The Real Blogger Status

In the now distant past, one popular attraction in a theme park (then, called an "amusement park") would be a fun house, or maze . My favourite section of a fun house would be the "hall of mirrors" - a maze where all of the walls were mirrors. One person, entering the hall at one end would be seen in dozens of mirrors, all reflecting an image from other mirrors. You would see one person, and would have fun trying to decide whether that person was right in front of you, or perhaps a few feet away from you, with his / her image reflected off dozens of mirrors.

As Blogger continues their efforts to classify and remove abusive use of Blogger resources , they are adapting and sharpening their fuzzy spam classification process . The sharpening enables them to righteously classify more spam blogs, and to spuriously classify less genuine blogs. This improvement is good - to everybody but the would be publishers of hacking, porn, and spam content. The victims of Blogger's success - the spammers - are being forced to change their techniques, and to outsource their controversial content to other sites. The spammers are going to both improve their technique, and to double or quadruple their efforts. Spammers use other peoples computers to do their work - so quadrupling their efforts simply means using more bots, and sending out more spam. That's a simple, low cost solution. This month, we have activity in BHF: How Do I? and BHF: Something Is Broken , possibly intending to probe the nature of the fuzzy classification process. That...

If you're a fan of "spy" movies and novels , you may know about the concept of "intelligence" networks. These networks are composed of people who devote their time to clandestinely gathering and sending information, from one country to another. Intelligence networks are large, and contain confusing and redundant casts of characters. These large numbers are necessary, to prevent the host country from detecting and stopping the activities of the networks.

Blogger One Button Publishing is a platform for publishing personal web sites, using an intuitive GUI process. You publish content that's personal to you, and your readers (possibly using alternative techniques like Following and subscribing ) read your personal web site because of the content that's personal to you. If you have advertising on your web site, and you are paid to host the advertising, the ads are financed by the companies that sell the merchandise featured in the ads. And your readers are the targets of the ads, so they hopefully will buy the merchandise. The money flows from your readers, to the sellers of the merchandise, to the advertisers who publish the ads, to you who host the ads on your blog. Your readers learn about the merchandise through your efforts, and you are paid because of that. That's organic advertising and merchandising. You make money from publishing content, that draws readers, who read your content, and click on the ads. The...

In 1977, the late Charles Bronson - better known for his vigilante justice " Death Wish " movies - starred in a movie that capitalised on US paranoia about American - Soviet Russia relations. Set at the height of the Cold War era , the plot of Telefon featured 51 human time bombs - all ordinary Americans. Each had been hypnotised to perform as Soviet spies, when a specially coded telephone call was received, with each tasked to sabotage some specific portion of the American infrastructure. None of the 51 human time bombs had any conscious awareness of their intended roles. Each thought of her or him self as an ordinary American, and lived that way - until a phone call from an evil renegade Soviet agent triggered their personal hypnotic suggestion . The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, but I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep. Remember. Miles to go before I sleep. In the action adventure genre of fiction (aka "spy...

In the American game of baseball, each player while performing in the offensive role has three chances to swing the bat and hit the ball. If he does not connect with the ball in any way, on the third chance, he is "out" and goes to the bench. As a blogger, and when your blog is detected as hosting possible spam content , you have three strikes, too. An automated spam classification process, performed by a Blogger bot , inspects your blog, possibly with a few other blogs , and locks or deletes your blog. A manual review process, performed by people , inspects your blog again, and objectively asks whether or not it is actually hosting spam. This is done after you complete the sometimes hated 4 step review process . A second manual review process, performed by people , inspects your blog for a third time, and carefully asks whether the first two processes were correct. This is done after the review process, and is generally referred to as "escalation". This is the ...

Today, in the USA, we celebrate the national holiday of " Thanksgiving ". Many people call it "Turkey Day" because the traditional cooking for the holiday meal is centered around roast turkey. The words "gobble, gobble" have two meanings. Turkeys are attributed as making that sound, such as the cat makes "meow", and the dog "bow wow". Celebrants of the holiday eat a lot of food, also popularly expressed as "gobbling". So, we have a "double entendre", that is, still, relevant.

The 1978 cinema classic " Animal House ", which starred the late, great John Belushi as John Blutarsky, was a comedy about American 1960s college life. It was described by one reviewer as the best college comedy ever made. Nothing has ever come close to comedic perfection, and never will again. It focused on one fictional fraternity, Delta House, the rejects of the campus fraternity system at the college. The members of Delta house included screaming nuisances ( coyotes ), troglodytes and trolls ( hyenas ), and hapless morons ( turkeys ). Many inhabitants of Delta House, many years later, can be found as bloggers, posting in Blogger Help Forum . Coyotes are individuals who, unhappy with the way they are treated by Blogger, convince the general public (their reader population) to conduct a Distributed Denial Of Service attack against the forum. The owners of their namesake blog, The Daily Coyote , conducted a DDOS in April 2008, when it was locked as a suspected spam blog...

In my musings last month about spam blogs, and people victimised by spam blogs , I analogised the legendary college secret societies , and the impersonal and rude treatment of the unfortunates who did not get initiated. eventually, those who don't get elected will open their eyes, remove the blindfold, and find herself / himself in a pitiful group of rejects, all waiting (hopelessly) for that tap. The tap that never comes.

I'll be honest here. I was a nerd in college (and I am one even now ). So this story is one that I've only seen in movies - neither I, nor my friends, got even this far. College Secret Societies Some of them have no name even. There are no published entrance rules - membership is by invitation only, and rules are communicated by word of mouth. And the initiation process starts like this: The prospective members are blindfolded, and led to a dark room. The prospective members are put into a circle, in silence. The prospective members wait, for what will happen, they are told nothing. Periodically, one prospect will feel a slight tap on the shoulder. In silence, he / she will be taken by the hand, and led into another room where they will join the elite. And eventually, those who don't get elected will open their eyes, remove the blindfold, and find herself / himself in a pitiful group of rejects, all waiting (hopelessly) for that tap. The tap that never comes.