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.

Accuracy Trumps Speed (Or At Least It Should)

I'm going to throw a suggestion out there to folks who liveblog events: Perhaps transcribing quotes, paraphrasing what people are saying, adding one's own thoughts and keeping up with the conversation are too many things to be doing at one time. Without naming names, I've seen some of the liveblogged posts from the Annenberg hyperlinking conference, and they're quite inaccurate. Some of them don't even make sense. I think that maybe this might be an area where blogging can borrow from traditional journalism. Use your laptop to take notes and transcribe, then write the story when you have a chance to add your own thoughts and self-edit a bit. And don't worry that the guy frantically typing away next to you is going to get something up first. If he posts anything like some of the liveblogged posts I've recently seen, you won't have anything to worry about.