Wednesday we requested questions for Jonathan Zdziarski, an open source contributor and author of the recently reviewed book "Ending Spam." Jonathan seems to have taken great care in answering your questions, which you will find published below. We have also invited Jonathan to take part in the discussion if he has time so if your question didn't make the cut perhaps there is still hope.Ads_xl=0;Ads_yl=0;Ads_xp='';Ads_yp='';Ads_xp1='';Ads_yp1='';Ads_par='';Ads_cnturl='';Ads_prf='page=article';Ads_channels='RON_P6_IMU';Ads_wrd='interviews';Ads_kid=0;Ads_bid=0;Ads_sec=0; Winkydink asks: How do you pronounce your name? Jonathan Responds: Hi. Well first off, I'm sticking to the pronunciation 'Jarsky', however many of my relatives still pronounce it 'Zarsky' or "Za-Jarsky". As far as I can tell, my last name was originally 'Dziarstac' when the first generation of my family came over, which would have been pronounced with a 'J'. It's of polish decent, but I'm afraid I'm not very in tune with my ancestors on this side of the family. The other side of my family is mostly Italian, and they drink a lot, organize crime, and generally have more fun - so they are much more interesting to hang out with. For the past 29 years of my life, giving my last name to anyone has included the obligatory explanation of its pronunciation, history, and snickering at puns they think I'm hearing for the first time (-1, Redundant), so don't feel too bad for asking. As far as who I am and why you should care - I guess that depends on what kind of geek you are. I've never appeared in a Star Trek series or anything (I've been too busy coding and being a real geek), so I guess that eliminates me as a candidate for public worship in some circles. I guess if you're into coding, open source, hacking all kinds of Verizon gear, or eradicating spam, then some of my recent projects may be of interest. If you at least hate me by the end of the interview, I'll have accomplished something. An Anonymous Coward asks: What do you think about the proposed change to the GPL with the upcoming GPL 3? Is it a welcomed breath of fresh air to the Open Source Community, or will it just be a reiteration of the previous GPL? What are your thoughts and comments on the GPL 3? Jonathan Responds: Based on the scattered information I've read about some potentially targeted areas in GPLv3 and the religious fervor with which some of these discussions have been reported, all I can say is I hope common sense prevails. Actually there's much more I can, and will, say about the subject below, but I think it's probably a good idea to summarize in advance as you may not make it through the list of details in one sitting. So in summary of all my points to come: I hope common sense prevails. One of the things I've heard, which doesn't make much sense to me, is the idea of changing the GPL to deal with 'use' rather than 'distribution', which would affect companies like Google and Amazon. The argument seems to be that some people feel building your infrastructure on open source should demand a company release all of their proprietary source code which links to or builds on existing GPL projects. They argue that the open source community hasn't benefited from companies like Google and Amazon. Well, from a source code perspective that might be somewhat true - but if you take into consideration the fact that we all have a good quality, freely accessible search engine, cheap books, and employment for many local developers (many of whom write open source applications), the benefits seem to balance out the deficiency. Does anybody remember what the world was like before Google? None of us do, primarily because we couldn't find it - we couldn't find much of anything we were looking for on the Internet as a matter of fact, including other people's open source projects. You might not be getting "free as in beer" or "free as in freedom", but you are getting "free as in searches" and "free as in heavily discounted but not quite free books" in exchange. That's a pretty good trade. It's certainly better than having to look at pages of advertising before completing your order, or subscribing to a Google search membership. On top of this, you probably wouldn't want to see half of the source code that's out there being integrated (internally) into these projects. While I haven't seen Google or Amazon's mods specifically, I do heavily suspect that, if they are like any other large corporate environment, there are many disgusting and miserable hacks that should under all circumstances remain hidden from sight forever - many of which are probably helping ensure job security for the developers that performed the ugly hacks in the first place. Just how useful would they be to your project anyway? Probably little. And if you really believe in free software ("free as in freedom"), then the idea that someone should be required to contribute back to your project in order to use it is contradictory to that belief - you might just as well be developing under an EULA instead of the GPL. With that said, there's a difference between freedom and stealing. I've heard that GPLv3 will attempt to address the mixing of GPL and non-GPL software. I think this clarification might be a good thing. For one, because I've seen far too many pseudo-open source tin cans and CDs being resold commercially out there, distributing many different F/OSS tools with painfully obvious closed commercial code, and finding ways to easily loophole around this part of the GPL, and secondly because it's based around implementation guidelines that really aren't any of the GPL's business. At the moment, mixing uses a very archaic guideline, which is - in its simplest terms -based on whether or not your code shares the same execution space as the GPL code. I think this needs to be reworked to give authors the flexibility to define "public" and "private" interfaces in a project manifest. We're already defining these anyway if we believe in secure coding practices. Closed source projects may then use whatever public interfaces the author has declared public (such as command line execution, protocols, etcetera) but private interfaces are off limits. One particular area where this would come in handy is in GPL kernel drivers, which need this ability to avoid tainted-kernel situations. If the author wants, they can declare dynamic linking to a library as a public interface and even make their code more widely useful without having to switch to the GPL's red-headed stepchild, the LGPL. It would also be nice to be able to restrict proprietary protocols (such as one between a client piece and a server piece, which may have originally been designed to function together) to only other GPL projects, which would essentially create GPL-bonded protocol interfaces. This won't restrict use in any way - only what closed-source projects are limited to interfacing with when redistributed. I would also like to see the GPL's integration clause tightened down quite a bit. There are some companies out there abusing the GPL with "dual licensing". I've considered dual licensing myself in some commercial products, and I just don't believe it's being done in the right spirit much, if at all. Doing away with the possibility of integrating the GPL into a dual license could help strengthen the GPL. Finally, I'd say mentioning a few words in the GPLv3 about submission practices to help stave off problems like this whole Sco and Linux® fiasco from ever happening again would be a good thing. People generally don't want to limit usage, but if you're going to submit code, there should be at least some submission guidelines. I suspect much of this can (and should) be done outside of the GPL, but at least covering the basics might be appropriate. It should be understood that if you're going to contribute code to the GPL, it had better be unencumbered. It's definitely something every project should already be considering already. An Anonymous Coward asks: Do you have any suggestions for the enthusiastic yet inexperienced? Perhaps a listing of projects in need of developers, with some indication of the level of experience suggested (as well as languages required). Jonathan Responds: The best projects I've seen were those started from someone with a passion for what it is they're coding. Open source development is the internship of the 21st century, and working on projects is tedious, frustrating, and likely to make you want burn out if you haven't developed perseverance. I usually suggest to people to come up with ideas for some projects they feel passionately about and make those their first couple of goals. Even if it's completely useless to anyone else, you're still likely to benefit from it yourself. Just look at my Australian C programming