Data Comparisons

Test New Spam Filter

95 Comments

Hi all… I activated a new spam filter. I’m afraid it is overly aggressive. No spam is getting through, but also, the rate of human comments is unexpectedly low. (I know you are all back at work… but still…)

Please enter a comment to see if you get blocked. If it is filtered and you are human, send me an email through the contact form. http://rankexploits.com/musings/contact-lucia/.

Thanks.
Update: This spam filter seems to work amazingly well!

95 thoughts on “Test New Spam Filter”

  4. I guess it didn’t look very spam-y.

    Here’s another test:

    Only 24-hours left! Time is running out on our Cyber Monday Sale! Today is the last day to get any of our expert how-to audio guides or PDF transcripts for only $99 each! (Regular Price is $197)

  5. Testing, testing. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog’s back. Four score and seven years ago… Now let’s put in a link and see what that does. Caballero Notes.

  12. Boris–
    The spam filter is supposed to put some hidden fields in the comment form. Some are prefilled, some not filled. It checks to see if they got changed or filled. If either happens, it decides you are a spammer and deletes your comment. (It’s not even in the spam bin!)

    Your naughty word was caught by the next filter, so I could recover it!

  13. Hank–
    Spambots are getting more and more sophisticated. Also, there has been an explosion of spam attacks the past two weeks. I do suspect this may be due to cyber monday.

  15. Gambling against carbon insurance or fuel diet will not enlarge wealth. Doubt merchants mortgage future for cheap profit.

    Works as advertised on TV!

  18. Re: SteveF (Nov 29 13:11),

    It wouldn’t help. In fact, I’ve referenced it at least once and probably more over the course of the correspondence, probably at tAV rather than here. As I remember, the first time was when AM said she’d never seen a reference to the scale height of water vapor being ~1/4 that of air in a meteorological text.

    I just looked at Curry and Webster on Amazon and there was a problem on page 127 that assumed that the scale height of water vapor was different than the scale height of air.

  19. Lucia,
    “Your naughty word was caught by the next filter, so I could recover it!”

    What is naughty about that word… having just turned 60, I have to stand up…, er, um, well… for my generation.

  25. SteveF–
    SEO is “search engine optimization”. It’s what you do if you want to come up #1 on a search engine search. Search engines often scan pages and count links to decide whether a page should rank well. So, spammers are often trying to get lots of links on pages to gain a good search engine rank for potentially profitable items.

  27. Reader– Why do you change your “name” so often? Yes, I know you want me to discuss AMSU. It’s near the end of the month, I think you can wait 2 days for the “normal” time when we have that discussion.

  35. Spam spam spam spam…
    …spam spam spam egg and spam; spam spam spam spam spam spam baked beans spam spam spam…
    … Spam! Lovely spam! Lovely spam!

  36. Another Miracle Just Happened…

    We are in the throes of Unprecedented Global Warming and it’s cold and snowy at the same time.

    Andrew

  37. We had 45 people at my house and 4 turkeys. All 4 turkeys were eaten. I also had myself a fine 12 pack of Carlsberg, which is a fine beer.

  44. All-
    .
    Ryan O’Donnell, Nicholas Lewis, Steve McIntyre, and Jeff Condon
    .
    Got their improved analysis of Antarctic warming (an improvement on Steig et al) accepted at Journal of Climate. Visits Jeff’s site for more…

  45. P1: Spammers are breaking captchas with AI, so I’ve built a new system. It asks users to rate a slate of comments as “constructive” or “not constructive.”
    P1: Then it has them reply with comments of their own, which are later rated by other users.
    P2: But what will you do when spammers train their bots to make automated constructive and helpful comments?

    http://www.xkcd.com/810/

  46. Ryan O’Donnell, Nicholas Lewis, Steve McIntyre, and Jeff Condon
    Got their improved analysis of Antarctic warming (an improvement on Steig et al) accepted at Journal of Climate. Visits Jeff’s site for more…
    .
    In the course of looking for this paper, I found this interesting RC post, with an even more interesting comment thread in which Ryan O interacts with Steig. It even features JeffId being not just civil, but actually measured and cautious , over several paragraphs of a climate discussion (I’m still recovering from the shock).

  47. How are you doing today? Hope you get this on time,I am sorry I didn’t inform you about my traveling to England for a program.

