This week on Talk the Talk, we’re talking about spam.
Not the spicy ham product, but the wretched dreck that clogs your inbox. Why do we call it spam? How does your computer know if your email is spam? How do you know if an online review is for real, or if it’s just spam-for-hire? Where is all this spam coming from, and why is there so much of it?
Linguist Daniel Midgley gives you the real deal on this episode of Talk the Talk.
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http://danielmidgley.com/talkthetalk/talk_classic.xmlShow notes
Wikipedia’s Spam page has a good rundown of the history of spam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_(electronic)#Etymology
The NYT article on the Cornell team’s work
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/20/technology/finding-fake-reviews-online.html
And Myle Ott’s ACL presentation (PDF)
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~myleott/op_spamACL2011_slides.pdf