macros. Who would have thought that people wouldn't want to use "int gday(int argc, char *argv[])" in their code. I'm sure I learned something from that project, though I still can't remember what. Instead of spending idle time looking for other projects to jump on, I'd spend as much time as I could in man pages, books, and coding up my own little concoctions. Even if they're stupid ones, you're likely to learn something, or even better - come up with another neat little idea you can spin off of it. Necessity is the mother of invention, so I try and figure out what it is I need, and then do it myself. That usually works. If you still can't think of anything, see if you can catch a vision for something someone else needs. I wouldn't touch anything that you're not 100% bought into and excited about for your first projects. RealisticCanadian asks: I myself have had numerous interactions with less-than-technically-savvy management-types. Any time I bring up solutions that are quite obviously a better technical and financial choice over software-giant-type solutions; conversation seems to hit a brick wall. The ignorance of these people on such topics is astounding, and I find many approaches I have tried seem to yield no results in the short term. "Well, yes, your example proves that we would save $500,000 per year using that Open Source solution. But We've decided to go the Microsoft (or what-have-you) route." With your track record, I can only assume you have found some ways to overcome this closed-mindedness. Jonathan Responds: I'm not so sure that I have convinced anyone open source was better inasmuch as I've convinced people that other people's projects were better than what Microsoft had to offer, and that's not hard for anyone to accomplish. I can strongly justify some open source projects to people because they are already superior to their commercial counterparts, but there are also a lot of crummy projects out there that should be shot and put out of my misery. I'm not one to advocate a terribly written project, even if it is open source. The good projects can usually speak for themselves with only a little bit of yelling and biting from me. So if you want to become a respected open source advocate at your place of business, I'd say the first rule of thumb is not to try and advocate crap projects for the mere reason that they're open source. Advocating the good ones will help you build a reputation. It also helps if you read a lot of Dilbert so you'll understand the intellectual challenges you'll be facing. Some other things that I've found can help include what managers love to call a "decision matrix" which is a spreadsheet designed to make difficult decisions for them. For your benefit, this should consist of a series of features and considerations that the competitor doesn't have, with a big stream of checkboxes down the row corresponding to your favorite open source project. Nobody's interested in knowing what the projects have in common anyway, so tell them (with visual cues) what features your open source solution has over the competitor. And if you really want to get your point across clearly to your manager, do the spreadsheet in OpenOffice so they'll have to download and install an open source project to read it. Once you've done that, and if you're still employed by now, the next thing to put together is an ROI (return on investment) comparison, which not only addresses the costs of the different solutions, but costs to support both solutions in the long run, cost of inaccuracy (if this is a spam solution for example), cost of training, customizations, and resources to manage each product. This is a great opportunity to size machines and manpower and include that in a budget forecast. Many managers are sensitive to knowing just how much extra dough it's going to cost to implement the commercial solution. At the very least, you ought to be able to prove many commercial solutions don't actually make the company much money in the long run. If speaking of cash isn't enough to convince your manager then a full analysis of low-level technical aspects will be necessary. This is simply a dreadful process, and where most open source attempts fail - because a lot of people are just too lazy to learn about the technical details of both projects and complete their due diligence. If you take the time, though, you're likely to either convince your boss or utterly confuse him - either one is very satisfying. The biggest challenge in justifying many open source projects I've run into is finding solid support channels that your boss can rely on if you get hit by a bus (or in his mind, fired). Support is, in many cases, a requirement but not all good open source projects see the benefit in offering support. A lot of companies are willing to pay just to have someone they can call when they have a problem. So if you can find a project that's got a pool of support you can draw out of, you can not only use that to justify the project to your manager, but kick a few bucks back into the open source community. I started offering support contracts for dspam primarily because people needed them in order to get the filter approved as a solution. I think I do a good job supporting my clients that do need help, but at least half of them just pay for a contract and never use it. I certainly don't have a problem with that, and it supports the project as well as the people investing time in it. Goo.cc asks a two parter: 1. In your new book, you basically state that Bogofilter is not a bayesian filter, which was news to some of the Bogofilter people I have spoken to. Can you explain why you feel that Bogofilter is not a bayesian filter? Jonathan Responds: Bogofilter uses an alternative algorithm known as Fisher-Robinson's Chi-Square. Gary Robinson (Transpose) basically built upon Fisher's Inverse Chi-Square algorithm for spam filtering, which provided some competition for the previously widely accepted Bayesian approach to this. Therefore, Bogofilter is not technically a Bayesian filter. The term, "Bayesian", however is commonly a buzzword known to most people to describe statistical content filtering in general (even if it isn't Bayesian), and so Bogofilter often gets thrown into the same bucket. CRM114 is another good example of this - many people throw it in the same bucket as a Bayesian filter, but it is configured (by default, at least) to be a Markovian-based filter which is "almost entirely nothing like Bayesian filtering". Technically, CRM114 isn't a filter at all, but a filtering-language JIT compiler (it can be any filter). I cover all of these mathematical approaches in Ending Spam, so grab a copy if you're interested in learning about their specific differences. 2. Bayesian filters have been around for some time now but there still seems to be no standardized testing methods for determining how well filters work in comparison to one another. Do you think that comparative testing would be useful and if so, how should it be performed? Jonathan Responds: Part of the reason there's no standardized testing methodology is because there's no standardized filter interface. A few individuals have attempted to build spam "jigs" for testing filters, but the bigger problem is really lack of an interface. About a year ago, the ASRG was reportedly working on developing such a standard - but as things usually turn out, it's an extremely long and painful process to get anything done when you've got a committee building it (take the mule, for instance, which was a horse built by a committee). This is probably why filter authors have also been hesitant to try and accommodate their filters to a particular testing jig. Incidentally, this is how I surmise that SPF could not have possibly made it through the ASRG - the fact that it made it out at all suggests that it never went in. I think it's of some interest to compare the different filters out there, but it's also somewhat of a pointless process too. Since these systems learn, and learn based on the environment around them, only a simulation and not a test, will really identify the true accuracy of these filters - and even if you can build a rock solid simulation, it will only tell you how well each filter compared for the test subject's email. If we are to have a bake-off of sorts, it definitely ought to include ten or more different corpora from different individuals, from different walks of life. Even the best test out there can't predict how a filter might react to your specific mail, and for all we know the test subjects may have been secretly into ASCII donkey porn (which will, in fact, complicate your filtering). This is why some people misunderstand my explanations of dspam's accuracy. All I've said in the past is "this is the accuracy I