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Project Blogger is a marketing scheme that gives free stuff to bloggers in exchange for their talking it up. Of course, the obvious question is whether the blogger maintains an independent voice. If they send you some crappy soft drink to try and you write that it tastes like goat urine, will they send you that hot new Nokia phone next month? It would seem that the price to stay on the gravy train would be to keep writing uncritical reviews of the free schwag. One condition of the project is that you put a bit of code on your page that enables them to see what kind of traffic you’re getting. It seems obvious that any number of blog tracking sites could keep a list of people who are participating in the program, and we can evaluate their comments through that lens. By the way, Project Blogger didn’t give me anything at all to talk about them, and even though I’m not signing up for the project, I could use a free cell phone. ...

Tim Bray posts today about progress in the spam wars. His basic sense is that the filters are winning. At this point, I’m inclined to agree. He uses Mozilla’s built in spam filter; my weapon of choice is SpamAssassin. My experience with it has been good since I first started using it for about 10 months, and since I installed version 2.50, it’s gotten a lot better. I’ve never had real problems with false positives, and these days it’s letting very, very little spam get through. I’m still saving up a big pile of email messages to train the Bayesian filter, but I haven’t bothered yet, and at this point I don’t know whether I will. The built in filters are already outstanding. One perverse thought I had the other day is that ISPs running spam filters are kind of screwing those of us who run our own spam filters. The reason is that if spam filtering is opt-in (either setting up your own or turning on the ISP spam filter), then spammers have little incentive to write their messages to get around the existing filters. They might do so anyway because my gut assumption is that spammers are generally total morons, but any spammer with a modicum of brain cells should know that if I’m willing to go to the trouble to set up a spam filter, I will never, ever accept an offer that comes in via spam. On the other hand, if AOL and Yahoo set up spam filters by default for all their users, then there’s a powerful incentive for spammers to attempt to circumvent them. Overall, such filters may still be to the good on the larger scale, but they sure don’t work to my benefit. ...

Given the major attention given The Threatening Storm author Kenneth M Pollack in this space, it would be poor form for me not to give equal billing to Jim Henley’s response to Pollack’s arguments. Can Saddam Hussein be deterred? In my opinion the answer is, at least in some cases, yes.

I would have never expected an op-ed like this to be written by a former US Attorney General.

Looks like Oprah’s going to turn her book club into a great books course. More power to her. I guess the lip she got from Jonathan Franzen has led her to turn to dead authors who are no longer able to indulge in ingratitude.

I’m almost never an early adopter of hardware and gadgets, and it usually pays off. For example, Netgear is introducing a line of wifi hardware that works with 802.11a, b, and g. I’ll be able to get a fast wireless hub for home, and I won’t need to worry about compatability issues when I’m away from home. I was actually thinking of buying a wireless access point and card very soon, but I think I’ll hold out a bit longer now. (Link via Hack the Planet.) ...

Is being a product manager a step up from being a developer? If you had several years as a developer on various types of projects on your résumé, would you think that doing a stint as a product manager would add something? If you have an opinion on this, send email.

It looks like Afghanistan is funding its own economic recovery by growing lots of opium. Hamid Karzai’s government has banned opium production, but the claim is that the government can’t enforce the ban. Given the state of Afghanistan’s economy and government, I’d imagine that letting opium growers bring cash into the country peacefully is in many ways preferable to fighting a narco war (Colombia style). Besides, the opium farmers are probably better funded and armed than the government in Kabul. ...

The Washington Post explains the pro-war stance taken on its editorial page to its readers today in an unsigned editorial, and they do a better job than the Bush administration of clearly articulating the pro-war case. No crap about the moral righteousness of deposing the evil dictator or of fantastical links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Rather, they go straight for the jugular. Iraq agreed to disarm, and has refused to do so. If they continue to refuse, then we must compel them to disarm. That’s the best argument in favor of war under the present circumstances. As a liberal, I’d like to buy into the moral argument that the Iraqi people deserve a better government and that they should enjoy freedom, liberty, and all of the civil rights that John Ashcroft wants to take away from Americans, but it’s impossible for me to believe that we really care about that sort of thing. President Bush has also fully embraced the neocon argument that kicking out Saddam and installing a wonderful new government in Iraq will be the rising tide that lifts all boats in the Middle East, infecting everyone with democracy. That sounds nice, but I kind of wonder if there’s any evidence to back it up. I mean, that’s the best possible outcome, but wishing won’t make it so. Update: in other news, 122 Labour House of Commons members voted against war in the UK yesterday. At least in the UK elected officials are debating what the government should do rather than lining up behind Tony Blair with their mouths shut. ...

I was one of about a billion people who went to My Big Fat Greek Wedding and laughed until my sides hurt, so I was really looking forward to seeing how much of a train wreck the sitcom based on the movie would be. I had a strong feeling that they couldn’t capture the magic of the movie and turn it into a funny TV show, and based on the premiere, I was right. The show was so bad that I had to question my memory of the movie being funny. Heather Havrilesky points out a few of the show’s problems in her Salon review, but I think she’s too soft on it over. I don’t think I laughed once throughout. ...