No, but I don't think I should. Pat Benatar. Hmmm.

Are they searching under the Denver airport yet?

Gee, you guys are all famous !

Oh, that is weird.

Maybe it's post-modern poetry, academia-style? Using LGF comments as gibberish to transcend interpretation?

[Link: www.cs.cmu.edu...]

A comparison of "post similarity" between LGF and Kos?

WEIRDNESS,
R

"/experiments/post_similarity/" (from the URL)

Suggests that it is an algoritm to detect people posting with multiple handle, maybe? To see if the posts' contents can be used to ID the poster w/o regard to the handle? Just guessing.

More info on this particular project...

Oooh, I'm in there too, several times. Here I am talking about "Anthem," the Ayn Rand novella (formatted Carnegie-Mellon stylee):

re _meta_number_ref_ zombie anthem is the only book of hers i ever recommend

you can tell you re over the target by the amount of flak you are getting _meta_end_dot_

re _meta_number_ref_ mandymanners amen

re _meta_number_ref_ zombie

re _meta_number_ref_ zombie jwm

re _meta_number_ref_ zombie anthem and it s more like a novella or long short story you can read it in a day or two _meta_end_dot_ highly recommended a completely devastating critique of collectivism and communistic society _meta_end_dot_ that s the only rand book that i have read i read it in _meta_number_ref_th grade along with animal farm

Ta Da!

Here is the paper.

That's some weird shit they got going on there.

You can download the python scripts one directory up and there's a Kos directory too. Probably just too what they consider to be partisan sites to test some kind of language algorithms or something, but it's kind of fun to see the actual code.

[Link: www.cs.cmu.edu...]

Monitors
In
The
Classroom

P

Hmmm. URL includes "post similarity". And a bunch of lizard names: zombie, babbazee, alouette, cattt, doriangray, savage, mandy...

Most of the snippets on the page you linked to seem to originate from lionheart/BNP period.

Maybe this page explains something?

re: #10 Dan G.

Ta Da!

Here is the paper.

But that's an old paper from 2004. The comments in the first link above are much more recent.

They use python, which is more lizard oriented than perl.

A quick look made me wonder if they were grabbing comments from the lounge.

from readme on the /experiments page

Keep only the staff need to be on the web site.
most of the real experiment results should be kept in:
malbec.ark.cs.cmu.edu/~polit/

Obviously it's a KGB plot.

The Political Blogosphere and the 2004 U.S. Election:
Divided They Blog
4 March 2005

Abstract
In this paper, we study the linking patterns and discussion topics of political bloggers. Our aim is to measure the degree of interaction between liberal and conservative blogs, and to uncover any differences in the structure of the two communities. Specifically, we analyze the posts of 40 “A-list” blogs over the period of two months preceding the U.S. Presidential Election of 2004, to study how often they referred to one another and to quantify the overlap in the topics they discussed, both within the liberal and conservative communities, and also across communities. We also study a single day snapshot of over 1,000 political blogs. This snapshot captures blogrolls (the list of links to other blogs frequently found in sidebars), and presents a more static picture of a broader blogosphere. Most significantly, we find differences in the
behavior of liberal and conservative blogs, with conservative blogs linking to each other more frequently and in a denser pattern.

re: #6 Render

[Link: www.cs.cmu.edu...]

A comparison of "post similarity" between LGF and Kos?

WEIRDNESS,
R

Close. I think they are doing a text analysis looking for Charles' sock puppets -- like the way some trolls accuse Robert Spencer of posting as Hugh on his website... a way to broadcast controversial opinions yet keep your hands clean.

re: #10 Dan G.

Ta Da!

Here is the paper.

OK, here's the Abstract:

Abstract
In this paper, we study the linking patterns and discussion topics of political bloggers.
Our aim is to measure the degree of interaction between liberal and conservative blogs, and
to uncover any differences in the structure of the two communities. Specifically, we analyze
the posts of 40 “A-list” blogs over the period of two months preceding the U.S. Presidential
Election of 2004, to study how often they referred to one another and to quantify the overlap in
the topics they discussed, both within the liberal and conservative communities, and also across
communities. We also study a single day snapshot of over 1,000 political blogs. This snapshot
captures blogrolls (the list of links to other blogs frequently found in sidebars), and presents
a more static picture of a broader blogosphere. Most significantly, we find differences in the
behavior of liberal and conservative blogs, with conservative blogs linking to each other more
frequently and in a denser pattern.

Talk about pointless.

People get PhDs for this crap.

Mandy will not be pleased. May give rise to foul language. Warning.

re: #16 Charles

But that's an old paper from 2004. The comments in the first link above are much more recent.

Looks like they are doing another election-year study looking at patterns of argument or other aspects of communication.

It is a correlation engine.

Here is the dictionary - frequencies posted after each word.

[Link: www.cs.cmu.edu...]

Based on the use of the term "sim" in the naming structures and the structure of the input files, I guess the engine is being run through multiple simulations.

For what purpose I don't know.

I'm not in that experiment?

DISCRMIANTOIN!111

/lunch tiem, bbl

I don't think that paper is for the current experiment.

It's years older than the comments at the first link above.

Following Zombie...

===

[Link: www.cs.cmu.edu...]

"Keep only the staff need to be on the web site.
most of the real experiment results should be kept in:"
malbec.ark.cs.cmu.edu/~polit/

===

EH?,
R

re: #16 Charles

But that's an old paper from 2004. The comments in the first link above are much more recent.

Perhaps they are running the experiment again for this election season, or for some other event...

Smells like they are trolling the comments looking for sockpuppets - either sockpuppets here, or socks that post here and elsewhere.

Perhaps it's a project to gather information on the posters and compare for similarities to other posting identities elsewhere, with maybe an end-goal to reveal actual the identities of the commentators here.

Nothing like using software to do the job many of us have done by hand when we suspect a sock in amongst a forum we frequent.

In light of the language in their file names and directory structure, it seems like a formal request for them to declare their intent would be reasonable, IMHO, of course.

re: #21 zombie

Piled Higher and Deeper?

re: #21 zombie

Talk about pointless.

