A Gaberlunzie's Thoughts

Update: Spammers Using Book Text

2006-07-28T14:08:00.000-04:00

Ok, I have an update on my earlier post about receiving spam in my GMail inbox that contained text from "The Three Musketeers."

After looking through the rest of my spam messages, I discovered some of them also had quotes in the body of the message. Instead of the paragraphs that I was getting with the Three Musketeers spam, it was just three lines.

Searching on Google for these quotes, interestingly enough, returned only a few pages. These pages were typically hard-to-read Blogspot webpages, where the only posts were a bunch of spam messages, identical to the ones I was getting in my Spam box. Is this someone who is just posting their spam to their blog site? Or is it a method for distributing spam?

After not having much luck with Google, I decided to try the Google Book Search. Aha! Luck! And here's the bottom line: Every one of the 9 spam messages I checked contained a different set of three lines from this book:

A Stainless Steel Trio: A Stainless Steel Rat Is Born/The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted/The...
by Harry Harrison

Looking up Harry Harrison, I noticed he has a website (http://www.harryharrison.com/), which, although it could have a better web design, is probably not a spammer's homepage.

So here's my questions:
1) Why are spammers including text from books? The obvious answer to me is to try to defeat spam filters, but it certainly isn't working with GMail.
2) Why that book? Why the Three Musketeers? Or does it matter, and those were just chosen because they were available?
3) Is this copyright infringement? I'm sure everyone would love to have spammers locked away for good. I'm sure spamming is shaky legal ground, but I know copying someone's book and sending it out over email is breaking copyright. Maybe we could send these people behind bars?

I'll leave you with the book quotes. Hopefully they won't constitute copyright infringement (if they do, Mr. Harrison, please contact me and I will happily remove them).

must have been settled well before the League ever found this planet.
Thats why there is no record of them.
Who are them?

my feet. So I switched off the molebind gloves and swung down, hanging
only from the soles of my boots. The blood rushed to my head-as well
it might bringing with it a surge of nausea and a sensation of great

bystanders and occasionally giving a royal flick of the hand at some
of our cheering fans. We moved on through what appeared to be a
residential quarter and beyond it into a park-like countryside. Our

darkness! Release me, do not kill me, tell me what you wish of me then
go back to the pit from which you have escaped . . .
I reached out and tweaked his nose sharply. Shut up. Open your eyes.

my shoulder and waved. And theres Floyd - and Madonette. Welcome, my
dear, welcome. I would stand to greet you, but only with difficulty.
She smiled and kissed his forehead below the bandage. Of course she

Look! I snarled. Speak! And moaning does not count as speaking.
Ever seen this thing?
This one gurgled instead of moaning, then yiped as his arm got

gear. The League did have an outpost on this planet - disguised as an
interstellar shipping firm-which contained a fully equipped machine
shop and electronic facilities.

Floyd easily outdistanced me and by the time I got to the scene,
staggering and panting, it was all ancient history. Our faithful
friend was barking and, foreleg lifted and tail outstretched, was

walked away from the others so my voice would not disturb them.
Come in Tremearne. Can you read me.
Sergeant Naenda here. The Captain is off duty this watch. Should I

Three Musketeers Spam

2006-07-28T13:17:00.000-04:00

My time finally ran out.

For a while, I had been successfully avoiding getting any spam at all in my Gmail inbox. Perhaps this was because my username isn't a necessarily common one (kilroy2004).

At some point in the past several months, I started seeing messages appearing in my Spam box, but didn't think too much of it. However - I have more recently started getting spam delivered straight to my Inbox. When this first happened, I simply ignored it and "Report Spam"ed it. Gmail seems to adapt to these pesky messages, and has gotten better at filtering them out as I teach it what I don't like. (I should also mention that I love how good a job Google does at not sticking false-positives in my Spam box, unlike some email companies I could name.)

Today, I got for the first time a piece of spam I had not expected. The first paragraph of the spam message was from The Three Musketeers! The rest of the message was spam, but someone out there was clearly trying to defeat spam filters by including this text. I marked it as spam anyway, and noticed a little bit later in the day that another Three Musketeers spam message got filtered directly to the Spam box (good job, Google).

