Slashdot Mirror
Using AI for Spam Filtering (w/ Source Code)
jarhead4067 writes "Article snippet: "Up until recently, most researchers in the fight against spam have failed to classify it as an artificial living organism, hindering the development of effective tools and techniques to kill it. While this classification may sound strange, consider the following..." A novel approach to filtering spam, and hey, there's free source included."
... after we get an AI to counter the Slashdot effect.
"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life." -- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_, Book 9, 37
I won't believe spam is a living organism till I see Marty Stouffer do a special, complete with comedy 'boing' noises and 'aint that cute' music as we watch a mother Spam care for her young.
How about a nice game of chess?
And the AI says....
The page cannot be displayed
There are too many people accessing the Web site at this time.
Please try the following:
Click the Refresh button, or try again later.
Open the www.generation5.org home page, and then look for links to the information you want.
HTTP 403.9 - Access Forbidden: Too many users are connected
Internet Information Services
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
"living organism ... and techniques to kill it"
Next thing we know, we will have Animal Rights Activists in Washington, D.C. protesting our "spam traps"
who | grep -i blond | date cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger; mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount; sleep
> most researchers in the fight against spam have failed to classify it as an artificial living organism
Who would have thought Skynet has its origins in spam?
wooooooosh.
Your web server can also be classified as an artificial living organism. But I ain't so sure about that living part anymore...
I think about the only good thing I can say about this article is, at least he's not out killing puppies.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
I wouldn't. It's straightforward, dumb and effective. AI would be the opposite.
This article advocates a
( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
(x) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
(x) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
(x) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
(x) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(x) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
(x) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
(x) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
(x) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
(x) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Really? Why?
NOTE: The sample code for this application is in C#. C# was chosen over C++ so beginners could better see the structures of the process, and C# was chosen over Java because of the inherent performance advantages of .NET.
What morons. what total losers.