Re: [cobalt-users] RE: OT ** ORBZ **

[Jeff Lasman <jblists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Francisco Sánchez wrote:

> Spam is nasty (not more nasty than the snail mail spam we receive every
> day),

Oh yes it is.  I don't pay a penny for the snailmail spam that comes
into my mailbox, and I can even benefit, if I choose to sell it to a
paper recycler.

But I DO pay for the spam that comes into my system.  I pay for the
bandwidth it comes in on, I pay for the machine cycles that handle it. 
Even if I don't count my personal time.

> but blocking whole ranges of IP addresses, or even a single IP
> address, without a serious investigation, seems to me as outrageous as the
> people claiming to bomb some country after 11th Sept. when we did't even
> know where the attack came from...

No, it sounds more like not allowing anyone to fly in an airliner until
we knew the system was secured to our liking.  Sure it inconvenienced a
lot of people, but the cost was worth it.

Of course that's not a good analogy either.  The fact is I own my
server, and like Charlie, I can block anyone I want to block.  It's my
server.

Currently I don't block any email at all.  It doesn't mean I won't in
the future.

> Sorry, but I am against fanatism, and some ways of fighting spam seem just
> that.  Most ORBZ like services act like fanatics.

They are.  It's their privilege.  And it's my decision, and evidently
Charlie's, and yours, to not use them.

>  For those people who want
> to stop talking to half the world, I suggest they build an intranet and play
> with their own computers communicating each other.

Will you feel differently when you get millions of pieces of spam per
day?  Will you feel differently when your servers stop working because
somebody floods your domain with a dictionary email attack and none of
your customers' sites can be seen, when they all start calling you
because they can't get their email?

Maybe.

Jeff
-- 
Jeff Lasman <jblists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Linux and Cobalt/Sun/RaQ Consulting
nobaloney.net
P. O. Box 52672, Riverside, CA  92517
voice: (909) 778-9980  *  fax: (702) 548-9484