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Weather Pixie
Thursday, January 15, 2004 - 12:02 p.m. -
Interesting analysis
of the Democratic candidates by a political analyst. Especially good for people who think that Clark would walk all over Bush, or that Bush would walk all over Dean.
Wednesday, January 14, 2004 - 02:58 p.m. -
Two-thirds of all e-mail is spam.
Tuesday, January 13, 2004 - 10:59 a.m. -
Oh my goodness.
The world keeps getting cuter.
Tuesday, January 13, 2004 - 12:10 a.m. -
Wow.
Talking Points Memo nails the O'Neill thing. Well, one of the many O'Neill things.
Tuesday, January 13, 2004 - 12:05 a.m. -
Paul apologizes for not blogging.
That is, like, so 20th century.
Tuesday, January 13, 2004 - 12:00 a.m. -
Interesting endorsement of Clark
from an Economist editor. Should be required reading for anyone who thinks Bush has the right attitude toward alliances (so nobody reading this, obviously).
Monday, January 12, 2004 - 06:26 p.m. -
This afternoon I was flipping through a National Geographic while waiting for my delicious .95 spicy potato curry from my new favorite place* and came across a Viagra ad with the following header:
LOVE LIFE AGAIN
Wow! There's so much packed in there. That drone deserves a big fat raise. They can't outsource marketing to India yet, can they?
*Annapurna, 1833 Broadway (at Denny)
Sunday, January 11, 2004 - 02:16 p.m. -
Seems like everyone's been talking about the increasing freakiness quotient of spam lately (well, nobody online, except Dalton). I got one the other day from Mr or Ms. "Dehumanization R. Irregardless," whose name I loved. But the message texts are more confusing than delightful, filled with unrelated words and typically unclear about what the senders want their recipients to do (which makes me think maybe some of it is art).
Then I started noticing a new layer of nonsense: words inserted into other words, like "protmonkeyect." I had heard that some of the word salad in spam was intended to fool anti-spam tools that look for natural language, but this flies in the face of that theory. It reminds me of a chromosomal insertion, and it occurs to me that spam is perfect for for evolutionary programming: practically infinite seeds, concrete success criteria, and easy inheritance and mutation.
Send out 100 million messages, each slightly different, maybe by as little as one punctuation mark. Harvest the code (text) of the messages that succeed (by generating click-throughs?), mutate them slightly, then send them out again. I suppose you'd want to tweak their environment by culling bad addresses after one bounce or 10-20-100-1000 failures to thrive. It wouldn't be as cheap as shotgun spam, but it has interesting potential.
So: Are the bad guys growing their own super-sales tools? Maybe, probably not. Could good guys use some variation of evo-programming spam? Maybe...
And if this isn't what's happening, then what in the world is making these word-sculptures happen? Answer me!
Sunday, January 11, 2004 - 01:51 p.m. -
Have I mentioned the Weather Pixie down there on the left? Isn't she adorable? And now you know the weather here in Seattle (Boeing Field) in Fahrenheit and MPH. Thank me some time.
Sunday, January 11, 2004 - 01:49 p.m. -
Why do these donuts
make me uncomfortable? Are they looking at me? Are they coming on to me? Is it a warning? What are they trying to tell us?
Sunday, January 11, 2004 - 01:45 p.m. -
Furries are so 20th century -
get it on with the clunkies!
Sunday, January 11, 2004 - 12:08 a.m. -
WOW!
"Buddhism is the grandfather of scientology." I didn't know that!
Monday, January 5, 2004 - 12:18 p.m. -
Mr. Pants!
Is back! Rejoice!
Friday, January 2, 2004 - 04:35 p.m. -
Very good
little New Republic piece that finally really settled (for me) why Michael Moore and his shrill ilk (ooh, shrilk!) are good for the left.
Very Important Persons
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