    I need a favor from you because I Forgot my little bag in the Taxi on my way to the hotel where my money,and other valuable things were kept I will like you to assist me with a loan urgently with the sum of $3,500 to sort-out my hotel bills and get myself back home.

    I will appreciate what so ever you can afford to send me immediately through Western Union and I promise to pay back your money as soon as i return home. so please let me know on time so that i can forward you the details you need to transfer the money through Western Union.

    Regards
    HP

  49. Test Post explitive, explative, explaytive deleted whatnot whosoever @#$% again and again!!!

  50. Checking in to see if there have been any interesting developments.
    Sorry to say I cannot open the link at DeWitt Payne (Comment#63215) “Caballero Notes.” Sounds interesting indeed.
    Perhaps my connection is too slow.
    p.s. What should vegetarian spam be called anyway? (no, sorry I dont have a punchline maybe someone else does).

  51. HO HO HO HO HO, TOTO! TOTO, all I know is there will be a nice, fat piece of coal in your Christmas stocking this year. Pelosi’s global warming panel…SAY GOODBYE! HO HO HO HO, WHAT A MERRY CHRISTMAS! You know, Santa has given me so much this year, I need to give out a lot of presents to keep up with all the receiving. Hey Toto, I am shocked too. Are you as shocked as I am that someone from “the team” allowed an opposition paper to be published?

    I can’t wait to head on over to Desmog blog and read all of the blubbering.

  52. toto (Comment#63300),
    “I’m still recovering from the shock”
    Perhaps if you had seen this exchange a long time ago, you would have considered Jeff’s other comments a little differently. It seems to me that what sets Jeff off (and he does tend to rant sometimes!) is not the science in climate science, it is the influence of politics on how climate science is packaged and used by people on the far left for political advantage. The authors of RO(10) are a bunch of pretty smart guys; I hope you take the time to read the paper rather than simply dismiss it based on what Eric Steig and friends say about it.

  53. SteveF

    It is a lost cause. I am 24, and all of my friends my age are idiots. They made up their minds a long time ago and they will not change based upon anything. I used to think global warming was real and then I read about it. I think the reasoning for this Steve, and I hate to say it but it is what I believe. I think many young people want to use politics to change our culture. And this is deeply disturbing to me because there are things that I don’t like but the benefits far outweigh the negatives. I have heard many people my age say they hate this country, I think if that is your attitude then you should get the hell out, instead of trying to force your vaules onto the rest of us. You think the planet is endangered? Fine. Go sift dirt out of a creek. Buy a Prius. Just don’t get mad because I’ve decided I have much more important things to do and choose to do other things. I plan on being rich, successful and powerful someday and I don’t think much needs to change. Additionally, I think taxes are far too high, across the board. I would like to see total elimination of any taxes on oil, a huge lowering of taxes on cigarettes, even though I do not smoke, I would cut military spending by shrinking the standing army and spending more money on planes and bombs. I also forgot to mention alcohol. I would like to see taxes greatly reduced on it. Results. Government has less money to use on social programs (I prefer making the decision on who to give money to anyway, some people have family members who struggle financially). People have more money in their pocket because food gas and booze are items people buy everyday, and it benefits everyone.

  54. Dr. Shoosh,
    Well, I am 60, and I can assure you that the desire by people to change the culture through politics is nothing new; your friends are not unusual. It has been happening through all of my life, and I suspect through all of human civilization. Most people believe that government of any kind (AKA the institution of laws) is an improvement over the law of the jungle (murder who you want and take what you can). But the institution of laws must always, even in the best of circumstances, give power to some over others (police over criminals, majority over minority, etc.) and power always has the potential to corrupt. Mao said “Government is the barrel of a gun.”, and he was surely correct about this, since all laws, whether we think them “just” or not, are ultimately enforced, when needed, using the barrel of a gun.
    The structure of government and the laws based on that structure are always and everywhere an effort of people to force their own views and ideals on everyone. Sometimes those ideals include “taxing the rich to make society more just” or “eliminating social programs to allow people to keep more of what they earn”. The King forces his views on the whole country, the nobility forces their views on surfs, majority in a legislature forces its views on the minority, and the majority of the electorate forces (through their elected representatives) their views on the minority. The US constitution was written by people who understood that concentrated political power leads to abuse of individual liberties, and so tried to set up a structure which would inhibit the concentration of power to protect individual liberties. But people being people, they will always do their best to bypass any impediment to instituting their own political views, by whatever means available. Hence the frequent claim you hear for the need of “an evolving interpretation” of the constitution. It is all just politics by another name. It is naive to think this is anything other than normal; it is never going to end, but it is better than the jungle.

