The MySQL database used in this application allows the user to specify logical comparison operators in order to select records from the database.  If you are familar with mathematical or computer programming logic, you might try your hand at a few searches to get a feel for how this all works.  Our implemenation is similar to style of searching known as query by example.  The advanced version allows you to add the the logical operators right in the fields.  You must remember to check the "Advanced Searching" checkbox before actually requesting your search.

Here are some examples of using logic on several of the fields in the database.  Be aware that you cannot use logic operators on text fields.  Searching with logical operators in text fields requires a much more complex user interface.

Also we should point out that you MUST use the actual database table column names.  These names are not always those shown in the application.  See the column names reference  for more information.

Note also that across columns there is an implicit "AND".  For instance if you entered 3 in the N field and 5 in the Rating field, you are asking for a search that will compare and match only if N = 3 AND Rating = 5.  Currently there is no provision in our application to allow "OR"ing of two columns in the database.  Having said that, if you use the wildcard character "%" and do not check the Advanced Searching checkbox,  you may be able to simulate an OR function

Sample Wildcard Searches
	Field	Search Operation	Results
	Flags	SiteFlags < 100	All database reords with the SiteRating field set to 0, 1... to 99 or set to a minus number will match and be displayed in your results table.
	N	N >  1 AND N < 10	If the database has twelve records with N = 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12, records with 2 thru 9 will be selected and displayed
	Active	Active = 0 OR Active > 0	Active is a special type of number, a boolean value (1 or 0), and thus there are only two values to be found.  It is much easier just to use hon-advanced searching and put in a "%" instead. However, this has the same effect, any value of Active will match.
	Rating	SiteRating <> 0	Will return all the records where the Rating field is not zero.  Since this is a numeric field, even fields "defaulted" (no value has been entered by anyone) will not be found in the displayed results.

Logical Comarison Operators
	Operator	Example Usage	Function
	>	N > 1	Greater Than: Will match your search if the value in the field is 2 or greater, but not match 0 (zero), 1 or any minus number
	<	N < 2	Less Than: Will match your search if the value in the field is a minus number, 0 (zero) or 1, but not match any values that are 2 or greater
	>=	SiteRating >= 1	Greater Than or Equals: Will match your search if the value in the field is 1 or greater (2,3,4, etc.) but will not match a minus number or 0 (zero)
	<=	SiteFlags <= 5	Less Than or Equals: Will match your search if the value in the field is a minus number, 0 (zero), 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5, but will not match any number greater than 5 (i.e. 6,7,8, ... etc will not match).
	<>	Expand_1 <> 0	Not Equals: Will match if your search if the value in the field is a minus number or a positive non-zero number (i.e. -2, -1, 1, 2 etc)
	AND	N > 1 AND N < 10	Logical AND: Matches two phrases, the "left" and the "right" . If both "evaluate" to TRUE, then you have a logical match and the search will display results.  For this example, the only matching numbers will be 2,3,4,5,6,7,8, and 9.
	OR	SiteRating = 5 OR SiteRating  > 9	Logical OR: Matches two phrases, the "left" and the "right".  If either the left phrase (SiteRating=5) OR the right phrase (SiteRating > 9) is TRUE, then the search will match.  For instance, in this example records with 5 OR 10, 11, 12...(i.e. all values greater than 9) will match your search.

The SiteCategory field offers a pulldown menu of the Categories used in the database.  Currently this is the only way to specify searches for this particular field.  To match a particular category, simply click on the arrow and select one of the category types.  MATCH ALL does just that, searching the entire database matching all categories.  MILNET CHOICE searches for database records that match categories germaine to the MILNET subject matter, i.e, will match categories such as "MILITARY", "INFO", "RESEARCH", "OPINION", "SPACE", or "TERRORISM".  This leaves out activist sites, those with highly political propoganda, conspiracy theory sites, arms control sites, videos, images, and totally irrelevant sites such as games. The WEAPONS category is not included in the MILNET CHOICE selection since we use that category to specify weapons non-military enthusiast's sites, typically focusing on civilian weapons, tactical equipment and civilian gun control. 

The table below indicates if a field is a numeric field or a text field.  You should use different search strategies for text than numbers when using advanced searching.

