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[agustan]

Anyone of you guys have been using 'Ghost Radar' application from spudpickles.com ?
What do you think about that application? Does it work for real?

Here is a few parts of the FAQ I read and copy&paste here:
-------------------------------------------------------------

How does Ghost Radar work?
Modern mobile devices are amazing devices filled with sensors and transceivers. To name a few, there is a WiFi transceiver, a touch sensor, an acceleromete, a phone transceiver, a microphone, and a magnetometer. As you can see there are plenty of ways for paranormal activity to interact with the device, the trick is to interpret the readings from these sensors and receivers and present them in a way to help track the paranormal activity.

The majority of equipment used to hunt for paranormal activity was not originally designed to hunt ghosts and do not find the majority of their use in the paranormal. For example EMF detectors and KII meters were designed for electrical work and are used predominantly in that field, not the paranormal. Also, IR cameras were originally developed during the Korean War for the military to find enemies in the dark. These days IR cameras are mostly used by firefighters, astronomy, police, etc. Even though these devices were not originally designed for the field of paranormal they do seem to be the most effective tools in the hunt for the unknown.

Ghost Radar enables your mobile device to be used for the paranormal even though the device was not originally designed for the paranormal, just like the EMF detector, KII meter, and IR camera. The readings that Ghost Radar presents are open to your interpretation and up for debate.

Ghost Radar uses a variety of readings from the sensors on the iPhone and iPod touch to measure anomalous changes in the Quantum Flux (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_fluctuation). A large portion of the flux readings come from the background anomalies of the accelerometer. These sensor readings come in constantly and have only very minor changes. Ghost Radar tracks these readings and analyzes them; watching for strange behavior. Based on a multitude of different readings and historical trends Ghost Radar uses its proprietary algorithm to present various visual and audible representations of the readings.

Any comments about this? Have you ever tried to 'capture' any unusual activities around you... *boo! spooky!*

Open to discuss

[fwaggle]

Most of this stuff is just for fun, the only people who buy a "ghost detector" and then use it exclusively are crackpots. Sure, there's bound to be stuff out there we can't explain, but when someone attempts to sell you a product based on an idea that can't pass peer-review muster, take it with a grain of salt.

It might be worth the few bucks to find out your microwave is "haunted" though.

[Disrelation]

I wouldn't but it if I were you but hey, its your money..

[Kentos1HP]

I wouldn't buy it.. TBH, I don't believe in the paranormal activity stuff they say this thing detects.

[wtfstevensmith]

So I realized I necro'd this a bit, but I was wondering if anyone knew of something like this for a desktop or laptop. I have a macbook and I want to be able to monitor like this app, it's fun and I think my room is haunted ahaha. please get back to me asap. Thanks!

[lJesterl]

I'm not sure if most laptops or desktops would be able to monitor anything? I could be wrong. I know most tools even for phones or MIDS are just for craps and giggles

[Oduncan]

I worked in a hospital once and we had a nurse who bought into this
it was kind of funny when she wouldn't go into a room because
there was a "ghost" in the room. Personally i think she is just lucky no one got hurt or lacked care because she was afraid of a room.

[MrBox]

That's really silly. I should write a santa claus GPS tracking app for iPhones during christmas time. I bet it will sell like crazy.

[unity100]

what if it works, and you are all wrong ?

[fwaggle]

Originally Posted by unity100

what if it works, and you are all wrong ?

If it worked it'd be in peer-reviewed literature, explaining how it works.

Before you play the "organized system of ignorance" card, you should pay attention to the fact that none of the famous scientists are famous because they upheld the status quo.

[pulsemediahosting]

I doubt these things can work anyways. But no harm trying. Just don't get spooked if you do find paranormal activities around your room.

[unity100]

Originally Posted by fwaggle

If it worked it'd be in peer-reviewed literature, explaining how it works.

Before you play the "organized system of ignorance" card, you should pay attention to the fact that none of the famous scientists are famous because they upheld the status quo.

aaaaah ..........

thank you for not wasting my time to explain the organized system of controlled ignorance and scholastic conservativeness card.

in case you had any interest in science history, you would find that a majority of those famous scientists were crucified for their revolutionary ideas and propositions by the peer reviewed science for decades before even being taken into account.

[fwaggle]

Originally Posted by unity100

in case you had any interest in science history, you would find that a majority of those famous scientists were crucified for their revolutionary ideas and propositions by the peer reviewed science for decades before even being taken into account.

Care to name some, so I'm not starting off with Google-snacks that'll just lead me to some nutjob website with no clue about the scientific method?

