User: pjmatt

For every Steve Jobs dropping out of college

On: Steve Jobs In Praise of Dropping Out

..there will be several million whose only form of public speaking opportunities will involve the phrase "would you like fries with that?"..

Don't forget Stephen Hawking

On: Commercial Exoskeletons

Stephen Hawking did it first - here. [orig. theonion.com].

"Beware, would-be evildoers," Hawking said. "My crimefighting powers are as infinite and unknowable as the very universe itself."

whitelisting

On: De-spamming Your Inbox The Hard Way

Postfix configured with a healthy collection of RBLs rejects probably 60 - 70% of sapm I would otherwise receive. I reject the rest by whitelisting - i.e. only accepting mail from 'trusted' recipients or where the message subject or body contains specific keywords.

I use assp (http://assp.sourceforge.net/) tweaked into a whitelist only mode, though I'm sure other mail proxies can be configured similarly. A nice feature of assp is that it automatically whitelists the recipent of oubound mail so replies from them aren't rejected.

Any message that does not match one of my whitelist criteria is not accepted. The 500 error response contains a URL, so any real people trying to email me will receive a message that will direct them to a web page containing instructions on how to get mail though to me. Anyone too stupid to follow those instructions is probably not someone I want to receive email from anyway. ;)

I now receive less than 1 spam per month (down from about 50 or more per day), and that's only when they happen to match one of my whitelisted keywords by accident.

A hard core solution perhaps, and one not suitable for everyone. However, for my home mail server it's ideal.