I worked at McAfee too back when it was Network Associates, after they bought Deersoft, which I founded. Deersoft you'll recall was the company that made and marketed commercial versions of SpamAssassin. I'd just like to point out that we, the Deersoft folks, had nothing whatever to do with this patent. It appears to have originated with the prior-to-Deersoft SpamKiller product (the windows desktop app).
Also, the open source SpamAssassin project is likely 100% in the clear on this patent, even if it is valid (which is a separate question), since Network Associates and all of its employees who worked on the open source project have filed CLAs or CCLAs with the Apache Foundation. Section 4 of each document is worth a read. Looks like anyone who licenses a copy of the SpamAssassin code from ASF gets the right to use Network Associate's patent. Though IANAL.
Because the As are from Phillidelphia, and the Giants from from New York, of course. They've only been across the bay bridge from each other for a relatively short period of time.
Let's take the upper estimate there, call it 50% of all email is spam.
Looking at my mailbox, average size of spam: 10k
Average size of ham: 32k
Most estimates put SMTP traffic at about 1% of all TCP packets on the internet, and TCP is about 90% of all traffic.
So, 50% * (10/32) * 1% * 90% comes to about one tenth of one percent of total traffic being spam. It's annoying as all heck, but it has nothing to do with any kind of congestion or significant use of network resources.
Worth reading through their T&Cs'. One major point is that they don't actually ever need to pay anyone, as long as they delete the logfiles which tell them how much they owe you. They have language in there which basically says "If the data gets deleted, either accidentally or on purpose, then we owe you nothing".
So on the one hand, I would like other people in my friends network to see amusing posts by "Darl McBride", so it would make sense to tag this user as a "friend". But on the other hand, it's "Darl McBride", so it would make sense to tag this user as a "foe"...
Well, hotmail *has* published records. Just that Caller-ID is more complicated and hard to query than SPF. Compare the SPF examples you gave above to the ungodly:
[craig@belphegore craig]$ IDN_DISABLE=1 host -t txt _ep.hotmail.com _ep.hotmail.com text "<ep xmlns='http://ms.net/1' testing='true'><out><m><indirect>list1._ep.hotmail.com</indirect><indirect>list2._ep.hotmail.com</in direct><indirect>list3._ep.hotmail.com</indirect></m></out></ep>" [craig@belphegore craig]$ IDN_DISABLE=1 host -t txt _ep.list1._ep.hotmail.com _ep.list1._ep.hotmail.c om text "<ep xmlns='http://ms.net/1' testing='true'><out><m><r>209.240.192.0/19</r><r>6 5.52.0.0/14</r><r>131.107.0.0/16</r><r>157.54.0.0/ 15</r><r>157.56.0.0/14</r><r>157.60.0.0/16</r><r>1 67.220.0.0/16</r><r>204.79.135.0/24</r><r>204.79.1 88.0/24</r><r>204.79.252.0/" "24</r><r>207.46.0.0/16</r><r>199.2.137.0/24</r><r >199.103.90.0/23</r></m></out></ep>" [craig@belph egore craig]$ IDN_DISABLE=1 host -t txt _ep.list2._ep.hotmail.com _ep.list2._ep.hotmail.c om text "<ep xmlns='http://ms.net/1' testing='true'><out><m><r>204.182.144.0/24</r><r>2 04.255.244.0/23</r><r>206.138.168.0/21</r><r>64.4. 0.0/18</r><r>65.54.128.0/17</r><r>207.68.128.0/18</r><r>207.68.192.0/20</r><r>207.82.250.0/23</r><r> 207.82.252.0/23</r><r>209.1" ".112.0/23</r><r>209.185.128.0/23</r><r>209.185.13 0.0/23</r><r>209.185.240.0/22</r></m></out></ep>" [craig@belphegore craig]$ IDN_DISABLE=1 host -t txt _ep.list3._ep.hotmail.com _ep.list3._ep.hotmail.c om text "<ep xmlns='http://ms.net/1' testing='true'><out><m><r>216.32.180.0/22</r><r>21 6.32.240.0/22</r><r>216.33.148.0/22</r><r>216.33.1 51.0/24</r><r>216.33.236.0/22</r><r>216.33.240.0/2 2</r><r>216.200.206.0/24</r><r>204.95.96.0/20</r>< r>65.59.232.0/23</r><r>65.5" "9.234.0/24</r><r>209.1.15.0/24</r><r>64.41.193.0/ 24</r><r>216.34.51.0/24</r></m></out></ep>"
It' s not *just* that it's XML instead of more concise readable text, though that certainly is fucking idiotic.
