The "email is broken" meme has been going around for a month, long enough that I've lost track of the root discussion. The idea is that mailboxes are so overflowing with spam that they're useless, and ISPs are going to such lengths to block spam that they're catching too much legitimate mail.

I don't get it. Thin Film Manufacturing gets lots of spam, but very little of it actually gets to my inbox. Instead, I get a concise report that I can skim to catch false positives, of which there aren't many. Viruses bounce off the firewall all the time, but I don't remember the last time one got as far as my computer. I've had one problem with outgoing mail getting trapped in someone else's filter, but that was easily fixed.

Now, I'll grant that it's much easier to manage spam filters and software upgrades for a small organization, but nothing that I'm doing is rocket science. Mostly it's just remembering that the Internet is dynamic, and responding to new problems as they appear. While the problem is bigger at large corporations, so are the resources available to tackle it.

Remember the Sixth Amendment? That's the one that guarantees accused criminals the right to confront their accusers and present exculpatory evidence. The judge in the Zacarias Moussaoui case has ruled that it even applies to accused terrorists.

"It would simply be unfair to require Moussaoui to defend against such prejudicial accusations [that he was a conspirator in the Sept. 11 attacks] while being denied the ability to present testimony from witnesses who could assist him in contradicting these accusations."

(New York Times link. Free registration required.)

With the scent of plums on the mountain road--suddenly, sunrise comes!

--Basho

Hmmm. It seems I never posted a word count total for August. I had 183,720 words as of September 1; 198,120 as of today. That gives me 14,400 for September, quite a bit below my goal of 30,000 or so. I'll need 101,880 in the next three months to get to my goal of 300,000 for the year. The good news is that averages out to 1107 words per day, and my goal of 1500 per day is still working well on the days when I actually write. Now I just need to get some of these other distractions out of the way.

Which I should be able to do. I don't go on vacation every month, and I certainly don't schedule major computer and software upgrades any more often than necessary.

If the Red Sox are going to lose, could they at least do it quickly? A 4.5 hour marathon that didn't even start until 10 PM (EDT) is a bit much, guys.

Cubs win. Yankees lose. Red Sox play Wednesday night. All is right with the world.

4800 words since my last update, 198,120 since January 1.

Sound is vibration. Like ripples in a pond, thin films distort as sound waves pass through them. Philips Advanced Metrology Systems uses this effect to measure the thickness and modulus of advanced interconnect films. Very interesting technology.