taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

Hooray!

SpamAssassin has been voted DataMation Anti-Spam Product of the Year for 2006, earning three times as many votes as the next contender.

This is the second year in a row, which is fantastic — and our margin is increasing each year. ;)

Tags: anti, contender, datamation, hooray, margin, product, row, spam, spamassassin, year

Politics: California AG forwards anti-P2P screed on behalf of the MPAA.

However, the metadata associated with the Microsoft Word document indicates it was either drafted or reviewed by a senior vice president of the Motion Picture Association of America. According to this metadata (automatically generated by the Word application), the document’s author or editor is ’stevensonv.’ (The metadata of a document is viewable through the File menu under Properties.)

Sources tell Wired News that the draft letter’s authorship is attributed to Vans Stevenson, the MPAA’s senior vice president for state legislative affairs. MPAA representatives have issued similar criticisms of P2P technology in the past. Stevenson could not be reached for comment.

Funny: Humorix: Feds Unveil Practical Method To Combat Spam. ”If a spammer
has access to a list of millions of clue-impaired users, they won’t need to bother sending spam to anybody else’, Thullweppon argued.’ (thanks to Kenneth Porter for the link!)

Tags: anti, california, document, metadata, mpaa, politics, president, spam, stevenson, vice, word

Games: Anti-Monopoly: ‘A professor and a freelance writer are determined to set history straight on the origin and theft of a favorite American pastime’.

Details how Monopoly(R) is very similar — and allegedly based on – The Landlord’s Game, a socialist educational game from 1904, which was introduced as follows: ‘the object of this game is not only to afford amusement to players, but to illustrate to them how, under the present or prevailing system to land tenure, the landlord has an advantage over other enterprisers, and also how the single tax would discourage speculation’.

Apparently, once Monopoly(R) was set to succeed, this original was bought out and buried for $500. Here’s some more links that seem to back that up…

MonopolyCollector.com says ‘the Landlord’s Game was very similar to Monopoly(R), with the purchase of properties, utilities, a public park square, and a ‘Go to jail’ square. Many feel Darrow just added items to this game and improved some features.’

This article and its second part provide lots more detail.

Here’s a description of ‘The Landlord’s Game’, and another.

Tags: anti, freelance, game, games, history, landlord, monopoly, origin, professor, theft, writer

Spam: Federal Anti-Spam Law Passes Congress (Anne Mitchell):

This source also said that the bill in its ultimate (and by now presumably passed) version was significantly tighter and more pro-consumer than the version which passed the senate and went to the house earlier this month. That’s good. On the other hand, it still doesn’t go nearly as far as the CA law did in many ways.

Still, one must be pragmatic - it doesn’t really matter if it’s better or worse than the CA law, right now, because it is (will be) the law. If we have to have a Federal law, and if it has to pre-empt the states, then this one at least has some positive aspects to it.

Tags: anti, bill, congress, federal, law, passes, pro-consumer, source, spam, version

Federal Anti-Spam Law Passes Congress (Anne Mitchell):

This source also said that the bill in its ultimate (and by now presumably passed) version was significantly tighter and more pro-consumer than the version which passed the senate and went to the house earlier this month. That’s good. On the other hand, it still doesn’t go nearly as far as the CA law did in many ways.

Still, one must be pragmatic - it doesn’t really matter if it’s better or worse than the CA law, right now, because it is (will be) the law. If we have to have a Federal law, and if it has to pre-empt the states, then this one at least has some positive aspects to it.

Tags: anti, bill, congress, federal, law, passes, pro-consumer, source, spam, version

You Might Be An Anti-Spam Kook If… — very funny list from Vernon Schryver, concerning the many Final Ultimate Solutions to the Spam Problem (FUSSP) (link via Raph).

Raph says he, too, has a FUSSP, but says ‘I realize that using a trust metric to defeat spam, while probably effective, won’t be easy.’ Nevertheless, I’d be interested in hearing it, for one. Go on Raph, write it up! ;)

Funny: Whisky boss ‘amazed’ by spy interest: ‘The boss of a tiny Scottish distillery says he is amazed to learn that US spies have been monitoring his whisky plant for weapons of mass destruction.’

Tags: anti, boss, final, fussp, kook, list, might, raph, spam, whisky

Richard Dawkins: why Prince Charles is so wrong (via BB).

An interesting read, if only because Richard Dawkins misses several massive chunks of the anti-GMO argument, as several folks point out on the BB discussion board. Firstly, the profit drive is the only thing driving deployed GM products, and that’s already been shown to produce unsafe results, in the UK with BSE. Secondly, as one of the posters says, ‘Oh, yeah – Dawkins is absolutely right (in comparing GM to modifying running software): Nothing to gripe about when people tinker with your mission critical apps’.

Tags: anti, argument, board, discussion, drive, firstly, gmo, profit, read, thing

the Anti-Telemarketing EGBG Counter-Script:

Telemarketers make use of a telescript - a guideline for a telephone conversation. This script creates an imbalance in the conversation between the marketer and the consumer. It is this imbalance, most of all, that makes telemarketing successful. The EGBG Counterscript attempts to redress that balance.

Half of the coolness here is the excellent, form/script-based design. Well suitable for printing out and sticking to the wall beside the ‘phone…

Tags: anti, conversation, counter, egbg, imbalance, script, telemarketers, telemarketing, telescript, use