People get PhDs for this crap.

It's mostly about determining communications/relationships amongst people with similar politics... I'm sure it would find application in the advertising industry (read spam industry)

re: #10 Dan G.

Ta Da!

Here is the paper.

The Political Blogosphere and the 2004 U.S. Election:
Divided They Blog

/only problem is that the comments on that page are recent

Ooooh, look at this page.

re: #29 justacanuck

Smells like they are trolling the comments looking for sockpuppets - either sockpuppets here, or socks that post here and elsewhere.

Perhaps it's a project to gather information on the posters and compare for similarities to other posting identities elsewhere, with maybe an end-goal to reveal actual the identities of the commentators here.

Nothing like using software to do the job many of us have done by hand when we suspect a sock in amongst a forum we frequent.

In light of the language in their file names and directory structure, it seems like a formal request for them to declare their intent would be reasonable, IMHO, of course.

I doubt they're interested in individual identities. Sounds like they're interested in things like the nature of online networks (e.g., which blogs link to which other blogs). I'm sure they would respond to an inquiry about the purpose of their study.

They're using pretty recent stuff. One of the input files references about 60 threads with numbers mostly in the 28000-28600 range.

Experiment will not work. Different blogs have different rules. Michelle deletes me with unusual vigor. Others do not care. the subject matter and initial commentary are different, as are the posters. E.G. Michelle's are boring, it is much more stimulating here.

re: #34 zombie

Ooooh, look at this page.

Interesting quote:

Did some experiment on comment prediction with link-plsa-lda. Withheld the comment information of 204 users from the training set. Then computed log-likelihoods of their comments on each blog post (985 post * 204 user = 201105 data points) according to the trained model. 5678 positive (i.e., there in fact is a comment by the user on the post) and 195427 negative examples. Below is the results.

Comment prediction?

/Get out of my head!

Here is the python script to run the correlation engine

[Link: www.cs.cmu.edu...]

Time to go looking at the other blogs they are running...

Yes, they are using NEW comments, but likely doing the SAME thing since the paper etc.. are all in the same project directory "TP" ("Talking Points"). It could be the collection of additional data for the data set.

Well, this pretty much explains everything.

re: #38 zombie

Is this an attempt to pass the Turing Test?

Here's the paper:

[Link: www.cs.cmu.edu...]

I'm no expert, but.. port sniffing?

re: #40 Dan G.

That is the way I see it.

Artificial intelligence? [pdf]

Who ever thought that garbage labeled as "research" could be so sophisticated and at the same time be so worthless. Shit like this gives PhDs a bad name for good reason. Polishing farts to get Piled higher and Deeper has become, for the most part, an ephemeral exercise in self deception.

re: #38 zombie

This isn't that advanced of stuff - we are working on a simillar concept for internal corporate communications. This has been around a while.

What a bunch of BS. ...Fail

They are testing for similarity in posts? As in do we group think?

re: #43 Charles

Hey Charles - you have f'd up their model by introducing comment rating and spinoff links.

re: #21 zombie

Talk about pointless.

People get PhDs for this crap.

Perhaps its a repeat of his 2004 masterwork, (cough) now refined for the 2008 election season.

Creepy!

re: #51 karmic_inquisitor

Likely true. I spend most of my time on links researching now. So do others.

re: #49 pat

What a bunch of BS. ...Fail

Are they trying to figure out how we think?

re: #47 gymnast

Who ever thought that garbage labeled as "research" could be so sophisticated and at the same time be so worthless. Shit like this gives PhDs a bad name for good reason. Polishing farts to get Piled higher and Deeper has become, for the most part, an ephemeral exercise in self deception.

I don't think that this stuff is useless, it may be dated as #48 suggests, but automated compiliation of hot topics is rougly what google news is...

(reuter run the same story, LGF respond twice in the like mnnaer.)

re: #50 slokat

They are testing for similarity in posts? As in do we group think?

Every group does group think. The patterns are a bit disconcerting at first glance but then make sense when you think about them.

Most businesses use email to destroy original thought. I can prove that.

EXPERIMENTATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!

/I demand compensation for being used as an unwilling test subject!

I wonder if linking to their experiment will introduce fatal feedback loops, leading to a disturbance in the Krell mind-field and possible space-time discontinuity?

re: #58 karmic_inquisitor

Every group does group think. The patterns are a bit disconcerting at first glance but then make sense when you think about them.

Most businesses use email to destroy original thought. I can prove that.

Sounds like a future Dilbert strip.

re: #55 The Other Les

Yes. Exactly. And to identify cross posters. All they had to do was ask.

re: #44 Yankee Division Son

I'm no expert, but.. port sniffing?

What is port sniffing?

Man, I'm digging through their entire directory system, including trashed/deleted files. No restrictions.

Don't these people know how to protect their directories? Amateurish.

I mean, they're doing statistical analysis of LGF comments, and they don't know thing one about Internet security? I thought these people were PhD candidates in computer science or something. Maybe statistics? Political science?

re: #61 Charles

Maybe it'll start up the Large Hadron Collider and cause division by zero.

/OH SHI-

//actually goes to lunch nao

re: #65 zombie

Man, I'm digging through their entire directory system, including trashed/deleted files. No restrictions.

Don't these people know how to protect their directories? Amateurish.

I mean, they're doing statistical analysis of LGF comments, and they don't know thing one about Internet security? I thought these people were PhD candidates in computer science or something. Maybe statistics? Political science?

I know. It's wide open. Amazing.

re: #51 karmic_inquisitor

Hey Charles - you have f'd up their model by introducing comment rating and spinoff links.

I wonder if this thread screws up his project, if the subjects (i.e. us) know they're being experimented on it kind of screws up many experiements...

re: #64 JustMyView

What is port sniffing?

A technique to see what traffic is going over a network port. Used by hackers and network administrators alike.

This program could identify sock puppets, but won't. Because it is a dead end. As Karmic says.

re: #64 JustMyView

What is port sniffing?