So, here's my question... what's the point of all this spam? I get messages with garbled text, broken pictures, Three Musketeers text, text ads for Viagra, %-off deals... none of which I have signed up for, but all of which have somehow been targeted toward me. What's the point? If you want to get me to buy something, the least you could do is write a decent subject line... not something like: Re: caxyrVljIAGRA. I mean, honestly! Who's going to click on that?

I could write a much better spam message in just a few minutes:
Subject: Pharmacy Online - Buy cheap Viagra!
Body: Do you need cheap Viagra? You won't find it anywhere cheaper than our online store at ___. Plus, we offer free shipping for orders over $100! New customers get half a bottle FREE! Try us today!

In parting, I will leave you with the text of my Three Musketeers spam:

And at these words Lord de Winter passed his arm through that ofFelton, and led him out, laughing. I thought so; but we will return to my Lord Dukepresently. Andyet if we burn it, who knows whether Monsieur Cardinal has not asecret to interrogate ashes? Adieu, dear sister, till your next swoon! The soldier went out to obey the orders of his officer. I am for younot only a protector, but a friend; not only a benefactor, but afather. In one case or theother, the trial was soon over. Indeed, sir, said Milady, you must be either drunk or mad. And now, madame, try to make your peace with God, for you arejudged by men! In the morning, when they entered her chamber she was still inbed. There are here no procurators who regulatesuccessions beforehand. The Rochellais, then, had no hope but in Buckingham. In the morning at nine oclock, in the day at one oclock, andin the evening at eight. And remounting his horse, which Cahusac led to him, he salutedthem with his hand, and rode away. Inthe first place, La Rochelle appeared impregnable. He is a young, ingenuous, pure man whoseems virtuous; him there are means of destroying. That knife was for you,my lad; she would have killed you. There are here no procurators who regulatesuccessions beforehand. From whom cancome so many disgraces heaped upon her head, if not from him? Felton made a slight bow, and directed his steps toward the door.

Edit: Here's a link to where this text is in The Three Musketeers:
http://www.literature.org/authors/dumas-alexandre/the-three-musketeers/chapter-52.html

Gmail+Writely+Spreadsheets+?... A Perfect World?

2006-07-18T11:39:00.000-04:00

So today I made good use of the GMail Suggestion Form today. I think it's great that they list the commonly requested features to save themselves time (and someone making a feature request). However, the feature I was submitting is so glaring and obvious that I can't believe it hasn't become one of their top requests!

Integrate Gmail with Writely, Google Spreadsheets, and Picasa Web Albums.

This seems like an obvious step (or is it just me?). When you have an attachment at the bottom of your email, Google gives you just two options: "View As HTML" and "Download." Isn't it an obvious choice for RTF or DOC files to "Open With Writely?" Isn't it an obvious choice for XLS files to "Open With GSpreadsheets?"

One of the reasons to have Writely and GoogleSpreadsheets is to give the user a web-interface to edit their files (especially if they don't have the software to open the files on their computer). But right now, I have to download the DOC file to my computer, log in to Writely, upload the file to my Writely account, and then begin editing it.

I understand that Gmail is still a beta product, and Writely and GoogleSpreadsheets are both beta products as well. This, however, is a natural step (I think) for these applications to make. In fact, ideally all of these Google programs would be saved and read from an online GoogleHardDrive... but I'm getting ahead of myself.

I'd also like to mention that I was trying to find a way to modify Gmail (with a plugin or something similar) so that it would have these features. But I was unable to find a way for Writely to open files from the web! (Is uploading the only option?) If that's the case, Writely needs to be updated to have this feature!

Gmail Inbox Dynamic Size

2006-07-05T10:36:00.000-04:00

I'm sure many of the technology-literate will remember when Google first rolled out their GMail service. As I recall, everyone thought it was an April Fool's joke. After all, Google is famous for them. And the concept of one gigabyte of storage for your online email was revolutionary.
A year later, Google bumped the size up to 2 GB.

If you are like me, whenever you log in to GMail, you might glance for a moment at the rapidly changing counter at the bottom of the page:
"Over 2741.225060 megabytes (and counting) of free storage"
"Over 2741.225124 megabytes (and counting) of free storage"
"Over 2741.225173 megabytes (and counting) of free storage"

Have you ever investigated this counter?

