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More on Bayesian Spam Filtering
michaeld writes "The "Bayesian" techniques for spam filtering recently publicized in Paul Graham's essay A Plan for Spam doesn't actually seem to have anything Bayesian about it, according to Gary Robinson (an expert on collaborative filtering). It is based on a non-Bayesian probabilistic approach. It works well enough, because it is frequently the case that technology doesn't have to be 100% perfect in order to do something that really needs to be done. The problem interested Robinson, and he posted his thoughts about trying to fix the problems in the Graham approach, including adding an actual Bayesian element to the calculations."
Finally. FP.
Sudden change of agenda?
`I heard a bang on the roof, and when I went outside to look, I saw it was a plastic bag full of human waste,' she said, gesturing toward her dwelling in the slums of Nairobi. `You might just be relaxing in your house, then you hear a noise on your roof and someone has thrown a bag of sewage up there,' said Njoki, 27, wrinkling her nose with disgust.
There are only five toilets for the more than 2,000 people living in the slum known as Ghetto - a fetid labyrinth of claustrophobic dirt lanes and streams of stinking effluent.
For most people here, the flying toilets are the only way of answering nature's call: you simply use a plastic bag, then fling it as far out of sight as possible.
Walk into Ghetto, or any one of scores of slum settlements housing two million people in the Kenyan capital, and the scale of the task for one African city alone seems staggering. At almost every turn, a sickly sweet stench of urine wafts from between the huts. Barefoot children play by trenches frothing with scum. The edges are strewn with telltale bags.
`First thing in the morning, the flying toilets are rampant,' said Njoki, as a gaggle of other women in a courtyard nodded in agreement. `Sometimes you are walking down the path and you see human waste, people have just thrown it there.'
Consider that Njoki and her neighbors are just a handful of 2.4 billion people worldwide who lack access to decent sanitation, and the scale seems even more mind-boggling.
In Njoki's neighborhood, the only sign of hope comes not from the government - who consider much of the slums a virtual no-go zone - but from residents determined to help themselves. On the edge of the sea of rusting iron roofs stands the only public toilet around. Four women got together to build the facility three years ago - paying off their investment with the two shillings ($0.02) a time paid by 50 or so visitors each day. On Sundays, when the toilet attendants say many residents decide to treat themselves, the number of users rises to 100."
was 99 percent shameless self-promotion and 1 percent useful link. How's that for statistics?
WTF? Where did the redhat/ibm article go
I have been really busy.. new job and all. Plus, KC nightlife is surprisingly good.
The site was taken down for a couple reasons, one was bandwidth usage and the other had to do with an illegal picture that was discovered by the hosting company. I did not put the picture there, and I am not quite sure who did, but they decided to play it safe and shut me down.
-trollaxor
And what was the reported problem he cried about? Not an overload on his network, that was not his complaint. But his domain name being blacklisted. With good reason, IMHO. He was running a server that spammers used, and could even see this when the people he invited to test his system got right in. He then claimed they misused his system because they gave a false name and suggested he should sue them!
Maybe this guy was just too stupid to block a port on an incoming firewall to keep the outside mail server users out. It seems unlikely though, particularly if he had the ability to set up a mail server (supposedly for the use of his own local network). It sounded more to me like there was a good chance he knew exactly what he was doing and wanted to set up a server for spamming, and was blowing smoke when he got black holed.
Getting black holed will not be a problem for a dummy server that never actually sends mail (the black hole people are not out there port scanning like the spammers are). Even if your dummy mail server were to be blacklisted, so what? That in no way would affect your normal e-mail that you send through your service provider.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Thanks! I downloaded everything (about 400MB)
yea - right, as if spammers are all going to comply and do that.
Or of some "international law" gets passed requiring them to post their real identitys.
Hahahaha!
you'll need more input text to make that work -- it'll take a lot more training.