How Spam Works

BusinessWeek has a great story and graphic explaining how spammers make their living, based on research by Jacobs School Computer Science Professor Stefan Savage and colleagues here at UC San Diego and at UC Berkeley.

"You pay the money, and you get a product," Savage told BusinessWeek. 

Researcher Damon McCoy, also in computer science and engineering, was instrumental in putting the graphic together.

Read the story here.

And make sure you take a closer look at the graphic here.

Rainbows as Media Stars

Earlier this week, we posted a news release titled "Computer Simulations Shed Light on the Physics of Rainbows," explaining how an international team of researchers led by a Jacobs School computer science graduate student and his professor, simulated rainbows and gained a better understanding of how real rainbows form in the process.
The story has now become quite a hit with news sites and blogs.
It was featured on the home page of ABCNews.com, Discovery Channel news, the New Scientist and CNET.com. In case you missed all the coverage, here are links to some of the stories:

ABCNews.com: Fake Rainbows Lead to Scientific Discovery

CNN Light Years blog: Seeing double: Researchers find rainbow connection

Discovery Channel: Secret of Twinned Rainbows Found in Simulations

MSNBC: Secret of 'Twinned Rainbows' Simulated on a Computer

Science:  "Burgeroids" Cause Double Rainbows

Mashable.com: "But What Does it Mean?" Computer-Generated Rainbows Reveal Some Answers

New Scientist: Rare twin rainbows simulated in 3D

CNET: CGI hackers discovery secret of rainbows