You may know that Outlook 2003 – MS's email etc client – has, at last, a spam filter system. Using 'state-of-the-art technology' too, natch.

Someone's analysed how it works. And guess what? Not only is it crap, as in really really crap…

(You know all those 'PEN1S' enlarging systems and 'C*H*E*A*P***V*I*A*G*R*A'? They're considered less likely to be spam, because the subject is all in capitals. Plus 'pen1s' is unlikely to be in the filter's fixed and untrainable list of words, unlike – I kid you not – 'riilldijgjgjg' and the second one has lots of non-alphanumeric characters.)

…but if it detects the word 'linux' in the text of the email, it considers it's more likely to be spam than if it does not.