get", and "this is the accuracy this dude got". Which is the equivalent of "our lab mice ate this and grew breasts". There's no guarantee anybody else is going to get those results, though I'm sure many would try (with the mice, that is). In general, though, I try to publish what I think are good "average" levels for users on my own system, and they are usually around 99.5% - 99.8%. In other words: your mileage may vary. So try it anyway. Incidentally, I've been working with Gordon Cormack to try and figure out what the heck went wrong with his first set of dspam tests. So far, we've made progress and ran a successful test with an overall accuracy of 99.23% (not bad for a simulation). What would be far more interesting to me would be a well-put together bakeoff between commercial solutions and open source solutions. The open source community around spam filtering really has got the upper hand in this area of technology, and I'm quite confident F/OSS solutions can blow away most commercial solutions in terms of accuracy (and efficacy). Mxmasster asks: Most antispam software seems to be fairly reactionary - wither it is based on keyword patters, urls, sender, ip, or the checksum of the message a certain amount of spam has to first be sent and identified before additional messages will be tagged and blocked. Spf, domainkeys, etc... requires a certain percentage of the Internet to adopt before they will be truely effective. What do you see on the horizon as the next big technique to battle spam? How will this affect legitimate users on the Internet? Jonathan Responds: That's the problem with most spam solutions, and why I wrote Ending Spam. Bayesian content filtering, commonly thrown into this mix, has the unique ability to grow out of your typical reactive state and become a proactive tool in fighting spam. I get about one spam per month now at the most, and DSPAM is learning many new variants of spam as it catches them; I'd call that pretty proactive. Spam, phishing, viruses, and even intrusion detection are all areas that can benefit greatly from this approach to machine learning. They will likely never become perfect, but these filters have the ability to not only adapt to new kinds of spam, but to also learn them proactively before it makes it into your inbox. Some of this is done through what is called "unsupervised learning" and not traditional training, while other tools, such as message inoculation and honey pots, can help automate the sharing of new spam and virus strains before anyone has to worry about seeing them. We haven't thoroughly explored statistical analysis enough yet for there to be a "next big technique" beyond this. The next big techniques seem to be trying to change email permanently, and I don't quite feel excited about that. Statistical tools are where I think the technology is at and it needs to become commonplace and easier to setup and run. The problem seems to be in the myth that statistical filtering is ineffective or incomplete. Many commercial solutions pass themselves off as statistical(ish) and it seem to be contributing to this myth by failing to do justice to the levels of accuracy many of the true (and open source) statistical filters are reflecting. Any commercial solution that claims to be an adaptive, content-based solution (like Bayesian filters are) really ought to deliver better than 95% or 99% accuracy. Part of the problem is just bad marketing - most of these tools are not true "Bayesian" devices; they just threw a Bayesian filter in there somewhere so they could use the buzzword. Another problem is design philosophy and the idea that you need an arsenal of other, less accurate tests, to be bolted in front of the statistical piece. If you're going to train a Bayesian filter with something other than a human being, whatever it is that's training it ought to be at least as smart as a human being. Blacklist-trained Bayesian filters are being fed with about 60% accurate data, (whereas a human is about 99.8% accurate). So it's no surprise to me that Blacklist-trained filters are severely crippled - what a dumb combination. If you really want to combine a bunch of tools for identifying spam, build a reputation system instead. They do a very good job of cutting spam off at the border, are generally more scalable than content-based filtering, and most large networks can justify their accuracy by their precision. Not all commercial content-based filters are junk. Death2Spam is one exception to this, and delivers around 99.9% accuracy, which is in the right neighborhood for a statistical filter. Not all reputation systems are junk either. CipherTrust's TrustedSource is one example of what I call a well-thought out system. If you must have a commercial solution, either of these I suspect will make you quite happy. As for (most of) the rest, quit screwing around and build something original that actually works. Jnaujok asks: The SMTP standard that we use for mail transfer was developed in the late 70's - early 80's and has, for the most part, never been updated. In that time period, the idea of hordes of spam flowing through the net wasn't even considered. It has always been the most obvious solution to me that what we really need is SMTP 2.0. Isn't it about time we updated the SMTP standard? Jonathan Responds: You're talking about an authenticated approach to email, and there have been many different standards proposed to do this. First let me say that, even though SMTP was drafted a few decades ago, it's still successful in performing its function, which is a public message delivery system - key word being public. There exist many private message delivery systems already, which you could opt to use, including bonded sender and even rolling your own using PGP signatures and mailbox rules. I have reservations about forcing such a solution on everybody and breaking down anonymity for the sake of preventing junk mail. Until you can sell a company like Microsoft on absolute anonymity in bonded sender and sell ISPs into putting up initial bonds for their customers (so that a ten-year old gradeschool student can still use email), I see a very large threat (especially by the government) in globalizing this as a replacement for the 'public' system. With services like gmail, where you can store an entire life's worth of email, the idea that everything you've ever said could be sufficiently traced back to you and used against you, I would rather deal with the spam. Why? Let me pull out my tinfoil hat... It's been advertised plenty of times on Slashdot that Google stores everything about all of its queries. It wouldn't surprise me if they already have government contracts in place to perform data mining on specific individuals. How would you like, in the future, all of your email to be mined and correlated with other personal data to determine whether or not you should be allowed to fly? Buy a firearm? Rent a car? We're not very far off from that, and even less so once this correlation is made possible. So abstract some level of anonymity at the ISP-level you say? That's just not going to happen. For one, that makes it just as simple for a spammer to abuse somebody's network and then we've gone and redesigned SMTP for no good reason. Remember, business has to be able to set up shop online fairly easily and spammers are a type of shop. So we are always going to balance between free enterprise and letting spammers roam on the network. Should we employ a CA, how much would it cost to run your own email server? More importantly - does this perhaps open the door for per-email taxes? I'd much rather just deal with spam the way we are now. For another thing, abstracted identity architectures would only give you a level of anonymity parallel to the level of anonymity you have when you purchase a firearm (where the forms are stored by your dealer, rather than filed to a central government agency). See how long it takes for the feds to trace your handgun back to you if you leave it at the scene of a crime. You can't leave it in the ISP's control anyway. The sad truth is that most ISPs still don't care about managing outgoing spam on their network; so new spammers are being given a nurturing environment to break into this new and exciting business. I had a recent bout with XO Communications about one such new spammer who had run a full-blown business on their network since 1997 and recently decided he'd like to start spamming under the "CAN-SPAM" act (which he was convinced defended his right to spam). He included his phone number, address, and web address in the spam - I called him up and verified he was who he said he was (the owner of this business, and spamming). Provided all of this information (over a phone call) to the XO abuse rep (let's call him "Ted"), even