 13th January 2021 15:17 GMT Rameses Niblick the Third Kerplunk Kerplunk Whoops Where's My Thribble?
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Wednesday 13th January 2021 15:25 GMT Muscleguy
Since the ‘50s we have developed radar stealthed aircraft and at least the idea of adaptive camouflage. Aliens would have FTL travel, life support, radiation screening, all kinds of very hi tech but not cloaking.
So they must have nicked it from us.
Either that or alien tech increases in line with our scifi which means they’re fictional.
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Wednesday 13th January 2021 15:20 GMT Muscleguy
Perhaps because mobile footage comes tagged with metadata and there are now tools which can tell if the footage has been ‘worked’ on.
This has stymied the fraudsters. The toss the UFO model in the air and film with handheld 8mm brigade have given up.
I recall two UFO incidents from my time in NZ. One was a of a light which kept ‘following’ experienced airforce pilots. Turned out to be the planet Venus.
Another was a scam by former residents of my uni Halls who being from all over the country worked out timings and slightly varying descriptions (to make them real) of an object travelling very fast all along the length of the country. It was regarded as the best attested UFO sighting in NZ.
At a college reunion in my time the plotters came clean including to the media. The UFO nuts refused to believe a ‘bunch of students’ could have cooked it up and carried it out. Some got their parents to call the report in to add verisimilitude. UFO nuttery appears to be a combination of wish fulfilment and faith.
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Thursday 14th January 2021 10:07 GMT Mooseman
I used to work for a laser display company. One of our outdoor gigs was to do advertising for a new nightclub, so we set up on the roof of a nearby building and did the show. Growing bored we fired some of our standard patterns over the nearby hill (20w laser) and then went home. Local newspapers later carried the story of some old boy who was cycling home from the pub only to be bathed in a mysterious green light and then saw a saucer shape flitting overhead (also in virulent green)....
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Wednesday 13th January 2021 17:00 GMT Anonymous Coward
Maybe because the aliens got all the data they needed in the 50s, and so most of them have swanned off to research some other planet and species?
Think of how we research animals today: A bunch of researchers fly in, abduct a few specimens, take samples and measurements, attach a tracker to some, and then release them back into the wild to tell wild tales to their mates.
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Wednesday 13th January 2021 15:32 GMT imanidiot
I have yet to see ANY even remotely convincing evidence of anything ACTUALLY exhibiting impossible speeds or accelerations or movement. Not to mention the people usually claiming to have been abducted by aliens are the sort of people who would have been less interesting to said aliens than the average non-human primate. (Though I could see why they'd want to kidnap a human over a chimp or gorilla. Those things are murder machines if provoked)
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Wednesday 13th January 2021 16:31 GMT Chris G
Some years back, having missed my flight ( in a conventional airliner) I ended up with about twelve hours to sit around before the next connection, so I had a look for something to read. I ended up buying a book of tales from alleged abductees, not one of whom could produce a reasonable account of what happened to them that made any sense at all.
I am fairly certain the vast majority of them were attention seekers and one or two of them were genuinely ill and in need of therapy of some description.
I wish I could remember the title but is was a dozen years ago and I left the book on the seat when my flight was called.
I think life of some kind is highly likely somewhere out there but any life form that is advanced enough to have a practical form of interstellar transport will almost certainly not need to creep around the skies of Earth flashing lights and pissing off jet pilots.
As for the 'We are not ready for them' meme, a good percentage of humanity is still unprepared for walking upright.
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Wednesday 13th January 2021 16:55 GMT Manolo
Reminds me of that beautiful Calvin & Hobbes cartoon:
https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1989/11/08
"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us"
From the book "Scientific Progress Goes Boink" I think.
See also Carl Sagan - The Demon-haunted World.
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Wednesday 13th January 2021 17:44 GMT steelpillow
Parapsychologist Dr Susan Blackmore was once visited by a man who claimed to have been abducted to a UFO and there had had a pellet embedded in the roof of in his mouth. She sent the pellet for analysis. Back came the verdict; dental amalgam. The man remained convinced of his experience, though he confessed to having no clue as to why the aliens would use such a material.
