Hugo’s blog

As if people usually read terms of service and privacy policy, here’s an email I received today:

Re: Notice of Changes to Scripps Network’s Policies

In the past you have provided your email address and other personally identifiable information ("PII") to Scripps Networks and its affiliates (e.g., LIST). As part of our ongoing development of our sites, we have made changes to our Privacy Policies and Terms of Use of these sites. PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT TO CLICK THROUGH AND REVIEW THE NEW PRIVACY POLICIES AND TERMS OF USE as the changes affect the way we will use and share your PII and the terms and conditions for the continued use of our sites.

DIYNetwork.com: Privacy Policy
http://www.diynetwork.com/diy/press/article/0,2019,DIY_13703_2291323,00.html

DIYNetwork.com: Terms of Use
http://www.diynetwork.com/diy/press/article/0,2019,DIY_13703_2291309,00.html

FineLiving.com: Privacy Policy
http://www.fineliving.com/fine/about_the_site/article/0,1663,FINE_1459_974467,00.html

FineLiving.com: Terms of Use
http://www.fineliving.com/fine/about_the_site/article/0,1663,FINE_1459_974465,00.html

FoodNetwork.com: Privacy Policy
http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/privacy_policy/

FoodNetwork.com: Terms of Use
http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/legal_information/

GACTV.com: Privacy Policy
http://www.gactv.com/gac/about_us/article/0,,GAC_26085_4700542,00.html

GACTV.com: Terms of Use
http://www.gactv.com/gac/about_us/article/0,,GAC_26085_4709297,00.html

HGTV.com: Privacy Policy
http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/about_us/article/0,1783,HGTV_3080_1424715,00.html

HGTV.com: Terms of Use
http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/about_us/article/0,1783,HGTV_3080_1424672,00.html

HGTVPro.com: Privacy Policy
http://www.hgtvpro.com/hpro/about_us/article/0,2616,HPRO_20139_3386704,00.html

HGTVPro.com: Terms of Use
http://www.hgtvpro.com/hpro/about_us/article/0,2616,HPRO_20139_3386705,00.html

Recipezaar.com: Privacy Policy
http://www.recipezaar.com/about/privacy.zsp

Recipezaar.com: Terms of Use
http://www.recipezaar.com/about/tos.zsp

If you do not agree to the new terms of use, do not continue to use our sites. Continued use constitutes acceptance. If you object to the changes to our privacy policies, you can opt out of the new policy below with respect to your PII collected under the old policy. However, any new PII you supply us will be governed by the new policy.

I love the If you do not agree to the new terms of use, do not continue to use our sites.

Fascinating.

I am always entertained by the cat and mouse game that spammers play.

At first, we had a few rules to catch spam. But spammers got smarter. So we started using Bayesian filters to tell which emails are legit and which are unsollicited. And of course, spammers started working around it by using Bayes poison.

And as spam filters started getting better at detecting those, spammers started using images for the content of the message, and Bayes poison for the rest of the message. So spam filters started reading into those images to see if they were containing spam.

The next logical step was obviously for spammers to try to block the optical character recognition step. Not surprisingly, I received today my first spam as an image with diagonal text:

Let’s look at the next possible steps:

1. Spammers introduce Bayes poison in images
2. Spammers start using CAPTCHA technology for their messages
3. Spammers give up on images, and start using videos

That’s obviously one of the many possible scenarios, but the bottom line is that the story goes on until we find a better way to do email. Considering how electronic signing has failed until now, the future of email is looking rather grim.

Max just wrote about how much he loves gnus.

It’s interesting to see how much he asserts that he’s dependent on gnus, while I just went in the opposite direction, by stopping using Mutt after almost 9 years of use! I could have written the same article about Mutt a couple of months ago, but my Mutt propaganda page seems very old now.

As I’m a configuration freak, I too invested a lot of time in making sure that my one-and-only mail client was doing exactly what I needed it to do. I had macros, hooks and scripts for every complex operations.

However, I realized when I got a PowerBook that my life in a terminal was a little secluded. I couldn’t integrate with other tools from the OS, click on URLs nor view HTML messages other than by looking at a text dump easily.

So, as I moved my personal domain to DreamHost, I decided to start from scratch, expose my email by IMAP ­- it already was the case before, but it was complex as it was mixed with work email on the same machine ­- and try the stock clients that my environment gave me. KDE provided me with Kmail, OSX provided me with Mail.app, and DreamHost has SquirrelMail installed as a Web mail for each domain.

So I tweaked my spam filtering slightly to work independently from adjustments I was making from inside Mutt, changed the way I was dealing with archived mail, and I now have the feeling that wherever I am, in a cyber-café, on my Mac, on my PC, or even on my PDA, I have the best interface I can get.

And I really have the feeling that I’m free: I got rid of my Mutt addiction.

Sure, I lost some of the power of Mutt (I haven’t figured out how to reply to several messages at once neither in Mail.app nor in KMail yet), but as Michael Elkins said in 1995: All mail clients suck.

I just received an interesting spam which managed to go around all my spam filters. It starts with:

This email is:    [ ] actionable   [x] fyi        [ ] social
Response needed:  [X] yes          [ ] up to you  [ ] no
Time-sensitive:   [ ] immediate    [X] soon       [ ] none

It’s nice for them to classify it as fyi. I’ll pass on replying to it though. And I’m dealing with it in a time-sensitive manner as advised: I’m deleting it and making my filters learn about it right now. Thank you.