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Tuesday, November 05, 2002 |
FTC:
Where Spam Goes Off to Die, by Michelle Delio, Wired News.
Since 1998, the Federal Trade Commission has asked people to
forward any and all spam to a special e-mail address: "uce@ftc.gov."
Consequently, the FTC now has the most complete spam database in the world,
a collection of over 20 million missives containing the solutions to all
human wants and woes.
. . .
The commission has carefully saved every single spam ever sent to them. . .
. .
But the FTC's junk mail hoard may not be around much longer.
This year there's been a huge rise in the amount of spam we receive,
said Brian Huseman, a staff attorney for the FTC. We probably won't be
able to afford to store them all much longer.
The FTC now gets around 70,000 forwarded spams a day. Last year, they
received about 40,000 pieces a day. Three years ago, that mailbox received
about 4,000 missives daily, and in 1998 the entire year's take was fewer
than 100 spams.
3:33:56 PM 
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Chinese province launches access-card requirement for Internet cafe
users (AP)
This system gives us more power to prevent crimes and
identify criminals on the Internet,' said the spokesman, who wouldn't
give his name.
. . .
Jiangxi's system requires customers to register their names, ages and
addresses, information which is then loaded into a police database, the
police spokesman said.
They get an access card, which is swiped on an identifying machine when
they go online. That sends a signal to police, who continuously monitor the
Web for people attempting to reach barred sites. Police can also block
access to selected cardholders.
1:33:34 PM
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It was true, again, this morning that turnout seemed reasonably robust at
my polling place. (''Again'' as in ''as was the case two years ago.'') Not
so many folks out as in 2000, but still a lot of cars in the lot and a
significant line waiting to vote. Things moved along pretty speedily,
though, and I did my duty and departed quickly enough. Now, the waiting.
In the 2000 election, I relied on these Election
Night Web Sites to follow returns. I haven't checked them for currency
today, but I figured this was a place to start.
More later, events of the day willing.
12:33:42 PM
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Mic
rosoft Antitrust Findings Still Apply - Judge, by Peter Kaplan and Reed
Stevenson (Reuters).
Software industry rivals suing Microsoft Corp. won a victory on
Monday when a federal judge ruled that many of the incriminating findings
handed down in the course of the government's antitrust case should apply
to their lawsuits as well.
U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz denied Microsoft's request to re-open
395 of the 412 fact-findings of U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield
Jackson, the trial judge who oversaw the government's landmark case against
Microsoft.
. . .
Motz's ruling on Monday mirrors an Oct. 7 decision by yet another judge
overseeing 27 class action lawsuits filed against Microsoft in California.
California Superior Court Judge Paul Alvarado ruled that judge Jackson's
fact-findings should be binding in those cases as well.
They won't be able to dispute what they've previously tried and
lost, said Richard Grossman, an attorney with Townsend and Townsend and
Crew, the firm that is leading the California class action cases.
12:33:39 PM
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More on quantum bogosity:
Physics bitten by reverse Alan Sokal hoax? Update. Update from Robert Coquereaux
Commentary by: Arkadiusz Jadczyk and Laura Knight-Jadczyk
So no one in the string group at harvard can tell if these papers are real or fraudulent. This morning told that they were frauds everyone was laughing at how obvious it is. This afternoon, told they are real professors and that this is not a fraud, everyone here says, well, maybe it is real stuff".
In fact this affair reveals something extremely preoccupying. It simply means that when a paper may be different from most of the standard litterature (which precisely is the case with our publications) it might fall into the category of "hoax papers".
and
Are Igor and Grichka targeted by COINTELPRO for innovative ideas? Are they being targeted because they are in a position to expose some of the serious cracks in the foundations of science?
Or are they perpetrating a hoax on science - extremely hoaxable due to those very cracks in the foundations?
Will there be a television program about the idiotic Leaning Tower of Science, and how it was pushed over by very clever infiltration? Or will the program show the Leaning Tower falling over because it refuses the very innovative thinking that would serve to correct the imbalance?
6:05:57 AM
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More on the Sokal-like hoax in physics:
Physics hoaxers discover Quantum Bogosity, by Andrew Orlowski, The REgister (UK).
The physics establishment appears to be unable to decide whether papers submitted by two former French TV presenters are a scientific breakthrough or an elaborate hoax. The debunking to date has been done on Usenet groups and informally, over the Internet.
. . .
But curiously, so arcane and abstract is the world of theoretical physics, that the work has yet to be repudiated.
. . .
The Bogdanovs apparently foxed a New York Times reporter curious about the case, who after an angry denial from one of the hoaxers - denying that he was a hoaxer - dropped his investigation.
Does no one have the courage of his convictions to stand up and declare an opinion one way or the other, or is it simply that no one has bothered to actually spend the time to acquire an informed opinion (i.e. more than just skimming the papers for a few choice sentences)?, asks Kevin Scaldeferri from the California Institute of Technology.
. . .
The terrible, terrible conclusion some might draw from the episode is that string physics is no more a "science" than a social science. Several years ago physics professor Alan Sokhal hoaxed the cultural theories establishment with a delightful pastiche that suggested recent quantum theory work proved aspects of Lacanian psychoanalysis . . . .
5:51:59 AM
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