/turn your head to the left and breathe through your nose

re: #65 zombie

Man, I'm digging through their entire directory system, including trashed/deleted files. No restrictions.

Don't these people know how to protect their directories? Amateurish.

I mean, they're doing statistical analysis of LGF comments, and they don't know thing one about Internet security? I thought these people were PhD candidates in computer science or something. Maybe statistics? Political science?

Computer Science

re: #61 Charles

I wonder if linking to their experiment will introduce fatal feedback loops, leading to a disturbance in the Krell mind-field and possible space-time discontinuity?

Um... didn't they blow up a planet that way?

re: #56 Dan G.

I don't think that this stuff is useless, it may be dated as #48 suggests, but automated compiliation of hot topics is rougly what google news is...

And Google news has what qualities that you are willing to allow it to do your thinking for you? Are you contextually illiterate?

Keep only the staff need to be on the web site.
most of the real experiment results should be kept in:
malbec.ark.cs.cmu.edu/~polit/

re: #43 Charles

Here's the paper:

[Link: www.cs.cmu.edu...]

Abstract
In this work, we address the twin problems of unsupervised
topic discovery and estimation of topic specific influence of
blogs. We propose a new model that can be used to provide a
user with highly influential blog postings on the topic of the
user’s interest.

Idiots. Using computer algorithms to determine how to made a good blog post?

How about this for a clue-byte, you bozos: Have political acumen!

Did pat say any thing snappy?

re: #56 Dan G.

I don't think that this stuff is useless, it may be dated as #48 suggests, but automated compiliation of hot topics is rougly what google news is...

Right. There are all sorts of reasons to be developing systems and tools to analyze large text databases. I have no idea what they're searching for, but it doesn't appear to be anything having to do w/ the content of the posts here.

[Link: www.cs.cmu.edu...]

(This link WILL become invalid soon!)

It looks to my un-Pythonesque eye like a programmer is using the cosine function to create some kind of mapping on how comments refer to one another based on comment location in the thread; and looking at different types of postings from Charles (open thread, breaking news, news outlet criticisms) to see if there are any trends in the discussions that vary according to the posting type.

That has to be one of the worst run-on sentences I've ever written.

From one of the files:

topic 003
3253 mccain
2526 huckabe
4497 romnei
4527 rudi
2229 gop
2194 giuliani
3368 mitt
2525 huck
5310 think
3323 mike

topic 006
2212 god
4350 religion
864 christian
445 believ
4352 religi
875 church
3412 mormon
1882 faith
4384 republican
302 atheist

re: #65 zombie

Man, I'm digging through their entire directory system, including trashed/deleted files. No restrictions.

Don't these people know how to protect their directories? Amateurish.

I mean, they're doing statistical analysis of LGF comments, and they don't know thing one about Internet security? I thought these people were PhD candidates in computer science or something. Maybe statistics? Political science?

At the level of dumb I'd have to say it was Political Science.

who is lionheart?

re: #74 gymnast

And Google news has what qualities that you are willing to allow it to do your thinking for you? Are you contextually illiterate

Fetching news for me isn't thinking for me... "contextually illiterate"... define that please.

re: #65 zombie

Man, I'm digging through their entire directory system, including trashed/deleted files. No restrictions.

Don't these people know how to protect their directories? Amateurish.

I mean, they're doing statistical analysis of LGF comments, and they don't know thing one about Internet security? I thought these people were PhD candidates in computer science or something. Maybe statistics? Political science?

A number of the links to pdf reports and results papers are broken.

And on a completely unrelated topic, WinHTTrack is a wonderful utility for copying entire html sites. ;-)

re: #61 Charles

I wonder if linking to their experiment will introduce fatal feedback loops, leading to a disturbance in the Krell mind-field and possible space-time discontinuity?

one can only hope...

or maybe it will result in "Change!" %-)

re: #68 Dan G.

I wonder if this thread screws up his project, if the subjects (i.e. us) know they're being experimented on it kind of screws up many experiements...

The observer is part of the event being observed.

Don't remember how to ask a Unix about a particular user.

Am I the only person who looked at the page that Charles linked to, and had flashbacks to this?

Author

Check out this breakdown of how they categorize the nature of blog posts ...

[Link: www.cs.cmu.edu...]

re: #65 zombie

Man, I'm digging through their entire directory system, including trashed/deleted files. No restrictions.

Don't these people know how to protect their directories? Amateurish.

I mean, they're doing statistical analysis of LGF comments, and they don't know thing one about Internet security? I thought these people were PhD candidates in computer science or something. Maybe statistics? Political science?

Can you operate on their files or can you just look at them? Maybe they don't care about keeping them private.

re: #64 JustMyView

What is port sniffing?

after you pour some in the glass, but before you take a sip, swirl it around a bit and inhale whist the dark chocolate is melting on your tongue...

re: #80 Opilio

The first is likely one of Charles polls, but the latter are word amalgamations. Will not tell anything without context.
/obama

re: #81 The Other Les

At the level of dumb I'd have to say it was Political Science.

It is in fact.

re: #69 karmic_inquisitor

A technique to see what traffic is going over a network port. Used by hackers and network administrators alike.

Thanks.

Somebody's in for a surprise when they check the server logs.

re: #83 Dan G.

Fetching news for me isn't thinking for me...

When Google News decides what news is worth fetching, and ignores important truth because it fails to align with their intentions...

It is thinking for you.

A blog related to the author

re: #82 bosforus

Put it in the LGF search- that's all I care to say about him.

re: #83 Dan G.

Fetching news for me isn't thinking for me... "contextually illiterate"... define that please.

You just gave a pretty good example.

re: #87 haakondahl

Don't remember how to ask a Unix about a particular user.

"finger" is one way.

re: #92 redc1c4

after you pour some in the glass, but before you take a sip, swirl it around a bit and inhale whist the dark chocolate is melting on your tongue...

Great! I like this definition better than the one I got from karmic inquisitor. Wish you had sent some port along with it though.

re: #72 Dan G.

Computer Science

So it IS the the Computer Science Department.