  56. Re: toto (Comment#63300)
    –
    Thank you for bringing back that old non discussion between Steig and Jeff Id. It was just marvelous.
    –
    [Response: No comments of yours have been deleted that I’m aware of, at least not to this post. Still, I’m not at all interested in debating you — I’ve got much better things to do. Let me be very clear, though, that I’m by no means claiming our results are the last word, and can’t be improved upon. If you have something coherent and useful to say, say it in a peer reviewed paper. If your results improve upon ours, great, that will be a useful contribution.–eric]
    –
    Seems he is got what he was asking for.

  59. Steve, I agree with most of what you said but I think it is now widely accepted that everyone should be working (No this doesn’t include people with mental or physical disabilities). I actually found something rather funny though, many of my friends smoke cigarettes and they think that second hand smoke is pretty harmless but ask them about global warming and you get a response, “Oh yeah, oh yeah no doubt about it. Did you see the glacier melting in Yellowstone Park?” And one of my friends actually did say this to me. And I get the whole notion that Obama is new and young and inspiring to younger people but the majority of that party is a bunch of clowns. Pelosi is awful. She single handedly sunk the Democrat party. And so I think Obama was a fool to not reign her in and tell her to shut it. I need to see some more fight out of him.

  61. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now?

    And thanks DeWitt Payne for the notes. i claim witness to a lunar glory – displayed on snow covered ground, one winter night, viewed from an airplane. It persisted for nearly 1/2 hr (ref. 5.6c)

  65. ♫ Hold on tight to your dream
    Hold on tight to your dream
    When you see your ship go sailing
    When you feel your heart is breaking
    Hold on tight to your dream ♫

    Happy Friday

    Andrew

  66. Layman–
    Thanks! I’ll try to get the winners announced tomorrow. I’ve been fiddling with R. I got a script running… debugged… and decided to answer the question I want, I need to run more scripts and think. Yikes!

    I’m going out to dinner tonight, so I won’t get the UAH up in the next 30 minutes. (I better go read what they actually are now!)

  69. roll the clock back on dehog

    dhogaza says:
    1 June 2009 at 12:00 PM
    I didn’t read the JeffID/RyanO work but have read JeffID’s earlier “I’ve mathematically proven the hockey stick is an artifact of the analysis” piece and it was garbage. It was explained to him that it was garbage, and why it was garbage, but he didn’t budge.

    So don’t expect any backtracking by them on this piece of work.”

    yup

  70. lucia,

    It might be nice to go to the old RC thread and pull up all gotcha

    dhogaza says:
    1 June 2009 at 4:19 PM
    You are conflating the need for better models with the reality that the globe has warmed.

    No one argues the need for improving models. Why do you think Gavin has a job?

    You don’t *improve* a model that’s been “contradicted”, especially when the physics upon which they’re based has been contradicted, as you claim: “any reasonable Antarctic temperature math contradicts predicted CO2 based warming”.

    You would throw it out and start over.

    My main reason for posting is to encourage lurkers to investigate you themselves, as your oh-so-polite, watered-down act here is … an act.

    I agree with Eric (and various others who’ve said the same at WUWT): submit your work for publication at a reputable journal and see where it goes.

  71. Steve Mosher,

    Wow, I got very little out of that comment Mosh. Could you try again?
    I am especially puzzled by “as your oh-so-polite, watered-down act here is … an act.” What? Who’s act? Who is oh-so-polite?
    Really, what are you saying?

  72. Steve, he is just having a little fun digging up dhog comments. I think it is from Steig’s RC thread on “overfitting” when Steig took his first run at the emerging blog critiques at tAV and CA.

  73. Yes,

    I think it would be nice to pull up that old thread. and review what people said at the time. many interesting threads..

