On Mon, 11 Jul 2011 11:47:31 +0100, Invisible wrote:

>> Firefox does not ship with AdBlock Pro installed.  People download it,
>> install it, and use it successfully.  I happen to be one of those
>> people.
>>
>> You, instead, have assumed "it can't possibly work" and so haven't even
>> tried it.
> 
> Before we get too far into this, I would like to re-emphasize what I
> actually said:
> 
> I said I had never bothered trying such software under the /assumption/
> that it won't work properly. I said that it looks intractably difficult.
> Then again, so does writing non-trivial software using something as
> primitive as C, and apparently people manage to do that.
> 
> In short, I would be surprised if ad-blocking technology can work. Not
> astonished, but definitely surprised.

Prepare yourself to be surprised, then. ;)

It works pretty well.  Not 100%, but IME better than 90%.

>> You're declaring failure because 1 message in "n" (for sufficiently
>> large values of 'n') gets through.  Fact is, spam filters aren't
>> supposed to block all spam.  They're supposed to reduce it, and for
>> most people, they do the job properly.
> 
> In my book, if I use a spam filter and still receive unacceptable
> quantities of spam, or have unacceptable quantities of genuine mail
> filtered, then the filter is "not working". I agree that 100% filtration
> would be almost impossible, but (for example) 3% filtration is useless.

We can agree on that last sentence.  Now, using various spam filtering 
technologies myself over the years, I've seen some good ones, and some 
excellent ones.

3% filtration is not what I've seen with any solution that I've used.

>> Have you tried something like Spamassassin?
> 
> Nope. If fact, I've never actually installed spam filtering technology
> myself. I've only had it forced upon me by whoever is operating the mail
> server.

One of the benefits of using something like fetchmail to pull from an 
external server to your own is that you can do this.  I use fetchmail to 
pull from my Earthlink account (which has its own spam filtering 
enabled), and fetchmail delivers to my local mailbox after running it 
through spamassassin to catch the ones that got through the Earthlink 
filters.

>> And yes, you do work in an industry where the normal triggers for spam
>> might actually be legitimate business communications.
> 
> Quite. This has no bearing on the spam filter at home being similarly
> useless, however.

No, that has to do with incompetence at your mail provider or an improper 
configuration on your account.  Since I don't know what they use, I 
couldn't comment on that.

>> That doesn't mean spam filters are useless.
>>
>> You'll note that I didn't say *all* spam filters were wonderful and
>> flawless.  I said that spam filtering generally works well.
> 
> Even I didn't say that *all* spam filters are useless. I merely said
> that I've yet to see one that isn't. (I even qualified it by saying I
> haven't seen all that many.)

Fair enough.  You seemed to be implying it in your original post, but re-
reading it, I see that I inferred something that perhaps wasn't there.

Jim

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