I tried porting a number from Sprint to Cingular, and they came back and said "not possible", which is bullshit. I decided to just forget that, and port my landline number to the new phone instead, from SBC (which is the parent of Cingular). They said "not possible". I've filed FCC complaints against both Sprint and SBC, and have been hounding SBC customer support for the last 6 days to get this resolved. The long and short of it is, there's a big fine for them to pay if they're not following the FCC mandate, and there's a very easy online way to file complaints with the FCC. Who knows how long it takes for the FCC to actually process the complaints, but I figure it can't hurt the later-adopters for us early-adopters to give the telcos a bureaucratic kick in the ass.
Simple solution: just back-date the invoice, and make sure the accounting system shows that it's been on file for months but hasn't yet been paid. Then call up the accounts payable department, and demand to know why the invoice *still* hasn't been approved for payment after 300 days.
I read through the section on transfers on the mailer I got the other day, and Microsoft appears in their settlement to have thought of exactly this scenario. Vouchers can be transfered once only, to a person or entity that will use the purchased items themselves, and the maximum that any individual or organization can redeem is $10,000. You may use multiple vouchers towards an individual purchase though. But this means that effectively the FSF can only get $10,000 of donated vouchers, anything more than that will be wasted.
But, the settlement agreement is not yet final -- this seems like exactly the kind of detail that the judge would like to hear about before signing off on the final decision. It should be entirely legitimate for individuals to be able to contribute their vouchers to a not-for-profit; I can understand why they don't want to have people selling the vouchers, but donation ought to be legit. I would encourage any californians to write to the judge indicating that they feel this aspect of the settlement should be changed.
The idea would likely be to have the plugin only kick in for either certain mime types, or content above a certain size, at least for today. Yes, currently you need to have a bittorrent client installed, or integrated into your browser, but the content is at least available in a slashdot-like situation. I agree that it's likely HTML or small image files will never usefully be conveyed by this mechanism, but larger files, or any content that's rendered inline in a page would benefit.
The way to go here is to make serving content through bittorrent easier. Ideally, as easy as publishing a resource on a web server (that is, copy a file into a directory and figure out what the URL is). This is the goal of the mod_torrent project. We're building an apache plugin on top of libtorrent which automatically creates torrents in response to http requests, and then begins serving them, in response to conditions on the apache server. Load is low? Fine, service with good-old HTTP the normal way. Load is high? Instead of a direct HTTP download, instead have the HTTP GET respond with an application/torrent file, which then launches bt to grab the content (all automatic). Goodbye slashdot effect.
However, if the 3 lines of code are really the only logical way to implement something, and that feature is necessary to the product (but not patented), then the 3 lines of code could be viewed as being legitimately copiable, since the product feature is a scene-a-faire.
SpamAssassin has *great* brand name recognition. Yes, it is heavily amongst slashdot-like crowd, but it's also been featured a lot in the press, plus there are many/.ers who run open-source SA on their boxes at home, but would just love an Outlook/Exchange version to purchase for use at the office where Mr PHB wants something which runs on Windows, or where they don't have the time/personel to install/tweak/maintain/update the open source version.
Deersoft's aim was to provide nicely packaged, GUI-ized point-and-click products for the Windows market, driven by the same high-precision engine that's available to the open-source enlightened through spamassassin.org
They have acquired rights to the trademark, those parts of the open source code written by Justin or me, and rights too all of Deersoft's proprietary stuff. Justin and I have also entered into employment agreements with NAI to continue there as employees following the merger.
Since we haven't been at NAI very long yet, many decisions have yet to be made about roadmap, timelines, Justin and my level of continuing involvement in the open source project, etc., but all signs so far indicate the likelihood that NAI is planning to do the right thing, and continue Deersoft's license of the mark to the open source project, as well as allowing Justin and me to continue working on the project, while also working on NAI stuff which is not open source (just like we both were doing at Deersoft).
However NAI ends up using what they've acquired, you be bet they'll be very likely to invest in publicizing (and providing paid support for) whatever products they built based on the technologies.
Of course, all decisions are just my perceptions so far. I'm still chasing around the building (and on the phone to those people who aren't physically in this building) to nail down all the answers. Large companies move slowly though, so final confirmation on all this will likely take some time. I'll keep everyone posted as best as I can.
All negotiations with NAI during the merger, and all evidence I've seen or heard since arriving at NAI's offices to start work yesterday, are that both Justin and I will still be working on the OS stuff in the same way we were for the last months while we were employed at Deersoft. I haven't heard the official word confirmed from the right people definitively yet, but that is my expectation at this point. Justin and I will let you all know exactly what the 411 is once we know ourselves.
The open-source project used the mark under license from Deersoft. AFAIK Deersoft has always defended the mark when it thought the mark was being infringed.