    The response ” do your own science and get published” doesnt work when the people you are challenging have the talent to do exactly what you are taunting them to do. Steig would have done better to engage Ryan O and Jeff Id and do a paper with them, rather than challenging them to do it themselves. The team will never learn when it comes to people like steveMc, jeffID and Ryan 0. They fundamentally misunderstand them because they see then through the lense of Mann’s paranoia

  74. “Do your own science and get published” means exactly that. It’s not a taunt. Steig doesn’t have to work with anyone he doens’t want to, it’s a free country. It’s nice to see something written by McIntyre for a change that isn’t full of taunts and casting aspersions on people’s character. Oh wait, you can’t do that in published work, can you. Must have nearly killed him.

  75. The response ” do your own science and get published” doesnt work when the people you are challenging have the talent to do exactly what you are taunting them to do.
    .
    Wait, what? It has worked. They actually went and made a paper instead of rambling along on a blog. Now the paper is published, a normal scientific exchange can take place. More evidence, less conspiracy theorizing. Everybody benefits.
    .
    They fundamentally misunderstand them because they see then through the lense of Mann’s paranoia
    .
    Mann is paranoid about JeffId in the same way that mice eat cats and tails wag dogs.

  78. “Now the paper is published, a normal scientific exchange can take place.”

    toto,

    A normal scientific exchange can always take place without somebody somewhere publishing a paper. The Publish Thing is just not necessary.

    On a lighter note, I love ‘Rosanna’. 😉

    Andrew

  79. toto (Comment#63333),
    “Mann is paranoid about JeffId in the same way that mice eat cats and tails wag dogs.”
    .
    I don’t think “paranoid” is right, but a little delusional is probably fair. Certainly Eric seems to have misjudged the combined level of mathematical and technical sophistication among the authors, as well as their persistence in fighting the ‘Team’s’ inevitable negative reviews.
    .
    After the Nature paper came out, the authors of RO10 individually and jointly tried to point out to Eric that there were real problems with the paper, and that the method used was inaccurately contaminating the whole of the continent with warming form the peninsula. Eric basically told them to shut up or publish something that refuted his work. They were trying to help, and he told them to buzz-off. I read over the Real Climate thread at the time, and Eric was altogether too arrogant, and the others commenting in the thread were worse. “I won’t waste my time debating you, I have better things to do” and “maybe you could enroll in my Matlab course”. Maybe those “better things to do” included the time to generate 88 pages of back-and-forth review documents in a failed effort to keep the paper from being published?

    Eric went out of his way to insult and taunt people who clearly knew a great deal about principle component analysis. He behaved badly, and continues to.

  80. The spam filter is supposed to stop incoming traffic, but yours stops outgoing traffic as well. The article about Spencer publishing the November anomaly has not come through.

  82. Alex–
    I’ll do that now! (I’ve been obsessing about doing something in R. It’ confirming something I knew from excel, but looking up appropriate commends and getting used to R has involved swearing. Oh… and not going to the gym.)

  83. Not to put too fine a point on it…

    I am not dismissing the paper of Ryan O. et al.

    I am saying that science is a method. It is not the publications of certain magazines or the declarations of an institution.

    It’s the ongoing blogging work of people like SteveMc and JeffID that mean something to me, whether it is ever published in a journal or not.

    It’s like Joey Votto winning the National League MVP. I told my buddy that I hope Joey puts it in a shoebox under his bed and plays like he never got it.

    Andrew

  84. Bugs doesnt see how how that taunt doesnt work because he doesnt see it in the larger rhetorical context. That context used to be “bloggers are not serious because they do not publish” like the frame of skeptics are not serious because they do not publish in peer review. That is why Steig and friends fought against Ryan O’s paper.
    Its far more effective and economical to say ” dont mind JeffId, he’s a blogger, and bloggers never publish” Now, that simple retort is gone. You also start to set up an asymetry. That works like this.

    You have two published authors: JeffId and Eric Steig.
    One of them operates a blog. He publishes science and he publishes a blog. On his blog he engages readers. He stays with a conversation. He lets other voices be heard. The other does not operate a blog. He publishes science. He rarely engages readers. He shuts down threads. He moderates alternative voices.

    Who has more credibility in the eyes of readers? Now, I am not taking about actual credibility ( some idiot runs off and counts papers ) I’m talking about perceptions. In over 10 years of doing this blog commenting thing I will tell you who has more credibility in the eyes of the average reader. The person who comes down from the ivory tower to mingle with the common folk. It’s even better if that person fought the “system” and won. Took the challenge and succeeded.

