Project Blue Book

Posted on 2015-01-21 by arjaybe
Credit Travis Walton - Public domain

Credit Travis Walton – Public domain

The United States military has declassified Project Blue Book, and converted all the files from about 10,000 cases into 129,491 searchable PDF pages. If you ever wanted to know what they were hiding about UFOs, now is your chance to find out.

Credit USAF - Public domain

Credit USAF – Public domain

You can browse the website, Project Blue Book – Archive Powered by the Black Vault, by year, for the 1940s, 50s and 60s. The projects looking into the UFO phenomenon ran from 1947 to 1969, when it was determined that there was no threat to US national security. It may seem odd that possible visits to this world from another world would be scrutinized for only national interests, but the military isn’t employed to protect the world, only the nation employing it. You can also search the entire database, and freely download any or all of it.

Credit Jim Trottier - CC-BY-SA

Credit Jim Trottier – CC-BY-SA

So, will this silence the ufologists and conspiracy theorists who have long been accusing the government of hiding evidence of extraterrestrial aliens? Not likely. Any conspiracy theorist worth his salt will just know that if they’re releasing this stuff, then they must be hiding the really good stuff. Right?

Still, that’s a lot of data. I predict that some interesting hypotheses will come out of it.

rjb

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Passive-Aggressive

Posted on 2015-01-14 by arjaybe

Credit Paul Downey CC-BY

Credit Paul Downey CC-BY


Can anyone tell me what the pop psychology phrase “passive-aggressive” means? I see it everywhere, but everyone seems to assume that everyone knows what it means, so they don’t bother trying to explain it. I’ve tried to figure it out from context, but I don’t think I’m getting it. The closest I can come is, person A wants to get person B to do something. Person B doesn’t do it. Person A accuses them of being passive-aggressive. Apparently that’s supposed to settle things.

Oh, and I think it’s supposed to be an insult.

So, am I close? What does passive-aggressive mean?

rjb

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Copyright Protection Racket

Posted on 2015-01-12 by arjaybe
Credit Maria Elena - CC-BY

Credit Maria Elena – CC-BY

CANIPRE (pronounced canny prey,) Canadian Intellectual Property Rights Enforecment, in an undated piece, announced that in 2015 it would be protecting our copyright by tracking our Internet traffic. They will sell their services to rights holders. They managed to get the government to rewrite copyright law to support this effort. A major part of this legislation forces Internet Service Providers to pass on an Infringement Notification to whomever they say. On January 5 they announced the beginning of this program.

On January 6 Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa law professor who often blogs on copyright issues, pointed out that the blog carrying the announcement is itself probably guilty of copyright infringement. It’s in the habit of re-posting entire articles from other media outlets, including so-called exclusive content that requires payment to read. This goes well beyond the scope of fair dealing even if they hadn’t overlooked giving proper attribution to the original article.

On January 8 Geist showed us that this new Infringement Notification system is being used to intimidate people into paying protection by threatening to do them far worse harm. They back up the threat by implying that they know who the alleged infringer is, when under Canadian law they can’t, and by implying penalties that are 30 times as high as allowed in Canada. ISPs are forced to forward false information to their customers, the purpose of which is to extract money from people who have not been proven guilty of anything. Happily, ISPs are attaching clarifications to the notice, pointing out the falsehoods and standing up for their customers.

The government was warned that this would happen and they could have avoided it by clearly stating what would constitute a valid notification. They chose not to. Today, January 12, Geist wrote about how the government is now saying that they’re going to do something about it. Meanwhile, ISPs have to continue passing on false information or be fined $5000, and their customers continue to be at the mercy of this copyright protection racket.

This wouldn’t be happening if we has a rational copyright system.

rjb

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