On Sun, 1 Aug 2004, Jeff Chan wrote:
I've already voted for 20 random :-) but I'd like to know if SpamCopURI is skipping empty (unclickable) anchors. IIRC we talked about this before, but I don't remember the outcome. A URI that's unclickable probably should not be checked. Not checking them also cuts down on some of the impact of the URI "chaffing" which means adding fake or distracting ones.
(Chaffing was a term I heard used Friday by Microsoft researcher Geoff Hulten at the CEAS conference; don't know if he coined it.)
Jeff C.
The term 'chaffing' predates Microsoft by almost half a century.
RADAR was effectivly invented during WW-II (1940-1945) as an important tool to detect enemy aircraft at night or in cloudy skys for aiming anti-aircraft guns. One of the counter-measures developed was for the aircraft to release bunches of aluminum foil streamers to create fake echos and fool the RADAR allowing the planes to evade the AA fire. The name for those foil streamers was 'chaff' so using them to evade detection was 'chaffing'.