Interested in when we'd hit the magical 3GB mark (3072MB), I took a look at the source code for the GMail homepage. Surprisingly, it was not a server-side update, but just a standard javascript function. Delving a little deeper, I investigated how the javascript worked. The key behind it all is this array:

[ 1136102400000, 2680 ]
[ 1149145200000, 2730 ]
[ 1167638400000, 2800 ]

The datestamp is on the left side, and the GMail size on the right side. The datestamps are standard unix timestamps (in milliseconds). Here's what that tells us:

January 1st, 2006 : 2680 megabytes
June 1st, 2006 : 2730 megabytes
January 1st, 2007 : 2800 megabytes

Until those numbers are updated, we will incrementally be counting upward from June 1st's value of 2730, up to January 1st's value of 2800. (And if we look at today, July 5th's value, we see this is true, with 2741MB.)

Researching on the web, I found several sites that had investigated this code in the past:
July 31, 2005 (Sree's Tech Notes)
August 25th, 2005 (Antimail)

As well as a site that has continually been updating the count: (GMail is increasing mailboxes size)

It looks like we used to be increasing the size at about 100MB per month, but at the current rate, it looks like we won't see 3GB for another 2 years. Hopefully, the next update from Google will show us the exact time that we can expect our 3GB inbox (maybe for GMail's 4 year birthday?). Or maybe they have slowed down to make it look even more dramatic when they announce a 500GB inbox... or a 1TB inbox. And maybe I should stop dreaming...

Speaking of large inboxes, how many people have even filled up their 2GB inbox?

Life Expectancy: 1000 years?

2006-06-26T13:34:00.000-04:00

This topic is a little off-track from my usual technology-related rants. But this article intrigued me so much I couldn't help myself.

Original Article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4003063.stm

The Kilroy Summary: We have the technology to begin repairing the gradual degradation that our bodies undergo throughout our life. With the ability to repair our bodies, the only thing that will kill us is through Darwin Awards. In other words, if you are stupid enough to get yourself killed, it's your own fault.

My Thoughts: Good... and bad. For one thing, you can't really stop working, because no one's retirement plan is going to cover them for 950 years if they only worked 50. Let's look at the average lifespan, and how we spend our time:

0-20 years : Maturing and educating ourselves
20-25 years: Higher education
25-55 years: Working toward retirement
55-90 years: Retirement

Now let's translate that into a 1000 year lifespan:
0-20 years : Maturing and educating ourselves
20-250 years : Higher education
250-550 years : Working toward retirement
550-1000 years : Retirement

Let's be honest with ourselves. No one can stand 230 years in college. No one can stand working in the same job for 300 years. And no one can stand sitting around waiting to die for 400+ years. So how would our lifestyle change? Here's what I expect:

0-20 years : Maturing and educating ourselves
I expect that the early years will be the same for pretty much everyone. No matter what your lifespan is, you will still grow up at the same rate. I do expect that parents, because they have so much time on their hands, will probably play a much more active role in a child's early years. Social development is important, so home-schooling will probably not become predominant, but parents will not be working 40+ hours a week.

20-40 years : Further education, although focused to the individual's interests
The current higher education model is extremely flawed. The goal for students is to learn the information so that they can get a good job. No one learning for that purpose is going to be able to spend 20 years educating themselves. On the other hand, no one will have the money to purchase 20 years of education without having some kind of income. Ideally, education would take place in an open-source (meaning free) format. The next article I am going to write will talk about my ideas for how Google is setting themselves up to be the start of an Open-Source Educational Facility.

40-65 years : The first job
The primary goal of an individual's first job is to discover their interests and, essentially, soul-search. They have their whole lives ahead of them (65 years in a lifespan of 1000 is equivalent to less than 6 years in a lifespan of 90).

65-400 years : Jobs mixed with Education
At this point in life, the individual has a pretty good idea of what makes them happy and what they enjoy spending their time doing. They will start a family, and will probably see several generations grow up during this time. They will try different jobs, educating themselves as necessary. Individuals who live to 400 years will be extremely well-rounded with lots of experience and knowledge.

400-1000 years : Investment, Retirement and Exploration
With a family, a solid investment capital, and half their life still in front of them, individuals will choose different paths. Some, feeling they have accomplished all they need to, will choose to end their lives. Governments, burdened with explosive size of their populations, will have reluctantly legalized suicide. Others will feel the desire to explore. The solar system will be no barrier, and colonization of Mars and other planets and moons will be highly desired. Perhaps space travel will be a possibility, and individuals will begin exploring the reaches of space. Others will choose a life of luxury and relaxation, spending the money they have earned to purchase land (which will become more and more expensive on Earth) and surround themselves with riches.