Number	1 or 0	Text	Text	Text	Text	Text	Text	Number	Number	Number
N	Active	Category	Sub-Category	Name	Theme/Keyword	Description	URL	Rating	Flags	Exp_1
N	Active	SiteCategory	Expand_2	SiteName	SiteTheme	SiteComment	SiteURL	SiteRating	SiteFlags	Expand_1

Some other notes on the database: 

• The Internet is a perfect example of open source information.  Disinformation abounds and bias is rampant.  Most web sites do not care to provide any balance.  We at MILNET always attempt to provide guidance -- using SPECULATION or OPINION when we feel our bias at work.  Or we place discussions in an Opinion area of our website when we might be making a political statement (which we do from time to time :).  Most sites (7/8 is a VERY conservative estimate) are clearly biased AND make no attempts at providing rationale or supportable evidence let alone any sort of balance, adopting the "its up to you to figure it out" approach to providing information.  In these cases the theory that "if someone says it, it must be true" abounds.  And if you don't already know this, just because someone claims to be an expert, they may not be. 
  
• In our opinion, academia worldwide is failing to hold their graduate students to any sort of standards of behavior, and the results are providing an abysmal approach to science when these folks graduate.  This is reflected in much of the information found on the Internet.  For example, simulations are perhaps the most devisive and error prone area of scientific endeavor -- with many so called scientists "playing" with their simulations until they get the results they are looking for, rather than discounting their own work for the lack of any real hard evidence or simply applying common sense to input variables or the methods for gathering that data.   Similarly, statistical studies are prone to error from the get go.  Statistics is perhaps the poorest of mathematical sciences, primarily to the major manipulator of the input data, the human data input element.   It's like asking men about impotence -- you may not get the truthful answers you want unless you figure out a very clever way to sneak up on the subject.  And History?  It is being rewritten within minutes of the event.  Ancient history?  "Evidence" being used to rewrite ancient history is appallingly suspect yet presented as if historians have had it wrong all along.  Facts are scarce on the Internet, you must apply your noodle!
• Typically the Military category is where the subject matter is usually all about the military -- like GlobalSecurity.com, FAS, or MILNET (yes we are in the database).  Just because a particular article covers a military subject, it does not mean it or the site it is published on should be categorized under military.  Examples are personal sites of enthusiasts for military topics but where the majority of the site is focused well off the topic matter germaine to MILNET.  For instance, a lot of universities provide personal web sites to their students, who in turn may post an anti-war article that mentions various weapons. We make exception where the personal site does an admiral job of covering a specific area, for instance, a number of authors cover their favorite aircraft or weapons system.
  
• Any SiteRating of 10 indicates a default value.  It means we have NOT scanned the article yet, or if we did, either we didn't think it all that relevant to the MILNET topic matter or our scan did not progress much further than looking at the site's "About us" or similar fields to get a handle on their objective on the Internet.  This is perhaps the most common error in the database, however, and the most subjective of fields.  It will improve over time -- there are only so many hours in the day :).  Our bias is certainly going to present here. 
  
• SiteComment may contain a "quoted" string which is a pure "lift" from the site's "About Us" or "Mission" statement.  It is also were we inject our opinion as to the site content, and as a result may indicate why it is categorized the way it is.  We reserve to right to our bias.  Don't like it?  Click on the close button, thank you very much for visiting.
  
• Military use of weapons will NOT usually be found in the WEAPONS category in our database, instead we filed military weapons and their uses under the Military category. 
  
• The Intelligence category is not yet been applied to the database.  This is due to the dual use of the English word.  We have yet to figure out a way to accurately get topic matter without specifying particular websites.  Try Googling this yourself, it's a mess.   Using SPY or AGENT, or ESPIONAGE is interesting but try Googling INTELLIGENCE AGENCY or ESPIONAGE CASE.  We will continue to work this problem and slowly add to that category offline until we get critical mass before adding the records to the database.
  
• Ditto for Terrorist and Terrorism.  There are more articles on George Bush the terrorist than there are on Hezbollah.  That should tell you something about the Internet. In our opinion, the Internet is THE bastion of the looney left supplemented by the propaganda machines of extremists the world over.  We are working on an offline segment for serious work on terrorism and terrorist profiles...some have been entered in the database already but have yet to be recategorized -- view these entries with caution until we say differently.
  
• Arms Control, Gun Control and Disarmament may be also categorized under Activists, especially when we scanned the particular cited article and detected those agendas.
  
• Sites focusing on peace, human health (for instance use of depleted uranium munitions or mines), nuclear industry (waste management, anti-nuke power, etc.) or most humanitarian sites that focus on a particular anti-military or anti-war topic will usually be found under the Activist category as well.  A few U.N. articles may have fallen into this categorization due to the other content of a reposted/reprinted U.N. article.  We managed to weed out several thousand sites (tens of thousands of articles) on demining and the like.  If you are into this stuff, you won't like MILNET anyway, we suggest you look elsewhere.
  
