Re: Claim by 'Stevo' - "CEOP show Maddie is missing on 30th April 2007"

by whatsupdoc 20.06.15 13:14

Syn Could you explain the following link which arrives at 30th April having a 1st May @ midnight in the date / time stamp followed by the * ?

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by Syn 20.06.15 13:17

sallypelt wrote:
Syn wrote:
Tony Bennett wrote:
Syn wrote:
Wayback has issues loading the flag gifs on all captures of the page including the erroneous 30/04/07 one....I hope this makes sense
YES.

It does.

You are saying that Wayback Machine/archive.org is unreliable.

Period.
I think they had some issues in 2007 certainly with pdfs etc

They acknowledge this themselves

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What a coincidence. 2007, again? The McCann saga is full of "coincidences" and you know what they say when there are so many coincidences?

Sorry, I meant specifically in this case re the 30/04/07 anomaly in 2007. The page that screenshot comes from is current http://archive-access.sourceforge.net/projects/wayback/administrator_manual.html There will have been many other webpages affected for the same reasons as this throughout the years. Identifying them is not so easy though as we have no specific dates to reference. We can in this case as there are points of reference to a date of 03/05/2007.

by Syn 20.06.15 13:21

whatsupdoc wrote:Syn Could you explain the following link which arrives at 30th April having a 1st May @ midnight in the date / time stamp followed by the * ?

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Looking at it whilst they are retrofitting code or whatever they are doing is a waste of time at the moment to be honest. They have said once they re-index the 30th April date will go. Not sure how often they do that though.

by jeanmonroe 20.06.15 13:21

O/T

"FIBBING CHILDREN STUDY"

I wonder if OG could 'conduct' a.........."FIBBING ADULTS STUDY"?

by Syn 20.06.15 13:22

I have to go out but will look in again later :)

by Joss 20.06.15 13:26

Syn wrote:
whatsupdoc wrote:Syn Could you explain the following link which arrives at 30th April having a 1st May @ midnight in the date / time stamp followed by the * ?

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Looking at it whilst they are retrofitting code or whatever they are doing is a waste of time at the moment to be honest. They have said once they re-index the 30th April date will go. Not sure how often they do that though.

BBM, Where was that said, and by whom & Why?

by Guest 20.06.15 13:29

Wayback Machine was very accurate in April 2007!

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by Nuala 20.06.15 13:33

@ BlueBag

You're working hard on this aren't you.

How rude.

As I said originally, Tony Bennett asked a question and because I knew the answer I signed up to answer him.

I also took the time and trouble to try and explain to you how web crawlers work as well.

If Tony, or anyone else who is civil, has any further questions, I will try and help.

Any more rudeness and I'm gone, I don't have to put up with that when my only motivation was to try and help answer a question because it's a subject I happen to know a lot about.

by **Jill Havern** 20.06.15 13:42

This thread has now been moved into the new section where guests can contribute technical knowledge to the debate without the need to register.

I've tweeted the link to Jim Gamble... titter

by **Tony Bennett** 20.06.15 13:52

Nuala wrote:@ BlueBag

You're working hard on this aren't you.

How rude.

As I said originally, Tony Bennett asked a question and because I knew the answer I signed up to answer him.

I also took the time and trouble to try and explain to you how web crawlers work as well.

If Tony, or anyone else who is civil, has any further questions, I will try and help.

Any more rudeness and I'm gone, I don't have to put up with that when my only motivation was to try and help answer a question because it's a subject I happen to know a lot about.

@ Nuala I fully agree - BlueBag had overstepped the mark with his response to you.

Speaking personally, I am grateful for all responses that help us to shed further light on this 'CEOPGate' mystery, and I thank you again for intervening.

I think however that claim and counter-claim by 'tecchies' must be tested.

In a nutshell, you said that web-crawlers could not 'find' dummy web pages that folk were workng on, but had not yet 'gone live' yet - which you said meant that there was as yet no 'hyperlink'.

You have probably seen the quote I gave from 'Resistor', timed at 11.37, from another forum, where he says that some search engines can pick up pages which do not have hyperlinks.

