Lunchtime links: Starry-eyed idealism

[nameandnature]

Vernon Schyrver is being typically acerbic in news.admin.net-abuse.email about whether this Anti Spam Research Group is ever going to go anywhere. Given Vernon's annoying habit of being clever and right, it seems likely that non-techies are doomed to get spam until their mailbox collapses under the weight. When I work up the courage, I'll ask him whether he thinks the hashcash idea might work if there were some way for people on slow machines to pay their ISP to do the computation for them. This seems more likely to work than the mythical micropayments systems which people always suggest, since you're dealing with an organisation with which you already have some kind of billing arrangement.

Danny O'Brien (of NTK fame) linked to a posting by someone who gets why I write stuff to filter the crap that works on Windows for people who aren't very technical: This time we said it would be different, remember? If I can manage to concentrate this evening, might do some more work on another Spampal plugin.

Seeing as a few friends seem to be getting into LiveJournal, I'll mention that Friendster seems to be the new SixDegrees (anyone remember that). I'm tempted.