...

FAIL.

Info

re: #96 Charles

Somebody's in for a surprise when they check the server logs.

BWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Whoa. Slokat, good work. You sure?

re: #96 Charles

Somebody's in for a surprise when they check the server logs.

Yep. Those damn Canucks...

re: #100 gymnast

You just gave a pretty good example.

Put the definition into a sentence.

Schrodingers cat? Not that I know very much about what I'm referencing.

re: #79 victor_yugo

[Link: www.cs.cmu.edu...]

(This link WILL become invalid soon!)

It looks to my un-Pythonesque eye like a programmer is using the cosine function to create some kind of mapping on how comments refer to one another based on comment location in the thread; and looking at different types of postings from Charles (open thread, breaking news, news outlet criticisms) to see if there are any trends in the discussions that vary according to the posting type.

That has to be one of the worst run-on sentences I've ever written.

Not too different from the "tag storm" provided here?

Must be a programmer

Python
&
Knitting?

re: #65 zombie

Man, I'm digging through their entire directory system, including trashed/deleted files. No restrictions.

Don't these people know how to protect their directories? Amateurish.

I mean, they're doing statistical analysis of LGF comments, and they don't know thing one about Internet security? I thought these people were PhD candidates in computer science or something. Maybe statistics? Political science?

copy everything, if you've got the disk space... could be useful, could be educational for them...

/just a thought %-)

re: #99 Sharmuta

Put it in the LGF search- that's all I care to say about him.

I figured it had to be a username but I've never seen so I wasn't positive. Thanks.

Checkout the dictionary for dkos.

[Link: www.cs.cmu.edu...]

They sure use the term "cheney" a lot.

I wonder why? /S

Here's the author's personal (non-academic) web site:

Fashion Projects

Has this tidbit:

Tae Yano is a software engineer. She is completing her PhD in computer Science at Carnegie Mellon.

It's a she!

re: #104 haakondahl

I love the page title:

Litttle math kills no one

We could coordinate with the other conservative blogs that its watching and spoof a result that would trigger the program...

re: #101 Dan G.

"finger" is one way.

user1@user1-desktop:~$ finger taey@cs.cmu.edu
[cs.cmu.edu]
One entry found for exact uid match
Login: taey Name: Tae Yano
Directory: /afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/taey
Mail is forwarded to taey+@imap.srv.cs.cmu.edu
No Plan

Charles, are you saving a copy of their directory?

re: #113 bosforus

I figured it had to be a username but I've never seen so I wasn't positive. Thanks.

You could use the Tag Storm too.

re: #115 zombie

Here's the author's personal (non-academic) web site:

Fashion Projects

Has this tidbit:

It's a she!

DOH!

Notice the title of this page:

[Link: www.cs.cmu.edu...]

"Shaking a bush. Poking a shrub."

re: #108 Dan G.

Put the definition into a sentence.

Look it up. It's in plain English.

And here's her picture!

re: #91 JustMyView

Can you operate on their files or can you just look at them? Maybe they don't care about keeping them private.

I'd need the admin password for that.

You can have her

Charles,
My guess is somebody's learning about Bayesian Classification indexes in an Algorithms CompSci class and decided to datamine your site. To what end, I don't know.

The least they could have done is told you, before the fact, that they'd be crawling your site for data. Or respected your robots file.

re: #117 Dan G.

We could coordinate with the other conservative blogs that its watching and spoof a result that would trigger the program...

The experiment seems to be an attempt to predict which users will post on a given topic, perhaps given the topic itself, perhaps given who has already posted, perhaps both. This is being run against Daily Kos (I presume that's what DK is for) and LGF.

AAARRRGGGHHH!
What the HELL, did I just look at Hillary in the buff? DAMN my eyes are burning, CHARLES!...WTF? ATROPINE! ATROPINE! AUTO-INJECT NOW! SECURITY OUT!

Lots of blogs listed here:

[Link: www.cs.cmu.edu...]

re: #96 Charles

Somebody's in for a surprise when they check the server logs.

I don't think she knows how to check the server logs.

re: #118 haakondahl

user1@user1-desktop:~$ finger taey@cs.cmu.edu
[cs.cmu.edu]
One entry found for exact uid match
Login: taey Name: Tae Yano
Directory: /afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/taey
Mail is forwarded to taey+@imap.srv.cs.cmu.edu
No Plan

Since security has been a second thought for Tae try

echo "We see you too. LGF" > /afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/taey/.plan

It will display whenever the screen saver kicks on (if her desktop is in fact a *nix based system).

This is not malicious, but standard academic "stuff." Some poor doctoral student, probably in computer programming/software, is desperate to complete dissertation research.

re: #106 pat

Just going up the tree

re: #115 zombie

Here's the author's personal (non-academic) web site:

Fashion Projects

Has this tidbit:

It's a she!

Well she is gonna have a conniption when she reads her server logs.
Damn she's got a gazillion files on there ...

More info on her:

Tae Yano
Ph.D. student, LTI
NLP in the political domain
Japanese, English, Spanish, French English
C, C++, Java, Perl, Python

NLP = Neuro-linguistic programming?

re: #43 Charles

I think that might be paper #2 of three, dated '06. Zombie found paper #1, dated '04. The initial posted link has posts from Jan-Feb of '08.

Yet to be mapped/written?

ONGOING,
R

I tried to log in with anonymous FTP, but no go.

2 Methodology
In order to get a representative view of the liberal and conservative blog communities, we cast our
nets wide and gathered a single day’s snapshot of over a thousand political blogs. Since we also
wanted to do a careful study of the heart of the political blogosphere, we then analyzed the posts
for the two months preceding the election with a smaller set of 40 influential blogs.

Fatal flaw

re: #136 zombie

More info on her:

NLP = Neuro-linguistic programming?

Yep, that's what it means.

re: #102 JustMyView

Great! I like this definition better than the one I got from karmic inquisitor. Wish you had sent some port along with it though.

i did, but it obviously went into the wrong port on your end...

may i suggest Robert Hall port? not sure where you live, but it's very nice stuff, and they ship. %-)

re: #122 Charles

Notice the title of this page:

[Link: www.cs.cmu.edu...]