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Wednesday 13th January 2021 17:35 GMT steelpillow
These documents prove nothing...
"Hey, what a letdown! Not the slightest evidence of a genuine UFO (sic) sighting!"
"Of course not you dummy, you didn't think they'd release those photographs, did you? They're still in the vaults at Area 51. Are you coming on tonight's alien hunt or aren't you?"
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Wednesday 13th January 2021 19:58 GMT jake
I was once handed a couple of ...
... pieces of "alien" technology. Fearsome, spiky things they were. They came complete with the story of how they were obtained. Hot, moonless desert night, deserted highway, bright light in the sky, road lit up for miles, car motor stopped for no real reason, extreme silence, rush of wind, object landed a couple hundred yards off the road, you get the drill. The guy spun it out for at least nine or ten paragraphs.
Long story shorter, after the object took off again, he walked over to the landing site and found the objects. I hefted them in my hand and agreed that they didn't look or feel like any normal earthly objects, and handed them back.
To this day I wonder if he actually found the custom made titanium chainsaw felling spikes out in the desert, and if so, how they got there.
It was probably aliens wot put them there, innit.
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Wednesday 13th January 2021 21:44 GMT Sanctimonious Prick
We Saw Nothing - Obviously
Going by the comments here, what I saw with about 5 other family members, just didn't happen, or what we saw was an experimental aircraft of some kind.
That was 45 years ago, and whatever that experimental aircraft was, it still hasn't been approved for production.
A massive dense red triangular object slowly moving across the sky in the early evening.
I've read reports of a similar object appearing from time to time in other parts of the world.
I have no idea what it was we saw, where it came from, where it went to, or anything, but what we saw was real (i was six years old, so little chance of mind altering substances being involved).
Bring on the downvotes, motherfuckers!synchronic
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Wednesday 13th January 2021 21:58 GMT steelpillow
Re: We Saw Nothing - Obviously
Thank you for posting, and my congratulations on your strength of character. (Do you know the hippie classic Argent song "Hold your head up"?) I was not there, but it is clear that you guys saw something exceedingly unusual.
On that basis, as Kurt Goedel pointed out, there are more unpredictable truths than there are predictable ones. I'd hesitate to draw any of the rather small number of obviously predictable ones, either way. Though I do like the theory that the US Military painted the odd Stealth prototype bright red so as to hide it in plain sight, just as they originally spread UFO rumours around their secret test base we all know as Area 51.
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Thursday 14th January 2021 10:02 GMT jake
Re: We Saw Nothing - Obviously
No downvotes from me ... You described what your memory says you saw as a 6 year old, and didn't go into baseless flights of fancy about it.
I created one of those triangles in a campground in the Sierra by stringing three little dim lights about 40 feet up, in an open space between some pine trees. Come later in the evening, we were all telling tall tales around the camp fire, as is typical in such situations. I told a story similar to yours, and at the opportune moment had my Wife turn on the lights and point up with a "Just like that one?".
The lights were just bright enough to fool the eye into thinking that there were no stars showing between them .... Presto, huge dark triangular shaped "craft" over our camp fire. When the wife shut them off after about 5 seconds, I yelled "Shit! Did you see how FAST that thing was?". One of the guys not in on the trick commented that it made it over the next ridge (about four miles away) in under a second. Strangely enough, almost everybody agreed with him. At this point, some people were claiming they thought it was redish.
The oddest thing is that when I collected my wire and lights the next morning, several people asked what I was doing. I told them. They did not believe me! So I told everybody the truth about the hoax over breakfast. Most of them refused to listen, and today many of them still tell the story of the huge triangle craft hovering over our camp that disappeared like a bat out of hell when we all looked up at it.
I never messed with that kind of mass illusion again. Too much room for error.
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Wednesday 13th January 2021 22:50 GMT Danny 2
I saw one, naturally
The terrifying tale of the 'A70 incident' - Edinburgh's own alien abduction case
That's not me, but I lived nearby and had a similar experience nearby a few years later. I rarely talk about it because I ken fine well it destroys your credibility, one explanation is that aliens only appear to people who have no social standing. Locals started putting up 'low flying UFO' signs, humorous but also because a fair few locals had seen something.
