Why do spam filters suck?

I have a pretty decent spam filter in Outlook at work, but I'm still surprised by the crap that gets through occassionally. It seems to me that a few simple filters would catch a lot of the spam I get.

For instance, if the subject line or return address contain profanity or graphic descriptions of bodily functions, I probably don't want to read it. Likewise, if a grammar or spell check flags more than -- oh, I dunno -- 30% of the body of the message, I don't want to read it even if it's not spam.

A big group from work went down to the apple retailer in Fayetteville on Tuesday to ooo and ahh at the Mac Mini. It really is pretty mini. Grab a stack of 5 CD cases. That's about how big it is. Pretty cool. Not nearly as cool as the 30" widescreen monitor they had on display, but not bad.

I'm planning to get one, but I'd like to hold off until Tiger comes out. Plus our CIO said he'd buy one for everybody on our dev team if we make our beta and final release dates, so I'll probably wait at least long enough to tell if we're staying on schedule. He might've just been kidding, but we're planning to hold him to it. ;-)

After working through the excellent intro tutorial last week on OnLAMP covering Ruby on Rails, I'm now evaluating that as a possible web dev alternative to PHP. I like Ruby a whole lot better than PHP, so I'm pretty stoked about possibly getting to use it. Hopefully it'll work out.

Long Time, No Blog

Things have been pretty busy lately. And, frankly, I haven't been doing anything interesting enough to talk about.

I'm pretty intrigued by the Mac Mini. Seems like a good opportunity and excuse for me to get a Mac.

Brilliant really. By lowering the barrier to entry to $500, Apple got me to mentally commit to a Mac. Then I might as well go for the $600 model. Plus I need a KVM switch ($80ish), and the 256 MB of RAM is anemic (add $200 for 1 GB to install myself). Suddenly it's a $900 computer.

Then it's only $100 more for an iBook, and it would be nice to have another laptop around the house. Besides, I'm sure I'll like OS X, and I'll want a better Mac soon anyway, so why not save the $800 I would've spent on the Mini and put it toward an iBook instead? Heck, that savings brings the real cost of the iBook down to only $700, which is less than the cost of the Mini to begin with!

In the long run, I'm actually saving $100!!!

My friends Bill and David have taught me too well how to twist login and abuse mathematics in order to rationalize otherwise irrational things....

See, I Told You So

Just a quickie post to proclaim my correctness.

Right before Christmas, after playing a friend's Sony PSP, I said that "my prediction is that the PSP is what you'll see NBA players and rap stars playing...."

Lo and behold! What's on CNET this morning? A picture from CES of a rapper using a PSP.

Granted, he's a rapper I've never heard of, and I have no clue how his name is supposed to be pronounced, but that's definitely a PSP in his hand.

Interesting that it's hooked up to a Vaio. I wonder if Sony is aiming for a handheld-to-desktop media integration similar to what Apple has with the iPod and Mac....