Hi,

Marc: Please, please, please - read what I've written, fix EFFector's
confirmation process to comply with the guidelines at
http://mail-abuse.com/manage.html - specifically "Permission of new
subscribers must be fully verified before mailings commence."

Reconfirm your mailing list. Take data on the number of times your
mailing is flagged as spam by Razor before and after the change. If the
number of Razor reports does not decrease within eight weeks of
confirming your mailing list, come back with data in hand, leave the
Frea Speach & censorship phraseology at the door and maybe someone with
access to the innards of Razor can help you solve the problem.

And please, please, please - if you're going to respond to my posts and
point out where I may be uncertain, if not wrong, at least have the
courtesy to accede when I'm right. As it is, you excised the bulk of my
arguments, leaving a few niggling pieces of opinion to argue over[1].
Remember your high school debate - a dropped argument is a lost
argument.

Other people: Please, please, please don't abuse Marc for suggesting
that Razor's trust model may not be perfect. All software is flawed[2]
and we should not immediately chastise people who suggest our favorite
code is imperfect. And while you may get some small satisfaction calling
him names, impugning his powers of cognition, analysis, and synthesis,
etc., overall it just wastes a lot of bandwidth.

----

I've carried this argument on too long, I've suggested a course of
action for Marc and tried to defend what intelligent points he was
trying to make (i.e. any anti-spam system should be designed to avoid
malicious use.) 

However, it's clear to me Marc is more than willing to call out
perceived flaws in Razor but is less than willing to fix what he can
within his sphere of influence, or even to admit his organization's
system may be as or more flawed than Razor. Until he's willing to
honestly accept and address his own system's shortcomings, I don't see
any further point in belaboring this, on-list or off.

-- Bob

[1] I'm formally trained as an engineer so I feel ethically bound not to
state with certainty things that I am not certain about. In "Revising
Prose" by Richard Lanham, this practice is called out; what the engineer
considers responsible professional communication is taken by
non-engineers as a weak argument, the same way some deride evolution as
being a 'theory', mere speculation rather than the best current model.

This is an unfortunate gulf in communications between the technician and
the layman, who only wants to know if he should worry more about his
toaster exploding and burning down his house than being eaten by a bear
while walking to the mailbox. The engineer can only ask "Where do you
live?" and "What kind of toaster?" instead of smiling sweetly, remarking
"I'd worry more about car accidents and heart disease," then driving
home for a well-deserved dinner of steak and ale.

[2] Except maybe TeX.


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