I worked at airports and was driving home in a clear, dark night. There was a car parked at the top of a hill I was driving up, fairly common because of the nice view. Except when I got to the ridge the headlights were still thirty feet above me and I was about to drive under them. At that point the adrenalin kicks in, and I slowed down to get a better view. I nearly stalled the car and if I had stalled the car I would've panicked and could easily have passed out. Instead I revved the engine and drove under it accelerating, then instantly regretted it and turned hard to go back but it had vanished apparently at high speed.
It was a black, flat triangle about 20 foot long, blocked out the stars in my sunroof as I went under it, made a weird, low noise unlike any plane or copter. I've seen all sorts of weird aircraft especially in that job. I was raised on Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind so naturally that is where my mind went. I quickly suspected a prank though, because the lights were just like car halogens and surely extraterrestrials would have better illumination than Halfords. I guess it was an inflatable drone that disappeared simply by turning off it's lights and rising, but it may have been from a nearby RAF base.
[A friend asked me if I lost any time later that evening. "Aye, I had a dram and a joint, just the any other evening". I've still never been anally probed - at what age are we supposed to ask for a prostrate exam?]
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Thursday 14th January 2021 16:32 GMT Danny 2
Re: I saw one, naturally
It was definitely something I could have shot with a shotgun, so I briefly considered applying for a shotgun licence. But 'Reason for Application : to shoot down a UFO' would've had me sectioned.
Maybe this was your relatives. In the same area a piece of string appeared overnight over a distance of at least 15 miles in a straight line through (not over) fences and fields. It fascinated the locals who started to ball it up. They wanted to know why and how. I was just amazed that you could get a single piece of string that length.
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Thursday 14th January 2021 18:32 GMT jake
Re: I saw one, naturally
"I was just amazed that you could get a single piece of string that length."
You can get bailing twine that long. It's usually sold in 20,000 foot lengths (two still connected 10,000 foot spools in a single box (this one measures 8.5x10.25x16 inches)), but the factory will ship 100,000 feet (5 boxes, just under 19 miles) or more in a single length. I have seen a pallet with 45 still connected boxes. That's over 170 miles of the stuff.
Cost? US$25 for 20,000 feet at retail. Always in stock at the local Tractor Supply Store. Far cheaper per foot for bulk orders. Just make sure you ask the factory not to cut the string between boxes.
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Thursday 14th January 2021 23:48 GMT Danny 2
Re: I saw one, naturally
Ta much Jake.
I always knew somebody would be willing to traipse though fields just to create a local mystery, I just couldn't grasp where they'd get a string that long. Before that the longest string I'd encountered was maybe 200 yards tops. I was perturbed by the fact I couldn't do it, so it was impossible, yet it had been done.
I am genuinely going to contact some of my old neighbours with your info just to put the mystery to bed. I am tempted to buy 170 miles of string and recreate the prank on a bigger scale, but due to covid legislation and my lack of fitness I couldn't walk for more than 20 miles.
Were you a buyer at some point in your career? You repeatedly have good info on materials. How long is a piece of string? Here to Dundee if you pay for it.
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Friday 15th January 2021 19:55 GMT jake
Re: I saw one, naturally
The OP said the string went through (not over) fences. What is the lowest altitude aircraft are allowed to fly in your jurisdiction? Crop dusters[0] excepted.
More likely it was a couple drunk kids from the nearest Uni with the largest roll of baler twine they could find, stuffed into a backpack (or backpacks) and trailing out behind.
Come to think of it, they probably found it on the side of the road[1]. Now, what can we do with 15ish miles of string in a single long length? Wrapping the village Bobby is too obvious ...
[0] "Aerial Applicator" is the new PC term, but I always forget to use it.
[1] Honest, Guv, it fell off the back of a tractor!
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Friday 15th January 2021 20:35 GMT jake
Re: I saw one, naturally
I never really thought about it, but I guess I've kind of been my own buyer since the 1960s. Chasing down parts and prices is half of what makes restoring old stuff fun ... and growing up in Silly Con Valley, building stuff from scratch on a budget was normal. Normal in my circle of friends, anyway. I've had a pile of cross-reference books (like you used to see at automotive shops) for auto, bike, truck, aircraft and farm equipment for about as long as I can remember.