filed a police report, and XO still to this day has done nothing. His site is even still there, selling the same crap he spams for. This happens every day at ISPs out there. The consequences outweigh the benefits. The people who drafted the SMTP protocol probably thought of most of these issues too. A public system can't exist without the freedom to remain anonymous, ambiguous, and the right to change your virtual identity whenever the heck you like. Sheetrock asks a two parter: 1. In the past, I've heard it suggested that anti-spam techniques often go too far, culling good e-mail with the bad and perhaps even curtailing 1st Amendment rights. Clearly this depends on what end of the spectrum you're on, but recent developments have given me pause for thought on the matter. For example, certain spam blacklists would censor more than was strictly necessary (a subjective opinion, I realize) to block a spammer -- sometimes blocking a whole Class C to get one individual. This would cause other innocent users in that net space to have their e-mail to hosts using the blacklists silently dropped without any option of fixing the problem besides switching ISPs. Jonathan Responds: A lot of blacklists have started taking on a vigilante agenda, or at the very least rather questionable ethical practices. Spamhaus' recent blacklisting of all Yahoo! Store URLs (and Paul Graham's website) is a prime example of this. As long as you're subscribed to human-operated blacklists, you're going to suffer from someone's politics. That's one of the reasons I coded up the RABL, which is a machine-automated blacklist. There is also another called the WPBL (weighted private block list). As the politics of the organizations running human-maintained lists get worse, I think more of these automated lists will start to pop up. Machine-automated blacklists don't have an agenda - they have a sensitivity threshold. It's much easier to find the right list with the right threshold than it is to find the right politics (and then keep tabs on them to make sure they don't change). The RABL, for example, measures network spread rather than number of complaints. If a spammer has affected more than X networks, they are automatically added to the system, and removed after being clear for six hours (no messy cleanup). Another nice thing about machine-automated blacklists is that they are really real-time blacklists, and capable of catching zombies and other such evils with great precision. NOTE: I haven't had time yet to bring the RABL into full production, but am interested in finding more participants to bring us out of testing. 2. This is an extreme example, but most anti-spam approaches have the following characteristics: They are implemented on a mail server without fully informing the users of the ramifications (or really informing them at all). They block messages without notification to the sender, causing things to be silently dropped. Even if the recipient becomes aware of the problem, few or no options are given for the recipient to alter this "service". Jonathan Responds: I've run into issues like this with my ISP (Alltel), and I agree with a lot of what you're saying. In the case of Alltel, not only are they filtering inbound messages using blacklisting techniques and other approaches they don't care to tell me about, but they are filtering outbound messages as well. I had to eventually give up using their mail server because I could not adequately train my own spam filter (Alltel would block messages I forwarded to it). To make matters worse, there is no way to opt out of this type of filtering on their network, even though I offered to give them the IP address of my remote mail server. This clearly does affect their customers, and I feel there are censorship, violation of privacy and denial of service issues all going on here. (Somebody please sue them by the way). Fortunately, I don't think this issue is as wide spread as you might think. Many of the ISPs and Colleges I've worked with are, unlike Alltel, very dedicated to ensuring that their tools only provide a way for their users to censor themselves. I think this ought to be a requirement for any publicly used system. Specifically... 1.The user must be able to opt in or out of all aspects of filtering2.All filtering components and their general function must be fully disclosed3.The user must be able to review and recover messages the system filtered Opting out of RBLs is as easy as having two separate mail servers and homing on the box you want. I would strongly advise to ensure that your solution is capable of receiving instruction from a user to improve its results, but it is still very difficult to scale this to millions users. At the very least should be fully disclosed, recoverable, and removable. An Anonymous Coward asks: Without going into the truths of the beliefs in question, which I'm sure will be debated enough in the Slashdot thread anyway (and I hope you'll join in), what do you think the reason is that so many scientists, nerds and people otherwise rather similar to you think your beliefs are obviously incorrect? Do you think they are all deluded? Do you agree that there might be a possibility that your beliefs are not rational? Jonathan Responds: The beliefs I hold as a Christian aren't always the popular ones, but they're certainly valid arguments for anyone who cares to ask about them (not that that has happened). When you read about someone's beliefs, you have the option to engage in discussion, or to filter his or her beliefs through your own belief system. The former option involves cognitive thought, however the latter is how most people today respond to anything that even smells religious. And I say this coming from the position of someone who hasn't tried to shove my beliefs down anyone's throat - I merely documented them on my personal website. That tells me that some people don't believe I have the right to my own beliefs - how asinine is that? But to address the question, my beliefs aren't based on some religious intellectual suicide. In fact, the Bible teaches that you should know what you believe and why, and that you should even be prepared to give a defense for your faith - so the Bible encourages sound thinking and not some pontificated ideal structure as many quickly dismiss it as. I didn't dumb down when I became a Christian. In fact, it felt more like I began to think more clearly. I was raised in the same public school system as everyone else and didn't even know who Jesus Christ was until around my junior or senior year of high school. I've read from my early days in Kindergarten how "billions of years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth" and I've been taught the theory of evolution like everyone else. The problem, though, is that no matter how credible or not a particular area of science is, much of what is out there is taught based on authority. I find it very ironic to be flamed by anyone who thinks I'm an idiot for not believing in a theory that's never been proven by scientific process. It's recently become a "religious act" to question science in any capacity, but isn't questioning science the only way we can tell the good science from the bad science? And there is a lot of great science out there - even in public schools. But there's no longer a way for students to evaluate the credibility of what they're being taught. That seems to be degrading the quality of the subject. Science should be a quest for the truth, with no presuppositions, and appropriate understanding between hypotheses vs. theories vs. laws. When a theory is presented in the classroom as law and it's not held accountable to method, it's degenerated into mere conditioning. I've spent a considerable amount of time studying topics such as the age of the earth and the theory of evolution, and I could probably argue it quite well if so inclined to engage in a discussion. That's important if you're going to believe anything really - including whatever the mainstreamed secular agenda happens to be. Just as an example, I've recently looked into Carbon-14 dating and found that in cross-referencing it to Egyptian history (which dates back as far as 3500 B.C. and is held to be in very high regard by archaeologists and scientists alike), there is evidence that Carbon dating may be inaccurate beyond around 1800 B.C. For someone not to consider that would be ignoring science. My point here is that my beliefs aren't merely unfounded, eccentric ideas. Just because microevolution is feasable, that doesn't mean I'm going to sweep macroevolution under the rug and not test it - the two are actually worlds apart, just cleverly bundled. The Bible has given me a perspective that seems to offer a reasonable and sensible way to put the different