CEOP show Maddie is missing on 30th April 2007

WLBTS wrote:

canada12 wrote:
Yes I just checked that small delay for myself. I do have to concede you're right :-)

Additionally, note that in the Facebook screenshot the alt text 'Photograph of Madeleine McCann' appears at the bottom of where the second photograph should be.  This indicates that the image element was indeed present in the HTML for the second photograph, but the web-server failed to deliver the image file for some reason.

I wish I'd had the foresight to save the source code from the page when I first looked at it a few days ago. I'd love to compare the old source codes with the new source codes. I wonder if anyone else thought to save the page source codes for comparison purposes?

canada12 wrote:

I wish I'd had the foresight to save the source code from the page when I first looked at it a few days ago. I'd love to compare the old source codes with the new source codes. I wonder if anyone else thought to save the page source codes for comparison purposes?

Yeah, I really wish I'd saved them, it would be nice to be able to support what I'm saying, as the source code would be pretty conclusive to those who understand their workings.

Another thing I've noticed about the photographs:

The first entry in WBM's history for the URL 'http://www.ceop.gov.uk/madeleine_01.jpg' is June 6th 2007.
The first entry in WBM's history for the URL 'http://www.ceop.gov.uk/madeleine_02.jpg' is April 30th 2007 (the same time-stamp that I have concluded is incorrect).

Of course, 'madeleine_01.jpg' could have existed prior to June 6th, that's just the first time that image was crawled.  But if my conclusion is correct - that the April 30th time-stamp is erroneous - then this is exactly what I would expect to see.  It may also explain why only one photograph appeared and the other failed.

This is fairly important.  If the mccann page allegedly crawled on 30th April contained a link to 'madeleine_01.jpg', I would have expected the image URL to have been crawled at the same time.  However, the first time we see it crawled is not until June 6th.  Which makes sense if the 30th April date is erroneous and the mccann page was not actually crawled until a later date.

The only thing is, WLBTS, I looked at the original link when it first came to light earlier this week. I clicked on it, and I saw for myself - there was only one photo of Madeleine. I was on the link for quite a long time, and no second photo ever loaded. In fact, I wanted to see if I could find the EXIF info for the photo, so I saved it to my desktop and ran it through an EXIF viewer. There was no EXIF info there.

So, there may be a lag now in loading the second photo, however my memory isn't faulty. There was only one photo of Madeleine on the original April 30 page.

I wish I'd saved a screenshot myself. I do have the original photo which I downloaded to my work desktop and I won't be able to access it until next week. I'm not sure it will be of any help however.

Anyway. There was only one photo on the page originally.

Look at the facebook screenshot that you linked yourself.

Next to the first photograph, you can see the alt text 'Photograph of Madeleine McCann'.  That means that the image element for the second photograph was in fact present in the HTML for the page allegedly of 30th April 2007.  All that has happened is that the image hasn't loaded.

I'd like to ask PeterMac's opinion here, because on the other forum he posted a screenshot that I assume he grabbed himself. It's on page 2 of the discussion http://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t11399p10-claim-by-stevo-ceop-show-maddie-is-missing-on-30th-april-2007

Here is his screenshot:
https://i.servimg.com/u/f18/16/77/69/72/ceops_10.jpg

One delayed loading I might allow... but two delayed loadings... hmmm.
PeterMac, can you contribute anything to this conversation?

Edited to add: Is it possible that the alt text 'Photograph of Madeleine McCann" is a placeholder for a photo that was yet to be added, rather than an indicator of a photo that wasn't loading?

canada12 wrote:
Edited to add: Is it possible that the alt text 'Photograph of Madeleine McCann" is a placeholder for a photo that was yet to be added, rather than an indicator of a photo that wasn't loading?

Then why does the text 'Photograph of Madeleine McCann' not appear at all in PeterMac's screenshot?  If it was simply text then it would be there from the time the HTML was loaded and parsed.

PM's screenshot is of the same link that Steve posted, before the pages in question were taken down.  Therefore the 'Photograph of Madeleine McCann' appears very clearly to me to be alt text for an image.

