Microsoft Tools Separate Friends And Flamers

from the yeah,-but-does-it-work? dept

Microsoft says they've created some technology that will be useful for sorting out the "friends from the flamers" on Usenet. Isn't this product about a decade too late? It basically looks at what people say in a newsgroup, how they say it, how long the thread is (longer threads indicate flames, apparently) and determines if they're "friendly" or not. These days, I imagine such a product (with some tweaks) would be more useful in analyzing the blog world. Either way, though, it would likely get tricked pretty quickly. The biggest problem I see is one of identity. How do they identify who a particular person is - and guarantee that the same person posting under multiple names/email addresses are connected?