Computers and the supernatural.

reply to post by Dragonfly79

While I myself believe there's more about computers and the astral it would be more like methods or interfaces to work with the spirit and soul in an understandable, safe and controlled manner rather than actual interaction between the spirit and physical.

I,m afraid this thread caught my "eye", as I believe, there are words of truth in your above passage. But why?

Lets say for the sake of argument there is truth in the train of thought that "Computer Tech" is a form of communication between the material world and ethereal, why? "controlled manner"? Why? Besides the obvious......

First observation I make, and have made in the past is that "Computer Tech" is not natural to the human species. The components alone are quite unbelievable and in fact in my opinion, on the nano scale. Technology in general has had unbelievable advancements, and too many to have been a natural evolution. Ted Kaczynski a well known serial killer was motivated to action because he realized the dangers of "Uncontrolled" technology. He was also a man before his time in that he saw the control of mankind through technology. And as we have seen through misapplication of some of this tech, micro chipping and nano/ brain control, his position is vindicated. Mankind would eventually loose its freewill if tech was not controlled.

It is at this point I must concede the point, that flesh and blood bodies are a form of nano engineering. The meat bag itself, is high, ancient, tech, produced by a "Intelligence" far superior than we in the bag can imagine. The two technologies are so far apart on the scale, the common person could never imagine or even comprehend this. This is where we stand today, where the two intelligences merge.

The earth, the planet, was in grave danger. We were about to loose another firmament to the powers and forces that are negative to the marriage of the spirit and flesh. Shall Technology save mankind, or be its doom. I suppose that all depends on who's tech we are using.

If in fact there are benevolent powers interfacing with mankind through "electronic device" I have but one question. When will all the killing stop? I know that not all people can and will be saved, but when is enough, enough? Surly they must understand that our timeline and theirs are not the same. A passing of one second of their level equates to millions of people destroyed on ours. I know its not like driving up to a McDonald's and ordering a meal to go (gross, McDonald's). But when? How long? How many more seconds must pass for the Palestinian mothers to stop crying over their dead children? Another question might be, what can I do as a individual to assist. But that question can never be answered.

Again, all the previous is just argument, and everyone knows angels, spirits, the disembodied, do not exist, and therefore can not inhabit the electronic realm.. Kasie, nice avatar, reminds me of a fishing hook, don't know why....... Keep posting, and never give up, regardless of how many evil spirits are directed your way............

‘Ghosts in the Machine’ for want of a better term is nothing new. In my youth, I used to do tech support and faults would disappear for no ‘real’ reason and often certain individuals would seem to constantly generate intermittent faults.

Now the armchair sceptic can talk about user error, temperature fluctuations etc. But when you know your systems and users, some faults and fixes are sometimes unexplainable.

I used to live in a house share where three of us had no problems with the PC however one of the girls would constantly suffer with random crashes. The only sort of watch she could wear was mechanical as battery powered ones would be lucky to last a couple of months.

Originally posted by DangerMcBacon
reply to post by Kasei

 

As I said if I were your boss I would fire you in a minute, you don't seem to be very good at what you purport to do.

And if you did I'd sue you for wrongful termination. Someone expressing an interesting idea on ATS is not grounds for firing. All we need is more PHBs running around acting like drill sergeants. If you acted like that in my shop I would send you to a little "sensitivity training" on how to treat employees and if that didn't work, it's your ass that would be fired by me for being a poor manager.

I was a sysadmin and CTO for nearly thirty years, way before ethernet was invented. I had nine sites and about 350 PCs, servers, etc. I know what you mean about issues surfacing and then appearing to "fix themselves." It's frustrating when you can't get to the root of a problem, but bear in mind that our networks are extremely fragile, Just look at your average RJ-45 plug. There are four points of failure right there in that little piece of plastic. Here you have four tiny wires "connected," so to speak, by pressure. From an engineering reliability standpoint this is insane. It's not like you have several strands of wire wrapped around a screw terminal made fast with a screwdriver or a solder joint.

A mere change in air pressure can make a typical RJ-45 connection short out. They are made to be cheap and fast. They aren't made for quality. I'd bet you have tens of thousands of such connections in your system. Given the fragility of most systems, I don't think you can make a good case for a paranormal aspect. Add in a bunch of VPNs and you have a level of complexity that is adverse to diagnostics. You have wires that might not even be wires, but be virtual and part of code stuck in a switch. Without some very careful documentation, which I suspect you will agree is rare, you don't really know what you're tearing into, which is why I suspect you were preparing to "rebuild" to get around the problem. Especially if you were coming in behind someone else who left you spaghetti code and a rat's nest of wires, I don't blame you.

