I’m almost convinced now that the majority of stuff SpamAssassin misses isn’t really spam, but phishing messages. I think it’s time for SpamAssassin to start considering detecting it. Perhaps take a look at mscott’s good work for Mozilla Thunderbird.
Odds are lots of that detection stuff, will also detect spam slipping through by other means.
After seeing Matt’s post that TinyMCE has been integrated into WordPress, I think I’m doing the same to a few things I’m currently developing. I was considering a WYSIWYG tool previously for these projects, but decided against it mainly because of the poor code they often produce. TinyMCE is rather good, but didn’t support Safari. Now that appears to be changing (they are testing and working with Apple). So I really have no reason not to use it right?
It’s a great thing for those who don’t know much (or good) html. Keeps the crud out. Now I need to either find, or write a really good html sanitizing function for php so I can make sure it’s pure safe html. Right now I just delete any tags.
Sony states:
The operating system has also yet to be clarified. The integrated Cell processor will be able to support a variety of operating systems (such as Linux or Apple’s Tiger).
A very interesting proposal. It’s not surprising that they would be supported, especially considering who developed the Cell processor. It would be interesting to see if Apple would create a Mac OS X distribution for the PS3. It would have some potential of increasing the user base, and providing a new avenue to showcase the OS’s features and capabilities while not really infringing on the computer business (people aren’t likely to trade in their PC’s for PS3’s just yet). Apple may have had this in mind for some time, just take a look at technologies such as Inkwell, VoiceOver, and of course Speech (which has really been around for several years). It’s perfect for the PS3.
[Hat tip MacNN]
I ordered back on 7/5/2005. I’m still waiting. While CDW still has the balls to say 3-6 days on the product page. Eventually I guess I’ll give up, even though I really don’t want to get a slower drive. My hope is to be able to purchase a Seagate Momentus 7200.1 80GB. I may end up settling with a Seagate Momentus 5400.2 80GB if it doesn’t start moving soon. This is approaching a month now. I emailed Seagate to see if they were even shipping yet, and this is what I was told:
The ST910021A and ST980825A , 7200 RPM laptop drives have been released, but to the OEM manufacturers. We do not have an exact date for release to the open market but the date they were announced precedes their actual availability by approximately 160 days. The drives are pre-sold to manufacturers for at least that much time. We anticipate a late August release.
The development stages are supported with testing by both Seagate and major OEM accounts working mutually to finalize the design and development of the products. The OEM partners have Purchase Orders for minimum quantities of $2.5 million per quarter. These orders are filled completely prior to drives being offered to the open market.
> 4) “Is there any updated availability? “
They become available when the last OEM delivery is completed, that is a date that is a moving target as the OEM accounts often add on to the ordered volumes if demand is high.Thank you for your inquiry. We appreciate your consideration of Seagate products for your storage solutions.
CDW said they received a small shipment in June, so it’s possible they purchased OEM drives (which isn’t that uncommon). Though the date keeps slipping.
So what’s a geek to do? Anyone know a store with these awesome drives in stock?
For the most part, the news has been rather clear, though a few questions still remain.
The key responsibility is that the Module Owner’s job is to act in the best interests of the community and the project at large, not in the interests of his or her employer. Ben has lived with these responsibilities as a volunteer, a Netscape employee, a Mozilla Foundation employee and now as a Google employee. We’re confident that Ben will continue to help us drive great innovations in the browsing world.
Speaking of Ben’s departure to Google. Now is the Foundation ultimately going to continue to lead the community? Or will the Corporation step into play here? Is it possible for the Foundation and Corporation to disagree? How will that be mediated?
The ultimate question here is how much control will the Foundation have over the Corporation. As a wholly owned subsidiary, the Foundation should have substantial say, though it’s not quite clear just yet how a Corporation status will effect policies, most of the discussion thus far has been on day to day operation or “the basics” (will Firefox still be free? etc.) Hopefully a MoFo or MoCo (oh boy do I like the abbreviations) representative will be clarifying things in days to come. I’ll update this post if they do (nudges Asa and Mitchell).
Several weeks ago I reported that Microsoft was sniffing user agents, and giving misleading errors based on it’s findings. They resolved that rather promptly. Interestingly enough, looking at the blog for Microsofts start.com, there are two blog posts [one | two] that mention Firefox compatibility. It’s great to see them acknowledging browser choice. Thanks Microsoft!
As many sites are reporting (I’ll just link slashdot), DRM has been found in the new Intel Macs. So what? It doesn’t really say much. Mac OS X has always been tied to Mac hardware (with a small window for clones during the 90’s). It’s a little premature to assume that it will be used all over your computer. It’s likely because of this that those Mac_OS_X_10.4_Tiger_x86.iso‘s haven’t made it onto the net yet. There’s no way they would work without DRM. The good thing about DRM is that just because it exists, doesn’t mean it has to be used. Apple has been locking hardware with exclusive ROM’s, and special motherboards. Now they replaced all that with 1 chip. IMHO that’s just consolidation. If anything, it’s opened up a few doors. Now perhaps software manufacturers can allow us to activate software from the privacy of our own computers without phoning home (something that always bothered me a bit). Why do I have to tell Microsoft that I installed their software? Isn’t it enough I bought it? Do I actually need to call them up and tell them? I’d rather the DRM chip so they can preserve their licensing, and I can preserve the right to not initiate an electronic conversation with them to let them know I installed Windows XP (and obviously give them my IP address).