pieces of good science together. No matter what you believe, I strongly feel that you should have some factual foundation to support whatever it is, and if you don't, then be man enough to admit you only have a theory put together. No matter what side of the camp you are on, your beliefs require a certain amount of faith, as neither side is at present proven scientifically. I don't have all the answers, but I don't think science in its present state does either. At the end of the day, you can't prove the existence of God factually, and so whatever you believe is still based on faith. But at least the Christians can admit that - I just wish the evolutionists would too. This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted. Jonathan Zdziarski Answers Log in/Create an Account | Top | 326 comments | Search Discussion Display Options Threshold: -1: 326 comments 0: 321 comments 1: 277 comments 2: 179 comments 3: 37 comments 4: 17 comments 5: 8 comments Flat Nested No Comments Threaded Oldest First Newest First Highest Scores First Oldest First (Ignore Threads) Newest First (Ignore Threads) The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way. Ahh the sign of a leader. (Score:3, Funny) by webby123 (911327) on Tuesday August 30, @03:20PM (#13438610) First Question: How do you pronounce your name?proving a theory? by measlymonkey (Score:3)Tuesday August 30, @04:42PMRe:proving a theory? by operagost (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @05:23PMRe:proving a theory? by measlymonkey (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @07:59PMRe:proving a theory? by dhasenan (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @10:14PM Re:proving a theory? (Score:4, Informative) by Valiss (463641) on Tuesday August 30, @05:39PM (#13439608) (http://www.whutdufuk.com/) "I find it very ironic to be flamed by anyone who thinks I'm an idiot for not believing in a theory that's never been proven by scientific process."I hate crap like that. Scientific America had a great article a while back that explains this just as well as I ever could. Here, I found a copy of the article (Scientific America wants you to reg to read the original on their site):"1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law.Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty--above a mere hypothesis but below a law. Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses." No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution--or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter--they are not expressing reservations about its truth."PDF version: http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/cpurrin1/textbook disclaimers/wackononsense.pdf [swarthmore.edu]Original: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000D4FE C-7D5B-1D07-8E49809EC588EEDF [sciam.com]Enjoy! (flame on) [ ParentRe:proving a theory? by The Slashdolt (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @05:11PMRe:proving a theory? by Nuclear Elephant (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @05:18PMRe:proving a theory? by Pentagram (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @05:48PMRe:proving a theory? by Rei (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @07:19PMRe:proving a theory? by pestel (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @09:19PMRe:proving a theory? by ozmanjusri (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @10:26PMRe:proving a theory? by 2short (Score:3)Tuesday August 30, @10:45PMRe:proving a theory? by WilliamSChips (Score:1)Wednesday August 31, @04:17PM-- mod parent down -- by WilliamSChips (Score:1)Wednesday August 31, @04:21PMRe:proving a theory? by cyclop (Score:2)Friday September 02, @06:49AMRe:proving a theory? by qwijibo (Score:2)Monday September 12, @12:53PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Re:proving a theory? (Score:4, Insightful) by plover (150551) * on Tuesday August 30, @05:43PM (#13439649) (http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Thursday June 02, @02:22PM) If you're going to call it a theory, one ought to teach it as such.This statement is typically a sign that someone doesn't understand the difference between a theory and a hypothesis, or a theory and a law.Try Googling for an example of a theory you might understand, like Shannon's Mathematical Theory of Communication, which explains why compression has a lower limit. If at some point you begin to understand that all of today's slashdot traffic can indeed be compressed into a single bit, but that it's kind of hard to reinflate that bit back into slashdot, you'll gain some insight as to how strong calling something a "theory" can be.A scientific theory is something generally accepted as true due to the overwhelming preponderance of corroborating evidence (and with no solid evidence to the contrary,) but is impossible to completely prove to be true because it cannot be duplicated. In this case, it's impossible to prove the theory of evolution true because because we can't repeat the experiment by creating another earth exactly as it existed 4.5 billion years ago. We can, however, perform tests on a much smaller scale, such as hybridizing new species, genetic splicing, causing environmental stresses in reproducing populations, and any other number of approaches. And we have. And the vast majority of these experiments strongly support the theory of evolution. Plus, the occasional experiments that don't are typically shown to be flawed in a meaningful way.A TV cop show having some bald detective saying "My theory is that the guy with spike hair killed the guy with no shirt for the drug money" is not using the scientific definition of the term "theory". Don't be confused by the popular use of the term. [ Parent Re:proving a theory? (Score:4, Insightful) by 2short (466733) on Tuesday August 30, @11:31PM (#13442513) I disagree. The difference between a theory and a law is that a law was named by it's arrogant discoverer, probably Newton. It's all theories. Even bad, wrong theories are theories. It's a theory if it expresses some meaningful explanation for observed phenomena. They never get proved in science the way they do in math. Whether you do an experiment to cause some evidence to appear, or whether you have to go out in the world and find some evidence, all you have is more evidence that supports your theory, or doesn't. The advantage that experimental sciences have is that you can carefully devise an experiment whose result will go one way if the prevailing theory is correct, and another if your up and coming one is, which can lead to drama. Diciplines that are not as subject to experiment usually have to rely on the slow accretion of many tiny bits of data. When you've got stupendously huge piles of evidence that supports your theory, and nobody can really imagine another theory that would explain it all, you can be pretty sure of yourself, and reasonably treat it as established fact. This is the case for evolution.The thing to understand is the difference between theories and non-theories, if you will. A non-theory is compatible with any evidence. It can't be supported by any evidence, it can't be undercut by any evidence; evidence is simply irrelevant to it.Your hypothetical detective has a perfectly good theory for why the guy with no shirt is dead. If we examine the guy with spike hair's backpack, and find it full of money, that will tend to support the theory. If there isn't any money in the room at all, that will tend to undercut it. If the detective says "I think an all-powerful wizard cast a spell, that caused all the contents of the room to come into being exactly as they are, including any memories in the heads of living occupants" that's not a theory in the scientific sense. It doesn't matter if we find any money or where. There is no point in looking at anything in the room in judging this idea, because nothing you find could help ddecide if it is right."God made everything the way it is, last Tuesday" could be absolutely true, and in that case evolution would be one tiny footnote in the number of things people think that are wrong. I hope it is not surprising that I do not propose to spend much time contemplating this proposition. Absolutely nothing I could find, think or say would add any support, or in any way refute it. I am in fact going to blindly assume it is false, because I'd prefer there be some point to thinking about the world. Nor do I see how it makes any difference if we say 6000 years ago instead of last tuesday as the interview subject would have us do.It's not particularly strong to call something a theory, but there are some requirements, and creationism doesn't cut it. [ ParentRe:proving a theory? by Kadin2048 (Score:2)Wednesday August 31, @12:25AMRe:proving a theory? by 2short (Score:2)Wednesday August 31, @12:04PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:proving a theory? by Elwood P Dowd (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @05:44PMRe:proving a theory? by Nuclear Elephant (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @06:24PMRe:proving a theory? by Rei (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @07:26PMRe:proving a theory? by Elwood P Dowd (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @07:30PM Re:proving a theory? (Score:5, Funny) by Rei (128717) on Tuesday August 30, @06:34PM (#13440057) (http://www.cursor.org/) If you're going to call it a theory, one out to teach it as such. You mean, like this sticker? "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. The material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered." Good point! May I also suggest some more: "This textbook states that the earth is over 4 billion years old. Because some people strongly believe that the earth cannot be this old, the material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered." "This book promotes the theory of plate tectonics, the gradual movement of the major land masses. Because nobody observed this process, this material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered." "This textbook suggests that the Earth is roughly spherical. The shape is a controversial topic, and not all people accept this theory. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered." "This book contains material on gravity. Gravity is a theory, not a fact, regarding a force which cannot be seen. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered." "This book discusses heliocentrism, that the Earth orbits around a centrally located sun. Because astronomers still disagree over the details of the heliocentric model, this material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered." "This book contains material on special relativity. Special relativity is a scientific theory, and very few scientists fully understand it. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered." "This textbook claims that evolution is not fully accepted by scientists because it is just a theory. The author hopes to confuse you into equating "scientific theory" with "cockamamie theory." To read a short blurb on what a scientific theory is, go to, http://wilstar.com/theories.htm [wilstar.com]." "This book does not contain the word evolution, the unifying principle in biology and an important component of the National Science Standards and the Scholastic Achievement Test. For an overview of what your class is missing, go to http://evolution.berkeley.edu/ [berkeley.edu]" "This book was anonymously donated to your school library to discretely promote religious alternatives to the theory of evolution. When you are finished with it, please refile the book in the fiction section." "This book mentions Creationism, New Creationism, Scientific Creationism, or Intelligent Design. All of these beliefs rely on the action of a supernatural entity to explain life on Earth. Scientists rejected supernatural explanations for life on Earth in the 1800s, and still do today." "This book discusses gods. The existence of entities with supernatural powers is controversial, and many believe that myths, especially other people's myths, are fictional. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered." "This book contains an evolution disclaimer sticker mandated by your local school board. For fun, submit an article to a local paper that probes the motivations of board members and analyzes the impact of weakened science instruction on students' college applications." "This sticker covers a pre-existing sticker designed to subtly undermine the teaching of evolution in your class. To see the full text of the original sticker, examine the books of children of school board members, who mandated the stickering." "This book discusses evolution. President George W. Bush said, "On the issue of evolution, the vRead the rest of this comment... [ ParentMOD PARENT WAY UP by WilliamSChips (Score:1)Wednesday August 31, @04:25PMRe:MOD PARENT WAY UP by Rei (Score:2)Wednesday August 31, @05:43PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.2 replies beneath your current threshold.It's obvious by commodoresloat (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @05:58PM I still want him to answer why we are filtering! (Score:1, Troll) by garcia (6573) * on Tuesday August 30, @03:20PM (#13438615) (http://www.lazylightning.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday September 07, @11:31AM) The one fucking question [slashdot.org] I really wanted him to answer he wasn't even asked.Instead something completely worthless like Winkydink asks: How do you pronounce your name? shows up instead.Thanks Slashdot.Re:I still want him to answer why we are filtering by bradbeattie (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @03:24PMRe:I still want him to answer why we are filtering by webby123 (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @03:25PM Re:I still want him to answer why we are filtering (Score:4, Interesting) by winkydink (650484) * <sv.dude@gmail.com> on Tuesday August 30, @03:43PM (#13438755) (http://www.networkmirror.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday July 14, @12:45PM) Well, it wasn't worthless to me, and it looks like the editors thought that my question was a bit more coherent than a improperly written href.If there's something that you really want to know, have you considered contacting him using this newfangled technoloigy called email? [ ParentRe:I still want him to answer why we are filtering by winkydink (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @03:56PMRe:I still want him to answer why we are filtering by garcia (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @04:01PMRe:I still want him to answer why we are filtering by WalksOnDirt (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @07:43PMRe:I still want him to answer why we are filtering by extrasolar (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @08:26PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Your "a href" is wrong. by hummassa (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @04:10PMRe:I still want him to answer why we are filtering by Nuclear Elephant (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @04:30PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:I still want him to answer why we are filtering by garcia (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @03:30PM Re:I still want him to answer why we are filtering (Score:5, Funny) by cybersaga (451046) on Tuesday August 30, @03:36PM (#13438712) (http://www.luci.ca/) Jesus Christ how old are you?He was about 33 when he died. [ ParentRe:I still want him to answer why we are filtering by WiFiBro (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @04:49PMRe:I still want him to answer why we are filtering by Rei (Score:3)Tuesday August 30, @06:08PMkawabonga by N3wsByt3 (Score:2)Wednesday August 31, @06:15PM2 replies beneath your current threshold. Very interesting (Score:3, Insightful) by Sinryc (834433) on Tuesday August 30, @03:26PM (#13438655) (http://ss4matt.xepher.net/) Very, VERY interesting. I have to say thank you to him, for the fact that he made a good statement about faith. Very brave, and very good man.Re:Very interesting by VolciMaster (Score:2)Wednesday August 31, @08:15AM n00B! (Score:3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30, @03:27PM (#13438661) Does anybody remember what the world was like before Google? None of us do, primarily because we couldn't find iyYESI do remember you noob.Google is nothing new, before them there were a few engines that did the job fine. There was even an web based FTP search engine Where is that google, where is that.Re:n00B! by kashani (Score:3)Tuesday August 30, @04:23PM1996?? by commodoresloat (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @06:03PMRe:n00B! by jonadab (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @05:59PMRe:n00B! by Rei (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @06:51PM what is so terrible about dual licencing? (Score:4, Interesting) by 00_NOP (559413) on Tuesday August 30, @03:31PM (#13438676) (http://www.landslide.ath.cx/) If i write some code and I licence it under the GPL and something else what is the problem?You can take the GPL code and do what you like with it under the GPL, but I choose to licence what i have written under BSD (say) as well then what is the problem? It is going way OTT to take that away from me if I am gifting my work back to the community with the GPL. This is why I always stipulate that my code is licenced under GPL v2 and not any subsequent version - no self-appointed guardian has the