I can think of both an exciting idea and a depressing idea about this future. The exciting thought is that space will no longer be such a large boundary. Even if it takes years to travel to the other planets in our solar system, we will be able to! The depressing thought, however, is that laziness will undoubtably flourish. With ten or twenty times the lifespan they had before, people will not feel urgency to make their mark on the world.

It is both exciting and disturbing that society could change so much so soon.

Is Digital Copyright Meaningless?

2006-06-05T09:25:00.000-04:00

An article I have read in the past (and re-read today) is one of the best arguments against digital copyright I have ever seen. It is well written (although a little long) and does a fantastic job of poking holes in digital copyright.

Here is the article: Monolith: Muddying the Waters of Digital Copyright Debate

In the article, written by Jason Rohrer, we are given the specifications for a program called Monolith. The only thing that Monolith does is take two digital files and XOR them together (interpretation: the two files are blended together).

He presents his argument in two steps (as I see it):

Step 1: Digital files, made up of 1's and 0's, are not inherently copyrightable

1's and 0's exist in ALL digital files
a section of the Bible is shown to have the same bit pattern as a section of a copyrighted mp3
a single copyrighted work (like a song) could be encoded in so many different formats that you could argue there are an infinite number of ways it could be digitized (i.e. with 0's and 1's)

Step 2: Therefore, the digital bitcode is not copyrighted, but the content, particularly the presentation of it.

If an mp3 file exists on your computer that, when played by a standard mp3 player, would produce the sound of a copyrighted song, that content is copyrighted and therefore that digital file

His entire article is presented much better than these simple points, but I just wanted to summarize for those who don't want to read the entire thing.

So here is my question (based on what Jason has been saying):
1.1) Assume I have a digital file. When I open this digital file in a text editor, it displays a portion of the Bible. This is not illegal for me to have, because the Bible is in the public domain, correct?
1.2) But what if I opened the digital file with a modified video player (modified to use the Monolith program), and it starts to play a copyrighted movie!
1.3) Certainly it is illegal for me to play this movie unless I own it. But is it illegal for me to have the digital file (which is arguably the Bible)? Or illegal for me to have the video player (which has no idea if the movie is copyrighted or not)?

2.1) So, let's say I distribute this digital file that can be read as the Bible.
2.2) Let's also say that I host my Monolith-modified video player on a website.
2.3) Is it illegal for me to distribute either of these files?
2.4) Does it become illegal if I tell someone how to merge the two files?
2.5) If 2.4 is true, then if I (the uploader) didn't tell everyone how to merge them, but someone else did, would I be legally in trouble, or would the person who explained how to merge them?

It really does raise some interesting questions about the nature of copyright.

Open Source Windows

2006-06-02T16:01:00.000-04:00

Here's an interesting concept.

What if tomorrow, June 3, 2006, Microsoft announced that they were making all of their products open source?

Would Windows bugs be fixed faster?
Would there be fewer bugs in the first place?
Would people still complain that Microsoft is evil?
How many programmers would join in and help fix problems?
Would Windows be better?
Would your computer ever crash?
Would anyone donate money to keep Microsoft afloat?
What kind of ideas would programmers be able to put into practice?

It is an interesting proposition to me. I think Microsoft, right now, is in the unique position of controlling the dominant operating system that is installed on consumer's computers. Together, with the help of open-sourcing, they could produce and distribute the best operating system and suite of tools ever imagined. Except for the fact that Microsoft is unwilling to open source its code.

I think that, in the end, consumers are generally more satisfied with open source products than with products they have to pay for. Microsoft is losing customers, slowly but surely. They lost their browser dominance (well, are in the process of losing) to Firefox, and they are beginning to lose their operating system dominance to Mac OS X.

I saw the same trend back with Internet Explorer and Firefox (which was then called Firebird). Someone would say, "Hey! You should check out Firebird, it's way better than IE!" And someone might go check out Firebird, might get converted, and might spread the word. But now, if someone tries out Firefox, they are almost guaranteed to prefer it to IE. Because IE hasn't changed in years, but Firefox is growing by leaps and bounds.