Is he plain wrong about that?

by Syn 20.06.15 13:54

Joss wrote:
Syn wrote:
whatsupdoc wrote:Syn Could you explain the following link which arrives at 30th April having a 1st May @ midnight in the date / time stamp followed by the * ?

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Looking at it whilst they are retrofitting code or whatever they are doing is a waste of time at the moment to be honest. They have said once they re-index the 30th April date will go. Not sure how often they do that though.
BBM, Where was that said, and by whom & Why?

Flying visit as really do have to zoom out now but will be back later :)

Chris followed up his email to Isabelle McFadden with this:

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by Joss 20.06.15 14:03

Syn wrote:
Joss wrote:
Syn wrote:
whatsupdoc wrote:Syn Could you explain the following link which arrives at 30th April having a 1st May @ midnight in the date / time stamp followed by the * ?

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Looking at it whilst they are retrofitting code or whatever they are doing is a waste of time at the moment to be honest. They have said once they re-index the 30th April date will go. Not sure how often they do that though.
BBM, Where was that said, and by whom & Why?
Flying visit as really do have to zoom out now but will be back later :)

Chris followed up his email to Isabelle McFadden with this:

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Thanks.

by sar 20.06.15 14:05

weird when a "100 pager" like this happens, lurkers come out in force to dispute, nada before the spike....

by worriedmum 20.06.15 14:06

So are the next questions to Wayback,
WHY?
HOW?
WHEN?

by Nuala 20.06.15 14:09

@ Tony Bennett

Is he plain wrong about that?

Yes he is.

I think however that claim and counter-claim by 'tecchies' must be tested.

I agree, and understand how frustrating it is being caught between two opposing "experts" and not knowing what to believe.

There is a very simple way of sorting this issue, and that's to ask Wayback Machine exactly what their web crawlers were able to access back in 2007.

An answer from them, as I see it, would be the only way to get some sort of reassurance on the issue, particularly for the non-techies.

I stand by what I've said though re how web crawlers work. Web crawlers aren't hackers, they're bots designed to do a particular job. In the case of Wayback Machine the job of their crawlers was to take a snapshot of how a web page looked at a certain moment in time. Whatever else might have been on a web server at that moment, and unconnected via a hyperlink to the website in question, the crawler would have known nothing about, and certainly wouldn't be trying to hack the server to find out.

by **Tony Bennett** 20.06.15 14:09

Syn wrote:
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17 JUNE

1. Our systems made a mistake

2. Er, because it's a mistake, it really should not be in there in our archive

3. So what we've done now is to remove this system error from our archive

4. We need to fix this with Wayback Machine

5. And then we will amend our archive so that it doesn't say what it did on Wednesday morning

6. We are currently investigating further and will get back to you

7. The 'blue circle' thingy is also wrong

8. That'll have to wait a bit longer i.e until the next indexing of the Wayback Machine

9. As I say, once we've sorted out all the technical issues about this regrettable error, we'll get back to you

20 JUNE, 2.10pm

10. Still investigating this, awfully sorry for the delay. This error is proving quite a hard task for us to explain at the moment. Rest assured, as soon as we're in a position to make a statement about it, we will! Be patient

by sallypelt 20.06.15 14:13

And to think that CB was so confident in the accuracy of WBM in his first email to Isabella, yet a few hours later, in a hurried email to Liz, it was an "Error".

Ummm!

by sallypelt 20.06.15 14:15

Tony Bennett wrote:
Syn wrote:
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17 JUNE

1. Our systems made a mistake

2. Er, because it's a mistake, it really should not be in there in our archive

3. So what we've done now is to remove this system error from our archive

4. We need to fix this with Wayback Machine

5. And then we will amend our archive so that it doesn't say what it did on Wednesday morning

6. We are currently investigating further and will get back to you

7. The 'blue circle' thingy is also wrong

8. That'll have to wait a bit longer i.e until the next indexing of the Wayback Machine

9. As I say, once we've sorted out all the technical issues about this regrettable error, we'll get back to you

20 JUNE, 2.10pm

10. Still investigating this, awfully sorry for the delay. This error is proving quite a hard task for us to explain at the moment. Rest assured, as soon as we're in a position to make a statement about it, we will! Be patient

This error is proving quite a hard task for us to explain at the moment

so, "at the moment" the "error" is unexplainable.

by sallypelt 20.06.15 14:21

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by **Tony Bennett** 20.06.15 14:21

sallypelt wrote:And to think that CB was so confident in the accuracy of WBM in his first email to Isabella, yet a few hours later, in a hurried email to Liz, it was an "Error".

Ummm!

Yep, I think the French have it with 'Volte Face'. Or as the English would say, 'A 180-degree turn'.

@ Nuala

I think I fully understand your point BUT I'm not sure you've fully answered the point made earlier today by MRNOODLES (page 31 of this thread, for reference), where he discusses the 'Shirt-gate' incident at Norwich City Football Club.

If an ordinary bloke with no tecchie experience can go into a website and - clearly - has found a page there that was not 'live' and had not been uploaded yet to the website - why cannot a web crawler/search engine, especially a very well-designed one, find (in a similar way) a page, like the CEOP 'Madeleine' page, that has not yet been uploaded to the main site?

by Guest 20.06.15 14:23

Tony Bennett wrote:
Nuala wrote:@ BlueBag

You're working hard on this aren't you.

How rude.

As I said originally, Tony Bennett asked a question and because I knew the answer I signed up to answer him.

I also took the time and trouble to try and explain to you how web crawlers work as well.

If Tony, or anyone else who is civil, has any further questions, I will try and help.

Any more rudeness and I'm gone, I don't have to put up with that when my only motivation was to try and help answer a question because it's a subject I happen to know a lot about.
@ Nuala I fully agree - BlueBag had overstepped the mark with his response to you.

Speaking personally, I am grateful for all responses that help us to shed further light on this 'CEOPGate' mystery, and I thank you again for intervening.

I think however that claim and counter-claim by 'tecchies' must be tested.

In a nutshell, you said that web-crawlers could not 'find' dummy web pages that folk were workng on, but had not yet 'gone live' yet - which you said meant that there was as yet no 'hyperlink'.

You have probably seen the quote I gave from 'Resistor', timed at 11.37, from another forum, where he says that some search engines can pick up pages which do not have hyperlinks.

Is he plain wrong about that?

I am suspicious of "new" members signing up to put us right on a hot topic.. we've had two in the last 24 hours.

by Guest 20.06.15 14:28

Tony Bennett wrote:
sallypelt wrote:And to think that CB was so confident in the accuracy of WBM in his first email to Isabella, yet a few hours later, in a hurried email to Liz, it was an "Error".

Ummm!
Yep, I think the French have it with 'Volte Face'. Or as the English would say, 'A 180-degree turn'.

@ Nuala

I think I fully understand your point BUT I'm not sure you've fully answered the point made earlier today by MRNOODLES (page 31 of this thread, for reference), where he discusses the 'Shirt-gate' incident at Norwich City Football Club.

If an ordinary bloke with no tecchie experience can go into a website and - clearly - has found a page there that was not 'live' and had not been uploaded yet to the website - why cannot a web crawler/search engine, especially a very well-designed one, find (in a similar way) a page, like the CEOP 'Madeleine' page, that has not yet been uploaded to the main site?

But Nuala has already said it's impossible so it must be impossible because Nuala knows exactly how the Way BAck machine program worked in 2007 and that's why he/she signed on urgently to tell us.

Still no real explantation from the real people.

by sallypelt 20.06.15 14:28

Can any technician explain, in simple terms, what Web scraping is?

by **Tony Bennett** 20.06.15 14:29

BlueBag wrote:
I am suspicious of "new" members signing up to put us right on a hot topic...we've had two in the last 24 hours.

@ BlueBag

At least it's nowhere near as bad as that evening in late October 2013 after I had first posted my major doubts about the 'Smithman' sighting, and tentatively suggested that maybe the Smiths had fabricated their claimed 'sighting'.

That evening, we had SIX new members join the forum.

Each one of those six ONLY JOINED THE SMITHMAN THREAD.

And every single one of those six subsequently proved to be a disruptor

by Guest 20.06.15 14:30

sallypelt wrote:Can any technician explain, in simple terms, what Web scraping is?

It's just copying.

It's copying a webpage at a certain date and time and archiving it.

A snap shot.

Scraping is supposed to sound more down with the kids.