Synthetic Morpheme

Wednesday, September 25, 2002

A recent study suggests that the recording industry might do better if it stopped focusing so much on encryption and spent more time focusing on business models [here].
10:36:34 AM

Those guys over at GNU have always been a bit fanatical. Now they have a FAQ that verbosely explains why Linux should be called GNU/Linux. This is a bit like how LEGO prefers that you call they're product "LEGO building blocks" instead of "Legos" [here]. Or, how Band-Aid brand bandages prefers that you call they're competitor's products "bandages" and not "band-aids" [here]. What all of these "trademark" issues are combating is the natural human desire to simplify. It is simpler to say Linux than GNU/Linux. For this reason alone, it is unlikely that people are going to start using the term GNU/Linux.
10:09:53 AM

In biological systems, any time you have a strong selection mechanism (a disease or new kind of predator, for instance), you will also find that organisms while adapt to the new circumstances. This has also proven to be the case with peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. The recording industry demolished Napster, but KaZaA learned from Napster's downfall and the recording industry is finding that this new contender is much better adapted than the old [here].
9:55:52 AM

Since installing SpamAssassin on my email system a few weeks ago, the amount of spam that I have been receiving has dropped considerably. However, in the last week I have received a slew of spams that SpamAssassin has been unable to filter. This new batch of spams share a common characteristic...they all look like regular emails. They don't have any blinking text, no ALL CAPS, no 800 numbers or the like. Instead, they are posing as short little notes from a friend. Here's an example of on of these spams:

Hey sexy its me Julie. Where have you been . I've been tring to get hold of you for such a long time now. You have to come check out my new site its called juliescove.com Come check it out we can chat there.

Later

Julie

I doubt that any of the spam filtering techniques available will be able to stop this type of message. Even Bayesian filters are likely to be useless against this type of spam. Oh well, I guess my delete key will continue to get lots of use.
9:47:04 AM