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"I do think there is a link in that in both cases, writing fiction or writing a computer program, at any given moment you're focusing on a very specific and particular thing—one word, one line of code, whatever."
- Neal Stephenson
 |
| Screening Software | ||
| Rules-based software trained to eliminate spam email. |
This idea is taken from a 1991 story, which seems very early for this idea. I couldn't find anything like it until at least 1998.
| We used to get megabytes of automated invective via email, but that, at least, turned out to be easily fixed; we installed the latest screening software, and fed it a few samples of the kind of transmission we preferred not to receive. |
| Technovelgy from The Moat,
by Greg Egan. Published by Aurealis in 1991 Additional resources -
|
The first recorded instance of a mass-mailing (which was done by mistake) occurred in 1978 when a DEC marketer wanted to trumpet a new feature.
I used company email systems as early as 1986; I don't remember anything like this, because there was no problem. As far as I know, the first use of "spam" to describe repetitive, unwanted email occurred in 1993.
However, Egan is proposing an automated way to remove unwanted email by simply pointing out emails that you don't like. This sounds like "statistical filtering," a technique that was proposed in 1998 and, judging by how well PCs do it, still needs work.
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and Technology from The Moat
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and Technology by Greg Egan
Tech news articles related to The Moat
Tech news articles related to works by Greg Egan
Screening Software-related
news articles:
- Spam Kiwi Kings Of Spam Sent Third Of All Spam Emails
| Birds Learn To Sing Pictures ala Frank Herbert's Distrans |
| Polish Turns Your Nail Into A Stylus |
| Huawei Pura X Folding Phattie Phone |
| Positioned Cybertrucks With Free Starlinks WiFi In LA |
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'So, Ender, we will now begin your education.'
'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!'
'Forget the head atop it, the legs below, feet, arms, hands. It compels erasure.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair or to perch on a flagpole in imitation of a giant bird, even in the windy city of Chicago.'
'The thirty-odd miles of The Factory’s circumference...'
'Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them.'
'Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface...'
'For a while your colonists will have to come up to the [orbital] Hospital...'
