The Lexicographer's Rules

;Before I begin my testimony, I want to say that I am a great fan of Steffi Graf. I follow her entire career with great interest. I have, for example, been sending her money every birthday since the borders were opened… Then, in 1990, Steffi Graf lost to Monica Seles in the German Open. My world collapsed around me. I could not bear the thought of someone beating Steffi Graf. Although she had not lost her No 1 seeding at that time, it affected me so much that I even considered suicide. In 1991, or 1992 at the latest, it was old news. I had then definitely decided to injure Monica Seles in such a way that she would no longer be able to play tennis, or at least for a while. At no time did I intend to kill her. I did not even want to cause her a serious injury… For me, Steffi is the top woman. Her eyes sparkle like diamonds. She is an absolute dream woman. I really want to emphasise that; it comes straight from the heart. (Source Link)

Five percent of black Americans are home-schooled, up from about one percent in 1997.

After seeing the link to Cory Doctorow’s novella, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, about a gagillion trillion times, and reading him talk about it even more (who isn’t their own best spokesperson and PR rep?) I finally downloaded it and read it. It’s good. At about an hour’s read, it’s a rich, intriguing sci-fi melodrama, with a thousand openings for elaboration on Cory’s invented society and the humans Mark II which inhabit it. But some of the implications of Cory’s near-future are bothersome. I’ve been swatting them away for several days, the way you do movie plot holes and insults from people you have a crush on, but those spiny implications are now so far under the riding blanket, I’ve got to rest this horse. Ha. So, in an attempt to work through those niggling details, I’ve written The Lost Chapter from Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, in which I’ve extended some of the themes into what I consider logical exaggerations, working vaguely within the rough parameters laid out in Cory’s Bitchun world.

Mitch Wagner asks in Internet Week, What does it really cost to deal with spam? Here’s my take. I’m a freelance tech consultant here in New York City. I have about 25 clients, from 5 to 25 employees. All of my clients have a spam problem. Some of them have asked me to do something about it. One client is a small advertising agency with 15 employees. If each of those employees takes 100 seconds a day to delete spam (entirely too small of a number, but one we can work with to make a point), that’s 1500 seconds a day. That’s 104 hours a year (given five work days a week, and 50 work weeks a year). The billable rate for some of the art directors at this ad agency is $250 an hour. So that lost income could be as high at $26,041 a year. It’s at least more than two weeks of lost man hours, the equivalent to an employee’s vacation time. And that’s a small company losing labor or paying opportunity costs they would not otherwise have had to pay. Let’s look at it from another angle: technical assistance. Although I have been able to keep the software costs down by using Unix tools on OS X, installing Exim with Spamassassin on a mail server, including converting the mail accounts over from the old system, tweaking, changing client settings, and modifying the DNS records and all that, still cost that company about $2400 in my billable time. For a small, struggling company with 15 employees that’s a lot of money, and a cost they would not otherwise have had. And it’s on top of the four other solutions I tried, and the hours I spent and billed for, in an attempt to reduce the load on the mail server. It’s a 350MHz iMac on a slowish ADSL line: it can’t handle a dictionary attack of thousands of messages a minute. And they can’t afford to upgrade just to handle spam. I’ll have to do that installation repeatedly for various clients. Sure, the time it takes will improve as I repeat the installation, but there are still costs involved, costs they would not otherwise have had. And another cost: one of my clients has a very Christian employee. Like everyone else in the office, she receives high volumes of unsolicited pornographic spam. The company has taken the precaution of consulting with and paying for legal counsel, to see what can be done to protect itself from possible lawsuits stemming from offended sensibilities. Whether or not there is a case there, or anything to worry about, that lawyer had to be paid. It’s a cost they would not otherwise have had. I don’t think these costs are small. They are concrete, actual costs which can be expressed in the fiscal ledgers, in billable hours, in productivity. If there are any numbers that need to be examined for false claims, I would look at the spammers’: — What is their actual response rate? What do they tell their clients it is?
— How much more money do they make from selling spamming software and email addresses than doing the actual spamming itself? What do they tell their clients about this?
— How many of the email addresses they sell are valid, verified, opt-in addresses? What number do they tell their clients? See, from my perspective, the spamming scam is based upon a series of lies, many of them self-inflicted: — Deniability. If someone somewhere along the chain says an address is verified, no due diligence is performed, and this claim is accepted as truth.
— Respectability. Spammers are unwilling to judge themselves by the company they are keeping, while everyone else does. Mortgage vendors side-by-side with teen sex pornographers next to toner refillers next to multi-level marketing scams. It’s a bad lot. No respectable person would be a part of it.
— Legitimacy. While no professional marketer uses the fake Reply-Tos, fake headers, fake From addresses, fake unsubscribe options, disguised URLs, misleading copy and false claims, spammers have no problem with such tactics because that is what they’re selling. It’s not the product being touted in the spam that makes any money, it’s the method for sending of the spam itself.
— Accountability. Spammers claim to respect bounces, but do not actually do so. Spammers claim to use legitimate mail services, but in truth use unwitting open relays. Spammers claim a high level of success, but in truth make more money selling the spamming tools than sending the spam itself.
— Equivalency. Spammers claim their product is the same as sending paper junk mail. Paper junk mail is paid for by the sender, spam is paid for by the recipient. Spammers claim their commercial messages are covered by the First Amendment. That remains to be seen. In order to combat spam, I would encourage legislation with the following: — That a recipient must specifically and knowingly agree to receive commercial emails. — That any act of collecting email addresses for any reason must:
a. On a web site, always have the check box for “no” selected as the default next to any statement such as, “Do you want to receive marketing messages from us?”
b. Indicate exactly and truthfully what purpose that email address will be put to in non-legalese, large-type fashion, including the frequency and content of such future messages.
c. Include on the same page explicit and working instructions for unsubscribing.
d. Always include a follow-up message to the user to verify that they have indeed chosen to subscribe and have not been falsely subscribed by another user, and specific information on how to unsubscribe in the future. — That marketers be prevented from inheriting permission to send commercial messages. That is, if an Internet user has signed up with one marketer, that marketer cannot resell that address and accompanying permission under the false rubric of “partners” without identifying those partners to the user in advance. Such permissions cannot be tied to the user receiving other, unrelated services. New permission to send commercial messages to the user must be obtained when new “partnerships” are formed, and such permission can only be granted when initiated by the consumer, not by the marketer. In other words, a marketer cannot keep barraging consumers with constant, “Do you want to subscribe messages?” — That email addresses which are bought in bulk must be verified as belonging to valid recipients who have knowingly requested to receive marketing email. This must be the responsibility of both the seller and the buyer. — That all email marketers provide an easy-to-find, non-onerous, working and online method for unsubscribing.

