The CRU documents are posted to a news group

I guessed that this would be the case. The documents obtained by the Russian hackers are posted to a news group. They are from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit. They are saud to imply that scientific data was altered to show that there was global warming, even when actual temperatures were in decline. You can find the RAR file by searching with BinSearch (the website) with the search term "Climate". Look in the most popular news groups.

Artificial Intelligence in Action

The emphasis on rule-based systems in the mid-1980's was a mistaken notion based on experience with mostly toy systems. The work of John R. Anderson was the exception. He continued to evolve tutoring systems that worked off a combination of rules and knowledge structures.

I have been working on programs since August that use some alternate approaches to applying AI techniques. The classic architecture of "generate and test" still works. The major component of the "generate" portion are heuristic rating systems and some just plain "hacks". I quickly found that in my problem domain of choice, that I had to go beyond principles and look at performance with real world data. In conjunction with the heuristic rating systems, I also use some extremely simple machine learning. Those two together seem to be producing adequate performance. I will continue to tweak and test every day, as new ideas occur to me and I see the results of applying what I have.

Megan McArdle?

I have been curious as to what is happening to Megan McArdle. She has kept moving to the left as she has switched employers. The Atlantic certainly is a left-leaning publication, which is fine in itself. She was running along, blogging frequently, and then lately has fallen strangely silent. I hope she is OK. She was going to get married and then decided that they couldn't afford to marry. So what is up? At least she finally spoke up today with several blog posts after being quiet for some days. I find her present political orientation understandable, as Megan started out on the far left, and then picked up libertarian tendencies. I was fooled prior to 2008 into thinking that she was center-right. At best, she is center left, but probably just left.

The Nobel Peace Prize

Barack Obama receiving the Nobel Peace Prize just shows how politicized the award has become. What did Obama do, promise to close Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention center and then not do it?

September 11th

We sit now on September 11, 2009, eight years after the attack on the World Trade Center in New York. I heard someone point out that President Obama has dismantled many of our anti-terrorism efforts since he took office. How long before we see another attack? I still vividly remember the day. I was working in a western suburb of Minneapolis. I first heard that there was something happening while I was stopped in traffic on the highway. I was listening to Bob Edwards on NPR, back in the days when NPR was leftist but you could stand to listen to them (unlike now). Bob told us that there was report of a twin-engined aircraft hitting one tower of the World Trade Center. Could it have been a small aircraft? We finally heard it was an airliner, which seemed strange. At work, someone had radio on, and we heard of the other tower being hit, and then in rapid succession, the attack on the Pentagon and the plane in Pennsylvania. We all knew that this was a terrorist attack. We were sent home at about 11am and didn't know if we would work the next day or not. We saw, on the CNN website, the video clips of the planes hitting the towers and then people running down the streets when the towers fell, with a cloud of dust behind them. Now, eight years later, we sit here with a buddy of Hugo Chavez as our president. I guess that we have officially forgotten 9/11.

Censorship? In 2009?

I still have trouble believing that the main search engines are censoring search results, but that is exactly what Google and Yahoo are doing. For a long time, after Google was doing it, Yahoo was still feeding up the Blogger "Former Naval Person" in search results, but now they have stopped. To get there, you have to follow a Boxxet.com link or a link from one of my blogs. A good number of people also have bookmarked the blog.

Where can you see my fakes of naked women?

Someone asked me yesterday if I had any fake pictures of naked women. The answer is "yes" and they can be found at the Blogger version of "Former Naval Person" blog. I got into the business of making fake pictures in early 2007. I started putting pictures of naked women on my blog as far back as June 2006, when Heather Mills first made a big splash. You can also find that content at the "Original Former Naval Person" blog. This has different new content than the Blogger version, but shares some content from farther back.

Eric Dane and Rebecca Gayheart, with Kari Anne Peniche

Guess what I will being tonight? I will look on the UseNet for the video of Eric Dane and Rebecca Gayheart, with Kari Anne Peniche. "It's not a sex tape, just three naked people maybe wanting to have sex".

Two Minutes of Hate

Roger Kimball, of the New Criterion magazine, writes about the similarities between the Obama operation and 1984. In the Obama universe, George W Bush takes the place of Emmanuel Goldstein in 1984.

WinRAR

RAR files are commonly used on Usenet to compress large video files or large collections of smaller video or jpg files. The best binary file Usenet readers support extracting RAR files, at least to a point. NewsRover would not extract this one 1.5GB RAR files (combined split files). I needed to get WinRAR, from the inventor of the format. I had not realized that an individual has the right, under the license, to install WinRAR on all the computers that they own. A business needs a license for each computer, but there are volume discounts to ease the burden. I certainly am going to take advantage of the license and install WinRAR on my second desktop computer.

