Metacult: So, Pater, I was thinking—wait a minute; I hear someone scratching at the door.
Janra: Hi, Vespucci. How are you?
Vespucci: Doing well. Take a seat.
Janra: Where?
Vespucci: Anywhere.
Janra: Anywhere?
Vespucci: Anywhere...
Off! Off! Get off my lap! Only my wife is allowed to sit there. You know that. Anyways, the Radical Gadgets catalogue came in today...
Janra: By the way, I phoned the company today. I think I can get some World War II vintage mechanical—
Vespucci: Don't even think about it. If you—
Pater: Easy, brothers. As you were saying?
Vespucci: As I was saying... Radical Gadgets has the most interesting tools. The cover product this month was an e-mail filtering package that uses Bayesian filtering techniques to block unwanted messages.
Janra: That's original! I checked Freshmeat today, and I think they only have half a dozen well-known anti-spam packages, not counting lesser products and tools that have just been released. Does Radical Gadgets always find products this original?
Vespucci: But it is original. And it's not an anti-spam package. It has nothing to do with spam.
Pater: Huh?
Vespucci: Let me explain. You know that Bayesian filtering looks at a message and uses statistics to guess what category it belongs to, right?
Pater: Yes; go on.
Vespucci: But that will work whether you use it for incoming or outgoing e-mails. Most people use the filtering techniques on incoming e-mails, to try and reduce the fire hose of spam coming in. But you don't have to stop there. You can also filter outgoing e-mails.
Pater: Why would I want to filter the e-mails I send out?
Vespucci: You've never sent a flame? Come on; I remember a couple of times that you flamed me over something minor, and sent a very embarrassed apology when I waited two weeks and simply sent it back, and asked you to read it aloud, and tell me whether that's what you want me to hear from you.