I'll add again that the photograph that *is* present in those screenshots ('http://www.ceop.gov.uk/madeleine_01.jpg') does not appear in WBM's history until June 6th 2007.  Of course, it is possible that if there really was a page that was crawled 30th April 2007 that the link to that first photograph was different, we don't have the HTML now so it is impossible to tell.  I do not believe that to be the case, the weight of evidence is for the 30th April 2007 time-stamp being erroneous.

And here's another URL problem - the PDFs on the mccann page.

The WBM history for http://www.ceop.gov.uk/downloads/CEOPHelpMadeleine_uk.pdf shows that it was first crawled on July 8th 2007.

The WBM history for http://www.ceop.gov.uk/downloads/CEOPHelpMadeleine_pt.pdf shows that it was first crawled on July 8th 2007.

The WBM history for http://www.ceop.gov.uk/downloads/CEOPHelpMadeleine_es.pdf shows that it was first crawled on July 8th 2007.

The WBM history for http://www.ceop.gov.uk/downloads/CEOPHelpMadeleine_fr.pdf shows that it was first crawled on July 8th 2007.

The WBM history for http://www.ceop.gov.uk/downloads/CEOPHelpMadeleine_ar.pdf shows that it was first crawled on July 8th 2007.

This is - once again - exactly what I would expect to see if the 30th April time-stamp is erroneous.  Of course, in fairness I must point out the possibility that the files could have existed prior to July 8th 2007 but hadn't been crawled.  Possible, but I don't consider it probable.

The 30th April page only showed one photograph, but it was clearly designed to carry two.  (If you are designing a page with only one photograph in it, you tend to centre it, not put it to the left).  But the second photo - Maddie with the tennis balls - doesn't show up at all.  Remember that on 30 April, the picture of Maddie with the tennis balls hadn't been taken yet, according to Andy Redwood on Crimewatch.

So maybe there was a link to a picture called Madeleine_02.jpg there as a placeholder, waiting for a file of that name to be added later.  But that doesn't make any sense either, because then you would see a little box with a red X in it, or some other thing, indicating a broken link.  There are lots of other pages on Wayback that show exactly that.  Instead, there is just a big white space.

Or an image called Madeleine_02.jpg which is exactly that - a big white square, 180 pixels wide.  To be replaced by the proper photo later.  That would support the theory that the April 30 version was a work in progress, a draft.  When I am making up webpages I tend to stick in any old picture that comes to hand, cropped or resized to the same size and shape, until the actual one I want is available.  I don't tend to use big white squares, but other designers may well work differently from me.  I know it sounds daft but without the source code for the April 30 page (I know, I never saved it either ) it's the only explanation I have.

The links to the PDFs are not so problematic.  You can write anything you like between <a href> tags and it will just show up as a normal hyperlink.  The only way you are going to know that the link is broken is when you click on it and nothing happens, or there is an error message, a 404 not found, something like that.  It's perfectly possible that somebody put in the links to the PDF files and then added the actual PDF files later.

ETA I just looked at Joss' screen shot, and that is definitely a broken link. So the link to Madeleine_02.jpg was in the code, but the actual file Madeleine_02.jpg was not there, or wasn't linking correctly. As I already said, the picture of Maddie with the tennis balls wouldn't have been taken yet on April 30.

Another one, the URL http://www.madeleine.ceopupload.com that appeared on the '30th April' home-page:



First crawl date - 23rd May 2007.

Resistor wrote:So maybe there was a link to a picture called Madeleine_02.jpg there as a placeholder, waiting for a file of that name to be added later.  But that doesn't make any sense either, because then you would see a little box with a red X in it, or some other thing, indicating a broken link.  There are lots of other pages on Wayback that show exactly that.  Instead, there is just a big white space.

Depends on the browser.  Look on page 6 of the JH thread for a screenshot showing a broken image link (post by user 'Joss').

Sorry, I don't understand what this is trying to prove?

Resistor wrote:Sorry, I don't understand what this is trying to prove?

Ignore it then, if it doesn't interest you.