Obama and "Health Care Reform"

I can't figure out President Obama and his approach to health care reform. People voted for him thinking that he meant to give middle-class health insurance to the uninsured and let the rest of us who have health insurance keep what we have. We might have been excused if we thought that he also meant to limit the ways that health insurance treated us below the standard we expected. But now, President Obama's team of health care geniuses assumes that they cannot afford to give everyone good health insurance. Instead, while everyone would be covered, we would all be covered in such a way as to get worse coverage than we already have. Besides that, the government would reduce costs by not paying what it costs to provide health care, but to pay doctors and hospitals something less than that. That will help to reduce the numbers of doctors and hospitals and would further reduce the quality of health care. The present problems are at least partly due to the reductions in what Medicare and Medicaid will pay. They pay less than cost and force the rest of us to pay more.

What's Happening?

We finally had the content from the Blogger "Former Naval Person" blog copied to TypePad. The question is now: "how long before search engines start returning links to the new blog in search results?" There are something like 3300 blog posts on the new blog: "Original Former Naval Person". I am also adding new content of the same sort as the last two years (fake pictures, mostly). The Blogger Former Naval Person is still alive and as well as can be expected, given that all the traffic comes from Yahoo Image Search and links from Boxxet.com, except referrals from my other blogs.

How to find the Erin Andrews video at "My Back Pages"

I wrote how to look for and find the Erin Andrews video at "My Back "Pages". I would move fast, if you were interested, because there is no knowing how long it will be available. Some controversial content is caused to become expired prematurely, and this is content that there are people desperately trying to squash.

Tom Maguire excepts a funny David Brooks piece

David Brooks is generally the liberals' Republican, but he wrote a funny piece that is off the reservation. Tom Maguire, at JustOneMinute, excerpts it.

Good News-Bad News

The good news is that the News Rover news group search found that there were Little Liana pictures posted to one or more news groups. The bad news was that the binsearch.info didn't find them. Little Liana is one of the paysites advertised on this one young girl picture website (legal pictures only, by policy). They have this free site that they use to advertise hardcore paysites for 18 and over girls.

Browsing news groups online

Despite the demise of alt.binaries.nl, we can still browse news groups online, without looking at the attachments, of course. I am using the binsearch.info facility for browsing that is similar to that found in the late lamented alt.binaries.nl.

boxxet.com links to my posts with fake pictures

I wasn't sure what Boxxet.com was, but it seems find. They link to my pictures, and have my old fake Dakota Fanning picture from 2007, if you can believe it. I hesitate to actually link, because Blogger can do strange things at times. You can copy and paste the URL into a browser or, better yet, search for Dakota Fanning fake picture.

The Google AdSense Privacy policy

I had been uncertain how to satisfy the Google AdSense requirement for a Privacy Policy. From several blogs, I found what I wanted to see. First was the policy example and the general scoop from Mark8T. The second piece was how to publish the policy. "News Update" (free-sms-mms.blogspot.com) told how to do it. I finally compliant, albeit a month late.

Google AdSense Privacy Policy

Personal Information Collected on this Website
No personally-identifiable information is collected on this website from persons that browse our website. The only personally-identifiable information collected on this website is gathered on our “contact us” pages, where fields are provided so that you can provide your name, email address and phone contact information. We collect this information so that we can respond to the comments that you send to us via that form.

Anonymous Information Collected on this Website
We record anonymous data. Most of the information that we collect from this website is anonymous information, such as the pages you visit. Other anonymous data we may collect might include the name of your internet service provider, the website that you used to link to our site, the websites that you visit from our site, and your IP address. The data is used for statistical purposes, but you, as the individual user, remain anonymous. We use this anonymous information to help improve the content of this site and to compile aggregate statistics about individuals using our site for internal market research purposes.

Cookies
We use cookies on this website. We use Google, as a third party advertising company to serve ads when you visit our website. Google a DoubleClick DART cookie to serve ads to you based on visit to this sites and other sites on the Internet. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these Google, click here.

I keep finding new news groups with binsearch.info

I assume that alt.binaries.nl is permanently dead. It is too bad, as it had features not found in binsearch.info. In alt.binaries.nl, you could browse news groups from the web. You could not see files, but you could see the headers. Binsearch.info is still helpful, as I found two new news groups this morning, while looking for a specific topic.

In certain circles, you can't criticize Obama

This does not surprise me, given what we are seeing with the press. In certain social circles, you cannot criticize Obama. If you forget and do it, you find that all conversation has ceased.