"Shaking a bush. Poking a shrub."

Good catch!

re: #122 Charles

That page has (had) links to compare/contrasts between LGF and Kos. Alas, all links to results are dead.

re: #136 zombie

More info on her:

NLP = Neuro-linguistic programming?

Probably NLP

re: #136 zombie

More info on her:

NLP = Neuro-linguistic programming?

Yes, I'm sure that's right. CMU has a big CS department, and they do a lot of work in that area.

re: #138 Charles

I tried to log in with anonymous FTP, but no go.

I was gonna try that.

I'll put on my neuro-linguistic programming hat and PREDICT what she'd use for her password.

I looked at all the links and couldn't make heads or tails out of it, but then again I'm not a techie. It would seem to me the custodians working the night shift at Carnagie-Mellon are engaged in more productive and usefeul work.

re: #96 Charles

Somebody's in for a surprise when they check the server logs.

You're assuming they actually check the logs.. with directory browsing enabled and permissions open I tend to doubt it..

re: #138 Charles

I tried to log in with anonymous FTP, but no go.

I can ftp to you what I'm collecting...

Yep. looks like she's crawling lots of political sites on both the left and right side of the scale:

[Link: www.cs.cmu.edu...]

AMERICAblog_html/ 23-Dec-2007 19:39 -
BAGnewsNotes_html/ 26-Dec-2007 11:16 -
BelmontClub_html/ 23-Dec-2007 17:21 -
BlogForBush_html/ 24-Dec-2007 18:09 -
CaptainsQuarters_html/ 20-Dec-2007 21:25 -
CarpetBagger_html/ 20-Dec-2007 21:11 -
CrooksAndLiers_html/ 20-Dec-2007 20:49 -
DailyDish_html/ 26-Dec-2007 12:33 -
DailyKos_html/ 15-Dec-2007 02:16 -
Eschaton_html/ 27-Dec-2007 10:23 -
HughHewitt_html/ 23-Dec-2007 22:05 -
Instapundit_html/ 17-Dec-2007 13:16 -
JuanCole_html/ 24-Dec-2007 19:16 -
LeftCoaster_html/ 20-Dec-2007 21:01 -
MV_html/ 22-Dec-2007 09:14 -
MarcAmbinder_html/ 24-Dec-2007 08:40 -
MatthewYglesias_html/ 23-Dec-2007 20:49 -
MichelleMalkin_html/ 21-Dec-2007 10:48 -
MotherJones_html/ 17-Dec-2007 12:25 -
MyDD_html/ 23-Dec-2007 21:08 -
NRO_html/ 21-Dec-2007 11:47 -
Newsbuster_html/ 17-Dec-2007 10:26 -
NoLeftTurn_html/ 24-Dec-2007 10:28 -
OliverWillis_html/ 23-Dec-2007 21:24 -
PoliPundit_html/ 24-Dec-2007 10:38 -
PowerLine_html/ 17-Dec-2007 12:39 -
RCP_html/ 23-Dec-2007 21:38 -
Redstate_html/ 17-Dec-2007 11:43 -
RightWingNews_html/ 25-Dec-2007 00:37 -
RightWingNut_html/ 24-Dec-2007 10:55 -
RogerLSimon_html/ 25-Dec-2007 01:16 -
ScrappleFace_html/ 25-Dec-2007 01:29 -
TPM_html/ 17-Dec-2007 10:50 -
TPMmuckraker_html/ 23-Dec-2007 21:52 -
TalkLeft_html/ 20-Dec-2007 20:29 -
ThinkProgress_html/ 24-Dec-2007 18:10 -
master.txt


BTW, here's her "about me" page:
[Link: people.cs.cmu.edu...]

Found a paper on teaching third and fourth graders how to program using three letter commands... cool stuff.

She did spend a lot of time doing maps about liberal sites.

BTW - they have selected a sample of posts from LGF and DKos respectively, pairing the posts based on general topic.

When they run the simulation, they do it off of pre-distilled pages where they have reduced the page by throwing out html markup, ads and other content, and then further reduce the comment lines to eliminate words that are so common that they are meaningless.

They then build a dictionary for each site (one for kos, one for LGF) and score the words on frequency and relative importance (their formulaic version of relative importance).

The rest of the processing I assume to be a comparison of the dictionaries for commonality, and then submission of a new post for "scoring" to determine if the new post is a candidate for a "hot post" or one that should be skipped over. One could also predict which audience is likely to want the camdidate - if it has the word "Cheney" send it to the Kos pile, if it has "Quadaffi" send it to LGF.

re: #147 zombie

I was gonna try that.

I'll put on my neuro-linguistic programming hat and PREDICT what she'd use for her password.

My NLP hat predicts that the password is... ""

I can see several avenues of attack that would probably let someone get full access to their server. Not that I would do something like that, of course.

re: #138 Charles

I tried to log in with anonymous FTP, but no go.

Ditto. CR

re: #141 redc1c4

i did, but it obviously went into the wrong port on your end...

may i suggest Robert Hall port? not sure where you live, but it's very nice stuff, and they ship. %-)

I'll keep that in mind next time I shop. Thanks so much!

Interesting data plot here. (PDF)

oops... should have read "spacebar"

I wonder if [carnagie-mellon] we could throw off [carnagie-mellon] their delicate algorithms [carnagie-mellon] by tossing in random [carnagie-mellon] words?

This file seems to contain a list of words parsed from a set of LGF comments along with a couple of frequency counters, probably # of instances, and # of different threads.

Dictionary of LGF vocabulary

For example:

smurf 28 9
smurfed 1 1
smurfette 12 8
smurfettes 2 2
smurfish 1 1
smurfs 9 7
smurftastic 1 1

re: #145 Dan G.

Probably NLP

Quote:

neuro-linguistic programming, a field stated by its founders to provide a way to examine and decompose human subjective experience and communication into component parts, generate models from these, and work with them.