The only person that comes to my mind in relatively recent history was Nikola Tesla, and most of his stuff either didn't work, or wasn't practical, or he just plain got hosed because he was too busy inventing to spend any time patenting/profiting.

If you go back to say, the discovery of bacteria.. then sure. But science was less about science then, and more about aristocracy. If you want to prove it's still like that, you'll have a hard time - for example, something fascinating and counter-intuitive was discovered by a Tanzanian 13 year old, which could have easily been buried by the scientific ruling-elite.

[unity100]

my first question would be, why are you making sarcastic sounding, and far reaching comments, in an area that you havent invested any time in ?

for, ANY person who had any interest in science, would have learned science history, and would have learned that endless numbers of scientists, pioneers have been ridiculed for decades. leave aside, having been killed or burned in earlier ages.

anyway, let me provide you the snack which would lighten up the dark in your mind - by the way, im only citing recent ones, like in the past 50 years or close :

http://amasci.com/weird/vindac.html

the list is too long, however, it is not a full list of the incapability of 'peer reviewed bullcrap'. just the list of spectacular flops.

lets quote a few spectacular, well known ones.

this one is pretty rich

J Harlen Bretz

Endured decades of scorn as the laughingstock of the geology world. His crime was to insist that enormous amounts of evidence showed that the "scabland" desert landscape of Eastern Washington state had endured an ancient catastrophy: a flood of staggering proportions. This was outright heresy, since the geology community of the time had dogmatic belief in a "uniformitarian" position, where all changes must take place incrementally over vast time scales. Bretz was vindicated by the 1950s. Quote: "All my enemies are dead, so I have no one to gloat over."

they indeed laughed at the man for decades, even the national geographic community or whatever its ancestor was in 19th century. national geographic now has a documentary on this.

...........

they ridiculed black holes :

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (black holes in 1930, squashed by Eddington)

Chandra originated Black Hole theory and published several papers. He was attacked viciously by his close colleague Sir Arthur Eddington, and his theory was discredited in the eyes of the research community. They were wrong, and Eddington apparently took such strong action based on an incorrect pet theory of his own. In the end Chandra could not even pursue a career in England, and he moved his research to the U. of Chicago in 1937, laboring in relative obscurity for decades. Others rediscovered Black Hole theory thirty years later. He won the 1983 Nobel Prize in physics, major recognition only fifty years. Never underestimate the authority-following tendency of the physics community, or the power of ridicule when used by people of stature such as Eddington.

........

Robert L. Folk (existence and importance of nanobacteria)

Discovered bacteria with diameters far below 200nM widely present in mineral samples, able to both metabolize metals and to create calcium encrustations. Proposed their large role in creation of "metamorphic" rock and everyday metal corrosion. These ideas were rejected with hostility because the bacterial diameter is too small to include enough genetic material or ribosomes, and they seem immune to common sterilization techniques.

..........

Karl F. Gauss (nonEuclidean geometery)

Kept secret his discovery of non-Euclidean geometry for thirty years because of fear of ridicule. Lobachevsky later published similar work and WAS ridiculed. After Gauss' death his work was finally published, but even then it took decades for Noneuclidean Geometery to overturn the Greek mathematically "pure" view of geometery, and to win acceptance among the professionals.

...............

wow this one is rich. and way too recent. i wonder where the morons who ridiculed the guy are now. probably deans etc somewhere.

Binning/Roher/Gimzewski (scanning-tunneling microscope)

Invented in 1982, other surface scientists refused to believe that atom-scale resolution was possible, and demonstrations of the STM in 1985 were still met by hostility, shouts, and laughter from the specialists in the microscopy field. Its discoverers won the Nobel prize in 1986, which went far in forcing an unusually rapid change in the attitude of colleagues.

..........

R. Goddard (rocket-powered space ships)

Goddard was relatively obscure until late 1944, when those disgusting Jules-Verne fantasies, the rocket-powered space ships, started raining down on London during WWII. (By analogy, imagine the consternation of the scientific community if Iraq responded to Desert Storm with fleets of glowing UFOs w/deathrays!)

"The whole procedure [of shooting rockets into space]...presents difficulties of so fundamental a nature, that we are forced to dismiss the notion as essentially impracticable, in spite of the author's insistent appeal to put aside prejudice and to recollect the supposed impossibility of heavier-than-air flight before it was actually accomplished."
-Sir Richard van der Riet Wooley, British astronomer, reviewing P.E. Cleator's "Rockets in Space", NATURE, March 14, 1936

"This foolish idea of shooting at the moon is an example of the absurd lengths to which vicious specialisation will carry scientists." -A.W. Bickerton, physicist, NZ, 1926

............

this one is very important finding.