The twine is something I know about because I have a couple of balers. We grow our own hay and alfalfa, and I do custom baling (mowing, raking, conditioning ...) for the neighbors. It's fairly easy money when you have good equipment[0], cuts down on fire risk in "unplanted" european oat-grass fields, and they are happy not to do the work themselves. Win-win-win.
[0] "Good" in this case is not synonymous with "new". Instead, it means "reliable". I'd rather have a 1960s tractor & implements that give me a week of downtime per year than brand new John Deere kit that keeps me waiting on parts for a month per year ... and after I get them, I need to get an appointment at the dealer, who has to do all the work (including oil and filter changes!) or I lose my warranty. And of course I have to (pay to) transport the kit to the dealer and back, a three hour round trip. Fuck that ...
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Friday 15th January 2021 21:18 GMT Danny 2
Re: I saw one, naturally
My apprenticeship involved being rotated around each part of the chip-manufacturer. That included a month with the buyer, which I was dreading as it didn't seem techie. It was fascinating though. An engineer would look up a price in a catalogue and accept it and the spec. The buyer would demand a better spec and a lower price and would phone around 'til he got both.
I've never harvested anything I planted but I got into permaculture when I was blacklisted. A lot of scammers but some great stuff.
You sound like you have a good life. ('The Good Life' is a funny '70s BBC sitcom but inadvertent choice of words). If you've seen it what do you think of 'Kiss The Ground' on Netflix?
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Thursday 14th January 2021 01:30 GMT Claverhouse
Too Little, Too Late
Had Hillary, a devout believer, in correspondence with ( American ) UFO fan groups, won the election, she was planning to set up a Commission to investigate and evaluate Alien contacts --- and maybe, to find out what they wanted.
Perhaps expecting to be Earth's Representative in any Take Me To Your Leader scenario.
She would thus have forced all American agencies and forces to spend time and reveal everything they had on these interesting little visitors. Lacking that legal clout, many fascinating accounts by credible American witnesses in the cornfields may have been disappeared down the Memory Hole.
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Her admired role model pressie Reagan once saw a UFO.
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Thursday 14th January 2021 13:54 GMT Captain Boing
everything is explainable...
... just not yet. Give it a minute.
I remember seeing a documentary about UFOs years ago. There was a guy working on a North Sea platform who was ex-forces - Royal Observer Corps or similar. Anyway he was a trained observer and could identify absolutely any aircraft. He related seeing a "black triangle" being re-fueled by a flying tanker and escorted by two conventional fighter jets, high up over the North Sea. He underlined his impressive credentials and concluded by saying it was not of this earth because otherwise he would have been able to ID it... I remember thinking "why would a UFO need refueling?" sometime later the F117 stealth fighter became public knowledge... I remembered that documentary - there's your black triangle and it explains the escort and refueling.
I personally saw something very weird - like two cylinders of slightly different diameter stacked on top of each other and it was darting in and out of a cloud. I don't have an explanation but I know there is one that doesn't involve "alien" tech.
The gulf between us and the nearest star is mind blowing (Sun the size of a pea, Proxima Centauri 200Km away https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCSIXLIzhzk). It is my firm belief that yes there are other civilizations out there, probably even in our galaxy but we are all in gilded cages. Not interested in debates about generation ships, dimensional travel, FTL etc. There has never been one shred for anything approaching that tech... but give it a minute.
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Thursday 14th January 2021 15:23 GMT Disgusted Of Tunbridge Wells
Re: everything is explainable...
I don't believe in visitations, but the things that we have now that were definitely physically impossible not all that long ago.
There were things we couldn't even imagine that are now normal. Go back not too long ago and electric light bulbs were science fiction. Nevermind the Internet, probes leaving the solar system, powered flight, nuclear weapons, etc.
I think it's arrogant to say that something will never be possible, regardless of what our current understanding of the universe tells us.
I think we probably haven't been visited. Like 99.999999%. But I don't think it's impossible.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