WLBTS wrote:

Resistor wrote:So maybe there was a link to a picture called Madeleine_02.jpg there as a placeholder, waiting for a file of that name to be added later.  But that doesn't make any sense either, because then you would see a little box with a red X in it, or some other thing, indicating a broken link.  There are lots of other pages on Wayback that show exactly that.  Instead, there is just a big white space.

Depends on the browser.  Look on page 6 of the JH thread for a screenshot showing a broken image link (post by user 'Joss').

I use three different browsers and they all display different things to indicate broken picture links. There's none of them that just display nothing at all. But I'll go and look at the CMoMM thread and see, thanks.

WLBTS wrote:

Resistor wrote:Sorry, I don't understand what this is trying to prove?

Ignore it then, if it doesn't interest you.

There is no need to be so rude.  I didn't say it didn't interest me.  I said I didn't understand what point you were trying to prove.



WLBTS: I must say that I found your comment a bit needling.

Resistor wrote:
There is no need to be so rude.  I didn't say it didn't interest me.  I said I didn't understand what point you were trying to prove.

If you're interested in a proper discussion, please explain how news headlines from October 2007 appeared on a page crawled 30 April 2007.

WLBTS wrote:

Resistor wrote:
There is no need to be so rude.  I didn't say it didn't interest me.  I said I didn't understand what point you were trying to prove.

If you're interested in a proper discussion, please explain how news headlines from October 2007 appeared on a page crawled 30 April 2007.

Without the source code, I can't, as you well know. Seems to me that it is you who are not interested in any proper discussion. I have given my honest opinion but because you don't agree with it, you are just determined to be rude and arrogant, bragging about your qualifications but offering nothing in the way of proper explanations. This will be my last response to you, so don't bother replying, because I am done with you now.

Resistor wrote:
Without the source code, I can't, as you well know.  Seems to me that it is you who are not interested in any proper discussion.  I have given my honest opinion but because you don't agree with it, you are just determined to be rude and arrogant, bragging about your qualifications but offering nothing in the way of proper explanations.  This will be my last response to you, so don't bother replying, because I am done with you now.

That's because this bit of evidence absolutely contradicts your theory.  You are ready to argue any other point it seems, but not this one.  That may be because it shows the 30th April 2007 time-stamp to be erroneous, as Wayback Machine have themselves stated to be the case.

Seeing as you won't participate, I'll explain to everybody else who is interested.

Every version of the CEOP home-page in the Wayback Machine index lists news headlines that are in the past, i.e. prior to the crawl date.

Here are some random samples showing this fact, dated before and after the version allegedly crawled on 30th April 2007:

https://web.archive.org/web/20061230180407/http://www.ceop.gov.uk/
https://web.archive.org/web/20070104161747/http://www.ceop.gov.uk/
https://web.archive.org/web/20070108123846/http://www.ceop.gov.uk/
https://web.archive.org/web/20070703080541/http://www.ceop.gov.uk/
https://web.archive.org/web/20070919194259/http://www.ceop.gov.uk/

And the page of 12th October 2007, which looks extremely similar to the '30 April 2007' page, with 2 of the 3 news headlines in common:

https://web.archive.org/web/20071012051850/http://www.ceop.gov.uk/

Inspection of the HTML/JavaScript for those pages shows that the HTML for the news headlines was built by the server and sent at the time of the crawl.  The page /index.asp probably queried a database for the news headlines within a specified time-frame and spewed that out as HTML.  Which demonstrates that the October news headlines in the database must have existed at the point of the crawl request, i.e. '30th April 2007'. There's nothing 'dynamic' about those headlines as has been claimed, it is as if the headlines were printed on a piece of paper and posted through your letterbox.

This is of course, an impossibility, unless psychic powers are at play.  The only feasible explanation is that the crawl date was not 30th April 2007 at all, but some time from late October 2007 onwards.

And that in my opinion ends the matter, for me at least.  The home page crawl date of 30th April 2007 simply cannot be trusted, which brings all the other pages with the same time-stamp into question.  Seriously into question.

For comparison, here is the 13th October 2007 home-page, alongside the '30th April 2007' home-page*:



*Image on the right-hand side taken from a post by HiDeHo on CMOMM, I didn't ask permission but many thanks

On the '30th April 2007', one of the headlines is 'you can run but you can't hide', which links to this:

Tuesday 2 October 2007
You can run but you can’t hide
‘Most Wanted’ offender back in police custody
A registered sex offender who had been missing for over SEVEN years is now back within police custody after being identified from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre’s ‘Most Wanted’ website.

John Richard Murrell, aged 39, was tracked down in the Republic of Ireland and arrested on Friday 28 September by police officers in the Garda Siochana – assisting officers from West Mercia Constabulary.

This arrest was apparently predicted 5 months before it happened by CEOP, getting the exact date correct and who did the arrest.

And this article also appears in the index for the first time under the date 30 April 2007.  Surely that proves it once and for all!  This article cannot have been in existence on 30th April 2007, as it relates an event that occurs a full 5 months later.  However the Wayback Machine index shows that it was indeed crawled on 30th April 2007.

The time-stamp of this article is without doubt in error.  It is the same time-stamp as that of the mccann page at the heart of this current discussion.

WLBTS wrote:And here's another URL problem - the PDFs on the mccann page.

The WBM history for http://www.ceop.gov.uk/downloads/CEOPHelpMadeleine_uk.pdf shows that it was first crawled on July 8th 2007.

The WBM history for http://www.ceop.gov.uk/downloads/CEOPHelpMadeleine_pt.pdf shows that it was first crawled on July 8th 2007.

The WBM history for http://www.ceop.gov.uk/downloads/CEOPHelpMadeleine_es.pdf shows that it was first crawled on July 8th 2007.

The WBM history for http://www.ceop.gov.uk/downloads/CEOPHelpMadeleine_fr.pdf shows that it was first crawled on July 8th 2007.

The WBM history for http://www.ceop.gov.uk/downloads/CEOPHelpMadeleine_ar.pdf shows that it was first crawled on July 8th 2007.

This is - once again - exactly what I would expect to see if the 30th April time-stamp is erroneous.  Of course, in fairness I must point out the possibility that the files could have existed prior to July 8th 2007 but hadn't been crawled.  Possible, but I don't consider it probable.

When I go to this page:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070501000000*/http://ceop.gov.uk/mccann.html
and I click on the April 30 link:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070513020901/http://www.ceop.gov.uk/mccann.html
I am taken to a page which was "created" on May 13
When I click on the PDF's, and download them, I can see, in my full version of Adobe Acrobat, that the pages were created on May 10 and May 11, 2007. I can see this by clicking on the History of the PDF.
If I put the UK PDF URL into the WBM, I can see it was only crawled once, on July 8, 2007.
This in itself doesn't prove anything. It just proves that WBM only captured the PDF on July 8, 2007. It completely ignored the PDF on all the dates previous to that. However we know the PDF was created on May 10, 2007 because it's embedded in the PDF data.

Here is the link to the UK poster PDF. You can look it up for yourself if you have full version Acrobat.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070513020901/http://www.ceop.gov.uk/downloads/CEOPHelpMadeleine_uk.pdf

It would have been entirely possible for a "dummy" page to be uploaded on April 30 with the URL's in place, but no PDF pages created yet. In other words, a link created, the page uploaded, but the PDF's not yet created and uploaded to the server.

The link would have looked like this on the "dummy" page:
http://www.ceop.gov.uk/downloads/CEOPHelpMadeleine_uk.pdf

WLBTS wrote:Just thought I'd reiterate my position on this CEOP thing.  I also have many years of experience as a software developer, having worked my way up to Lead Programmer at various global companies and have managed large teams and codebases.  I also have a First class honours degree in IT and Computing, and was a member of MENSA until I got fed up of paying the annual fee for a magazine.  I wouldn't bother to mention this normally, but as experience would appear to be relevant to this discussion I'll have to show mine.

I looked in detail at the HTML + Javascript of both the mccann page and the home page dated 30 April 2007.  I am 100% certain that those pages were not crawled at that time, but much later, probably end of October 2007 onwards.  I've already given evidence relating to that, but I doubt that anybody has read it.