But paranormal? I think that's a bit of a stretch. There are so many things that could go wrong that you really don't need to invoke that.

reply to post by Kasei


I've not experienced the same situation that you did, however, I trust your instinct about questioning the situation. I still have found no explanation for an event Iexperienced and due to the event Ibelieve there can be a connection. About a decade ago my husband had built me a rudimentary beast of a system from junkyard bits. No speakers or microphone, either internally or external. One day as Ifinished a phone call discussing how dificult of a day it had been painwise (Isuffer with fibromyalgia), Iwiggled the mouse to check the time. Remember the old windows blue box error messages from decades past? There in center screen was a blue box error message. It read "Ihope you feel better soon" no error code accompanying it, and back then there was always a descriptive code to accompany. I called husband who said Iwas compromised and instructed to shut down asap. He figured someone had hacked system and listened in on conversation and was playing with me. I shut it down. Upon returning home he checked the protection and found that the router had received no incoming signals, and then realized the system did not have capability to "hear my conversation" at all and eventually chalked it up to my imagination as there was no record of an error message having appeared at all.

reply to post by Kasei


Your solution is clear. Don't go to work, just sit at home thinking about fixing the problem and you'll be far more productive. You may even become CEO.

You certainly pile up a lot of coincidences where problems fix themselves while you were only thinking of the problem. I do not believe in ghost messing with your stuff. You have an intermittent problem you have either overlooked are is very hard to find.

What's the common denominator in all of this - the business ( and or it's equipment) was either shut down of had no load on the equipment at night - while everything worked the next say. I'd start looking there for a possible problem. Could be something is heating up with the work load or electricity.. you did not detail all the steps you used to trouble shoot these problems. That would also shed light on the matter.

Originally posted by schuyler
A mere change in air pressure can make a typical RJ-45 connection short out.

I have worked in positive and negative swinging pressure environments and never seen this. Thermal problems on a poorly crimped connector sometimes or heavy wear.

What sort of environment do you work in?

reply to post by Kasei


Some problems do fix themselves in my experience as an IT dude. I work in a call center and have been for about six months plus, I'm also just a tech savvy nerd in general. Anyway, on to my questions regarding the issues you've been experiencing.

The virus on the computer that seems to fix itself and come back from time to time. Are you sure that it is a virus, have you seen the effects on the computer or has a security system actually found a virus and been unable to repair it? How do you know this issue isn't with the client using the computer? If you know it's a virus, do you know what kind of virus it is? Could it be a hacker program where someone is intruding into the system periodically and effecting performance among other things? That would be my guess as far as the "virus" computer was concerned. Perhaps it's an intrusion virus so it only really has an effect when it's being used by the hacker and thus it isn't always observable.

As far as the printing issue is concerned it's very hard to say what could have happened to cause such an event. I would have to guess it was some sort of network issue as you were leading to in the op. But network issues can be tricky and hard to pin down because they don't always make themselves known. Hell could even be an issue with the provider for the network. Do you use Cisco, or Nortell phone systems? Is the printing a part of a fax/email system that I assume is networked to people accounts potentially through a mail server like MS Exchange?

There could be so many things causing that sort of issue many of which are hard to pin down that's unrealistic in my opinion to assume it's a ghost. Perhaps if it had some sort of haunting effect for a particular person or the issues seemed malevolent in a personal way but the issues you describe just sound like unusual computer issues to me.

reply to post by Unclemobius


I have known, or helped various people in my line of work that do seem to have an affinity for the destruction of computers or other technology with their vary presence. I have also been witness to myself fixing others problems merely by talking to them for a minute without actually doing anything to fix the issue. Someone will call the solution center (the IT place I work at) and I'll get their information and then I'll start to try and fix the issue only to have them tell me, "Oh, never mind, it seems to be working now, apparently all I had to do was talk to you and it decided to work."

I have a love-hate relationship with computers & photocopiers at the office. I remember one day while on a new job, many years ago when I worked temp - I was stressed out at being in a newer office. Whenever I got stressed out the photocopier would jam up on me. And still to this day, if I'm having a bad day at the office, so does the photocopier, and often my computer...and sometimes, even the electronic sinks & towel dispenser in the washrooms break down too.

I used to work with this woman who was a very "out there" kind of person and had a bundle of nervous energy. We used to joke about her office which was a glass office, and we called it the fish bowl - so she could watch everything from her desk. When was in her office, her office would shine bright and there would not be one electrical issue while she was at work. But the moment she stepped out of the building - all hell would break loose in the fish bowl. The lights would burn out almost completely or flicker all the time.

Perhaps something like this is happening in your office OP. There may be a natural cause behind everything going on, doesn't have to be supernatural. But there could be someone or something in the building causing strange energies.

