"Spam Clogs Information Superhighway"

No kidding.

From an article in today's Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

.... The FTC estimates spam will cost businesses and consumers $10 billion this year because spam forces Internet service providers to pay more for bandwidth.

Internet service providers pay for bandwidth based on their projected usage. As spammers tie up bandwidth by sending spam, networks slow down because of the volume of e-mail.

An Internet service provider must either eat the added cost of paying for more bandwidth or increase rates charged to subscribers. Businesses that use the Internet for sales must pay higher subscription fees.

Brokers, using special software, "harvest" e-mail addresses from the Internet and then sell them to spammers who can transmit a million messages with a click of the mouse. There are software programs and special filters that can recognize certain words in commercial e-mail and intercept it before it reaches a mailbox.

Professor Scott Fahlman, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, said filters "actually work pretty well just now."

Filters can be thwarted by spammers who disguise the sender's name and subject line by personalizing it to make it appear the e-mail is a personal message rather than a pitch for an unwanted product or service.

That way, Fahlman said, the software won't recognize certain words usually contained in spam and allows the message to proceed to a recipient's mailbox.

Phil Svesnik, executive director of Information Technology for Westmoreland County, said spam causes a loss of time for employees who must spent 20 to 30 minutes deleting the messages each day.

He said the filtering programs cost about $30 each. With 1,300 systems in the county's network, the expense "begins to add up." He said the problem with filters is they are not foolproof.

"There's nothing out there in filtering software that will guarantee that you will get rid of something you don't want and not get something you want," Svesnik said. "There's no real cure for it."

Fahlman said the problem is that the spammers and anti-spammers are in a technological arms race to come up with software that will thwart each other's efforts....

Information superhighway? Oh, my. How September 10th. How Al Gorish....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 07/13/03 06:38:46 PM
Categorized as Other.

Three by Tabb

Poems by Father John Banister Tabb.

The Plaint of the Rose

Said the budding Rose, "All night
Have I dreamed of the joyous light;
   How long doth my lord delay!
Come, Dawn, and kiss from mine eyes away
The dewdrops cold and the shadows gray
   That hide thee from my sight!"

Said the full-blown Rose, "O Light!
(So fair to the dreamer's sight!)
   How long doth the dew delay!
Come back, sweet sister shadows gray
And lead me home from the world away
   To the calm of the cloister Night!"

(October 1889)

Exaltation

O leaf upon the highest bough,
The poet of the woods art thou
   To whom alone 'tis given—
The farthest from thy place of birth—
To hold communion with the earth
   Nor lose the light of heaven.

O leaf upon the topmost height,
Amid thy heritage of light
   Unsheltered by a shade,
'Tis thine the loneliness to know
That leans for sympathy below
   Nor finds what it hath made.

(May 1895)

My Portion

I know not what a day may bring;
For now 'tis sorrow that I sing,
   And now 'tis joy.
In both a father's hand I see;
For one renews the man in me,
   And one the boy.

(September 1909)

The Poetry of Father Tabb (1928) pp. 8, 26, and 146f.
ed. Francis A. Litz, Ph.D.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 07/13/03 04:30:37 PM
Categorized as Literary & Sunday Poetry Series.