right to take away my freedom to dual licence code.Re:what is so terrible about dual licencing? by Denzinger (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @04:46PMRe:what is so terrible about dual licencing? by 00_NOP (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @05:01PMRe:what is so terrible about dual licencing? by agbinfo (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @05:15PMMod Parent Up by DimGeo (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @05:35PMRe:what is so terrible about dual licencing? by budgenator (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @06:17PMRe:what is so terrible about dual licencing? by xygorn (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @08:33PMRe:what is so terrible about dual licencing? by 00_NOP (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @08:44PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Name Pronunciation (Score:2, Funny) by jatemack (870255) on Tuesday August 30, @03:32PM (#13438682) (http://winexpression.blogspot.com/) At least his first name isn't Jathan. He's be stuck explaining his name for another five minutes to people as well.Me: My name is Jathan.Response: Woah. Were your parents stoned when they named you?Me: haha, yeah that's funny. It's kind of like saying Jason with a lisp.Response: Thats great caus I half a lithspMe: Oh, sorry, it's like Nathan with a J then.I feel your pain Mr.Zdziarski.... Great Responses (Score:1, Redundant) by theGreater (596196) on Tuesday August 30, @03:34PM (#13438695) I'm glad to see someone discuss all these various spam issues with some degree of authority. It is nice to see someone differentiate between the different types of statistical filtering out there, and talk about the interactions between different levels of spam filtering.How sad that most of the next 300 replies are likely to be attacks on his personal faith.-theGreater.Re:Great Responses by Anonymous Coward (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @03:55PMRe:Great Responses by HanClinto (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @04:16PMRe:Great Responses by 2short (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @05:34PMRe:Great Responses by ninjakoala (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @06:13PMRe:Great Responses by Russ Nelson (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @04:15PMRe:Great Responses by Nuclear Elephant (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @04:28PMRe:Great Responses by 2short (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @06:52PMRe:Great Responses by Russ Nelson (Score:2)Wednesday August 31, @02:55PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Interesting analogy by benhocking (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @04:33PMRe:Interesting analogy by Russ Nelson (Score:2)Wednesday August 31, @02:34PMA different logical fallacy by benhocking (Score:2)Wednesday August 31, @03:27PMRe:A different logical fallacy by Russ Nelson (Score:2)Thursday September 01, @12:30PMExtending your logic by benhocking (Score:2)Thursday September 01, @01:28PMRe:Great Responses by operagost (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @05:29PMRe:Great Responses by Rei (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @06:59PMRe:Great Responses by Russ Nelson (Score:2)Wednesday August 31, @02:28PMRe:Great Responses by Nuclear Elephant (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @04:20PM Re:Great Responses (Score:4, Insightful) by Russ Nelson (33911) on Tuesday August 30, @04:32PM (#13439062) (http://russnelson.com/) Not trying to judge anyone,But you're *supposed* to judge people. Jesus wants you not to consort with disbelievers. How would you know they're disbelievers unless you judge them as such?The basic problem is that you're trying to impose your own definition of Christian on everyone. I'm a true Christian and I don't believe the same things as you, and you can't make me stop calling myself a Christian.The real metric of whether someone is a Christian or not is their actions, not their claims. Ye shall know them by their fruits. [ ParentRe:Great Responses by Moofie (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @05:04PMRe:Great Responses by operagost (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @05:32PMRe:Great Responses by Moofie (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @05:40PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Great Responses by 31415926535897 (Score:3)Tuesday August 30, @05:30PMRe:Great Responses by justin12345 (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @08:57PMRe:Great Responses by 31415926535897 (Score:2)Wednesday August 31, @09:05AM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Great Responses by justin12345 (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @09:04PMRe:Great Responses by Dysproxia (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @06:12PMYe shall know them by their fruits. by mbius (Score:1)Wednesday August 31, @03:35AM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Great Responses by digidave (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @05:16PMRe:Great Responses by WiFiBro (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @05:24PMRe:Great Responses by illuminatedwax (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @05:25PMMore christian than thou... by Vellmont (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @05:46PMRe:Great Responses by darkonc (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @05:57PMRe:Great Responses by darkonc (Score:3)Tuesday August 30, @06:14PMRe:Great Responses by mbius (Score:1)Wednesday August 31, @03:27AMRe:Great Responses by UnapprovedThought (Score:2)Wednesday August 31, @01:01PMRe:Great Responses by Rei (Score:2)Wednesday August 31, @03:53PMRe:Great Responses by darkonc (Score:2)Wednesday August 31, @07:23PMRe:Great Responses by squiggleslash (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @07:08PMRe:Great Responses by kaens (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @09:25PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Great Responses by Elwood P Dowd (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @05:23PM2 replies beneath your current threshold. Standard testing for spam filters (Score:5, Interesting) by pclminion (145572) on Tuesday August 30, @03:36PM (#13438709) Although there don't seem to be any standards in the Open Source community for this, there are definitely standards in the academic community. Spam filters are a subset of machine learners, and there are very specific and well accepted ways of comparing machine learners.Typically what is done is to select a range of filters/learners that you want to evaluate. A test dataset is also selected (in this case, it would be an archive of spam and nonspam messages, correctly classified). An M-way N-fold cross validation is performed. What this means is that the data set is split into N parts, and N runs are conducted for each classifier, training using N-1 of the parts. The remaining part is used to test the learner. This is repeated, each time holding out a different part of the test set.This ENTIRE procedure is repeated M times. This gives, ultimately, M*N results. Each column pair of results from a specific pair of learners has a T-test applied to it. This tells the statistical significance of variations in performance. Usually, a 5% or 1% threshold of significance is used.Once that is completed, something called a WLT table is computed. Each time a learner defeats another learner on a given test, its W ("Win") counter is incremented. Likewise, when a learner loses, the L ("Loss") counter is incremented. When two learners tie (i.e., when the variation is not statistically significant), the T ("Tie") counter is incremented.The overall "winner" of the comparison is the learner with the maximum value of W-L.This sounds complicated and bloated, but it is, in fact, how machine learners are tested in academia. The cross validation method, along with checks for statistical significance, is critical to achieving a valid comparison. Simply running the tests once and saying "This filter got 98% correct, and this other filter got 95% correct -- therefore the first filter is better" is NOT sufficient.Re:Standard testing for spam filters by Hrolf (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @04:05PMRe:Standard testing for spam filters by pclminion (Score:3)Tuesday August 30, @04:11PMRe:Standard testing for spam filters by Otter (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @04:38PMRe:Standard testing for spam filters by pclminion (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @04:49PMRe:Standard testing for spam filters by lost in place (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @08:39PMRe:Standard