That's not true - I've read it and its been instrumental in my changing my mind to the date being in error is the more likely explanation. However, I'm not as certain about it as you appear to be. The problem we all have in trying to work out whether the date is genuine or not is that we don't know how Wayback Machine works so we have to make assumptions, the first of these seems to be that it delivers an exact replica of how a page appeared when it was archived. This isn't necessarily the case and, in the case of some dynamic content, it isn't the same at all. From https://archive.org/about/faqs.php#The_Wayback_Machine

Wayback Machine FAQ wrote:
How do you archive dynamic pages?

There are many different kinds of dynamic pages, some of which are easily stored in an archive and some of which fall apart completely. When a dynamic page renders standard html, the archive works beautifully. When a dynamic page contains forms, JavaScript, or other elements that require interaction with the originating host, the archive will not contain the original site's functionality.

I'll come back to that in a minute.

Looking at the source for the controversial mccann.html, I see that there is code that puts the Wayback navigation bar at the top of the page. Clearly that didn't exist in the original CEOP page so it must have been put there by Wayback software. This could have been done at the point of archiving but I think it far more likely that its done when a page is retrieved. That way, Wayback can change the style or content of the navigation bar whenever they want. If I'm right, it means that the whole page as delivered to my browser is dynamic in that it is created on request and isn't simply a regurgitation of the contents of the archive database.

From there it isn't too much of a leap to speculate that parts of the page, like the news section on the home page, might be created at retrieval time and put there as html by the same software that adds the code to create the navigation bar. This allows for the possibility that it is the news that is in error, not the date. The future dated news might be the retrieval software making its best attempt to reconstitute the page as it was from the data that it holds but getting it wrong because of corruption at archiving, maybe because the original news links were dynamic.

Obviously we don't know how Wayback has been designed so all of the above is just speculation on my part, albeit based on a considerable amount of experience of design, analysis and programming. None of it though was in web based technologies and I freely admit that I could be talking nonsense.

canada12 wrote:
When I go to this page:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070501000000*/http://ceop.gov.uk/mccann.html
and I click on the April 30 link:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070513020901/http://www.ceop.gov.uk/mccann.html
I am taken to a page which was "created" on May 13
When I click on the PDF's, and download them, I can see, in my full version of Adobe Acrobat, that the pages were created on May 10 and May 11, 2007. I can see this by clicking on the History of the PDF.
If I put the UK PDF URL into the WBM, I can see it was only crawled once, on July 8, 2007.
This in itself doesn't prove anything. It just proves that WBM only captured the PDF on July 8, 2007. It completely ignored the PDF on all the dates previous to that. However we know the PDF was created on May 10, 2007 because it's embedded in the PDF data.

Here is the link to the UK poster PDF. You can look it up for yourself if you have full version Acrobat.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070513020901/http://www.ceop.gov.uk/downloads/CEOPHelpMadeleine_uk.pdf

It would have been entirely possible for a "dummy" page to be uploaded on April 30 with the URL's in place, but no PDF pages created yet. In other words, a link created, the page uploaded, but the PDF's not yet created and uploaded to the server.

The link would have looked like this on the "dummy" page:
http://www.ceop.gov.uk/downloads/CEOPHelpMadeleine_uk.pdf

The effect you're seeing is because the 30/04/2007 circle no longer points at the controversial archive. Instead it points at one taken on 13/05/2007. According to Wayback, the circle will disappear when the archive is next reindexed

WLBTS wrote:

Resistor wrote:
Without the source code, I can't, as you well know.  Seems to me that it is you who are not interested in any proper discussion.  I have given my honest opinion but because you don't agree with it, you are just determined to be rude and arrogant, bragging about your qualifications but offering nothing in the way of proper explanations.  This will be my last response to you, so don't bother replying, because I am done with you now.

That's because this bit of evidence absolutely contradicts your theory.  You are ready to argue any other point it seems, but not this one.  That may be because it shows the 30th April 2007 time-stamp to be erroneous, as Wayback Machine have themselves stated to be the case.

Seeing as you won't participate, I'll explain to everybody else who is interested.

Every version of the CEOP home-page in the Wayback Machine index lists news headlines that are in the past, i.e. prior to the crawl date.

