31 Jul 2002 Waldo   » (Journeyer)

Motherboard
I got my replacement Asus A7V-266e in the mail today from Asus, 28 days after I express-mailed the previous one back to them. This is the replacement for the replacement, the third thus far. Maybe this one will work?

Birthday

Tomorrow (well, in 30 minutes EST) I turn 24. I'm having a hard time even caring. I don't know why. I think it's because I'm in the beginning of a long chain of uninteresting birthdays. I guess I get to rent cars at 25, but that's not particularly interesting. It's not until 30 that there's any notable digit change. I've decided to celebrate the occasion by taking a flying lesson at the local airport, and then Amber and I will go up to a Dave Matthews Band concert in upstate Virginia, for which I have appropriately-fabulous tickets.

E-Mail Filtering: In Danger of Being Commercialized

The first e-mail filter that's on the right track has been announced. The software product, made by Banter doesn't yet have a name. The idea is that it sorts e-mail in your in box based on a whole mess of criteria on a scale of 1-100. It's the criteria that's the trick, of course, but they claim to have licked that. This is obviously necessary, as the current state of e-mail is quickly rendering it useless, as I'm sure many of you can sympathize with. The problem? This company has a patent on this type of natural language technology, and they're selling this software as part of a $75,000 package. I'm sure when they break it out as its own package, it'll be an enterprise plug-in to Microsoft's mail server. (IIS, I guess it's called. Or maybe that's just HTTP. I don't know.)

I'm worried. I lack both the time and the proper skills to launch an open source counterpart, but I'm gravely concerned that nobody else will do so. It's essential that an RFC be created to describe a public-domain, standards-based approach to a similar system such that everybody can benefit from this mail system. I'd hate for this system to be the defacto standard 24 months down the line, and find OSS advocates once again playing catch-up.

PHP

I've been doing a lot of PHP recently. Not only because it's necessary, but as a warm-up for getting involved in PostNuke. I need to get back into the swing of things.

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