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What Spam Filter Are You?

You’re a Bayesian Filter!

A Bayesian filter, such as POPFile, will quietly discard any type of mail you don’t want to read. You train the program by correcting its “junk” or “not junk” guesses on individual messages. Over time, the programs statistical accuracy improves dramatically, to the point where it can be trusted to file junk mail into a separate folder.

No algorithm is perfect, though. When new spam styles arrive, the program needs retraining. You should also check your junk-mail folder periodically for false positives, lest you miss your wife’s Valentine’s Day message from the airport kiosk. (True story.)

In a past life you might have been:
A Collaborative filter
A Whitelist program
No filter at all

Interesting how that worked out for me… I use POPFile and love it! What filter are you – take the quiz at Slate.

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Critic knows why SI’s swimsuit models don’t…

Critic knows why SI’s swimsuit models don’t wear bikini tops [Wash Post via Jim Romenesko’s MediaNews]

But then I realized what was really going on. SI is owned by AOL Time Warner, the rapacious conglomerate that was nearly bankrupted by the moronic merger-mania of its executives.

This folly apparently left SI so poor that it could afford to buy only the bottom halves of these expensive bikinis. And the models, eager to help their impoverished employer, gamely carried on as best they could. In these trying times, that’s downright inspirational!

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New York Songlines

Although the web allows for communication on a global scale, I love the local resources it makes available just as much. New York Songlines is a fascinating site with annotated maps of New York City maintained by Jim Naureckas. Simply designed, each map is a linear representation of a single street… [kottke.org]

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Web Shui

I know what question has been keeping you awake at night. “Is Feng Shui applicable to the Internet?” Yes, I believe it is. Below you’ll find a handy hexagram, devised in accordance with ancient Chinese secrets, enabling everyone to have a better surfing experience, free of negative energy (Shar Chi literally: “a gosh-darned, messed-up connection”).

The Pa Kua of the Web: OUTERMOST SECTOR: Elemental link colors. DIRECTIONAL SECTOR: Indicates direction your computer should face. ELEMENT SECTOR: Important clues to size of hard drive and sexuality. INNERMOST SECTOR: Indicates the homepage of the household head.
Bad Placement: By placing the mouse in the center, you will be subject to constant reboots and viruses. Bad Placement: Never place your mouse diagonally or you could be stabbed in the back by a coworker who catches you surfing porn. Good Placement: Nothing is blocking your mouse's path to health and prosperity. There is an abundance of beer. Good Placement: Coming in sideways, the mouse avoids the poison arrow effect of a flaming comment. [davezilla.com]

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A Baby Picture of the Universe Tell its Age

Animation showing how the structure of the universe evolved from WMAP’s “baby picture” of the Big Bang. Matter clumps under the force of gravity, then the first stars ignite, and finally the structures of galaxies form. Credit: NASA/WMAP Science Team /WMAP Science Team (5 Mb QuickTime file)

NASA today released the best “baby picture” of the Universe ever taken, containing such stunning detail that it may be one of the most important scientific results of recent years.

The new cosmic portrait — capturing the afterglow of the Big Bang, called the cosmic microwave background — was taken by scientists using NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) during a sweeping 12-month observation of the entire sky.

“We’ve captured the infant Universe in sharp focus, and from this portrait we can now describe the Universe with unprecedented accuracy,” said Dr. Charles L. Bennett of the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt Md., and the WMAP Principal Investigator. “The data are solid, a real gold mine.”

One of the biggest surprises revealed in the data is that the first generation of stars to shine in the Universe ignited only 200 million years after the Big Bang, much earlier than many scientists had expected.

In addition, the new portrait precisely pegs the age of the Universe at 13.7 billion years old, with a remarkably small 1 percent margin of error.

[NASA]

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GeoURL

This is very cool… working out my whereabouts now…

UPDATE – adding the meta info to the blog was very simple thanks to the site. I can now see myself within the physical blog space. This is similar, but seemingly more accurate than NYCBloggers which maps NYC based bloggers by subway line…You can find me on the “6“.

I like this one: GeoURL (via Howard Rheingold, Smart Mobs). You add two tags to your HTML – one with your latitude and longitude coordinates, and one with the name of your weblog (here’s how). You then ping them, and soon your weblog will be indexed, so that you can see which weblogs are geographically near yours. Here are my neighbors (within a 500 mile radius).

By the way: I used Maporama.com to look up my coordinates. According to GeoURL, I live one mile west of the center of Stockholm. You get an RSS feed with the neighboring weblogs as items. Here is a list of all sites near Stockholm.

[Tesugen.com]