You are viewing a plain text version of this content. The canonical link for it is here.
Posted to users@spamassassin.apache.org by Don Saklad <ds...@zurich.csail.mit.edu> on 2005/03/05 12:28:03 UTC
How to setup things. Novices with no or little mastery of computers.
You have no or little mastery of computers even though you read email
with emacs rmail. Spamassassin headers are appearing on your messages.
How do you setup things if you have no or only very little mastery of
making dotfiles?...
Spamassassin instructional information around the web makes use of
jargon and arcane references that make it a research project for
people with no or little mastery just to get through the instructional
information !
Re: How to setup things. Novices with no or little mastery of computers.
Posted by Bob Proulx <bo...@proulx.com>.
David B Funk wrote:
> This particular one has been killfiled all over Usenet for over
> a decade and so has turned to mailing lists.
>
> A quick Google or Usenet search will reveal it for what it is. ;)
Wow. I have been living a sheltered life of late and have blissfully
missed him. Google does show that he has been an active fellow. And
reading several of his postings I can only agree with the troll
classification. Sorry I fell prey to the posting today. Plonk!
Bob
Re: How to setup things. Novices with no or little mastery of
computers.
Posted by David B Funk <db...@engineering.uiowa.edu>.
On Sat, 5 Mar 2005, Bob Proulx wrote:
> Don Saklad wrote:
>
> > Spamassassin instructional information around the web makes use of
> > jargon and arcane references that make it a research project for
> > people with no or little mastery just to get through the instructional
> > information !
>
> SpamAssassin is a free software project maintained by a group of
> people across the Internet. People volunteer their time and resources
> to make this project available. We find it extremely useful and
> continue to contribute to it. However you are not required to use it.
> If you find it something that is not usable by you at this time then
> you should not use it. I am sorry but the tone of your message
> implies that you think you deserve something that does not exist.
Please do NOT feed the trolls, it only encourages them.
This particular one has been killfiled all over Usenet for over
a decade and so has turned to mailing lists.
A quick Google or Usenet search will reveal it for what it is. ;)
--
Dave Funk University of Iowa
<dbfunk (at) engineering.uiowa.edu> College of Engineering
319/335-5751 FAX: 319/384-0549 1256 Seamans Center
Sys_admin/Postmaster/cell_admin Iowa City, IA 52242-1527
#include <std_disclaimer.h>
Better is not better, 'standard' is better. B{
Re: How to setup things. Novices with no or little mastery of computers.
Posted by Bob Proulx <bo...@proulx.com>.
Don Saklad wrote:
> You have no or little mastery of computers even though you read email
> with emacs rmail. Spamassassin headers are appearing on your messages.
How are those spamassassin headers showing up in your messages?
Someone must have configured it for you. If not you then your ISP is
very likely using spamassassin to classify email. Talk to them.
> How do you setup things if you have no or only very little mastery of
> making dotfiles?...
You can't. A basic level of knowledge is required. If you have that
knowledge, as you imply by saying you read mail with emacs rmail, then
you should have no trouble understanding and creating, for example,
procmail rules to file your mail after having been classified by
spamassassin.
If you feel you do not have this level of capability then I suggest
you find help from the people who set up spamassassin for you. If
they are offering spamassassin then perhaps they are also offering
support for other aspects of mail handling.
If you are looking specifically for emacs rmail help then I suggest
looking to the emacs mailing lists. For example I use emacs but do
not use emacs rmail mode. (I used to use emacs vm (view mail) mode.
But now I am use mutt. I don't have emacs rmail knowledge to share.)
> Spamassassin instructional information around the web makes use of
> jargon and arcane references that make it a research project for
> people with no or little mastery just to get through the instructional
> information !
SpamAssassin is a free software project maintained by a group of
people across the Internet. People volunteer their time and resources
to make this project available. We find it extremely useful and
continue to contribute to it. However you are not required to use it.
If you find it something that is not usable by you at this time then
you should not use it. I am sorry but the tone of your message
implies that you think you deserve something that does not exist.
Bob
Re: How to setup Spamassassin. Novices with no or little mastery
of computers.
Posted by JamesDR <ro...@bellsouth.net>.
I think you are confused! What people are saying here is, this is a
mailing list for the _administration_ and _installation_ of
SpamAssassin. If you have any specific issues pertaining to the above
then welcome! Other wise, if these headers are added by your ISP or some
mail relay along the route, then you need to get with them regarding
specifics of _their_ headers. I have may headers that are different
from the default install, and theirs may also be different.
Efficiency of SpamAssassin is directly related to the efficiency of
technical knowledge of the person who is setting it up. The default
install is great, however, spam is ever changing. You would need to
understand what SpamAssassin is doing to either mark messages as spam or
not mark messages as spam (mark here is used to mean to classify
messages, marking can be done at the MTA.) The principals, RBL's,
URIBL's, Bayes, Rule Based, and Learning House are just a few of the
examples of anti-spam technology. All have their pro's and con's. It
may be, easier anyway, to search and read about each technology on the
Internet. Many many articles have been written about the technologies
employed by SpamAssassin. Before I had decided on a spam scanner, I did
just this.
If you are trying to find out if SpamAssassin is right for you in your
environment, I'll assure you that it is. Free, actively developed, can
be configured inside and out, uses _many_ anti-spam technologies. I've
used it for almost 2 years now, and have been quite impressed, and have
setup several other companies to the benefits and they have also been
very pleased at the price and performance. If you are just going to be
using one component of "package" that SpamAssassin offers you as the
network admin, then you will surely be disappointed in the results.