Ahh, so basically it's a merger between post-Marxist deconstructionism and THX-1138-esque Orwellian personality dehumanization.

Nice.

re: #108 Dan G.

Put the definition into a sentence.

"One should always include the definition of a new word when dealing with students just entering into the program."

there ya go...

LGF is the original tough crowd. if you can't fact check yo' own ass, ya really shouldn't expect other lizards to do it for ya.

/google

re: #153 karmic_inquisitor

They then build a dictionary for each site (one for kos, one for LGF) and score the words on frequency and relative importance (their formulaic version of relative importance).
The rest of the processing I assume to be a comparison of the dictionaries for commonality, and then submission of a new post for "scoring" to determine if the new post...

Excellent deduction! That is the very definition of a Bayesian Classification index.

re: #155 Charles

I can see several avenues of attack that would probably let someone get full access to their server. Not that I would do something like that, of course.

"We could get the money..." (Looks up and pulls down the microphone.) "But that would be wrong."

re: #162 zombie

Ahh, so basically it's a merger between post-Marxist deconstructionism and THX-1138-esque Orwellian personality dehumanization.

Nice.

Yes... the "linguistic" part should have given it away... Neural networks, I believe, are what the non-marxists in the field study.

HOME. of Tae Yano

/what the hell is Google on about today?

re: #160 stevieray

I wonder if [carnagie-mellon] we could throw off [carnagie-mellon] their delicate algorithms [carnagie-mellon] by tossing in random [carnagie-mellon] words?

I'd go with "fnord." on that one.

re: #163 redc1c4

LGF is the original tough crowd. if you can't fact check yo' own ass, ya really shouldn't expect don't be surprised when the other lizards to do it for ya.

Fixed.

Come on. Let's not post disparaging comments about people's looks. Chances are very good they're going to read this thread.

re: #164 bystander

Excellent deduction! That is the very definition of a Bayesian Classification index.

I liked the method of withdrawing all posts by 204 commenters, then asking the system to predict what those posts were (or *if* the post existed, I think) based on all the rest.

re: #168 The Other Les

Go with what?

You have some empty quotes in there.

re: #163 redc1c4

"One should always include the definition of a new word when dealing with students just entering into the program."

there ya go...

LGF is the original tough crowd. if you can't fact check yo' own ass, ya really shouldn't expect other lizards to do it for ya.

/google

I can fact check, but I'm not going to chase down a phrase that uses the word "context" without any context... especially when it is slung at me as an ad hominem.

re: #171 Charles

Come on. Let's not post disparaging comments about people's looks. Chances are very good they're going to read this thread.

Chances are very good that they're going to turn that comment in with their Dissertation.

Spelling tip: Carnegie Mellon University, not Carnegie-Mellon University. No hyphen. Not that it particularly matters.

re: #173 victor_yugo

Go with what?

You have some empty quotes in there.

Really? [fnord[ I didn't [fnord] notice that. [fnord]

Besides, if she is a fashion guru, she is likely a stunner when dressed for the dance.

re: #171 Charles

Chances are very good they're going to read this thread.

Think so?

OK, if that's the case:

---

Tae, you really need to learn how to password-protect your directories. Otherwise people on the Web will be able to see all your dirty laundry and hidden stuff.

Outside the ivory tower of academia, it's a rough-and-tumble world out here.

---

I'm enjoying the graphs. They're pretty.

re: #136 zombie

NLP = Neuro-linguistic programming?

Carnegie-Mellon, I expect it's simply natural language processing.

For all we know this could actually be an experiement out of the sociology department where a fake CS experiment is set up and left "wide open" to see which blog would find it first.

/I know - but it is late.

re: #179 zombie

Think so?

OK, if that's the case:

---

Tae, you really need to learn how to password-protect your directories. Otherwise people on the Web will be able to see all your dirty laundry and hidden stuff.

Outside the ivory tower of academia, it's a rough-and-tumble world out here.

---

What's more Tae, your competitors can easily scoop you if you are not careful.

pardon my hyphen

re: #178 pat

Besides, if she is a fashion guru, she is likely a stunner when dressed for the dance.

I'm going through the archive of her fashion blog. She could be a stunner but I wouldn't bet on that.

re: #179 zombie

I can see why an academic doing this sort of research would leave things open and then observe the reaction.

i hope she has everything backed up.

I am curious what conclusions she has drawn.

ok here's how I see it. There is a whole group at Carnegie Mellon CS department doing research in Artificial Intelligence by running statistics on blogs. A grad student Tae Yano stashed her research files on a server and left them wide open to WWW. The files pertain to running basic stats on DK and LGF, up to cosine similarity.
[Link: www.cs.cmu.edu...]
is a summary of points (haven't scoured it for bias).

My favorite picture is [Link: www.cs.cmu.edu...]

The AI goal would be to have a blog-commenting software indistinguishable from a blog-commenting human. For all I know, this, or any other comment, is already written by a python script.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~taey/TP/links0.html

If you want to know what threads were used in the comparison

bush bush bush bush rove hillary dillary dock obama osama

re: #181 itellu3times

Carnegie-Mellon, I expect it's simply natural language processing.

You're right.

Here's her advisor's page. He's supervising this thesis.

From his page:

Research interests:
Natural language processing (morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic analysis, algorithms, multilingual methods)
Machine learning (statistical languages, unsupervised grammar induction, structured prediction)
NLP applications (translation, information aggregation, the social sciences)

What in the world is her purpose here? I just dont get it. Could a techie break it down?

Wjat's the deal with Google?

/seriously

re: #180 bosforus

I'm enjoying the graphs. They're pretty.

I made this one about a year and a half ago. It charts comment volume by thread, over time.

Opening that spreadsheet still takes almost 5 minutes, even on a 2-CPU system.

re: #180 bosforus

I was trying to figure out what that one graphed...

BTW - CM does a shit load of research in cooperation with companies that pay for it. I know Seimens has a bunch of projects there. There is a chance that someone is paying for some of this.

Who would want to distill political blogs?

