Re: Spam, bogofilter, etc

[Martin Bligh <mbligh@mbligh.org>]

>>MX checking is as broken or more broken than bayes.
> 
> I have to say, OSDL has been doing MX checking, and it's effective as 
> hell. Most importantly, when it _does_ break, it's not because some 
> "content" is considered inappropriate, it's because some ISP does 
> something technically wrong.
> 
> OSDL also refused to talk to open mail relays etc. I got into something of 
> a (fairly civilized) shouting match with John Gilmore over it, who used to 
> send out email from a "fake open mail relay" on princuple (maybe he still 
> does). He claimed I was censoring his free speech rights when I didn't 
> read his emails, but I just told him that I was expressing my right to not 
> listen to people who are so stupid that they can't configure their email 
> servers.

That was actually pretty broken. Sending Andrew email stopped working
for ages. IIRC because I was sending email from my home address through
the IBM work server. It's not a trouble-free solution, and otherwise
fairly reasonable things stop working. I forget what the OSDL admins
did in the end ... I think put in a specific exception for an IP range.

M.