I'm one of the true alpha-geeks that read and enjoyed this book:
"Einstein's Unifinished Symphony" which covers this topic in staggering (stupifying) detail.
One thing you'll note, is that the power required to create a detectable gravitational wave is on the scale of supernovae -- so creating enough waves in a sequence which could be interpreted and read would be a pretty remarkable undertaking.
DVD obsolete in 10 years. No shit? Really? 80% of technology is obsolete in 10 years. In 10 years we've gone from 3.5" 1.44 megabyte floppy disks in boxes of software, through CDROMS, to Electronic Distribution on most stuff.
That's not news. Predicting something that WON'T be obsolete in 10 years would be news.
More competition and UI thinking is a GOOD thing..
on
Yahoo! Acquires Oddpost
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
But lets face it. The web browser is a really crappy place to work.
RSS is a really interesting use of a hybrid web / rich client technology and that's interesting.
Web Services are cool, but nearly unusable in their complexity if you go beyond time & temperature toys -- but the IDEA is right.
Anyway, GMAIL is less impressive to this of us wierdo's who got hooked on NOTES years ago (yes, I know its bizzare to code for and feels weird if you're not used to it -- but so does PHP and PYTHON -- but its amazingly cool if you know how to make it do its thing).
If Yahoo & Google fight it out for best UI bragging rights, we'll see innovation. Both companies are good at that.
Clearly, those in the press who live in the pocket of the redmondians would have us believe that this is a good reason not to stop using I.E. After all, you may go to all the trouble of switching and still not have nirvana.
Well, even if the beta versions of Mozilla aren't instant nirvana; they're already more secure, more stable, faster, smaller, and better looking.
The mozilla browser also comes with better karma, and I've heard some people have regrown hair, enlarged body parts, and improved their sex lives simply by switching.
a) Nudity (which presupposes a mixed gender group or at least a group interested in each others gender) which thus provides the possibility (though unlikely given the laser take croud) or improptu sex.
or
b) An unknowing population in the arena -- as others have suggested, playing the game in an urban area unaware of the game ads the element of police officers and atf types seeing you run around hinding and pointing guns -- and thus the added risk of being actually blown to hell.
Cool, but maybe not needed. Also, long term it isn't a perfect solution and will be worked around by the spammers before we could see massive benefit from the effort of organization.
If I as a single individual and receiving more than 400 spams in a day, it means that I'm clearly poking my head into the wrong websites, but also that I have a massive pool to work with if I've been saving them. So do you. So does everyone.
Anti-spam will need to be adaptive automatically to succeed. Lots of techniques need to be deployed working together.
Spammers send the same message out a dozen different ways. Each exploits the vulnerabilities of one anti-spam technique or another. Some people built good baysian word checkers so the spammers now send random quoted articles from online newspapers along with their messages. People use whitelists now, so spammers try to use common domain names in forged "from" headers.
Each of these is a good way around some filters. The way to adapt though, is to catch the relatively easy stuff for your particularly anti-spam filter, then use that to learn more about the spam itself, which then catches the harder to spot stuff.
The way I did it is one way of doing that but by no means the only way. I just make that single assumption -- that a part of the target url consisting of the domain and sometimes a bit more is the most expensive thing for a spammer to change. For me, it means I can use bayesian techniques on a much smaller subset of the message and am not fooled by a tossed in article from the Times.
I have no doubt that soon spammers will be sending me mail with lists and lists of links to other domains as a mask and I'll have to find some way to filter them. For now, this works.
standards are great! that's why we have so many.
on
Browser Wars 2004
·
· Score: 1
Look, virtually all the innovation in browsers came out of the browser wars. The wars ended, so did much of the innovation.
Of course, another word for innovation was split standards -- and that was hell to code for.
None of it matters. The browser is still only really good for well, browsing. Its a crappy place to build or use an application.
The Internet != Web Sites you can find with Google. argh.
At some point, people are going to wake up and realize that 90% of their email time is wasted, 80% of the web time is wasted, and the pc on their desk is largely useless. At that point, then can go back to working on whatever it is that they do.
Maybe we can get the sales people to go sell something, the designers to design something interesting (like where the hell is my affordable flying car and jetpack already?)
For now, people in offices will keep sending 80 emails a day arguing over nothing then surfing the web (wtf does that mean anyway) in the firm belief that the next big thing is to be found there.
gr. Its a network, move on. Where is the next killer app?
agreed. Neural networks were once seen as some kind of magical solution into which you could dump chaos and out of which would come order.