To what end?

Building a comment bot?

=

Asian females with large brains are sexy.

DISAVOW
ANY
STATEMENTS,
R

re: #178 pat

She uses the phrase "sustainable fashion."

That is not a good sign.

re: #176 JustMyView

Spelling tip: Carnegie Mellon University, not Carnegie-Mellon University. No hyphen. Not that it particularly matters.

You're correct, but this experiment seems to look for single words, so I wanted it to show up as one word, not a phrase. I probably should have used the "_" instead... or better yet, I should just get some sleep. Dawn comes soon enough for the working class.

Catch y'all tomorrow.

re: #192 MrArchieBunker

What in the world is her purpose here? I just dont get it. Could a techie break it down?

I'm pretty sure all of the data eventually gets summarized by an MSM talking head who says, Have you heard about blogs? Apparently they're better at our job than we are.

re: #193 Killian Bundy

read my 197.

re: #187 kuchuklambat

The AI goal would be to have a blog-commenting software indistinguishable from a blog-commenting human. For all I know, this, or any other comment, is already written by a python script.

I really like taking pictures of moonbatsbatsbatsbatsss...

...

zombie kernel panic.

Reboot zombie mode.

/

End.

re: #192 MrArchieBunker

What in the world is her purpose here? I just dont get it. Could a techie break it down?

well, I glanced at the paper, and still have to guess, but it's some kind of attempt to be able to let some robot read a blog and determine what people are talking about by using keywords rather than really trying to understand what's being said.

CIA/NSA love this kind of stuff.

re: #199 The Other Les

She uses the phrase "sustainable fashion."

That is not a good sign.

LOL. Good Point. Actually laughing out loud here.

Nite all,

Nice meeting you Tae, good luck with your research... ;)

re: #196 slokat

I was trying to figure out what that one graphed...

At first I thought it was a ranking from Alexa but Kos' not so. I think maybe the y-axis is a percentage, maybe of comments, but I have no idea how to interpret all the numbers above the graph.

re: #161 Opilio

This file seems to contain a list of words parsed from a set of LGF comments along with a couple of frequency counters, probably # of instances, and # of different threads.

Dictionary of LGF vocabulary

For example:

smurf 28 9
smurfed 1 1
smurfette 12 8
smurfettes 2 2
smurfish 1 1
smurfs 9 7
smurftastic 1 1

LMAO! That is smurftastic!

re: #202 karmic_inquisitor

read my 197.

I'm wondering about today's logo.

/wtf?

re: #207 bosforus

At first I thought it was a ranking from Alexa but Kos' not so. I think maybe the y-axis is a percentage, maybe of comments, but I have no idea how to interpret all the numbers above the graph.

PIMF

re: #204 itellu3times

Thanks, THAT makes sense.

bush plutonium opium Afghanistan

re: #210 Killian Bundy

I'm wondering about today's logo.

/wtf?

lasers. Invention thereof.

Why do you think she's funded by anything other than the department? This doens't look expensive. My hunch is that she's using university computers and time for her diss.

re: #203 zombie

I really like taking pictures of moonbatsbatsbatsbatsss...

...

zombie kernel panic.

Reboot zombie mode.

/

End.

"Assuming that every computer program has at least one bug and one extraneous operation, it necessarily follows that all programs can be reduced to a single instruction that doesn't work."

re: #214 karmic_inquisitor

lasers. Invention thereof.

Thanks.

/duh, never thought to just click the logo

re: #213 itellu3times

bush plutonium opium Afghanistan

spam spam lovely spam wonderful spam

Here's another tiny picture of her. Self portrait.

Was not easy to find.

re: #196 slokat

I was trying to figure out what that one graphed...

I get it now. In[26] is the x-axis. Out[26] is the y-axis. After the arrays are sorted in ascending order they're graphed. But what are the numbers?

re: #182 karmic_inquisitor

For all we know this could actually be an experiement out of the sociology department where a fake CS experiment is set up and left "wide open" to see which blog would find it first.

/I know - but it is late.

I thought of that before I tried to ftp. Could be a honeypot.

A classic honeypot is creating a file called something like passwords.txt or all_salaries.xls, and leaving it where people can get at it. Then you watch to see who opens or copies the file. Since you created the file, you know that nobody besides you has any legitimate business bothering that file.

re: #219 zombie

Here's another tiny picture of her. Self portrait.

Was not easy to find.

Pretentious.

anyway don't we already have carnivore reading our mail? surely it can read blogs, too.

re: #220 bosforus

Actually no, but getting closer.

re: #208 song_and_dance_man

Where is the boob thread graph?

Turned out goose eggs.

re: #215 hermeneutics

Why do you think she's funded by anything other than the department? This doens't look expensive. My hunch is that she's using university computers and time for her diss.

If someone is funding it they're wasting their money.

/seeing as how all the research is available for free

re: #204 itellu3times

well, I glanced at the paper, and still have to guess, but it's some kind of attempt to be able to let some robot read a blog and determine what people are talking about by using keywords rather than really trying to understand what's being said.

CIA/NSA love this kind of stuff.

Actually, that might not be far from the truth. The program doesn't have to understand the conversation. It only needs to observe the conversation until certain statistical values are met, then notify a spook that the thread might be of interest.

re: #204 itellu3times

Project Echelon

[Link: www.fas.org...]

Project Carnivore

[Link: www.msnbc.msn.com...]

===

Don't think that's where this is going though...

PARANOIA
WILL
DESTROYA,
R

re: #219 zombie

Here's another tiny picture of her. Self portrait.

Was not easy to find.

I like that one better.

re: #208 song_and_dance_man

Where is the boob thread graph?

i was wondering where the FNDT's fit into the scheme of things...

/as opposed to the ONDT's $-)

re: #226 song_and_dance_man

Islam Rosie hate misogyny link Soros goat Nazi Whore taqiyya Evolution

xenu tom cruise thetan enturbulate rondroid suppressive person

Ooooh, I found her entire curriculum vitae.

