I guess it shouldn't really be a surprise to learn that Americans use some heavy handed methods to get information on possible terrorist activities. If you think about it, American intelligence officials probably aren't just politely asking Saddam Hussein where he's hidden his weapons.

US Military: “Saddam, could you please tell us where some weapons are hidden?“

Saddam: “Sorry, I don't remember.“

US Military: “Oh. OK then. You're free to go.“

Man, if the American public ever really found out what their military does to get information, I am sure there would be shock and public outrage. No doubt, they use any and all mind-altering drugs available, and some mental and physical torture for good measure.

Wait a second. There's a story going around about prisoner abuse in Iraq by “a few“ members of the US Military. Some reputable sources are even suggesting that abuse is directly related to the interrogation, and that what those pictures depict ARE the softening up of prisoners to prepare them for interrogation.

I have always said that military and intelligence operations are like the wizard of Oz. Looking behind the curtain will ruin the trick. The American news networks have shown Americans a peek behind the wizard's curtain. Quick, close it! Before Americans find out any more of the disturbing things there government must do in the name of gathering vital intelligence.

To combat spam, I have installed a Bayesian filter on my home computer that does an excellent job of recognizing spam and sending it to a special folder I have setup in Outlook. It is very effective: 99.28% correct in determining the type of email coming in (personal, work, spam, etc.). My spam filter has only mistakenly classified 4 emails as spam, out of the 5000+ total emails I have received over the last 6 weeks, which is beter than 99.9%.

I do however, spend a few minutes each day combing through the spam just on that 0.1% chance a good email has been misidentified. What amazes me are the ineffective techniques spammers are using to try and trick Bayesian filters into accepting the message:

* Totally nonsensical subject lines, such as “apprise”. I can see what the spammers are trying to do. They're trying to pick a dictionary word that will likely not be considered spam by any spam filters. Luckily, my spam filter catches those emails all the time.

* Breaking up spam words with funny symbols and characters. How many emails have tried to sell me “V1@gr@” or “C.i.a.l.i.s”. I think the use of these non-alphabetic characters is a dead giveaway. That never works either.

* Adding random characters into the subject, like that's supposed to stop any modern spam filter.

* Leaving the subject field blank, hoping I would be curious enough to open the email just to see what it's about. It's easy to delete a subject advertising “We1ght Loss Pill“ but harder to delete one with no subject.

* A subject line that tries to pretend like it's a non-spam email. “Re: Your order“ is a favorite spammer subject line.

* Having only a little bit of spam (like a URL and a few words), and then a whole lot of unrelated non-spam-like text. I've seen spam that contain one bad sentence, and then 10-15 quotations from famous writers filling out the rest of the message.

None of the above types of messages ever make it into my Inbox.

The type of spam people are kind of worried about, as they could theoretically beat any Bayesian filter, is one that contains actual text that you (as the individual receiver) might be interested in. Say you are a computer programmer, and you send and receive emails regarding Linux and Oracle all day. Any spam that mentions Linux and Oracle a few times (and neglects to mention high-probability spam keywords) is likely to get through. But the problem is, each person's non-spam keywords will be slightly different. How can a spammer design an email message that gets through in my email, but does not get rejected by 99.999% of other Bayesian filters out there?

Luckily for us, in 2004, they can't. In order to do such a thing, you would literally have to have not only a list of 25 million email addresses, but a bunch of context sensitive keywords relating to each email address. I mean, you would have to link a spam database with Lexis-Nexis (or Google I guess). They may be able to do something like that in a few years, but I don't see that the technology is available today. And even if it was, there are two main reasons it still might not work:

(a) anyone who employs an aggressive spam filter is not likely to order products advertised as spam thus defeating the whole purpose; and

(b) in order for spam to be effective you have to mention the product you are advertising (mortgages, drugs, adult web sites, etc.) so those keywords will be automatically caught as spam anyways, despite how many non-spam keywords that are used. I would like to think that a spam email that mentions “online pharmacy“ will always be caught regardless of how relevant the rest of the content is to me personally.

I recently blogged about how my last contract had ended and I was available for new work. I am happy to report that I am no longer available for the next little while. I am excited, as this company sounds like it will be a lot of fun to work at, which I need right now. (FYI: My definition of fun is working on an interesting project with talented teammates.)

I do have several friends who are well qualified as Microsoft developers and are still available in the Toronto GTA area, so if anyone sends me a job description, I will surely forward it on to them on your behalf.

I stumbled across this from an old Atari Magazine:

What do micro buyers want? Easy. They want 1000K RAM, 10Mb of hard disk space; 3-D color animated graphics with a resolution indistinguishable from broadcast TV; a built-in modem, laser-disk interface, and printer; stereo sound on a par with a Moog; and ease of use like the Macintosh.

