Executive Summary: I think the evidence so far suggests that Smith isn't Bellesiles. I lent Andrew Ackerman some technical assistance over the weekend.
Tim Lambert wrote: > Of course, none of this proves that Smith isn't Bellesiles. Based on > all the other things that he has posted I still believe that it is > likely that he is Bellesiles but the case is not as strong now. Over the weekend, I lent some technical assistance to Andrew Ackerman in this matter. I was able to determine fairly conclusively [1] that Benny Smith has sent email and posted to Emory Wheel from the Saline, Michigan District Library. http://saline.lib.mi.us/ Andrew tells me that the ip that I tracked for him is from November, when Bellesiles was still at Emory. Apparently, as I understand it, Smith has used variants on that ip number several times, which would lead one to conclude that he uses computers at that library to send messages. I'm still awaiting information on ip numbers that Bellesiles used at similar times, but at least preliminarily, I am inclined to suppose that Bellesiles was not in Michigan during those times and that whoever Benny Smith is[2], he is not the same person as Bellesiles. If anyone has emails from Bellesiles, particularly from his Yahoo account, and would like for me to examine them to try to see if they came from the same ip range, contact me offlist. I promise to keep confidential any contents, but you don't really need to send me the contents if you just want to ask my help in tracking the ip numbers. My own working hypothesis is that Benny Smith is an enthusiast who may know Bellesiles via email, as I know all of you via email, even though I'm nobody at all in this field. --Jimbo [1] The records that I used to determine this are usually accurate but not always. It is at least possible that the ip number belongs to a different organization, or that it is part of a dialup pool. However, community libraries do not usually offer dialup service, and a much more plausible hypothesis is that these ips are for computers on the library's network. [2] I tracked down a Benjamin Smith who lives within commuting distance of that library, and Andrew Ackerman called and left him a message. Perhaps that's him, perhaps not.