To the non-believers - you don't have to visit the paranormal threads. If you have nothing constructive to add then don't bother.

I once had some serious error messages on a pc. After surfing the Internet taking a break from trying to fix the errors, I started doing more checks. My pc fixed itself. I spent a lot of time trying to fix it with no luck.

I suspect a hacker broke into my pc. Then they changed some settings that caused some serious errors. After I got back online that one time, they or someone hacked me again and corrected whatever they screwed up. I felt I got lucky. The other reason I thought it was due to a hacker was because at later times, one hacker was nuking my pc online one night up till I said it was annoying me when my screen keeps blacking out. Another time a hacker asked me to join them. I decided not to after looking at all the warning messages on the web link.

I once listened in on a hacker argument chat site room. One hacker said he liked to leave evidence behind just to let someone know their site was hacked. The other guy argued he wasn't a real hacker unless he could get in and out without leaving any evidence. They argued back and forth. I do not believe computers fix themselves. However my home pc's have mysteriously started playing some old dumb games much more intelligently learning from me. The AI is old and supposed to be stupid like it always was. Suddenly learning to play better is strange. It even occasionally cheats on me now. Makes me wonder if some really advanced government AI invaded my pc via the Internet and was playing with me.

I believe there are hidden codes deep within the operating system codes that allow the NSA and others to access any online pc. If the codes are there, anyone with enough knowledge could invade.

Originally posted by All Seeing Eye
reply to post by Dragonfly79
Lets say for the sake of argument there is truth in the train of thought that "Computer Tech" is a form of communication between the material world and ethereal, why? "controlled manner"? Why? Besides the obvious......

Just like mystics used to look into a bowl of water or a crystal ball to go into a trance where their minds eye would see images in the water or crystal so can a computer be used. Or like in hindu and buddhist medidations where a practitioner visualizes imagery to evoke certain spiritual experiences, in my case I relax and imagine myself sitting behind a big screen which shows me imagery. A hindu might chant some mantra's to guide the mind, I just imagine pressing myself alt-f4 and load the next movie.

It's just a method or system to generate imagery in the mind or to cause visions from the ethereal world in order to understand and explore. Which works for me as I already had visions and imagery, this just provided a frame work for me to make it all understandable and steer myself. An added bonus is I haven't met anyone or anything which gets what I'm doing as it isn't one of the known methods people used in the past (like spells or magical objects which believe held some power), so no one has real power over me unlike in the old days where a devout practitioner either had to allow themselves to be guided by celestial figures of authority or be send to some lesser dimension. I could go on about all the applications I've found so far but that would go too much offtopic.

reply to post by Kasei


I've seen a monitor come on and a cursor move slowly across the screen during an investigation of a haunted inn. Of course, this was probably due to static knocking off the screen saver and could've been triggered remotely. The mouse itself did not move.

There are numerous reports of possible paranormal activity interacting with computer equipment and systems. What intrigues me more is when a switch is physically turned on/of, the device is unplugged, or the breakers are flipped which are things that several clients have reported to me over the years.

I've sent E-mails to recently deceased people and have gotten no response so far.

There are reports--on this web site--of a disembodied head showing up in a microwave and speaking with several people, though I suspect that's not the type of malfunction we are talking about.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

You're the computer professional. If you can't figure out what is going on--as you pretty convincingly say--it does raise the level of suspicion that something strange happened.

"That's all I got to say about that." --Forest Gump

Speaking of computers and the paranormal, I once read a story in a tech mag about a network admin who was working on a network in a state hospital facility that had a really creepy mental ward. The story was titled "Ghost In The Machine?" He worked at night, when most of the employees were gone. He was configuring a page for their intranet. The links weren't working. You'd click on a thumbnail image, and get routed to the wrong page.

He said to his astonishment, he saw an image moving in a thumbnail pic. He thought he had been working too hard and was seeing things. He clicked on another image, then clicked back on the thumbnail in question, and it moved again! He looked at the image's 'properties', and confirmed it wasn't a GIF or Flash or any other file that could cause the movement. He said it obviously wasn't GIF-type animation. It was streaming video, like flash or something similar. He asked a medical orderly to look at the image. She saw it move too. The tech told her that the thumbnail images in the intranet pages don't contain any 'video' info. He said this was the equivalent of looking at a photograph of yourself and seeing you walking...actually seeing yourself moving. The orderly said something like, "Yeah, computers are crazy."

I hadn't shut down my laptop in a few days, and when rebooted it ...the computer tried completing "update 665 of 666"... in all my years of owning computers and I've owned a lot - never seen that number before! Thought perhaps my computer needed a priest.