Who is watching us?

From: Will Workforfood <EdR@jpshealthnet.org>
Date: Wed, Aug 20, 2003 9:40 PM

http://netscan.research.microsoft.com/reportcard.asp?timespan=m&searchdate=6/30/2003&NGID=10931&searchfor=alt.slack

http://news.com.com/2008-1082_3-5065298.html

Ever get the feeling your Usenet newsgroup list is being watched? By
Microsoft?

If so, consider yourself right. Thanks to the expertise of sociologist
Marc Smith, Microsoft is keeping a close eye on newsgroups and other
public e-mail lists, which it has identified as the Internet's
undervalued "knowledge management application."

In Microsoft's research and development labs, Smith has spent the past
several years slicing and dicing data about messages and message
authors in an ambitious effort to help people make sense of the
newsgroup manifold--the hordes of know-it-alls, flame warriors,
spammers and neophytes who, by Smith's estimate, last year numbered
more than 100 million in the Usenet network of e-mail threads, or
newsgroups.

Smith's idea is that you can tell a lot about the quality of data by
tracking its newsgroup contributors' social habits--a notion that
holds promise for sorting through millions of messages, and peril for
a online world increasingly skittish about invasions of privacy.

Following the launch of Microsoft's NetScan application for analyzing
newsgroups and the people who post to them, Smith spoke to CNET
News.com about NetScan, about Microsoft's interest in e-mail lists and
about an application under development that would link objects in the
real world to an array of online information.

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Subject: Re: Who is watching us?
From: subspecies23@aol.comyourmom (SubSpecies23)

Rest assured that if they've been watching this newsgroup it will have
completely fucked up any data they've gathered.

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EVERY SQUARE FUCKDORK WITH A PIPE... *IS NOT "BOB"* -- Ivan Stang

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From: joecosby@mindspring.com (Joe Cosby)

Tracking the social habits of subgeniuses

lol

Finally, something that will collapse Mircrosflopht FROM WITHIN

It's like trying to track the learning curve of republicans. NO GOOD
CAN RESULT FROM THIS!

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Original file name: Who is watching us? - converted on Saturday, 25 September 2004, 02:05