Posted by Jonathan on November 27, 2002, at 0:45:57
In reply to Re: Dr Bob, Gabbi is not Alphamale, posted by Tabitha on November 26, 2002, at 8:00:00
Tabitha wrote:
> Of course [Gabbi and alphamale] have the same IP address, they're probably using the same computer, but they're not the same person.I think it may be worth adding that, if they are using the same computer, they may also be sharing the same cookies. On Unix machines and the networked Windows machines you are most likely to have used at work (running NT, Win2000 or XP Pro), each user has his/her own account and preferences, browser history and cookies; I don't know about MacOS, but have heard that current versions are built on a variant of Unix. The older versions of MS Windows more common on home computers, Win95, 98 and ME (I'm not sure about XP Home) have User Profiles, which would enable each user to have his/her own cookies, disabled by default("Expert Guide to Windows 98" by Mark Minasi, p. 304). There is also a difference between the two most popular browsers: Netscape can maintain different user profiles independently of the operating system, whilst MSIE cannot.
I'm sure you know more than I do about using cookie and/or IP information to determine whether two posters are the same person, and prefer to keep your methods private. I thought you might, however, have never experienced the above limitation of MSIE on non-networked machines running Windows 9x, which might make two users sharing a machine look like the same person using two posting names. I shall be pleased to discuss this further with you by email if you wish.
Tabitha has already addressed the content of alphamale's posts and Gabbi's reply to the first.
I find alphamale's writing style significantly different from Gabbi's. For example, two sentences in his first post end with a vocative without the preceding comma, an idiosyncrasy I was unable to find in a large sample of Gabbi's recent posts ("... like you Mr. Scott." and "Stand tall my friend."); the full-stop is omitted from 4 out of 12 sentences in his first post and 2 out of 4 in his second; he makes more use than Gabbi of very short sentences (or phrases serving as sentences), each on a line of its own; and, although we have such a short sample of alphamale's prose, I see so many words and phrases which I feel Gabbi would be most unlikely to choose: "unmitigated gall", "stand tall", "be proud", "be glad", "pansy-ass excuse", "mysoginistic ass (sic, twice - I bet Gabbi would have spelt it correctly!) We babblers are so genteel that your search engine found the word "ass", which alphamale uses in both of his posts, in no fewer than 184 posts from the first six months of this year: none of these was written by Gabbi!
Even though I only know Gabbi through reading her posts here, I am convinced that she did not write alphamale's posts.
Jonathan.
poster:Jonathan
thread:8314
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20020918/msgs/8338.html