Archives for January 2012

Brand's First Law of Creative Works

Years ago, I was at a con, in a panel on intellectual property. At the time, I said, “If anybody out there can make a better ‘Calls For Cthulhu’ than I can, they deserve the right to do it, and I’ll help them if I can.” It was considered a magnanimous and surprising statement, and I stand by it.

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My 2012 Writing Schedule

Last year, I created a writing schedule in January that I actually stuck to pretty well. Because of that, I was able to write several books last year and publish two of them.

So I’m going to try it again here. This is my wishful thinking schedule for the year. If I do it right, it will let me publish four new books this year.

Here we go:

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The constant evolution of blog spam

As a computer programmer, I find that I’m fascinated by the evolution of spam comments.

I mean, the first ones were blatant – “BUY MOAR CHEAP WATCHES AND VIAGRA!!!”

After that, spam filters got better, so the commenters started avoiding obvious phrases – “BY MOAR CH3AP W4+(HES AND V1AGR4!!!”

This made the spam filters broaden their blacklists, and made it harder to read. Also, spammers ran into the problem where blog owners would read every comment, and the human filter was just too good to get around.

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