    Again, Bugs and Mann and the stupid ilk that manage and promote the frames of AGW, don’t get strategy. They don’t get that the “story” can trump the facts. I suspect that this story will turn eventually into a story about those 88 pages. Who wrote them and did they violate the rules of the journal in doing that. That’s a speculation. Scientifically un intersting but a story nonetheless

    Two options:

    A. Steig could have invited Ryan O and JeffId to write a paper with him. That process would be slow and tedious and steig would be in control. If no paper comes out of that who is to blame? very hard to pin down. Steig gets to be gracious.

    B. Challenge them to write their own paper and then fight the publication.

    Now the deciding thing for me in this is the quality of the blog work that Ryan produced before the paper. It was clear that he was onto something. Clear that he was getting interesting results. Clear that he understood PC retention better than steig ( see Ryans reading of North which is very precise and on the point) It was clear that Chaldni patterns mattered. Given that if you choose path B you are commited to fighting against the publication paper. That gives you an outcome space is that ugly on all outcomes.

    But Steig didnt think this way. He looked at Ryans work and pulled out a standard response. If you think you got something publish. If Im in Steig’s position I look at Ryans work and say ” hmm, it looks like he has some points, how can I get in on that.”

  87. Mosher–
    I think it’s difficult to know what was in Steig’s mind. However, he has posted at least one eye-roll inducing things in sounds like an attempt at spin comment at JeffId’s.

  88. Chladni patterns obviously matter and were discussed in the first draft.

    The infamous Reviewer A required that Chladni patterns be removed from the article and Ryan decided not to fight this point. The final version doesn’t mention CHladni patterns unfortunately – although they are an easy and precise way to visualize what is going on in the PC retention process here.

  89. One of the hypocritical aspects of the taunt “Do your own science and get published” is that the Team has been simultaneously do whatever it could to prevent critical articles from being published. Adverse team reviews have very little to do with improving the scientific quality of the articles and everything to do with placing roadblocks to publication. Ryan was persistent enough to pick Team spitballs off the wall, but I didn’t followup further on our Santer Comment after two sets of abusive rejections, or an earlier article on hurricanes after abusive reviews. So it’s not correct to say that the strategy hasn’t “worked” for the Team.

    Cimategate may have temporarily made it less easy for the editor to accede to Team pressure, but that moment may be eroding. (The Hwang stem cell case temporarily made it easier to get journals to require authors to archive data, but that moment seems to have passed.)

  90. bugs:

    I think he must have put the final nail in the coffin.

    His wife has cancer, douche bag.

  91. Someone asked a question, I just made a flippant response. I had no idea of his medical issues.

  93. If lucia wants to delete the comment, she is welcome. There was no intention to relate the remark to anything to do with Watt’s personal life.

  94. Re: Steve McIntyre (Dec 4 15:37),

    I guess when I say it hasn’t worked, I mean that it hasn’t worked to move things
    forward in a constructive way.

    When they challenge people capable of writing publishable papers to write a paper there are these outcomes:

    1. the person doesnt write the paper.
    2. The person does.

    Personally I would not throw the guantlet down to the like of ryan, jeff, roman, or you. Because that will surely lead to #2. I would throw the challenge down to TCO.

    If Im sure that the person will pick up the challenge then I have to be ready for these two outcomes.

    1. I fight the paper and win
    2. I fight the paper and lose.

    Which means when I throw the challenge down to somebody like ryan I am hoping for #1. Which means, that all ryan will have is a complaint that I blocked the paper. is that what I want to hand Ryan? he’ll just post his paper, post the replies, and people will argue the science and the process. It’s not as bad as #2, but it’s clearly worse than these options:

    A. admit ryan has some points and offer to work with him.
    B. borrow Ryan’s idea, write your own paper and offer him a co authorship
    when its almost done.
    C. ask a friendly to write a criticism of your paper.
    D. ignore him.

    many other options to take other than challenge a guy you know is right, who is capable or writing a paper, who is super motivated to prove he is right,
    who is an engineer ( they LOVE being told they cant do something)..

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn481KcjvMo

  95. Re: steven mosher (Dec 5 14:43),
    This is an oddly duellish way of seeing it. Urging someone to write a paper is a perfectly normal thing to do. And there’s no expectation of these combative responses. It’s just another paper in the literature with slightly different results and maybe improved methods. There’ll be more, and people can decide.

Comments are closed.