The seem to be in that same class of "wish fullfillment" that SF writers rely on for the magic way spaceships can do whatever the writer wants them to do.
Neural networks are good tools; and they may be the basis for some really nifty sensors in the near term and even AI in the long run -- but they're not magic.
The way to stop spam is convince enough people to switch to verfied email only. Convince companies that its worth potentially loosing a contact or two in the long run and they may even do it.
I don't see it as likely though. Try telling a sales guy that loosing a mail message or two from someone they haven't met yet is worth it and you'll have a fight on your hands. Every single lost email becomes that one thing that is the reason they didn't make their numbers.
Gack.
Baysian filters are bypassed just like any other. I'd bet most of us here have tried some form of adaptive filtering with varying results.
He's right in one key respect though -- spam is cheap to send, but spam DESTINATIONS (the links they try to get you to go to) are relatively expensive. You can't registered a hundred thousand domains a day. While its cheap to get one or two, massive domain registration is an expensive proposition. That's currently, IMO, the best way to catch spam once you've gone through the bonehead catch of faked headers.
Personally, I do two stages: First, I catch the obvious stuff -- it says its from AOL.COM but didn't come from their published servers. duh.
Then, I take those "known spams" and search for the call to action link -- what url are they trying to send me to. Take the primary part of that (the domain, plus a little more) and make a list of "probable spam destinations".
I do the same thing with known good mail (mail from people I have sent mail to).
Now have I have good baysian fodder -- actual destination lists both good and bad.
Making a baysian list out of those results in a fairly accurate secondary filter.
Email inbound to me now goes through three checks: 1) have I sent you mail before (whitelist) 2) is this obvious bonehead spam 3) how many links in the message are to the same place as the ones in the bonehead spam?
This works to stop 98% of the 400+ spams a day that get sent at me with a very very low false positive ratio.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm one of the true alpha-geeks that read and enjoyed this book:
"Einstein's Unifinished Symphony" which covers this topic in staggering (stupifying) detail.
One thing you'll note, is that the power required to create a detectable gravitational wave is on the scale of supernovae -- so creating enough waves in a sequence which could be interpreted and read would be a pretty remarkable undertaking.
Imagine 1 supernova per bit of communication.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0
Generalissimo Franscisco Franco is still dead.
DVD obsolete in 10 years. No shit? Really? 80% of technology is obsolete in 10 years. In 10 years we've gone from 3.5" 1.44 megabyte floppy disks in boxes of software, through CDROMS, to Electronic Distribution on most stuff.
That's not news. Predicting something that WON'T be obsolete in 10 years would be news.
But lets face it. The web browser is a really crappy place to work. RSS is a really interesting use of a hybrid web / rich client technology and that's interesting. Web Services are cool, but nearly unusable in their complexity if you go beyond time & temperature toys -- but the IDEA is right. Anyway, GMAIL is less impressive to this of us wierdo's who got hooked on NOTES years ago (yes, I know its bizzare to code for and feels weird if you're not used to it -- but so does PHP and PYTHON -- but its amazingly cool if you know how to make it do its thing). If Yahoo & Google fight it out for best UI bragging rights, we'll see innovation. Both companies are good at that.
Give me a Durango with a 7500 pound towing capacity to carry my ego around that gets 35 and I'm all over it.
No need to shoplift OUT of the store -- walk in and start tossing rfid emiters in coat pockets, bags of socks, other shoppers' carts .....
Overwhelm the system and it becomes useless.
Clearly, those in the press who live in the pocket of the redmondians would have us believe that this is a good reason not to stop using I.E. After all, you may go to all the trouble of switching and still not have nirvana.
Well, even if the beta versions of Mozilla aren't instant nirvana; they're already more secure, more stable, faster, smaller, and better looking.
The mozilla browser also comes with better karma, and I've heard some people have regrown hair, enlarged body parts, and improved their sex lives simply by switching.
The purpose of a paintbrush and paint is to produce stunning art. Using a paintbrush to protect a house from the elements is missing the point.
He needs to get over himself. The PC is a tool, a toy, a weapon, a paperweight, and for some a vibrator. Use it for whatever you want.
Most people use them for little more than anchors to keep the desk from flying off into space.
