Phasers on Rotating Modulation?

I've had some (temporary) success battling link spam by changing the names of my comment and trackback scripts and then changing their names in my config file. It confuses some of the link spammers for a bit, but usually not for long. I'm wondering why someone hasn't written a script that does this automatically. Much like when Worf programmed the phasers on a "rotating modulation" so as to be effective against the constantly-adapting Borg in Star Trek: First Contact, why can't the names of the comment and trackback scripts rotate with every submitted comment?

That way, it would make it difficult for link spammers to call the scripts remotely without accessing a blog's pages directly. And, odds are, even if a spammer caches pages of a blog in order to find out what the name of the script might be, it will have changed by the time he gets around to submitting a robotic comment.

Does this sound like a good idea?

Why I Dig Treasure Hunting

Saturday, in between trips to The Home Depot, I found an hour to head over to a local park with my metal detector. I won't say which park it was, but let's just say it was a place I went frequently when I was much younger. Along certain embankments that got a lot of foot traffic, I was getting tones for coins every few feet. I dug 20 coins in less than an hour, as well as a key and a small copper ring. Toward the end of the hour, I got a tone on a coin in about 4 inches of soil on an embankment, and I dug it. It was a Seated Liberty Half Dime, dated 1853.

I don't care who you are, it's cool to dig something that old out of the ground and wonder how long it's been there. This coin is sitting right next to my laptop, and as soon as the scanner starts cooperating here at the office, I'll post a scan.

These coins are pretty common, from what I gather, but it's still pretty cool to find something somebody lost over 150 years ago. To me, the excitement of wondering what I'll dig out of the ground next is enough to keep me digging.

Tomorrow's Spin

Tomorrow's Spin will deal with an issue I probably didn't do such a hot job of articulating at Annenberg, namely the unintended consequences of Google's creation of an inbound link-based currency. Let me go on record before it runs:

1) I'm not saying Google is evil. Sometimes unintended consequences come from noble intentions. I believe this is one of those cases. 2) I believe there is a lot more good that came from Google's doing this than bad. I'll go so far as to say that it's the best thing that happened to hyperlinks since the web itself. 3) The worst thing Google could do now is nothing. Ideally, it will develop better technology for separating the spam from the real content. If it does nothing, either it will leave itself vulnerable to a competitor or communities will remain vulnerable to spammers seeking free Google juice. Both outcomes suck.

Annenberg Hyperlinking Conference Wrap-Up

Unfortunately, I had to leave the conference early to get back to the office. I had intended to stay for the whole thing, but you know how things go sometimes... First of all, I wanted to thank Joe Turow for inviting me to what was one of the most interesting panels I've participated in in recent memory.

I was on the first panel of the morning, which was moderated by Jay Rosen. Eric Picard from Microsoft and Tony Gentile from Healthline rounded out the panel.

First of all, let me say it was a huge pleasure, but it was also a bit intimidating, I confess. Everytime I looked out into the crowd, I saw throngs of folks like Jeff Jarvis and David Weinberger tapping away on their laptops, either blogging or posting to the IRC that Weinberger set up. I joked that we should project the IRC conversation on the wall behind the panel, which got a laugh.

Among my bolder statements of the day were that some evil did come from Google's turning inbound links into a currency. There's a lot of noise in the channel, including blog and trackback spam and other ways that automated systems try to stuff the ballot box (so to speak), and this takes away from the conversation. As an example, I mentioned how Ann Handley recently e-mailed me about all the blog spam she gets on MarketingProfs. And I pointed out that for every hour Ann spends keeping the channel clear (deleting blog spam, etc.), that's one more hour she can't spend posting content and performing her other job duties. I didn't get the sense that people thought this was a big problem that detracted from the conversation (like I do). I got some disagreement from Jeff Jarvis, a guy who I respect immensely. He said Google's attribution of value to links was a terrific thing and that we will deal with the spam. I agreed with his disagreement, clarifying that I didn't mean to imply that Google's move was 100% evil, but that some bad did come along with the good.

I stuck around until midday, but then had to leave to take care of some stuff at the office. I hope I'll be invited back if there's another one.