R.S. McCain tells us how to get a million SiteMeter visits in less than a year

R. S. McCain ("The Other McCain" blog) tells us what he did to get a million SiteMeter visits on his Blogspot blog in less than a year.

I am now using binsearch.info for binary search

For uncensored binary search of news groups, I am using binsearch.info. At times, the NewsRover search will find things that binsearch.info will not find, but usually NewsRover search is censored, as far as I can tell.

Susan Boyle in 1984

After seeing the Flash video of Susan Boyle in 1984, you have to wonder how she remained undiscovered for so long. In 1984, she was in her prime and her appearance gradually deteriorated after that.

I enjoyed seeing Susan Boyle in 1984, when she must have been about 23

The new videos of Susan Boyle show her in 1984 singing "The Way We Were" and "I Don't Know How to Love Him". She must have been about 23 when she was recorded. The Daily Record has the original videos. This is the article for her singing "The Way We Were".

U.S. Banks under attack

If this doesn't worry you, it should. Henry Blodget says that traders are betting that the big banks will be forced to default.

Oracle buys Sun?

I just looked at Slashdot and saw this post that Oracle had bought Sun.

There are Susan Boyle skeptics "out there"

Ann Althouse is not alone in downplaying Susan Boyle's audition for Britain's Got Talent that aired a week ago. Rob Leigh, from the Mirror, is another skeptic. My wife disagrees and says that Susan is "the real thing". For what is it is worth, my wife went to school with "Vicky Carr" and sang in choir with her. I promote Susan Boyle because I believe she is good and more people should hear her sing.

I just got my Susan Boyle fix to keeping me going a little while longer

I have the avi file of Susan Boyle's appearance on Britain's Got Talent from last Saturday night. This video has more of her talking before and after her audition than is on the YouTube video. Now, they have found a recording that Susan made for a charity CD in1999 of the song "Cry Me A River".

The Susan Boyle internet phenomenon

What has happened since Susan Boyle performed last Saturday night is one of those classic internet-driven phenomena. Susan "came out of nowhere" to be an internet star. I think that the power of the song she sang "To Dream a Dream" has been overlooked. They have concentrated on the disconnect between her appearance at the time of her audition on Britain's Got Talent and her singing ability. You can follow the story on my other blog "My Back Pages".

Susan Boyle: Wow!

  (thanks to the NY Daily News)

I just finished re-listening to Susan Boyle auditioning on Britain's Got Talent, and she is amazing. Many versions of the YouTube video have expired, but the one that I link to on My Back Pages is still good. The NY Daily News isn't far wrong about her being the greatest reality show performance of all time.

More about alt.binaries.nl and binary search

My take on the situation is that alt.binaries.nl is either blocked or has been forced to cease operation. I suspect the latter. But don't dispair. In the US, I can use Google to search with the search term "binary search" and I can find the new alternative to alt.binaries.nl. I find that the new site is probably superior to alt.binaries.nl. One question is if anyone in Europe can see the new site, or if it is blocked. We want a binary search capability to look for various sorts of binary files in news groups. The good binary search sites don't keep content on their server and only look at headers (and information about attachments).

Strange stuff

One thing that I found out in my exploring is that some adult-content websites will not let you download full-sized pictures from their site. Instead, you get a low-resolution thumbnail. The only way to get content is to do screen captures and then save them as jpg files.

What happened to alt.binaries.nl?

More than alt.binaries.nl are affected by whatever has happened. I suspect a move by some government, perhaps the Netherlands, against alt.binaries.nl and other sites that help to access binary news groups. That is why I don't want to compromise another binary news group search website. You can find it and a few others easily enough with Google.

Exploring

I have been doing some exploring. That is a dangerous thing, potentially, on the Internet. I use McAfee SiteAdvisor to stay safe. The only thing that they do not cover well is objectionable content. All of a sudden, on a site that has a green check, I say "Oops!" and leave the site as fast as I can. They at least protect me from being hacked (most likely).

Amazing

I found a new online news group search facility. It is tailored for doing searches for binary attachments. I don't think that I care to say what the url is online, as I don't want to have it be killed off by the authorities. The authorities are intent on censorship, so the last thing that they want is for anyone to be able to do uncensored searches. The amazing thing is how much stuff that is out there are .scr or .exe files. To load a script is suicidal and I can't imagine running an .exe that I downloaded from a news group. One of the worst offenders seems to be alt.binaries.german. It is loaded with RAR files wrapped around .exe files.

So have they "taken out" alt.binaries.nl?