Reading that made me do a double take. Did they dream of 1 GB of RAM back in 1984? No wait, 1000K is only 1 MB of RAM. Holy smokes. What can you run on only 1 MB of RAM?

I remember my first real computer: it was a Texas Instruments TI 99/4A. When you first turned the TI on, you would get a BASIC (programming language) command prompt. Technically, it had NO RAM and NO hard drive. If you loaded a program into it, it would place the program into 16KB of video memory. I spent hours transcribing programs from Compute! magazine. You would save these programs onto audio cassette tape.

My second computer was an IBM XT. If I recall, it's CPU ran at 4MHz, and it had 640KB of RAM and a 20MB hard drive. Ah, those were the days. This was a DOS-only computer, although somewhere I had acquired a text-based menuing system for it. It's monitor was CGA, which meant it supported up to 16 color graphics.

My third computer was a giant step up. At some point, my mother won an IBM PS/2 at a church raffle. Yay Mom! The PS/2 had 2MB of RAM if I recall. Windows 3.1 was installed. And I don't remember much more about that particular machine.

Moving on up the line, I purchased my very own PC when I had enough money to do so - a 100MHz Pentium 1. I'm sure it came with 16MB of RAM and less than 200MB of hard disk. It came with Windows 3.1, but since Microsoft was just about to launch Windows 95, I got the vendor to send me that CD for free. Sometime later, I decided to spluge and add 16MB more of RAM. It cost me $160 if I recall.

This brings me to my present computer - kind of. I have owned parts of this machine since 1997 or 1998. But I have changed just about every component in that time. I have been through five CD burners - they keep getting cheaper and faster. I have upgraded it's memory to where I now have over 1GB of RAM. I have three physical hard drives, of 8GB, 20GB and 40GB respectively. I have two monitors - one new LCD plus the original 17“ CRT. I have been through numerous video cards, two CPUs, two cases, numerous power supplies, and two motherboards. The modem is probably original though. ;)

Wow, it's amazing what can be considered top of the line over a 10 year period. If you look at the quote at the top of this entry:

1984: 1MB RAM, 10MB hard drive, 2MB or so 3D graphics, 8MHz CPU
2004: 1,000 MB RAM, 120,000 MB hard drive, 128MB graphics card, 3,000 MHz CPU
2014: 1,000,000 MB RAM, 1,440,000,000 MB hard drive, 8,192MB graphics card, 1,125,000 MHz CPU???

That's Moore's law isn't it?

I guess I'm not alone. Everyone goes through phases in their blog reading. First you spend most of your time reading the A-list, such as scripting news and the scobolizer. Then you add a few more interesting (non A-list) RSS feeds to your aggregator. Then you find yourself with dozens or hundreds of RSS feeds. And then you discover you have stopped reading Dave Winer or Robert Scoble altogether.

Personally, I'm at the point where I still subscribe to those two gentlemen, but I find myself skipping most of the content.

In fact, having read Scobolizer for so long, I'm sure Robert doesn't mind losing a few readers who are now subscribed to some of the same sources as him and don't need a human filter.

I don't watch many reality shows. I'm not into The Swan and really couldn't care less about American Idol.

I do admit to watching Survivor and The Apprentice on a weekly basis. I've never seen more than a few minutes of “The Restaurant”, but since it's another Mark Burnett production, it deserves a look. It doesn't sound like a lot of fun, however, since this year it's all about the battle for power over a failing restaurant.

Anyways, here is an interesting article on the not-quite-behind-the-scenes fight that is going on between the chef and the financier. There is some talk that this show is ruining or has ruined Rocco DiSpirito's reputation as a chef. The Restaurant might become a good documentary for business students on how to make sure a restaurant fails:

Step 1) Get lots of publicity before you open, so that you have no time to work out any kinks before the bad reviews come in

Step 2) Have the chef spend more time selling pots and pans on QVC than actually in the restaurant

Step 3) Spend $9,000 on 5000 business cards, for an average price of $1.80 per card

I guess there is another lesson here: the risks of appearing on “reality TV“. Anonymous contestants like in The Apprentice or Survivor have nothing to lose by appearing on a reality show. People like Omarosa can develop awful reputations, but still capitalize for their 15 minutes of fame if they want to. However, people like Rocco DiSpirito, who are already somewhat famous to begin with, can ruin a good reputation with a show like this. There's a larger downside for them.

Add to the fact that producers have a natural tendency to emphasize the negatives, to boost drama and hopefully ratings. So if you have 1 bad moment in a week full of good moments, guess which moment gets aired on TV? So you end up looking like a jerk when you might not be. Things are also probably aired out of context, so they show you firing someone but don't show all the things the person did to get fired.