So long as we don't delve back into general politics again this thread is fine. Just an FYI.
That said, Will, you sound like a broken record. We understand your position on this. But, since I'm sure I'll be confronted with your position again and again over the next few days, I'll go ahead and drop my two cents. 1. A 35% reduction in spam on their network is SIGNIFICANT. It was reduced by that much? Awesome. Someone deserves a bonus. 2. On the argument that port blocking is similar to censorship or is in someway wrong, I disagree. Cox and others offer a business class service for more money that does not have these restrictions. I have no issue with segmentation of service levels based on price. It's like paying more for a car with leather seats. Don't like Cox? Go with AT&T. Don't like AT&T? Go with Broadband IP. Don't like Broadband IP? Go with <insert the several other choices you do have>. 3. On the argument that provider-controlled spam filtering is censorship, well, frankly, that's just silly. For one thing, offering per-user spam filtering control down to the training level is expensive in terms of implementation and day-to-day management cost. I HELPED BUILD a spam filtering appliance for a vendor as part of a development consulting project. Trust me, this is a difficult nut to crack, and a generalized spam filter goes a long way toward reducing spam and keeping a provider's cost down. Don't attribute to malice what you can attribute to maintaining the bottom line. -- Puryear Information Technology, LLC Baton Rouge, LA * 225-706-8414 http://www.puryear-it.com Author, "Best Practices for Managing Linux and UNIX Servers" http://www.puryear-it.com/pubs/linux-unix-best-practices Identity Management, LDAP, and Linux Integration willhill wrote: > When Comcast blocked port 25, it only reduced spam from their network by 35%. > > People at the EFF predicted the effect would be temporary. Even if you don't > care about user freedom, blocking port 25 was a failure. > > http://www.news.com/2100-1038_3-5251909.html > http://www.eff.org/minilinks/archives/cat_spam.php > > On Thursday 20 September 2007 10:39 am, Tim Fournet wrote: >> At one point you say that blocking outbound SMTP >> connections from home PCs does nothing to block SPAM, and then you say >> that the majority of SPAM comes from home PCs on broadband connections >> that are part of botnets (which use SMTP to send spam). Which is it? > > _______________________________________________ > General mailing list > General at brlug.net > http://mail.brlug.net/mailman/listinfo/general_brlug.net