Evana Kiniski -- it was amazing. you couldn't take your eyes off her. She had huge....tracts of land.
you need one of two things:
a) Nudity (which presupposes a mixed gender group or at least a group interested in each others gender) which thus provides the possibility (though unlikely given the laser take croud) or improptu sex.
or
b) An unknowing population in the arena -- as others have suggested, playing the game in an urban area unaware of the game ads the element of police officers and atf types seeing you run around hinding and pointing guns -- and thus the added risk of being actually blown to hell.
Either way, your juices should really flow.
Cool, but maybe not needed. Also, long term it isn't a perfect solution and will be worked around by the spammers before we could see massive benefit from the effort of organization. If I as a single individual and receiving more than 400 spams in a day, it means that I'm clearly poking my head into the wrong websites, but also that I have a massive pool to work with if I've been saving them. So do you. So does everyone. Anti-spam will need to be adaptive automatically to succeed. Lots of techniques need to be deployed working together. Spammers send the same message out a dozen different ways. Each exploits the vulnerabilities of one anti-spam technique or another. Some people built good baysian word checkers so the spammers now send random quoted articles from online newspapers along with their messages. People use whitelists now, so spammers try to use common domain names in forged "from" headers. Each of these is a good way around some filters. The way to adapt though, is to catch the relatively easy stuff for your particularly anti-spam filter, then use that to learn more about the spam itself, which then catches the harder to spot stuff. The way I did it is one way of doing that but by no means the only way. I just make that single assumption -- that a part of the target url consisting of the domain and sometimes a bit more is the most expensive thing for a spammer to change. For me, it means I can use bayesian techniques on a much smaller subset of the message and am not fooled by a tossed in article from the Times. I have no doubt that soon spammers will be sending me mail with lists and lists of links to other domains as a mask and I'll have to find some way to filter them. For now, this works.
Look, virtually all the innovation in browsers came out of the browser wars. The wars ended, so did much of the innovation. Of course, another word for innovation was split standards -- and that was hell to code for. None of it matters. The browser is still only really good for well, browsing. Its a crappy place to build or use an application. The Internet != Web Sites you can find with Google. argh. At some point, people are going to wake up and realize that 90% of their email time is wasted, 80% of the web time is wasted, and the pc on their desk is largely useless. At that point, then can go back to working on whatever it is that they do. Maybe we can get the sales people to go sell something, the designers to design something interesting (like where the hell is my affordable flying car and jetpack already?) For now, people in offices will keep sending 80 emails a day arguing over nothing then surfing the web (wtf does that mean anyway) in the firm belief that the next big thing is to be found there. gr. Its a network, move on. Where is the next killer app?
agreed. Neural networks were once seen as some kind of magical solution into which you could dump chaos and out of which would come order. The seem to be in that same class of "wish fullfillment" that SF writers rely on for the magic way spaceships can do whatever the writer wants them to do. Neural networks are good tools; and they may be the basis for some really nifty sensors in the near term and even AI in the long run -- but they're not magic. The way to stop spam is convince enough people to switch to verfied email only. Convince companies that its worth potentially loosing a contact or two in the long run and they may even do it. I don't see it as likely though. Try telling a sales guy that loosing a mail message or two from someone they haven't met yet is worth it and you'll have a fight on your hands. Every single lost email becomes that one thing that is the reason they didn't make their numbers. Gack.
Baysian filters are bypassed just like any other. I'd bet most of us here have tried some form of adaptive filtering with varying results.
He's right in one key respect though -- spam is cheap to send, but spam DESTINATIONS (the links they try to get you to go to) are relatively expensive. You can't registered a hundred thousand domains a day. While its cheap to get one or two, massive domain registration is an expensive proposition. That's currently, IMO, the best way to catch spam once you've gone through the bonehead catch of faked headers.
Personally, I do two stages: First, I catch the obvious stuff -- it says its from AOL.COM but didn't come from their published servers. duh.
Then, I take those "known spams" and search for the call to action link -- what url are they trying to send me to. Take the primary part of that (the domain, plus a little more) and make a list of "probable spam destinations".
I do the same thing with known good mail (mail from people I have sent mail to).
Now have I have good baysian fodder -- actual destination lists both good and bad.
Making a baysian list out of those results in a fairly accurate secondary filter.
Email inbound to me now goes through three checks:
1) have I sent you mail before (whitelist)
2) is this obvious bonehead spam
3) how many links in the message are to the same place as the ones in the bonehead spam?
This works to stop 98% of the 400+ spams a day that get sent at me with a very very low false positive ratio.