Re: Look at these update from M$ Corporation.

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To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Date: Sat, 02 Aug 2003 10:24:46 -0500

On Sat, 2 Aug 2003 07:36:35 -0700, Alan Connor <alanconnor@earthlink.net> said:

>> From srivasta@debian.org Sat Aug 2 06:52:59 2003
>>
>>
>> On Fri, 1 Aug 2003 21:17:28 +0100, Colin Watson
>> <cjwatson@debian.org> said:
>>
>> > I do not dispute that they eliminate spam, at least with the
>> > current generation of spamming technology. I merely claim that
>> > they are far from invulnerable, in particular to false
>> > positives. Some people care about this, some don't, and that's
>> > fine. However, *please* accept the existence of the other camp!
>>
>> I think we should get a few things clear.
>>
>> Any mechanism that eliminates spam is likely to have false
>> positives and false negatives; Alan has been trying to say that his
>> system reduces false negatives to nothing; I actully contest this
>> statement in the face of things like klez and increasingly
>> sophisticated spoofing of real email addresses by spammers.
>>
>> This is done, as you rightly state, at the expense of a far higher
>> false positive rate; which some people (including me) find
>> unacceptable.
>>
>>

> Depends on what you call "false positives." I don't accept
> anonymous email. Period.

        Through the last couple of decades, both in my business life,
 and my personal one, I've had unexpected emails whose content was
 important (and sometimes critical) to me. Prospective clients have
 come out of the blue, as have high school friends from 30 years
 ago. I would not be boorish enough to tell them that by default I
 consider them spammers; indeed, I would had been the loser in many of
 these opportunities.

        Of course, one can define away any potential problem by
 calling it a feature: You could equally say that any email not coming
 from gorgonzola.att.net is spam, and delete them, you still would
 have zero spam. (and no email, but hey, we defined that not to be a
 problem).

> Given the current obsession with matters of security, and the fact
> that it IS, as you state above, so easy to falsify *some* headers, I
> think that anyone who objects to taking a moment to offer some
> reasonable level of proof of their identity is pretty silly.

        Consider it whatever you wish; I refuse to do so, especially
 if I am doing you a favour. Of course, you have defined missing
 random acts of kindness as being not a problem, you you would not
 miss the kinds of emails I am talking about: the rest of us do not
 think so highly of ourselves that we never need to hear from
 strangers.

> The same people who will log in over and over again to a website,
> sometimes several times a day, for years on end, are freaking out
> over having to resend 1 email, one time, to establish a
> communications link with someone.

        My, what a luddite. On a secure machine, there are automated
 means of lgging in -- anyplace I can't automate that, I do not log in
 over and over again.

> The fact is, I believe, that most of them have commercial dreams and
> want people to block everyone's spam but THEIRS.

        You, sir, are a moron. Answering question on debian mailing
 lists is having a comemrcial dream? Old highg school friends
 wondering if it is really you have a commercial dream?

> And/or, they want to just fire off messages, often abusive, to
> anyone they feel like, invading and violating that person's privacy.

        Jesus. Talk about jumping to conlcusions on absolutely no data
 wgatsoever.

> A well-designed C-R program, like mine, works PERFECTLY. No
> commercials and no riff-raff have access to my mailbox, which is how
> I want it.

        As long as you define that blocking whatever email it did
 block is working perfectly, hey. But some of us do care about the
 email that is not delivered; and can't use blinders to ignore it.

> I don't get any spam or harrasing emails.

> Why do YOU?

        Because we do not wish to toss out the baby with the
 bath water.

        manoj

-- 
Things sweet to the taste, prove in digestion sour.  -- Shakespeare
Manoj Srivastava   <srivasta@debian.org>  <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05  CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B  924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C
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