Mac OS X is the same. Before, someone might say, "Hey Macs are cool!" And someone would try it out but dislike it because there was only one mouse button (sorry, sorry, I couldn't help myself). But now, since it is based on FreeBSD Linux, it is fortifying the Mac advocates, and also drawing in some of the Linux crowd. And, more and more Windows users are starting to buy iBooks and shift their experience to the Mac.

[Note: I am fully aware that Mac OS X is not open-source. However, since it is based on FreeBSD, it's consumers still play some role in programming and improving the operating system.

Microsoft is, in my opinion, putting all of their eggs in the Vista basket. And, unless Vista has a successful launch, Microsoft is going to look around, realize that all of their products are being beaten by competitors, and be in a real pickle.

However, if they switched to open source right now, they might still have a chance. What programmer wouldn't want to put their hands on Windows Source Code and play around with it?

Testing Google Personalized Search

2006-06-02T12:00:00.000-04:00

Let's face it. Google was an innovating search engine that changed the way people thought about searching. I've recently been remembering the older search engines I used to use seven or eight years ago: Dogpile, Metacrawler, AskJeeves, and even Yahoo!. That was back when searches used to take tens of seconds rather than tenths. Ah, "The good ol' days."

Just kidding.

Google introduced us to speed, quality, and a simple interface. Thank you, Google.

However, searching still isn't perfect (not for lack of trying, I'm sure). Ideally, I could ask a question, the search engine would know what I was talking about, and it would know exactly what page or pages to direct me to.

Except... how can a machine know what I am thinking, in what context my question is being asked? That is what my research is investigating - how to inform a search engine the context of a question.

Google already has some functionality for doing this. Google Personalized Search keeps track of your search history and hypothetically adjusts your search results to help narrow your search to topics that have interested you in the past.

However, my testing has not been successful in narrowing my search.

I started with a simple search query: jaguar

There are three distinct categories of results: Jaguar the car, Jaguar the Operating System (MAC OS X v10.2), and Jaguar the feline animal. Jaguar the car was the top result, followed by Jaguar the OS, then a single Jaguar the animal.

I attempted to promote Jaguar the OS to a higher rank. To do this, I deleted my entire search history, then began building the profile I wanted. I searched for Macs, I clicked on search results that had to do with Macs, I did everything I could think of to tell Google that I was very interested in Macs.

Then... I searched for jaguar again. Unfortunately... it returned the same results as before, in the same order. So, something is not working...

I haven't put enough time into building my Mac profile
Google is unable to see the similarity between the sites in my search history and the sites that are returned when I search for Jaguar

I'm a little curious why it isn't working quite the way I expected. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who has done some testing and has seen results from Google Personalized Search.

Definition and Purpose

2006-06-02T10:55:00.000-04:00

Let's get one thing straight from the start: A blog is simply a guy talking to himself until enough people snoop into his business that he has an audience to his self-idolization. At which point, it is still a guy talking to himself, just with people who read and possibly respond to his musings.

That being said, I wanted to start off by introducing myself (to myself, the only reader). I'm Stephen, a Computer Science undergraduate.

I dabble in many different technology fields: webpage design, search engine research, get-rich-quick website schemes, generalized programming, computer gaming, and I try to keep current on what is happening in today's technology news.

I have pretty strong opinions for open-source software, as well as generalized misgivings about the concept of copyright as a whole. I am not so radical that I believe copyright should be dropped from use, but I do feel that copyright has generated too much restriction on a rapidly-increasing global ability to harvest, store, and distribute digital data. That is, of course, through the Internet.

But back to the purpose of this weblog. For practical purposes, it is a place I will be able to publish my thoughts on topics I come across. So, although most posts will be technologically-oriented, I'm not going to guarantee anything.

What's with the title? Gaberlunzie is a word that I discovered in my family's dictionary several years ago when we were playing Boogle one night (we use the dictionary to check and see if some of the word we write down actually exist... it's a long story). Anyway:

Gaber-lunzie : A beggar with a wallet; a licensed beggar.
Source: "gaber-lunzie." Webster 1913 Dictionary. Patrick J. Cassidy, 1913. Answers.com 02 Jun. 2006. http://www.answers.com/topic/gaber-lunzie

Although, when I originally read it in the dictionary, it was along the lines of "A wandering beggar." That is why I chose it: In a sense, all students are wandering beggars, looking for a job and a place to call home.

More posts coming soon...