• Some gun enthusiast or military enthusiast sites may have been mis-categorized under Arms Control.  You can find these by using the MATCH ALL category and then entering SiteComment NOT LIKE "%arms%control%" in the SiteTheme field and and clicking on the Advanced Searching check box.  We don't believe that error occurred all that often and we are endeavoring to scan to correct this.  Various SQL queries using developer tools are being tested to see if we can select JUST the right entries, however, this is dangerous in terms of introducing other errors into the database.
  
• On occasion, we may have categorized an Activist or Propaganda site under Conspiracy -- this typically happens when the particular article referenced appears to be focused on a Conspiracy topic such as touting non-lethal weapons as "secret killing weapons being pawned off as non-lethal" or area denial EM devices as "secretly being used on U.S. citizens to test their abilities for torture and mind control".  If you believe this stuff, you won't like MILNET much anyway, we suggest you look elsewhere.  See our comment on the close button above.
• Some obvious political or propaganda sites may be found under the Propaganda category, or rarely under Opinion. 
  
• Opinion categorization may occur when the piece is clearly not factual based and expresses the site or author's opinions or political agenda.Some of these sites proport to be news feeds, but clearly feed something else tainted with a clear bias.  We give them the benefit of the doubt -- their opinions are biased, so our ours.  Examples might be the World Wide Socialism site which in our opinion is blantantly anti-american, anti-bush, and anti-western.   This site appears in both Opinion and Propaganda categories. 
  
• If you are worried that a particular SiteCategory is not listed in the dropdown menu (could happen), then use MATCH ALL and then search for the topic in the SiteComment or SiteTheme field.
  
• Some Military category entries may in fact be Activists, Propaganda, Arms Control, Gun Control, or Conspiracy sites.  Our categorization may have missed some and unfortunately a few remain in the Military category.  This is especially true in the chemical, biological,  nuclear weapons or new technology sub categories where activists of one sort or another focus on the evils of warfare.
  
• The Space category is under revision.  We initially did not have this category open, but later found a number of non-military space articles and sites.  You may have to MATCH ALL and then use %SPACE% in the SiteComment field to find interesting non-military space articles.
  
• Note that 7/8 sites under the sub-category of new technology or weapons were found to be some sort of anti-war, anti-gun, anti-bush, anti-government, peace activist, arms control or conspiracy theory sites. While some of these sites  take great care to provide details of military topics (FAS.org for instance is quite accurate technically even thought it tends to be a little TOO accurate earning the nickname the Federation of American Leakers), the bias on other sites sometimes is well hidden.  This means the information is highly slanted against their particular "hot button".   If you want to see an example of how this may be effecting the information provided on the Internet, search in SiteTheme for HAARP or MIND%CONTROL or ANTI%GRAVITY. Most of these are pretty far out (in our humble opinion).
  
• Some Conspiracy sites may be categorized under an more specific conspiracy area, such as 911.  You will not find these unless you MATCH ALL on SiteCategory and then perhaps search for 911 in the SiteComment field.  Good luck.  We also have the opinion that these people are seriously deranged.  One very popular series of frames says a "stealth" or "cloaked" orb is seen hovering near the towers during the events, another cites a UFO flying by, turns out to be a bird crossing in front of the camera at close distance creating a "hyper fast" UFO impression.  Yet another clearly shows a third big aircraft flying behind the towers wherein the same shot from three networks taken live off air during the exact same time period do not show this...how did this image get there?  We believe the nutcases edited it in...we have our own videos recorded on that day, broadcast live and they do NOT have any of the 911 "revelation" images on them.  Except the bird of course...that one really gets us chuckling.
• The looney left will usually be found categorized under Activist, however, since, while we might believe them looney, the category suffices to make some sense of their rant.  We thought of providing a "PITY THESE PEOPLE" category but that would be our bias at work, right?
• We have tried to weed out most UFO sites...these tend to REALLY clog up the database.  Do a GOOGLE on UFOs and you will be amazed and how prolific this topic is on the Internet.  Googling MILITARY UFO won't change much, good luck weeding out the crap when trying to find something almost believable.  If you are a UFO nutcase, you won't like our database, guaranteed.
  

© Copyright 2008, Michael G. Crawford for MILNET