Posted by Eric
Sun, 29 Sep 2002 04:00:00 GMT
The biggest challenge with spam filtering is reducing false
positives--that is, finding the good mail among the spam. Even the
best spam filters occasionally mistake legitimate e-mail for spam. For
example, in some recent
tests, bogofilter
processed 18,000 e-mails with only 34 false positives. Unfortunately,
several of these false positives were urgent e-mails from former
clients. This unpleasant mistake wasn't necessary--the most important
of these false positives could have been avoided with an automatic
whitelisting system.
Read more...
Tags Hacks, Probability, Python, Recommended, Spam
Posted by Eric
Fri, 27 Sep 2002 04:00:00 GMT
The ACLU on new censorship
restrictions: This part of the [Patriot] Act overrides existing
state and federal privacy laws, allowing the FBI to investigate which
books have been bought or borrowed by anyone it suspects of being a
terrorist--an extremely broad and vague determination. Further, it
prevents librarians and booksellers from revealing that such a search
has taken place, and it bars the press from reporting on such
searches...
Thus the press and the public have no way of knowing when, where,
or how often such searches have been conducted, or what books and
readers are being investigated. Normally, when a court imposes a gag
rule on pretrial or trial participants, including the press, it may be
fought and, in many cases, overturned. The Patriot Act makes such
challenges impossible.
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