Here are some random samples showing this fact, dated before and after the version allegedly crawled on 30th April 2007:

https://web.archive.org/web/20061230180407/http://www.ceop.gov.uk/
https://web.archive.org/web/20070104161747/http://www.ceop.gov.uk/
https://web.archive.org/web/20070108123846/http://www.ceop.gov.uk/
https://web.archive.org/web/20070703080541/http://www.ceop.gov.uk/
https://web.archive.org/web/20070919194259/http://www.ceop.gov.uk/

And the page of 12th October 2007, which looks extremely similar to the '30 April 2007' page, with 2 of the 3 news headlines in common:

https://web.archive.org/web/20071012051850/http://www.ceop.gov.uk/

Inspection of the HTML/JavaScript for those pages shows that the HTML for the news headlines was built by the server and sent at the time of the crawl.  The page /index.asp probably queried a database for the news headlines within a specified time-frame and spewed that out as HTML.  Which demonstrates that the October news headlines in the database must have existed at the point of the crawl request, i.e. '30th April 2007'.  There's nothing 'dynamic' about those headlines as has been claimed, it is as if the headlines were printed on a piece of paper and posted through your letterbox.

This is of course, an impossibility, unless psychic powers are at play.  The only feasible explanation is that the crawl date was not 30th April 2007 at all, but some time from late October 2007 onwards.

And that in my opinion ends the matter, for me at least.  The home page crawl date of 30th April 2007 simply cannot be trusted, which brings all the other pages with the same time-stamp into question.  Seriously into question.

I'm a little confused.
If I go to WBM and ask for an April 30, 2007 version of the CEOP home page, I can't find it.
The closest I can find is April 27. There doesn't appear to be an April 30, 2007 link.
https://web.archive.org/web/20070427113509/http://www.ceop.gov.uk/
And all of the headlines on that page are previous to April 27.

Now then, a very curious thing happens when you're at the above link. Try this yourself. Go to the link.
Look on the little highlighted black box which gives you the date at the top of the page. It says April 27, 2007.
Click on the left arrow. You can click back through all the dates. April 7, March 2, etc.
Now click forward again, using the right arrow.
You can't click any further forward than April 27.
If you hover over the arrow with your cursor, it says 11:58:03 April 30, 2007
However you can't go there.
Does this definitively mean an error on WBM's part?
Or does it mean that something else has happened?

Canada12 I just tried that and on the bit that shows the calendar for 2007 there are several blue dots I assume are the capture dates. Hovering over April 30 shows the following 30 Apr 1 snapshot 11.58.03 yet clicking it gives the same page as it does for Apr 27. Clicking on the actual 27 Apr blue dot says 27 Apr 1 snapshot 11.35.09
You are correct that clicking the blak forward arrow when in the April section will not move on yet if you go to the May section with 14 May as the only capture date the same action allows you to move forward to June and beyond.
I apologise for the primary school terminology but I hope I have explained what I mean.
I do know the other day clicking 30 Apr took you to the page that now appears on 14 May showing 2 photos of Madeleine. Now that same action takes you to 27 Apr so it looks like there was a hurried fix which was then refixed.
I would have thought if there was nothing suspicious going on WBM would have pulled the offending day and explained that they needed to examine it, not rush out an alteration.

To let you all understand, I will not be responding to anyone who simply sits and bleats "the date is wrong" or "it is a glitch" without offering any explanation as to why the date could be wrong, or exactly what the glitch is. That gets us all nowhere. I'm also not going to respond to goading and insults.

I will answer any questions to the best of my ability and if I don't know, I'll happily admit that I don't know. And neither will I get into any pissing competitions as to who has the biggest and best qualifications and experience, because there is no way of proving any of it on a forum, for all you lot know I could be Stephen Hawking (I'm not, but I could be :-))

What I did do last night, when I could not sleep, was trawl round a developers forum where the people who actually work on the open-source Java of the WBM hang out, and I found this.



My understanding of this is that the crawler archives pages on a certain date but then those pages can contain stuff that is crawled on a different date. In other words, it is the content of the page that might be unreliable from a timing point of view, not the date the page was found and archived.