She's actually a returnee to college from industry. Worked 4 years as a System Engineer
for Ricoh.

re: #229 Render

PARANOIA
WILL
DESTROYA,
R

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean the pizza isn't bugged.

re: #229 Render

Hillary or BO?

re: #226 song_and_dance_man

Islam Rosie hate misogyny link Soros goat Nazi Whore taqiyya Evolution

LOL!

It looks like the python code compares two documents by a cosine measure based on the number of words in each document. It counts the words in each document and does a dot product between the counts normalized by root sum-of-squares. Two documents are most similar when the "cosine" is 1 and different when the "cosine" is 0.

They're probably getting ready to do a study where they compare the similarity between threads and this is some initial set of data to debug the code.

re: #234 victor_yugo

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean the pizza isn't bugged.

Speak into potato comrade.

re: #209 Sharmuta

LMAO! That is smurftastic!

I thought you might appreciate that portion of the list :-)

LOL STFU STFD :) :-)

re: #214 karmic_inquisitor

lasers. Invention thereof.

I kinda liked the Mother's Day one with the duck and ducklings

/did I just say that?

re: #174 Dan G.

I can fact check, but I'm not going to chase down a phrase that uses the word "context" without any context... especially when it is slung at me as an ad hominem.

Now you are hoisting yourself on your own pitard. If you are not contextually literate, you will quickly become eligible for the dry pool diving team. Maybe even be eligible to try out for the Varsity Ornithology team if you have the right stuff.

With the exception of the first sentence in the above paragraph, you will not understand the next two statements without specific knowledge of contextual literacy. Google news is highly dependent on the contextual illiteracy of it's casual readers for it's "perceived validity".

re: #233 zombie

Dang, zombie, I'm almost scared of what you could turn up on me!

Good night Lizards!

&

If you track us back... Thanks Tae, for giving us a fun exercise!
Maybe you could contact Charles & give us an inside look at what this all means?

re: #238 The Other Les

Speak into potato comrade.

HAH!

re: #233 zombie

Her first degree is in International Relations/Affairs. Later, she veered off into computers where she's getting her terminal degree. It makes perfect sense that she'd combine her interest in politics with her knowledge of computers.

re: #243 victor_yugo

Dang, zombie, I'm almost scared of what you could turn up on me!

While my comment function is rebooting, I'm falling back on my Google-fu function.

OK, I've successfully recreated lgf1.pdf but have no idea what it means because I don't know what the numbers mean. If anyone has any clue it'd save me a lot of time at work tomorrow. :)

re: #239 Opilio

Well- it made me look around more too-

sharmie 18 8

That is almost all Render's doing.

Well, I'm going to mail her and tell her the jig is up. Fix her permissions.

re: #242 gymnast

Now you are hoisting yourself on your own pitard.

petard

/spelling police, out.

Judging that she started college in 1994, that means she was born in 1976, which would make her 32 years old now -- which jibes with her already having a real job for four years and then returning to get a PhD.

re: #232 The Other Les

xenu tom cruise thetan enturbulate rondroid suppressive person

Tom Cruise used to lease our house: we still get Scientology mail here.

/what a great scam... %-)

re: #249 Sharmuta

lol

oops...

sry,
R

re: #251 song_and_dance_man

IF you look carefully under the cup and on the paper you'll see religious messages. I'm serious. Verses from the Bible are hidden on all In and Out packaging.

re: #171 Charles

Come on. Let's not post disparaging comments about people's looks. Chances are very good they're going to read this thread.

Thank you!

Language and Politics
William Cohen, Noah Smith, and Tae Yano

Most approaches to automatic text analysis and processing treat text as a stream of words or sentences. A typical underlying assumption is that the use of language in the data is literal and that the data represent facts. Many genres, however, do not have these features.

We are exploring automatic methods for analyzing text in the political domain, specifically blog posts on topics pertinent to the 2008 United States Presidential Elections. Political text is often indirect, sarcastic, repetitive, hyperbolic, emotional, biased, manipulative, and riddled with unstated assumptions. Our aim is to automatically separate useful, thoughtful information from redundant "spin," using statistical natural language processing techniques and a data-driven methodology that makes use of the insights of political scientists.

The broader impact of this work will consist of a renewed emphasis exploiting domain knowledge together with text data for more powerful natural language understanding technology, as well as software tools that will promote more informed decision-making among American voters.

/scroll down

Good night all.

But I have a question for the great one: Are you keeping later hours than you used to (early morning open threads at 3 AM)? And no bike threads in a while?

Midlife lifestyle change, perhaps?

0.665689731523}, {16., 0.700371724223}, {17., 0.708542529981}, {18.,
0.72730225358}, {19., 0.816460766851}, {20., 0.855324151661}]}, {},
AspectRatio->NCache[GoldenRatio^(-1), 0.6180339887498948],
Axes->True,
AxesOrigin->{0, 0.4},

Hard to go wrong with the golden ratio.

re: #248 bosforus

OK, I've successfully recreated lgf1.pdf but have no idea what it means because I don't know what the numbers mean. If anyone has any clue it'd save me a lot of time at work tomorrow. :)

The numbers were fed in raw for each axis, then sorted and plotted sequentially. The meaning is known only to her at this time. Therefore, it's probably a test run, not to be considered valid.

re: #251 song_and_dance_man

BTW when I come to CA soon I'm taking you up on that In-N-Out burger offer.

no problema... email is active.

Tommys too? %-)

re: #255 Render

Don't be sorry, my friend. And, actually, "Sharmie" is the name I use at Pandora.

re: #261 victor_yugo

The numbers were fed in raw for each axis, then sorted and plotted sequentially. The meaning is known only to her at this time. Therefore, it's probably a test run, not to be considered valid.

Is that what's in the lgf1.nb file? It looks like she's making a table in that file.

re: #254 redc1c4

Be careful saying that. I'm sure they'd be interested to know that.

If I were you, I'd just turn it all over to a LEO somewhere.

re: #254 redc1c4

Tom Cruise used to lease our house: we still get Scientology mail here.

/what a great scam... %-)