Response to Gordon Cormack's Study of Spam Detection

Nuclear Elephant writes "In light of Gordon Cormack's Study of Spam Detection recently posted on Slashdot, I felt compelled to architect an appropriate response to Cormack's technical errors in testing which ultimately explain why one of the world's most accurate spam filters (CRM114) could possibly end up at the bottom of the list, underneath SpamAssassin. I spend some time explaining what is a correct test process and keep my grievances simplified about the shortcomings of Cormack's research."

Comments

Confirmed: Architect not a verb

[Exmet Paff Daxx]

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=architect :

1. One who designs and supervises the construction of buildings or other large structures.
2. One that plans or devises: a country considered to be the chief architect of war in the Middle East.

I mean, it's not even a second meaning. It's just plain English abuse. I hope this Zdziarski guy's paper is decent, since he's pretty tripped my spam filter from the gate.

Re:Confirmed: Architect not a verb

[j_kenpo]

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=google

The World-Wide Web search engine that
indexes the greatest number of web pages - over two billion by
December 2001 and provides a free service that searches this
index in less than a second.

The site's name is apparently derived from "googol", but
note the difference in spelling.

The "Google" spelling is also used in "The Hitchhikers Guide
to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams, in which one of Deep
Thought's designers asks, "And are you not," said Fook,
leaning anxiously foward, "a greater analyst than the
Googleplex Star Thinker in the Seventh Galaxy of Light and
Ingenuity which can calculate the trajectory of every single
dust particle throughout a five-week Dangrabad Beta sand
blizzard?"

Home http://www.google.com/.

(2001-12-28)

Look, thats not a verb either, but people still use it...

Re:Confirmed: Architect not a verb

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

But if it becomes a verb, Google loses it's hold on the name. You can't trademark a verb. Or something.

That's why back in the early 90's, Jeep put out an advertisement in most car-trader magazines saying "If it's not from GM, it isn't a Jeep!". People were calling anything that kinda looked like a Jeep a Jeep.

Re:Confirmed: Architect not a verb

[magefile]

It makes sense, though. If you want to take the flexible view, language is constantly evolving, and the verbing (no pun intended) of nouns is popular, as mentioned in the jargon file. We all understood what he meant, anyway. Second-language teachers call this communicative competence.

If you want to be less forgiving, English is a Germanic language. Thus, it makes sense that as German noun-verbing (Esse [food] => essen [to eat], etc) is acceptable and even common, English noun-verbing should be acceptable.

Yeah, I know, IHBT, IHL, HAND.

Re:Confirmed: Architect not a verb

[pipingguy]

If you want to take the flexible view, language is constantly evolving...

Sure, but so many terms are being invented now (IHBT, IHL, HAND, war-whatevering, etc.) that attempt should be made to properly use existing words don't you think?

"Architect" and "engineer" are frequently used interchangeably (improperly), no doubt this is the source of the malapropism.

Re:Architect is not a verb.

[pete-classic]

adb, you stole my post!

Jonathan,

Invest in a thesaurus. Or you can use this one. You might have used any of the following perfectly serviceable verbs: scratch, scrawl, scribble; draft, draw, make out, write down, write up, hatch, make, generate, or construct.

Please don't recast innocent nouns as verbs.

Thank You,
Peter

Re:Grammar

[anethema]

yes

Re:You don't like my software so I'll flame you

[Alanoman]

He appears to be a bible-thumper.

One of my favourite quotes from this article is "there's more evidence to support the existence of Jesus than there is Julis Caesar". !!