For the past 4 months, my server’s INBOX has been besieged by an unworldly amount of spam. It’s not as if I was resting on my laurels and doing nothing, however. I was running both Spam Assassin (albeit an older version), as well as an additional bayesian filter. It worked for a while, but those damn spammers are smart and figured a way around it. I guess it’d probobly help if I just took some time and updated my install of Spam Assassin, but I never did. Too many things popped up and it would have taken too much time. Instead I just slowly let my mailbox get taken over with about 11 spam messages coming in a day (not the most but for me it’s too much). Faced with the realization that I may not be able to check my e-mail all to frequently (hell I haven’t even really checked it since being here), and that my INBOX could be filled with litereally hundered of junk messages whenever I get the chance, I decided to act now.
I can’t do everything I want to do from these computers here so updating SA was ruled out. I instead chose to make a qucik and dirty PHP script that utilizes the principles of the Ackermann Function (anyone who took Computing & Algorithms at Georgia Tech will be very familiar with the function).
Simply put, it’s a recursive theory of computation that takes two natural numbers as arguments and returns a natural number as its value. The first row of the Ackermann function (or more accurately the values A(0, n)) is simply a list of all positive integers, and the only mathematical operation is the addition of 1 to n for the values in that row. All subsequent rows simply give directions to look up a value in that row. In the case of the m = 1 row, the directions simplify to give the value A(0, n + 1) from the m = 0 row, but the simplification is quite complex—for example:
A(1, 2) = A(0, A(1,1))
= A(0, A(0, A(1,0)))
= A(0, A(0, 2))
= A(0, 3)
= 4
A brief pseudocode mockup would make the structure look like this:
function ack(m, n)
if m = 0
return n+1
else if n = 0
return ack(m-1, 1)
else
return ack(m-1, ack(m, n-1))
Granted, this is an extremely heavy handed approach but I am at my wits end. I don’t feel like coming back home and finding 3 months worth of spam in my damn box! I also made a few changes to my .htaccess file to stop some of that damn referer spam and freakin’ API Fetch requests. Damn spam bots!
I haven’t been feeling too great. My mind has been elsewhere. I got into a bit of and argument with a someone I care for on the phone and…well…I never take it easy when I feel she’s upset with me. I jus kind of mope around and feel like shit. She is, afterall, my dong-saeng besides whatever else she may be to me… *sigh*
I spend most of my time in training isolated from most of the other people on this mammoth sized base. I guess they don’t want people looking over here. Yesturday I was able to venture out and saw the departure of some of the guys from the 82nd Airborne Division. About 500 of them are being sent to Afghanistan to act as a “visible force” for the elections coming in Oct. One of the guys just got married 2 days ago. The army is utilizing a technique with certain units called “rapid deployment” which means you’re ready to go anywhere in the world in 18 hours. He was a bit worried because he was leaving his wife behind and had only been with the division for about a week. He doesn’t have to be too frightened though. 9 out of 10 of the guys he’s mobilized with saw combat in Iraq and will be sure to look after him.
But I can understand some of his fear. It’s Friday and since Sunday, six soldiers have been killed, there have been two assasination attempts on Afghan government officials, not to mention “miscellenous” killings and bombings. Of course none of this is anywhere in the papers. That is unless you are actively searching things like the BBC or Google’s news page. If everyone agrees that the real “war on terror” is legitamately being fought in Afghanistan…why then does the media focus so much on Iraq? Oh well…
With my mind in a bit of turmoil because of the fore mentioned argument, I wandered into the recreation hall at around midnight. It was pretty much empty and I was there by myself. The TV there is hooked up to a satellite so I decided to flip around and see what international channels were to be had. I happened upon MBC (Munwha Brodcasting Corporation, a big Korean channel) and a really good drama. 황태자의 첫사랑, which means something like “A Prince’s First Love”. It’s pretty damn good and I found myself getting sucked into it and even yelling at the TV. “Yoo-Bin…arggh, don’t be stupid! Pick Seung-Hyun, not Gyun-Hee!!” Needless to say it’s another one of those dramas where the girl must make a decision between two guys. Why, oh why do I realate so much to those? If you can read Korean, I urge you to chek out the site here.
Additionally, I saw a joke commercial for this. I guess it’s to comfort all those girls whose boyfriends have to go off and do their mandatory 2 years of service in the Korean Army. A novel and cute concept though. I wonder if I should buy one for someone, but then again, I don’t have anyone to hold…