FWIW, Deersoft claims ownership of the trademark through precisely the prior use argument you're talking about. Justin Mason, who originated the SpamAssassin open source project, assigned the trademark to Deersoft through me. As for NAI's intentions wrt the mark, I'm working on clarifying those now (just moved into NAI's offices yesterday and still don't know everyone's phone number/office location), and will let you all know what's going on as soon as I have definitive information.
The SpamAssasssin open-source project is licensed under the "same license as Perl itself" -- ie a dual PAL/GPL where the licensee can choose which license they wish to use. Deersoft used the open-source engine as the spam-identification component of (at time of acquisition) two products: an Outlook plugin, and an Exchange server plugin. There's a lot of windows/outlook/exchange-specific code in there which is covered under a commercial (not currently open-source) license, and these parts of the software are kept quite separate from the open-source bits.
We're currently floating between meeting after meeting after meeting with the Network Associates folks, trying to nail down timelines, roadmaps, etc. and will have more information hopefully soon.
Through the merger process, one of my main concerns was trying to ensure the preservation and independence of all aspects of the open source project. This was partially reflected in the press release announcing the acquisition, but I think that was written by a marketroid who doesn't necessarily understand what Open Source even means.
If you want to contact me directly, please email me at craig@deersoft.com or craig@hughes-family.org and I'll try and get answers to any questions you may have -- be warned though that NAI is a large company with the typical slowness associated with large organizations.
The whole point of the monkeys/typewriters/Hamlet thing is as you state -- an infinite number of monkeys typing would *definitely* create Hamlet. The link you point to misstates the issue as being "enough monkeys" and "enough time" -- both of which imply a large but finite number of monkeys and time. The entire point of infinity as a concept is that your rational ideas of what constitute sound integer arithmetic break down somewhat when you talk about infinity.
In fact, if you had an infinite number of monkeys typing, you'll in fact have an infinite number of them typing out Hamlet, as well as an infinite number of them typing out every other thing which has ever been written. An infinite number of them will also be typing out Hamlet exactly right, except they are all misspelling "Ophelia" as "Ophilia". Another infinite number of them are writing a treatise on inifinity, etc.
Infinity is not merely a really big number. It's special.
"In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy..."
No mention of citizens, etc. These are not rights of citizens, but constraints on prosecution which apply in *all* criminal prosecutions, and which apply to the accused whether the accused be American, foreign, a turtle, or whatever.
Since the US Government is violating Dimitry and Elcomsoft's rights, I can't imagine many judges not dismissing the case if the visas remain ungranted:
Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
If you use Outlook, and you like SpamAssassin, then you can use SpamAssassin Pro from Deersoft instead of SpamNet -- seems to work much better for most people in terms of false positive/false negative rates.
Paul is taking an interesting approach here, but he's not correct in saying that SpamAssassin doesn't use a statitstical approach. He has a bit of a point in noting that his system will generate a prediction probability which is more intuitive than SpamAssassin's scoring system in terms of determining how likely a message is to be spam, but there is also an attractive element to the simplified, non-math way that SA uses scores, which allows them to be more understandable to non-math people.
Seems like a number of the points which Paul makes in the article about spammers being defeatable, about the basic premise that they must get their message through in order to be successful, and that the war on spam is winnable are extensions from my interview with Salon a few months back, but his statistical approach fails to make use of one factor which I believe is critical (and which SpamAssassin attempts to exploit), which is that those commercial messages must convey a commercial message, in other words, they have to be a message, and have some sort of linguistic component which encourages the reader to do something. A purely statistical approach to spam filtering will lose the power of doing analysis of higher-order linguistic concepts.
SpamAssassin's approach is to use the universe's best known natural language processors (humans) to build rules which they believe can differentiate linguistic elements of spam vs nonspam messages, and then use the best optimization and statistical tools we have (currently only using decent tools, not the best tools) to determine how to score those rules against individual messages. The scoring system is very simplistic today, just being a simple sum of the scores of the various rules (though it's slightly nonlinear because of the properties of some of the rules, like the auto-whitelist). Future SpamAssassin development directions include extending the scoring system to be much more non-linear, including examining statistically the frequency of occurrence of combinations of rule triggers.
Automated rule-creation certainly has its place (for example, SpamAssassin's spam-phrase rule, or the auto-whitelist), but I truly believe that the ideal spam filtering system will always have to make the best use it can of human language processing skills. Using this combination of human/computer power, I believe that SpamAssassin can (and often does for many existing users) achieve better ROC performance than anything else.
Now we're getting at what they mean by "restrictions". But the original point I was making was in response to a comment about a person buying their own ad personally. And that you will remain free to do (and it probably won't even be very hard).
