Back in June, aparently, the FTC said that a do-not-email list (like
the do-not-call list) would not work, and would generate more spam
because spammers would use it as a source of new email addresses.
Though it's a bit late now, I have to wonder about the latter
point. Why not simply map each address into its MD5 checksum
before storing it?
So foo@example.com would become "a0b6e8fd2367f5999b6b4e7e1ce9e2d2"
which is useless for sending email. However, spammers could use any of many available tools
to check for "hits" on their email lists, so it's still perfectly
usable for filtering out email addresses. Of course it would also
tell spammers that they have a 'real' email address on their list, but
only if they already had it -- so I don't think that would be giving
them much information at all.
I still think the list would be useless because spammers would simply
ignore it. But it wouldn't generate new spam, and it would drive
up the cost of spamming by making the threat of legal action a bit more
possible.
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
The Noosphere Just Got Closer
Of course it'll take several years, but Google's just announced project to digitize major university library collections means that the print-only "dark matter" of the noosphere
is about to be mapped out and made available to anyone with an Internet
connection. Well, at least the parts that have passed into the
public domain; the rest will be indexed.
I'm clearly a geek -- my toes are tingling.
I'm clearly a geek -- my toes are tingling.
Monday, December 13, 2004
The "5th Estate"
Interesting quote, from my point of view, in this article:
Jonathan Miller, Head of AOL in the US, testifies to the popularity of Citizen's Media. He says that 60 - 70 per cent of the time people spend on AOL is devoted to ‘audience generated content'.
(Though he's talking mostly about things like message boards and chat rooms, of course, rather than blogs.)
Jonathan Miller, Head of AOL in the US, testifies to the popularity of Citizen's Media. He says that 60 - 70 per cent of the time people spend on AOL is devoted to ‘audience generated content'.
(Though he's talking mostly about things like message boards and chat rooms, of course, rather than blogs.)
Monday, December 6, 2004
Welcome MSN Spaces!
A surprise to welcome me back from sabbatical: Microsoft released the beta of MSN Spaces
(congratulations guys!). I've been playing with it a bit over the
past few days; there's some very cool stuff there, especially the
integrations between Microsoft applications.
(I've seen a few comments about the instability of the Spaces service; come on folks, it's a beta. And they're turning around bug fixes in 48 hours while keeping up with what has got to be a ton of traffic.)
(I've seen a few comments about the instability of the Spaces service; come on folks, it's a beta. And they're turning around bug fixes in 48 hours while keeping up with what has got to be a ton of traffic.)
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