On Sat, 2008-08-23 at 20:41 -0700, Daniel E. Hassler wrote: > The word harvester might be more appropriate. Sadly there are folks out > there harvesting email addresses and sending SPAM :(
IMHO the word "scraper" does not only sound cooler, but it also has the appropriate negative ring to it in this case. Harvesting is a friendly business. Scraping on the the other hand implies considerable effort (as der Mouse pointed out), usually with no consideration for, or even at the expense of, others, and ultimately oneself. As in "scraping together a huge fortune", with Dickens' Scrooge as the prototype "scraper". Hacking hotmail dot com to obtain a million e-mail addresses at once is one thing, scouring unassuming mailing lists like this one for a few hundred e-mail addresses another, and definitely pathetic. I'm very much in favour of lifting the word Scraper into the official IT jargon, if it will make "those who scrape" - if only for a moment - a bit sad about themselves (it probably won't, though, because they're used to feeling that way). Bill > der Mouse wrote: > >>> Some @(*#$ idiot decided to write his own scraper and generated [so] > >>> many errors that the log partition ran full. > >>> > > > > > >> As English is not my mother tounge, I even ran "scraper" through a > >> dictionary. [...] > >> > > > > Here, "scraper" means an automated piece of software to gather up > > something from somewhere - usually, email addresses from webpages. > > (Why the name, I'm not sure. Perhaps derived from "scrape together", > > meaning approximately "gather", but with a connotation of difficulty; > > perhaps derived from the image of scraping something off something > > else, the way you might scrape frost off a window, or dried food off a > > stove.) > > > > /~\ The ASCII der Mouse > > \ / Ribbon Campaign > > X Against HTML [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B > > _______________________________________________ > > Soekris-tech mailing list > > Soekris-tech@lists.soekris.com > > http://lists.soekris.com/mailman/listinfo/soekris-tech > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Soekris-tech mailing list > Soekris-tech@lists.soekris.com > http://lists.soekris.com/mailman/listinfo/soekris-tech -- "There is nothing to worry about" - unknown _______________________________________________ Soekris-tech mailing list Soekris-tech@lists.soekris.com http://lists.soekris.com/mailman/listinfo/soekris-tech