Lynn Margulis (endosymbiotic organelles)

In 1970 Margulis was not only denied funding but also subjected to intense scorn by reviewers at the NSF. "I was flatly turned down," Margulis said, and the grants officers added "that I should never apply again." Textbooks today quote her discovery as fact; that plant and animal cells are really communities of cooperating bacteria. But they make no mention of the barriers erected by the biological community against these new ideas. Even today Margulis' ideas about cooperation in Evolution are not widely accepted, and are only making slow headway against the assumption that Evolution exclusively involves absolute selfishness and pure competition.

..........

B. Marshall (ulcers caused by bacteria, helicobacter pylori)

Stomach ulcers are caused by acid. All physicians knew this. Marshall needed about ?? years to convince the medical establishment to change their beliefs and accept that their confident knowledge was wrong; was nothing but a widespread believe, and that ulcers are actually a bacterial disease.

...........

i wonder where the monks who ridiculed this guy are now ...

Fernando Nottebohm

Mammal brains never grow new neurons after birth? We're given a set number of brain cells, and we can only kill them but not make new ones? After twenty years as a ridiculed minority, Nottebohm's work with songbird brains was finally taken seriously, and the biologists of today now recognize that the age-old dogma was wrong: brains DO regenerate neurons after all. As of the late 1990s the information has not yet reached most of the biological community, nor the general public.

........

its our life.

Prusiner, Stanley (existence of prions, 1982)

Prusiner endured derision from colleagues for his prion theory explaining Mad Cow Disease, but was vidicated by winning the Nobel.

........

and this, our field of industry

Stanford R. Ovshinsky (amorphous semiconductor devices)

Physicists "knew" that chips and transistors could only be made from expensive slices of ultra-pure single-crystal semiconductor. Ovshinsky's breakthrough invention of glasslike semiconductors was attacked by physicists and then ignored for more than a decade. (When evidence contradicts consensus belief, inspecting that evidence somehow becomes a waste of time.) Ovshinsky was bankrupt and destitute when finally the Japanese took interest and funded his work. The result: the new science of amorphous semiconductor physics, as well as inexpensive thin-film semiconductor technology (in particular the amorphous solar cell, photocopier components, and writeable CDROMS sold by Sharp Inc.) made millions for Japan rather than for the US.

............

Ignaz Semmelweis (surgeons wash hands, puerperal fever )

Semmelweis brought the medical community the idea that they were killing large numbers of new mothers by working with festering wounds in surgery, then immediately assisting with births without even washing hands. Such a truth was far too shameful for a community of experts to accept, so he was ignored. Semmelweis finally ended up in a mental hospital, and his ideas caught fire after he had died.

..........

Virginia Steen-McIntyre (found that ancient indian villiages date to 300,000BC)

Steen-McIntyre innocently stumbled into heresy when she found wide-ranging evidence that native settlements in the USA southwest were 300,000 years old. This damaged here career, since the dates acceptable to the archeologist community are more like 50,000BC.

......

Warren S. Warren (flaws in MRI theory)

Warren and his team at Princeton tracked down a Magnetic Resonance anomaly and found a new facet to MRI theory: spin interactions between distant molecules, including deterministic Chaos effects. Colleagues knew he was wrong, and warned him that his crazy results were endangering his career. Princeton held a "roast", a mean-spirited bogus presentation mocking his work. Warren then began encountering funding cancellations. After approx. seven years, the tide of ridicule turned and Warren was vindicated. His discoveries are even leading to new MRI techniques. See: SCIENCE NEWS, Jan 20 2001, V159 N3, "spin Control" (cover story)

........

they accused the finder of quarks theory, as charlatan, in 1960s ...

George Zweig (quark theory)

Zweig published quark theory at CERN in 1964 (calling them 'aces'), but everyone knows that no particle can have 1/3 electric charge. Rather than receiving recognition, he encountered stiff barriers and was accused of being a charlatan.

.........

dark matter !

Fritz Zwicky (Dark Matter)

Known in the astro research community as "Crazy Fritz," Zwicky investigated orbit statistics of galactic clusters in 1933 and concluded that the majority of mass had an invisible unknown source. He was ignored, dismissed as an eccentric.

[Lumix]

get a cat like this one. Maybe he can find ghosts too.
Cat Living in Nursing Home Has Uncanny Ability to Predict Death

This cat has been all over the local news here in RI.