langreiter.com plain, simple: comment-2002-08-16-1

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comment-2002-08-16-1

CREATED BY David Ness • LAST EDITED BY David Ness 7922 days AGO

I'm really glad you brought up the `spam issue' in the context of both of these notes. I must admit that sort of `don't get it' with respect to Spam, and I find that Odd, because I sure have put in a lot of hours on the net across a lot of years.

What bothers me about Paul Graham's piece---to put it in my usual kind and calm way---is that it looks to me like a first rate mind that is being wasted on a third rate problem. I have usually found Graham's stuff to be really smart and I have been waiting, if not with baited breath, at least with real curiosity, for his announcements about ARC. AFAICS the last word on ARC was a report on `Arc at 3 weeks' about 9 months ago. Nothing (that I have seen anyway) since. And here is is putzing about with Spam---which occupies about 5 mins out of my > 12 hour net days.

My `solution' to spam is to filter incoming mail into (a) probably not spam; and (b) probably spam. I admit that I do scan the `Subject' lines of the whole mess, and move obvious mis-categoirzed elements by hand. Then I open the `probably not spam' pile. About once a month something ends up in this pile that really was spam, but that isn't often enough to bother me.

The `probably spam' pile gets short shrift. If anything there looks suspicious (i.e. _not_ spam) then I open that. Again, maybe once a week I thus mistakenly open a piece of spam and about once a month I find a `real' letter that someone had, without thinking, managed to make look like spam.

Why someone as smart as Paul Graham wants to take time away from useful things that he might be doing. to save me one or two of my 5 minutes, I can't imagine.

Anyone know anything about the state of ARC? or was it more of the usual `smoke and mirrors'...

PS: `nosy' lists in the Swartz piece strike me as a `terrible idea', at least for me. A great proportion of the time, it is only half-a-dozen pieces into a thread that it takes a twist that makes it interesting. To have blown it off early in the thread would almost always be a mistake.