On 8/16/2016 6:45 AM, Marc Perkel wrote:
Thanks for the encouragement Ted. Unfortunately I know way too much
about mathematics and I have a deep understanding of probability
spectrums. There's a curve and I'm going to be somewhere on it. If I'm
lucky I might be here for some time. But my life is a casino right now.
And yes - there is also a probability spectrum for any of us getting hit
by a bus tomorrow as well. SpamAssassin is based on statistical
probabilities.
I have to have a dual track strategy. One one hand I need to do what I
can to move the curve into the future. But at the same time I need to
accomplish thing that are important within a limited time slot as well.
Spam filtering isn't just another job to me. I actually have a passion
for it. On a philosophical basis I look at the internet as the new
nervous system for humanity and is now core to who we are as a species.
And email is a very key technology in that nervous system.
In that context spam is like poison where predators suck some of the
life out of humanity, and my real life has always been about the
progress of the human race.
I think you already have found a way to fight your cancer. :-)
I am somewhat of a spam fighting savant. I actually run very little of
my email through SpamAssassin, truth be told. Over the years I've thrown
some ideas into the mix and sometimes they have been adopted to make SA
better. Sometimes I just get shouted down by trolls and the ideas go no
where.
At this point however there's a deadline and I have ideas that could be
implemented in SA very very easily. In fact it was through SA that I
discovered Redis, and SA already talks to redis.
Although my innovation is excellent as a programmer I'm mediocre. Never
worked as a team. Easily frustrated. Probably somewhat autistic and
somewhat arrogant. So mostly living in my own world doing my own
development. I have my little online empire. I work from home. I make a
great living. And I really like (most of) my customers and enjoy doing
tech support. And it's allowed me a lot of free time to do things that
I'm really interested in.
But my ideas are now my immortality, so I'm now releasing this to the
world. And mostly this simple AI method that SA could easily implement.
This new spam filtering trick is not only extremely effective, it's
extremely simple. I had it working in 2 days. The developers here could
probably implement it in 1 day. (At least the core functionality) And
with a team of better programmers probably do a better job and get a
even better result than I get. In fact you don't need or even want my
sloppy code (not in Perl). All you need is to read the description of
how it works and once you get it - coding it is trivial.
So - this is an opportunity to milk the mind of the dying spam savant.
It works, it's easy, and I'm just handing it to you all. There is no
reason I would be making this up. All you all need to do is accept this
gift.
I read though the site, and here's why I probably couldn't implement it,
at least not as it stands now.
SpamAssassin basically depends on a diet of spam to feed the learner.
The learner learns what is spam. If you add some ham into the learner
it works better - but the main thrust of it is feed me spam feed me spam.
Your method depends on a diet of -ham- not spam because you are doing
the opposite of SA
My problem as an admin is this. I can guarantee that when a customer
complains about a piece of junk, that what they give me is junk.
But customers don't complain about ham. So I'm not going to see it.
And I cannot just iterate through all my customer mailboxes and
assume they are all full of ham, because some of my customers are
lazy and won't delete spam, or they don't read their mailbox for
months at a time, etc. etc. I cannot guarantee I'll get only ham
by doing that - and so therfore I don't have a guaranteed source
of ham.
You said that your existing perl scripts are hacks and ugly. But,
I'm wagering that most of your ugly programming is user interface
code that somehow coaxes your users to yield up a diet of ham.
My problem is there is a tremendous dearth of user interface code
out there to get EITHER spam or ham.
The closest I have ever found is the mailwatch interface but that is
god-awful complex. I have it running on an ISP customer of mine's
mailserver but God what a hack.
Without that, all I can do is what I do now, which is make sure that
all customers accessing my server with IMAP have a junk mail folder and
know that if they drag spam into there that I'll suck it into the
learner. Of course, POP3 clients have nothing and I cannot tell
some POP3 user "Oh if you really want to reduce your spam load then
give up your POP3 email client and use this slick webinterface I have
setup for you to send and receive email."
I'm actually not as interested in your engine as I am in how you get
your customers to participate with it because if you have found a
way to get 'em to do it, that is truly revolutionary.
Mine would rather bitch and moan about spam and when they get it,
just delete it - which while it puts it in a deleted folder that I
can get at (if they are IMAP) it mixes it up with deleted ham, so
I cannot take that mess of mixed unidentified spam and ham and use it
for anything.
Ted
On 08/16/16 01:03, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
Hi Marc,
Back in 1994 I was diagnosed with testicular cancer, it was
essentially "stage 4" as it had metastasized throughout my body.
But, it responded to chemo and here I am today. In fact ironically
my original oncologist died a few years ago - on a fishing trip he had
an accident and drowned.
The Universe has an interesting sense of humor and likes to throw
curve balls. Take what you have been told about your "probability
spectrum" and toss it in the trash - hakuna matata. You could
accidentally step in front of a bus tomorrow and be dead. You could
live another 20 years. Statistics on people only have meaning on
large groups of people - they are irrelevant when it comes to the
individual.
I've met a number of people who had serious cancers. And I learned
one thing from that. The people who survived - every one of them,
fighters. And everyone fights differently. Some get on the food
bandwagon and try overdosing on green tea and every alleged
anti-cancer food out there. Others jump into yoga, and I knew one guy
who went out and binged watched Monty Python to spend as much time
laughing as possible. Me, I fought on a more mental approach. I
dropped everything in my life that I was not completely satisfied with
- I turned my back on my job, my apartment, etc. - every burden or
responsibility that I had which I didn't like and didn't really want -
and dove into the treatment, and I never let myself believe I was in
any danger of dying.
Of course, not all who fight, survive. But I will say with absolute
conviction that everyone I ever met who had a serious cancer and had
that "attitude of acceptance", later died. You are a fighter or you
wouldn't even be here. Now, fight to win.
Ted
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