Re: [Asrg] Is there anything good enough?

[Barry Shein <[e-mail]>]

On May 6, 2003 at 14:39 [e-mail] (Alan DeKok) wrote:
 > Dave Crocker <[e-mail]> wrote:
 > > Spoofing is bad, but it is not at all the core problem with spam.
 > 
 >   So there's no point in solving one part of the spam problem, because
 > the problem is larger than that.  Yeah, that makes sense...

No, the problem is that this spoofing is a minor problem and any
solution is easily evaded by spammers.

The real problem is you really don't know much about spam or its
tactics so you easily conflate direction with magnitude.

If a solution seems to go in the direction you want then it must be
worthwhile. That's not true inasmuch as many "solutions" aren't worth
the effort.

But it's hard to convince someone who, due to lack of concrete
experience, has latched onto direction as equivalent to magnitude that
they're wrong because they'll keep coming back to their certainty that
it goes in the right direction, the proverbial spit in the ocean, yes
indeed in theory eventually the ocean will overflow...

The past 10 years (almost) of spam-fighting is littered with people
who knew a little SMTP, a little DNS, etc, and had gotten some spam so
proclaimed themselves experts and saviors.

For example, RBLs were by and large a waste of time if you use the
volume of spam over their lifetime as any measure. The RBLs
proliferated, and spam hockey-sticked in their faces. But because it
just *had* to be having an effect in the right direction its
proponents clung to their defense. Surely this RBL has blocked one
piece of spam! And two! So by induction...

Really bright people have done just as you (and others here) are
doing, sat in their darkened estaminets and, with minimal practical
information, do Einstenian gedanken experiments and declare
themselves, well, Einsteins (of spam fighting.)

The roads are littered with them and their mostly useless "solutions".

I think, in some sort of epistemological way, that's where we're going
here at this point; trying to distinguish magnitude from direction and
assign values to each and both taken together.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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