by larc 44 Replies latest jw friends
Farkel,
I don't know why Cygnus is questioning you. It is evident from my search and the search of others that the official WT website is designed to selectively include propaganda and exclude information they have published that could come back to bite them. If Cygnus wants proof, he can read the entire thread and/or do his own search on the sanctified thread of the official, divine and pure religion, that is maintained by a channel of communication from Jehovah himself to Brooklyn.
Greetings Lark,
: I don't know why Cygnus is questioning you.
You mean "Cynicus?" Cygnus is a different person.
I think Cynicus' question is legitimate and if Cynicus is willing to convert the WT CD ROM database into ASCII files and bench mark searches on that data against the CD ROM data, I would encourage such a project. It may produce solid evidence that the society has also limited the search engine on the CD ROM. I would do it, but I don't have time for such an exercise right now.
Farkel
I don't know why Cygnus is questioning you. It is evident from my search and the search of others that the official WT website is designed to selectively include propaganda and exclude information they have published that could come back to bite them.
The question, my dear Larc, was very specifically targeted at the search engine on their CD-ROM product known as the Watchtower Library. The CDROM is from a technical viewpoint completely self contained, that is all software and all data required to do the searches are on each and every copy of it. On a website there may be hidden data, specific search routines with special heuristics that drive its behaviour. It is however almost impossible to prove the presence of such 'special heuristics' from a website.
If Cygnus [sic] wants proof, he can read the entire thread and/or do his own search on the sanctified thread of the official, divine and pure religion, that is maintained by a channel of communication from Jehovah himself to Brooklyn.It is not a matter of wanting proof about the web-site... I'll gladly take your word for that. When I laid eyes for the first time on the WTBS-website the word 'propaganda' came to mind without even having browsed through it.
The CDROM is a different ballgame though. I've established myself that the WTBS-publishers are kind of 'unprofessional' in the way they treat changes to their published materials: instead of publishing an 'erratum' they just go ahead and silently make changes whenever it pleases them. In a similar way their concordances are edited. Not all references on every lemma are completely indexed and 'old light' is notoriously removed from the indexes.
It would be really exciting if I could prove that they do this or similar also with their electronic library on CDROM. I know a great many witnesses who have developed a kind of 'dependency' on this product, and even Farkels reply above sufficiently proves that it is a very powerful instrument indeed.
How deceiving and dishonest would it be if they indeed built similar 'special heuristics' in that search engine so that particular topics would be difficult to find in an automated way. I just asked Farkel if he could provide an example of that. If that is indeed possible I'd like to prove the point unequivocally and illustrate it by reverse engineering their CD-ROM and make the publications thereon available in plain text files so that they can be searched with any search software available. In that way such a dishonesty could be proven to anyone.
However, it is a shitload of work to reverse engineer such a product. As I mentioned in my previous note to Farkel, the WTBS initially used a third-party product called FolioViews to e-publish the New World Translation on floppy disk. FolioViews was a very well known entity to any Novell-user or -system operator, since Novell has used the same software to make all their system documentation available to their users. However, when the Watchtower library got published they didn't use the Windows version of FolioViews or any other comparable third-party product, although these were available at that time.
In general constructing such a product your self is much more expensive than buying it. Of course that principle is founded on the economical principle that labour has an associated intrinsic cost, and in case of the WTBS this is obviously substantially lower than in the rest of the industry. Often such thirdparty software is based on a royalty payback scheme. And since the WTBS distributes their CDROM for free that might have been even more lucrative, but that is mere speculation.
Anyway Larc, before embarking on a project that would easily consume a couple of months of my free time, I'd like to know for sure that I'm really fighting a true windmill here. So I asked Don 'Farkel' Quijote de la Mancha about the shortest route to the nearest windmill, so that I, beloved donkey of Sancho Panza, Dapple, can have a go at it.
---
Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.
: So I asked Don 'Farkel' Quijote de la Mancha
This senor Quioxte only flails at real windmills (whether they exist or not!)
I have my WT-CD ROM in storage right now, but I would be curious to see what kind of data format it is in. It might be necessary to use a hex-editor in order to convert it to ASCII. If anyone would like to e-mail me a sample data table from the CD ROM, I'll have a go at it in my spare time.
With regards to your comments on the WTS not including errata when they change the bound volumes from what was printed in the loose publications, it has been my experience that they seldom make alterations to the material originally found in the magazines or books. The "before the end of our 20th century" change to "in our day" was the most noteworthy and most dishonest.
However, they have made numerous reference deletions in their indexes, which is why I seldom rely upon them as a bibliography when I'm doing research. Another notorious reference deletion is that the year 1975 is not now listed under "significant dates," even though it was by far the most significant date in my dub life and the dub life of most other JWs in my generation. Liars and Hypocrites!
Farkel
"Jarascz refuses to even use a computer, no doubt feeling that computers are ‘the Disgusting Thing That Causes Desolation’."
Bwahhhhhhhhh, ok. So, RIDING THE WILD BEAST must be a walk on the Brooklyn Bridge for JERKEROFF, no doubt.
Refuses? Interesting.
My mom "refuses" to use her computer too. It just sits there, collecting dust. roflolol Do I "believe" that she and JACKYOURCRACK "refuse" to log onto it? bwahhhhhhhhhhh
sKally, giving SLICKDICK a huge shout out here too
"refuse"...hahahahaha...i "refuse" to be A PART OF SATANS ORGANIZATION, A.K.A. UNITED NATIONS and to use their LIBRARY COMPUTERS!!
H.S.: pleased try not take offense to my inner most feelings here. And respectfully, how do you positively know this re: JACKSCRACK?