testing for spam filters by jpostel (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @06:25PMRe:Standard testing for spam filters by Otter (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @07:13PMRe:Standard testing for spam filters by jpostel (Score:2)Wednesday August 31, @02:01PMRe:Standard testing for spam filters by jhantin (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @08:35PMRe:Standard testing for spam filters by jpostel (Score:2)Wednesday August 31, @01:41PMRe:Standard testing for spam filters by jhantin (Score:2)Thursday September 01, @01:57PMRe:Standard testing for spam filters by Nuclear Elephant (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @04:23PMRe:Standard testing for spam filters by jpostel (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @06:20PMRe:Standard testing for spam filters by gvc (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @09:35PM My problem with spam filters... (Score:5, Insightful) by scovetta (632629) on Tuesday August 30, @03:38PM (#13438725) (http://www.scovettalabs.com/) I use SpamAssassin (server) and SpamPal (client). They're both quite accurate and I'm very happy with them.However, I've had unacceptably high false-positive rates. Saying that you only get one spam a day is fine--I can deal with that. Are you sure that no legitimate e-mail is being tagged though? I have the subject lines prefixed with [SPAM] and so I just go through and look for anything that looks like it might not be spam. This process takes about 10 minutes a day, which is 10 minutes more than I would care to spend.I give the anti-spam developers credit for their hard work, but I believe that the best solution would not be filter-based, for mere fact that if 1 spam gets through a day, and the volume of spam increases 100x in the next 2 years, then you're back up to ~100 spams a day. It's a temporary solution to a permanent problem.Just my $0.02.Re:My problem with spam filters... by Nuclear Elephant (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @03:47PMRe:My problem with spam filters... by Old Grey Beard (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @04:25PMRe:My problem with spam filters... by LnxAddct (Score:3)Tuesday August 30, @04:30PMRe:My problem with spam filters... by RAMMS+EIN (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @05:21PMRe:My problem with spam filters... by hackstraw (Score:3)Tuesday August 30, @05:23PM back in time? (Score:1) by dotpavan (829804) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .navap.flesym.em.i.> on Tuesday August 30, @03:38PM (#13438728) (http://www.me.unm.edu/~pavan) Interviews: Jonathan Zdziarski AnswersPosted by ScuttleMonkey on Tuesday August 30, @07:13AMhas time wound back? all the stories and comments seem to be showing AM instead of PM. Editors: correct the error please, I dont want to go to work again!Re:back in time? by dotpavan (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @03:48PMRe:back in time? by 680x0 (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @03:52PM Hmm, my question didn't get answered - (Score:2) by skazatmebaby (110364) on Tuesday August 30, @03:45PM (#13438764) (http://skazat.com/) And it was +5 Interesting. Anyone want to take a crack at it? http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=160001&cid=133 92902 [slashdot.org]Re:Hmm, my question didn't get answered - by Nuclear Elephant (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @03:55PM Nobody has been fired... (Score:5, Insightful) by PhYrE2k2 (806396) on Tuesday August 30, @03:54PM (#13438813) (http://www.myinnercircle.ca/) . The ignorance of these people on such topics is astounding, and I find many approaches I have tried seem to yield no results...Bingo. One of my managers said it very well at my former employment: nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM- and he's 100% right. I know a few companies spending millions to have services offered by Dell, IBM, Microsoft, etc who could get their services for thousands from clone computer makers, and Linux- but who would they?Choose IBM and loose a few million, and you 'missed the market'. Choose open source and loose a few million and 'your solution wasn't up to par'. Choose open source and succeed and you make millions...Is it worth the risk for the second situation? Most managers who want to leave with a hefty bonus and a good referral woulds say no.PS: Agree 100% with almost everything he said. Smart man.-MRe:Nobody has been fired... by PaxTech (Score:3)Tuesday August 30, @04:19PMRe:Nobody has been fired... by joeslugg (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @05:02PM We have discussed SPAM just way to much ... (Score:1) by GNUALMAFUERTE (697061) <almafuerte@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday August 30, @04:01PM (#13438855) But the other issues present in the interview are really way more interesting than SPAM (Religion and pronunciation os bizarre names :) ).I Agree with Zdziarski in that both science and religion need a bit of faith from their believers. The difference, is that science logically analizes our environment, and bases it's conclusion on that analisis. Religion, on the other hand, is arbitrary, it just states that certain things are so 'just because'; so, reading different theorys, and then i see which seems more plausible, is better documented, etc, and, off course, depending on my personality, i will find some of them more credible, and so i will put a little faith in them. Religious persons acts differently, they beleive in a certain religion because their parents did. I Don't beleive the same things that my parents did about science, i read my own books, make my own conclussions, etc. Also, science is more unified than religion, that is, for a certain topic, there might be a few scientific explanations, that may vary slightly, but they all have a common base, share certain ideas, etc., and usually there is a reasonable number of different theorys (two?, three?), but, in religion, there are hundreds of different religions and they all state things that are VERY different from what other religions explain, absolutely contradicting each other.Also, religion doesn't evolve, science does. The catholic church once stated how man was created, and that explanation is still the same than it was 1.7k years ago, science changes daily, improving, finding new ways and explanations, because the human being is constantly evolving, and so, we prove ourselves wrong constantly (may be not plain wrong, we just elaborate on what we thought previously), religion doesn't change, and doesn't add new knowledge.One of the weaker points of religions, is that they base all their facts in one initial fact: God exists, and so, from that all the other knowledge is generated. We don't know if god exists, it's just a theory, so all the theorys in religion are based on one single theory, that is impossible to prove, and that is the single more discussed and opossed theory in history, with lots of proves that it's false, being it's only argument to be true, faith. Science, on the other hand, bases all it's theorys on a fact: Man can learn, so, many specific theorys might be wrong, but they can't be all wrong, and they won't be all proved wrong in a day, in change, if i could prove you that god doesn't exists, i would be proving all your other theorys wrong at the same time.Obviously, you have the right to beleive, and i respect that.Re:We have discussed SPAM just way to much ... by Russ Nelson (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @04:21PMRe:We have discussed SPAM just way to much ... by GNUALMAFUERTE (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @04:35PMRe:We have discussed SPAM just way to much ... by GNUALMAFUERTE (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @05:40PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:We have discussed SPAM just way to much ... by Bob Cat - NYMPHS (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @05:15PMRe:We have discussed SPAM just way to much ... by PCM2 (Score:3)Tuesday August 30, @04:46PMRe:We have discussed SPAM just way to much ... by GNUALMAFUERTE (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @04:59PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:We have discussed SPAM just way to much ... by hackstraw (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @05:33PMRe:We have discussed SPAM just way to much ... by PCM2 (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @05:47PMRe:We have discussed SPAM just way to much ... by wabaus (Score:2)Tuesday August 30, @04:46PMRe:We have discussed SPAM just way to much ... by WiFiBro (Score:1)Tuesday August 30, @05:44PM Re:We have discussed SPAM just way to much ... 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