Friday, January 17, 2003

Cleverness vs. Statistics Spam's getting more sophisticated, as reported by Computerworld. (Via Scripting News, i.e. Dave Thinking Out Loud) Perhaps even too smart for Bayesian filters, which are emerging as one of the best classes of spam fighting tools. I've commented on this, but now Paul has made a fascinating connection to Dr. Seuss books. As it turns out, statistics underlie them both. Bayesian filters basically use statistical rules to determine the "spamminess" of e-mail messages with surprising accuracy. As a trivial example, the phrase "farm girls" is unlikely to turn up in the subject of a non-spam message. 9:15:42 PM    comment []

Would this be Dumping? A Motley Fool post suggests that Apple, "with its massive cash reserve," should lower prices and absorb the losses in order to gain market share. "If Apple loses $800M in cash over the course of 2 years but increase its user base back to 5% global market share, it would be worth it." He claims the company did the same thing in 1996-97 with good results. 3:18:40 PM    comment []

Woes of Technology Dependence A Washington Post article (House Makes a Plea To Keep BlackBerrys) reveals that Congress owns more than 3,000 RIM BlackBerrys, forcing it to "[defend] the continued use of foreign technology that is determined to be operating unlawfully," according to a lawyer opposing RIM. 2:34:33 PM    comment []