— That a small number of bounce messages be sufficient to be considered as the equivalent to an unsubscribe request. — That no mail shall be relayed through a remote mail server without the specific permission of the administrator or owner of that mail server, whether that mail server be domestic or foreign, protected or unprotected. That it is possible to relay through a mail server shall not be accepted as implied permission to do so. — That all commercial messages should be required to include full and valid contact information for the marketer and the company whose products are being marketed. These should include a valid email address, a valid phone number and a valid postal address. — That all commercial email must include the abbreviation “ADV:” in the subject line of each message. — That commercial email must include valid header information showing the true origin, route and destination of each message. I would encourage that penalties for violation of the above criteria include per-incident fines, and that the above criteria apply to American citizens whether they are operating at home or abroad, or using Internet resources at home or abroad. The sooner the sending of unsolicited commercial is regulated, the more pleasant (and cheaper) the workplace will be.

Emma at Caoine writes today, “I woke up with that horrible burny sore throat and swollen tonsils and my sinuses are full of crap.” Me too. We’re both in Brooklyn. For me, I know it’s an allergic reaction. My theory is that it’s caused by more particulate matter in the air. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation keeps statistics from air sampling stations throughout New York City, which is desginated as Region 2. More and varied data for all regions can be found in the topic index. A variety of data is collected, but today certain graphs offer a clue to the source of sniffles. Their graphs are created on the fly, so I’ve saved those which are relevant. First, there’s PM2.5 - Computer 24 Hr Avg which translates as the 24-hour average of particulate matter of 2.5 microns in aerodynamic diameter or less, as measured in micrograms per cubic meter. Notice all stations report an increase over 24 hours ago. Next, there’s PM10 - Computer 24 Hr Avg which translates as the 24-hour average of particulate matter of 10 microns in aerodynamic diameter or less, as measured in micrograms per cubic meter. Notice how the one station reporting shows an increase over 24 hours ago. Then we have Total Hydrocarbons measured in parts per meter cubed. Notice the massive spike this morning in the Fresh Kills readings. Most of that is methane. In addition, there’s a small rise in the carbon monoxide readings, measured in parts per million and averaged over eight hours. Finally, there’s a change in wind direction. Notice how in the last 24 hours it’s switched from around 320 degrees—more or less to the north-northwest—to around 160 degrees, with a dip as low as 120 or so, which means the wind is headed for the southeast. So where are the hydrocarbons coming from? Not sure. If it were from the other direction, I’d say JFK, because of this: “One 747 arriving and departing from JFK airport in New York City produces as much smog as a car driven over 5,600 miles, and as much polluting nitrogen oxides as a car driven nearly 26,500 miles.” In February, JFK had 20,862 flights. But most likely it’s automobile exhaust from Manhattan and New Jersey, chemical plant burn-off from New Jersey, and take-offs and landings at Newark Liberty International Airport, which had 28,837 flights in February.