(imho)
As for educating my users on what in the world sa headers are doing in
their head section, I tell them that the server is there and how it
works. That, as the admin, is my responsibility. I let them know that
this is a computer, and humans have written spams. And because of this
fact, computers can only be as smart as humans make them. And since a
computer can not alone figure out UBE/legit messages alone, that it will
make mistakes. One spam a month is a lot better than one spam an hour.
(Tho I do get complaints about one or two slipping by every 3 months or
so..) Just keep in mind, no one here is making a profit from support on
this mailing list.
We are here to help each other, but there comes point where the
questions can be answered by a 5 min. session on goggle, that can get
quite frustrating.
HTH
Thanks,
JamesDR
Don Saklad wrote:
> It's kind of an arrogant argument about not using something more
> advanced than your knowledge. It did not stop a lot of people from
> exploring things more advanced than their knowledge including young
> aficionados of computers themselves. There are a lot of areas of
> interest and knowledge. One can have knowledge of one area and not
> mastery of another related area. A better idea is considering how to
> better bridge what people with no or little mastery do not understand
> about Spamassassin. Efficacy is also based on usability. Spamassassin
> works better for some people but then if you don't figure out how to
> use it it doesn't work better for you.
>
> One hitch is composing the dotfile or dotfiles.
>
> I would rather read about what people are doing to bridge any gaps for
> interested users who find the Spamassassin headers on their messages,
> only know a little bit of the jargon and arcane references in the
> introductory informational materials, would like to try to use the
> Spamassassin headers more effectively, and cull the spam type messages
> from their email more efficiently.
>
> Anyway if you can not get past someone's lack of knowledge, lack of
> mastery you should not be replying on this point. I am grateful for
> you interest and critique in the how to type of question in any case !
>
RE: How to setup Spamassassin. Novices with no or little mastery of computers.
Posted by Greg Allen <ga...@netrox.net>.
You appear to be a 'user'. This is not a 'user' mailing list. It is for
system admins and developer types who install or configure spamassassin on
their servers at a system level. You should be talking with your system
administrator who installed SA rather than abusing this list.
-----Original Message-----
From: Don Saklad [mailto:dsaklad@zurich.csail.mit.edu]
Sent: Saturday, March 05, 2005 2:54 PM
To: users@spamassassin.apache.org; dsaklad@zurich.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: How to setup Spamassassin. Novices with no or little
mastery of computers.
It's kind of an arrogant argument about not using something more
advanced than your knowledge. It did not stop a lot of people from
exploring things more advanced than their knowledge including young
aficionados of computers themselves. There are a lot of areas of
interest and knowledge. One can have knowledge of one area and not
mastery of another related area. A better idea is considering how to
better bridge what people with no or little mastery do not understand
about Spamassassin. Efficacy is also based on usability. Spamassassin
works better for some people but then if you don't figure out how to
use it it doesn't work better for you.
One hitch is composing the dotfile or dotfiles.
I would rather read about what people are doing to bridge any gaps for
interested users who find the Spamassassin headers on their messages,
only know a little bit of the jargon and arcane references in the
introductory informational materials, would like to try to use the
Spamassassin headers more effectively, and cull the spam type messages
from their email more efficiently.
Anyway if you can not get past someone's lack of knowledge, lack of
mastery you should not be replying on this point. I am grateful for
you interest and critique in the how to type of question in any case !
Re: How to setup Spamassassin. Novices with no or little mastery of computers.
Posted by Don Saklad <ds...@zurich.csail.mit.edu>.
It's kind of an arrogant argument about not using something more
advanced than your knowledge. It did not stop a lot of people from
exploring things more advanced than their knowledge including young
aficionados of computers themselves. There are a lot of areas of
interest and knowledge. One can have knowledge of one area and not
mastery of another related area. A better idea is considering how to
better bridge what people with no or little mastery do not understand
about Spamassassin. Efficacy is also based on usability. Spamassassin
works better for some people but then if you don't figure out how to
use it it doesn't work better for you.
One hitch is composing the dotfile or dotfiles.
I would rather read about what people are doing to bridge any gaps for
interested users who find the Spamassassin headers on their messages,
only know a little bit of the jargon and arcane references in the
introductory informational materials, would like to try to use the
Spamassassin headers more effectively, and cull the spam type messages
from their email more efficiently.
Anyway if you can not get past someone's lack of knowledge, lack of
mastery you should not be replying on this point. I am grateful for
you interest and critique in the how to type of question in any case !
Re: How to setup things. Novices with no or little mastery of computers.
Posted by Robert Menschel <Ro...@Menschel.net>.
Hello Don,
You are correct. SpamAssassin is an open source project which
performs rather specific and technical functions, and in order for it
to work correctly it needs people with rather specific and technical
knowledge to apply it.
If you do not have the minimum technical knowledge required to
understand the how-to instructions available, then you should not be
using SpamAssassin itself -- you should be using one of the commercial
packages which use SpamAssassin internally, but which shield you from
needing to know those technical specifics.
See http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/CommercialProducts
Bob Menschel
Saturday, March 5, 2005, 3:28:03 AM, you wrote:
DS> You have no or little mastery of computers even though you read email
DS> with emacs rmail. Spamassassin headers are appearing on your messages.
DS> How do you setup things if you have no or only very little mastery of
DS> making dotfiles?...
DS> Spamassassin instructional information around the web makes use of
DS> jargon and arcane references that make it a research project for
DS> people with no or little mastery just to get through the instructional
DS> information !