Interestingly, it’s said that DRM is only invoked when running Rosetta. Very likely done as part of a licensing agreement to keep Transitive’s QuickTransit on only those systems designed for it.
I don’t quite get the fuss. IMHO DRM by computer chip is much less invasive than most DRM methods currently around (product activation). Why are we upset about things that potentially shield us from more privacy invading techniques?
I consider this a draft at this time, and will likely publish a more finalized version at a later date. Please read with that in mind.
Bookmarks suck. There I said it [5 seconds for public outrage]. I rarely use them. Instead I use the auto-complete functionality of the URL bar, and I know I’m not the only one. I decided to take a little time and discuss why bookmarks suck, pinpoint the problem, and suggest a solution. Why? Because bookmarks shouldn’t suck. They should be useful.
The problem can be summed up to basically three points which cause many people (in particular people who spend lots of time in a web browser) to not use bookmarks. I will attempt to discuss them as briefly as I can:
All three of the above share a few common characteristics. First of all, they are attempts to avoid an unmanageable list. You can call it “work avoidance”, “laziness”, or what ever you wish, but that’s what it is. The second is that these alternate methods serve two distinct methods of how most people remember things:
Is there a better way? I propose that there most certainly is. At least 1 better way, and likely many, some even better than what I’m going to suggest. My methodology involves a few specific ideas:
n : data about data; “a library catalog is metadata because it describes publications”
Source: WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University
The only difference here is our library catalog is our bookmarks, and publications are websites. Not really a difference eh? No, that’s not coincidence, that’s bonified logic. We’ll be working on this concept in a few moments.
Machine learning is an area of artificial intelligence concerned with the development of techniques which allow computers to “learn”. More specifically, machine learning is a method for creating computer programs by the analysis of data sets. Machine learning overlaps heavily with statistics, since both fields study the analysis of data, but unlike statistics, machine learning is concerned with the algorithmic complexity of computational implementations.
Source: wikipedia.com
Again pretty simple right?
Bookmark Metadata
That’s right, bookmark metadata. More than just a title. Most websites use meta tags on them. The two most common are keywords, and description. An intelligent bookmarking system would look at the page being bookmarked, and extract that information if known, in particular keywords. Take for example this link to Crucial.com’s Memory options for a Mac Mini
See that yummy data? We can use that. How? Something along the lines of bayesian learning, we’ll discuss a bit more later on.
Intelligent Filtering
I should be able to go the URL bar and simply enter mac and see all Mac related websites (Apple.com, and of course that crucial memory upgrade I noted above). memory should bring up crucial.com. Entering cruc should bring up crucial as well. To separate history from bookmarks, the browser should have an icon to the right of the URL (similar to Safari’s RSS icon) that indicates if it’s history, or a bookmark. Based on my usage patterns, it should give weight to the appropriate item. For example if I enter mac and apple.com, and that crucial memory upgrade page appears second, and I repeatedly revisit crucial, crucial should come up first. Why? Because that’s easier.
[ mac| ] |apple.com (Bookmark) | |crucial.com/foo/bar (Bookmark) | |macworld.com (History) | | ... | +----------------------------------------------------+
No giant menu’s to find where that crucial memory page is, I could type in mac or memory or something to that effect. The above illustrates how I no longer need to navigate that menu. It’s integrated right into auto-complete, making for a real easy experience.
Intelligent Views
Camino’s Bookmarks view is rather good. In fact, it’s really good. I should be able to create a folder called mac and put associated bookmarks in there. Then when I use that keyword, I get all the bookmarks in that folder, in a higher priority than the machine learned bookmarks. Ideally when a new folder is created, it should attempt to auto-file my existing bookmarks for me. The end result could go in the current bookmarks menu. A computer generated (human edited) list of websites sorted and organized. Useful and relevant.
Machine Logic
Machine logic for this new functionality can be simple, or extremely complex. At it’s simplest form, it’s using the title, meta-description, and meta-keyword data, stripping it of punctuation (comma’s and such), delimited it by spaces, and creating a searchable index. In a more complex form, it’s figuring out how to group them based on patterns, probability, and user input. It could even go as far as using a dictionary file to get like terms, so computer also checks for PC. It can go as far as natural language, or suggest corrections (similar to Google’s correction functionality).
It improves the end-user experience of course. The end result is really pretty subtle, but good. First the days of scanning through a list of scrolling bookmarks no longer exists. That’s wonderful. The days of simply typing what you want and let your browser find it will be here. Your usage patterns will provide the browser with the information it needs to create a relevant, insightful, and useful auto-complete list.
I haven’t implemented this, nor do I have plans to do so at this time. I think the plan could use some refinement, and the project would be better handled by someone with more experience (and time) than I typically have. I put this idea out there in hopes someone else will finally admit bookmarks suck, and help do something about it. Because lets face it, bookmarks suck. I would love to see it implemented, and ideally expanded upon so that it’s results are more relevant. Lists are bad, very bad. Simple queries are good. I know what I want. Why do I have to search an entire list? That’s the bottom line. Bookmarks were a good solution for their time. But not anymore. We can do better. Oh yea, Bookmarks suck, did I mention that?