Subject: Re: [Asrg] Spam Control Complexity

From: "John Fenley" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2003 14:21:32 -0600

>From: Jamie Lawrence <[email-masked]>
>On Sun, 20 Apr 2003, John Fenley wrote:
> > Spam evolves.
>
>...In the same way as car crashes do; in response to the infrastructure.
>Bridges, highways, and dense urban areas have all caused car crashes to
>'evolve'.
>
>Torturing analogies does not make them stronger.

Spam actively evolves using darwinian "survival of the fittest" methods.
Bacteria do this, car crashes do not.
This is not an analogy, this is the actual mechanism for the way spam 
behaves.

>
> > Spam foats around randomly untill it finds someone who will allow it to
> > spread.
>
>In the same way car crashes lurk with evil intent until some unsusecting
>automotive administrator approaches a curve. In other words, it doesn't.
>
>I'm belaboring this because the point is important. Disease eradication
>efforts are very different than harm reduction efforts. Attacking spam
>is a harm reduction problem.

Spam "reproduces". One generation's succeses and failures give rise to 
Memetic diversity. The thing that must be combatted is the mechanism for 
it's propegation, not it's symptoms.

> > >Incorrect. Businesses recieve spam, and are made of people. People
> > >buy stuff from spam.
> >
> > ok, so they are a vector.
> > the point is, my system is not aimed at the buissiness user who must
> > recieve orders and requests daily from strangers.
> > It is aimed at the majority of new internet users.
> > I don't see this "problem" as a reason why it will not work for them.
>
>Please, feel free to peddle your approach to whomever you please. Other
>approaches incrementally solve problems, work for businesses, do not
>require government intervention, approach solving bandwidth issues,
>and are not annoying.

An incremental overal aproach just gives an opportunity for spam to evolve. 
It is similar to the over-use of antibiotics the medical profesion is having 
to deal with now.

> > The details are important. Everyone here responbed to the "address
> > verification" performed by this list. This was a Challenge, and all of 
>you
> > Responded. C/R.
> >
> > You wanted something more than it inconvinienced you to respond.
>
>Sure. It is a fine mechanism to weed out subscription bombs, and
>has a nice side effect in that the utterly clueless usually can't
>seem to manage it.

Exactly.

>That it works for one purpose does not make it
>appropriate for pushing down to every initial email contact.

Why not?

>
> > Yes, the government has the funds to make a plan into reality if that 
>plan
> > can realy solve the problem.
>
>That governments (the "s" is important) have taxation authority does
>not automatically make them desirable entites in a given persuit, even
>one with a social good.
>
>I'm not going to write yet another long essay on why regulation of
>email is a Really Bad Idea; that has been covered here enough times
>already.

I am not going to be sucked into another meaningless argument against one 
particular way of funding the project I propose.

Propose an alternate means of funding if you wish to have that argument.
John Fenley

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---

From: Jamie Lawrence <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2003 19:07:26 -0500

Last post from me on the topic, either you get the point or you don't.

> This is not an analogy, this is the actual mechanism for the way spam 

Feel free to keep thinking so. I'll explain why this is flawed below,
though.
 
> It is similar to the over-use of antibiotics the medical profesion is 
> having to deal with now.

The reason you are wrong here is that you are following your flawed
analogy. A one time vaccination effort destroyed smallpox. That 
people are no longer vaccinated for it doesn't matter (modulo 
creepy government labs).

Going a day with out spam, say by shooting every spammer on earth, will
not ensure that spam stays gone - it is a side effect of the
infrastructure and human nature, not an external entity.

Ask yourself how you'd go about 'vaccinating' the world against
grafitti.
 
> >appropriate for pushing down to every initial email contact.

Because it will not work for businesses, requires massive funding, 
does not solve bandwidth issues, and is annoying. You may have heard
this somewhere before.
 
> Propose an alternate means of funding if you wish to have that argument.

No, thanks.

-j

-- 
Jamie Lawrence                                        [email-masked]
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy.