Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button idea is pre-failed
der Mouse <mouse@Rodents-Montreal.ORG> Tue, 02 March 2010 16:34 UTC
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Date: Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:01:08 -0500
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Subject: Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button idea is pre-failed
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> No, actually, it takes that into primary consideration. It simply > extrapolates out to Internet scale by asking "what if everyone did > this?" > Well, and then by extrapolating what we know of past spammer behavior > and current spammer capabilities. And, as you know (or should), any datum obtained by extrapolation is of at least slightly doubtful value. Not that we (FWVO "we") shouldn't extrapolate. But we shouldn't confuse extrapolations with facts. > [...] and B) large numbers of incompetent users -- which is what we > have -- do not en masse magically become competent. Actually, at many tasks, they do. Not individually, of course, but en masse; individuals' input needs statistical processing to produce the more-competent output, though this can sometimes be as simple as just taking the mean. (See _The Wisdom Of Crowds_.) > One of the repeated mistakes made in the anti-spam field over the > past twenty years -- and I'll admit to making it too -- is to presume > that just beause spammers aren't doing something today, that they > can't do it tomorrow. Indeed. But it is equally wrong to presume that just because they can do something, they will. And, even if they do, this is not a static field; even something that ultimately gets defeated may be useful, either in the interim or in what it teaches us. > Spammers have proven to us that once something starts to catch on, > they will invest the time to figure out if they can turn it to their > advantage. Some of them. Spammers are no more a homogenous class than anti-spammers are. This - FWVO "this" - may well prove to be useless against certain classes of spammer, possibly even actively harmful. But that is not to say that it will be useless against all spammers, nor that it won't prove to have overall positive value. (Not to say that it will, either, of course.) Of course, that's all generalities. As for the specifics of this particular instance, I see this as a space in which standardization is actually a bad thing. Even stipulating that your extrapolations are dead on, your dismal outlook is predicated upon there being one widely-deployed system; postulating dozens of TiS systems, each slightly different and incompatible, leads me to a much more hopeful outlook. And that's what research often is: trying dozens of things to see what we can learn from them. /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse@rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
- [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button ide… Rich Kulawiec
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Daniel Feenberg
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Jose-Marcio Martins da Cruz
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Alessandro Vesely
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Rich Kulawiec
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Alessandro Vesely
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Rich Kulawiec
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Martijn Grooten
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… der Mouse
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Chris Lewis
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Daniel Feenberg
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Michael Thomas
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Steve Atkins
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Barry Shein
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Chris Lewis
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Chris Lewis
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Steve Atkins
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Daniel Feenberg
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… BOBOTEK, ALEX (ATTLABS)
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Jose-Marcio Martins da Cruz
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… John Levine
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Barry Shein
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Ian Eiloart
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Ian Eiloart
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Ian Eiloart
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Ian Eiloart
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Dennis Dayman
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Paul Russell
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Chris Lewis
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Ian Eiloart
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Barry Shein
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Steve Atkins
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Barry Shein
- Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button… Chris Lewis