> >> In a way, Mathew's and Choate's attack upon the list has done > >> us a favour. The list is now effectively restricted to those > >> with the will and ability to use filters, which raises the > >> required intelligence level.
It has also increased the utility/use of centrally-filtered exploders, like lne.com. When there's cholera in the public supply (from people shitting in the well), you go to bottled (filtered) water. > > Does this vindicate homeopathy ? > > No, it vindicates the vaccination approach, the antigen-antibody > approach. The vaccination metaphor is flawed. If the use of personal filters were like vaccination, the spammers would find it harder to work in the vaccinated population. Ie, *more* than the vaccinated folks are protected: all the unvaccinated are protected because of the decreased ability for the infection to percolate through the population. This is similar to how those without guns in their homes are protected from burglars by those with guns in their neighborhood. The population resistance seen by the burglar/pathogen also protects the unarmed/unvaccinated. I don't see this population-resistance effect increasing by the use of personal spam/noise filters. I only see benefits to the protected individual. (And addressing the goofy homeopathic suggestion, no, there is no benefit from using ineffectual filters, tautologically.) --- We have always been at war with Oceania bin Laden -1984+20