I checked alt.binaries.nl, and they are down. Are they the latest casualty of the anti-free speech move in Europe and elsewhere? Anything that gives uncensored access to the Internet seems to be a target. They apparently took out Wikileaks.org recently. They only want you to see what they want, and nothing else. Since alt.binaries.nl is a newsgroup binary search, are the censors moving against the Usenet?

Is the list of banned webpages banned in the US?

The trend in the US seems to be that free speech needs to be restricted, and that reasons are given to justify the censorship. I can imagine that if you tried to access a banned webpage, you would be in trouble, as the government or left-wing pressure groups are spying on web traffic, looking for violations.

Obama apparently intends to kill the last source of good-paying jobs

The word on the street, in the defense industry, is that President Obama intends to make big cuts in defense acquisition programs. There would be a delay in the much-needed tanker replacement and there would be no new bomber built, for starters.

Someone I knew a long time ago has been doing good things

I knew a young woman a long time ago who seemed very bright and pretty. I have not seen her in a very long time, but once the Internet came into being, I started looking to see if I could tell what happened to her. By chance, about two years ago, I noticed that she was mentioned working for a large company in the Midwest. Today, I found an article that mentioned her more recent achievements in her field. I am not surprised, as even when I first met her, she seemed like a young woman with a lot of character and potential. This is sort of a waste, but I find it nice to be able to say nice things about this now, not-so-young woman who has prospered over time. At least I know about it. For many reasons, I can't say more.

If Obama has lost Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd, who's left?

Both Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd are both now former Obama supporters. If he has driven them off, who is left, besides The Huffington Post?

Obama stole our checkbook and is writing hot checks

I have the impression that getting elected President caused Obama to think that he had the right, then, to take our checkbook and start writing hot checks for all his buddies and pet projects. He obviously jokes when he talks about fiscal responsibility, runs up a huge deficit, and then proposed to raise my taxes by a large amount (at least if we were in the income range where we would like to be).

The techinical term for our situation is that we are "screwed"

Bob Krumm writes about Obama's performance in his first month. I can summarize it by saying that "we are screwed". Bob jokes about it, saying that Obama must be a Rovian plant, designed to discredit big government.

Bananatization

Definition: Bananatization - the process of becoming a Banana Republic.

Why is the birth certificate issue still alive?

The Obama birth certificate issue is still alive. I find it baffling that it still is. Clayton Cramer has a post about it.

A better plan?

I am under the impression that President Obama's "stimulus" plan is mostly a set of pork projects for various Democratic congressmen and senators, as well as diverting funds to Democratic constituencies. We would get better results from just spending the money on defense acquisition projects for ships, aircraft, weapons, and systems that what is proposed. Many Democratic constituencies would still benefit.

Firefox continues to be a resource hog

I hate using Firefox. The only software I hate using more is IE6 or 7. My gripe with Firefox is that it is such a resource hog. On my oldest desktop, with just 1GB, it is soaking up resources. That is based on looking at the Taskmanager and the processes tab. I like to have a lot of tabs open and it some of them are "active", it really shows.

My second cousin

I was thrilled when I had the chance to be Facebook friends with my second cousin, Lyn. The discouraging thing was that it only lasted a few hours and then she was gone. I only had a modest relationship with her that stemmed from genealogy research. Now, having a Facebook presence destroyed that link, and I would only be guessing as to the source of the problem. She is a liberal Democrat from the Flint area and a big Obama supporter, which is fine with me. I am not a liberal Democrat and not a big Obama supporter, so we have a mismatch there. I am also doing some things that some might find offensive, but for which there is an audience. It also interests me, for better or worse. The breach over Facebook is still unfortunate.

One disappointment

I was disappointed that my second cousin backed off from being a Facebook friend. I can understand that given that she is quite politically liberal (I take it) and I assume that she is pretty socially conservative that she could quite easily disapprove of some of my activities on two blogs. That is the risk that I take with what I am doing. I don't even have the excuse that I am doing it for the advertising revenue, because both the offending blogs are now ad-free. I do it because it interests me and there is an audience for it.

Nortel just filed for bankruptcy protection

This is been the wind for the last day. This morning, it happened. Nortel filed for bankruptcy protection.

I ran onto this while looking for something else. This guy sounds like an Objectivist, almost, while talking about Global Cooling/Warming (or whatever).

My main concern is a new "Puritanism" from the far left

Given the support of Hollywood for the Democrats, a new "Puritanism" imposed from the left seems bizarre. That is exactly what I am concerned we will see.

Two things that Obama could do

If Obama were interested in overturning invasions of privacy and restrictions on personal freedom, he could have the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the restrictions on sexually-related sites on the internet removed. I doubt that either would happen, but we can hope.