Slashdot Mirror
I worked at McAfee too back when it was Network Associates, after they bought Deersoft, which I founded. Deersoft you'll recall was the company that made and marketed commercial versions of SpamAssassin. I'd just like to point out that we, the Deersoft folks, had nothing whatever to do with this patent. It appears to have originated with the prior-to-Deersoft SpamKiller product (the windows desktop app).
Also, the open source SpamAssassin project is likely 100% in the clear on this patent, even if it is valid (which is a separate question), since Network Associates and all of its employees who worked on the open source project have filed CLAs or CCLAs with the Apache Foundation. Section 4 of each document is worth a read. Looks like anyone who licenses a copy of the SpamAssassin code from ASF gets the right to use Network Associate's patent. Though IANAL.
Because the As are from Phillidelphia, and the Giants from from New York, of course. They've only been across the bay bridge from each other for a relatively short period of time.
Let's take the upper estimate there, call it 50% of all email is spam.
Looking at my mailbox, average size of spam: 10k
Average size of ham: 32k
Most estimates put SMTP traffic at about 1% of all TCP packets on the internet, and TCP is about 90% of all traffic.
So, 50% * (10/32) * 1% * 90% comes to about one tenth of one percent of total traffic being spam. It's annoying as all heck, but it has nothing to do with any kind of congestion or significant use of network resources.
Worth reading through their T&Cs'. One major point is that they don't actually ever need to pay anyone, as long as they delete the logfiles which tell them how much they owe you. They have language in there which basically says "If the data gets deleted, either accidentally or on purpose, then we owe you nothing".
So on the one hand, I would like other people in my friends network to see amusing posts by "Darl McBride", so it would make sense to tag this user as a "friend". But on the other hand, it's "Darl McBride", so it would make sense to tag this user as a "foe"...
Well, hotmail *has* published records. Just that Caller-ID is more complicated and hard to query than SPF. Compare the SPF examples you gave above to the ungodly:
l .com</indirect><indirect>list2._ep.hotmail.com</in direct><indirect>list3._ep.hotmail.com</indirect>< /m></out></ep>"c om text "<ep xmlns='http://ms.net/1' testing='true'><out><m><r>209.240.192.0/19</r><r>6 5.52.0.0/14</r><r>131.107.0.0/16</r><r>157.54.0.0/ 15</r><r>157.56.0.0/14</r><r>157.60.0.0/16</r><r>1 67.220.0.0/16</r><r>204.79.135.0/24</r><r>204.79.1 88.0/24</r><r>204.79.252.0/" "24</r><r>207.46.0.0/16</r><r>199.2.137.0/24</r><r >199.103.90.0/23</r></m></out></ep>"h egore craig]$ IDN_DISABLE=1 host -t txt _ep.list2._ep.hotmail.comc om text "<ep xmlns='http://ms.net/1' testing='true'><out><m><r>204.182.144.0/24</r><r>2 04.255.244.0/23</r><r>206.138.168.0/21</r><r>64.4. 0.0/18</r><r>65.54.128.0/17</r><r>207.68.128.0/18< /r><r>207.68.192.0/20</r><r>207.82.250.0/23</r><r> 207.82.252.0/23</r><r>209.1" ".112.0/23</r><r>209.185.128.0/23</r><r>209.185.13 0.0/23</r><r>209.185.240.0/22</r></m></out></ep>" c om text "<ep xmlns='http://ms.net/1' testing='true'><out><m><r>216.32.180.0/22</r><r>21 6.32.240.0/22</r><r>216.33.148.0/22</r><r>216.33.1 51.0/24</r><r>216.33.236.0/22</r><r>216.33.240.0/2 2</r><r>216.200.206.0/24</r><r>204.95.96.0/20</r>< r>65.59.232.0/23</r><r>65.5" "9.234.0/24</r><r>209.1.15.0/24</r><r>64.41.193.0/ 24</r><r>216.34.51.0/24</r></m></out></ep>"
[craig@belphegore craig]$ IDN_DISABLE=1 host -t txt _ep.hotmail.com
_ep.hotmail.com text "<ep xmlns='http://ms.net/1' testing='true'><out><m><indirect>list1._ep.hotmai
[craig@belphegore craig]$ IDN_DISABLE=1 host -t txt _ep.list1._ep.hotmail.com
_ep.list1._ep.hotmail.
[craig@belp
_ep.list2._ep.hotmail.
[craig@belphegore craig]$ IDN_DISABLE=1 host -t txt _ep.list3._ep.hotmail.com
_ep.list3._ep.hotmail.
It' s not *just* that it's XML instead of more concise readable text, though that certainly is fucking idiotic.
I tried porting a number from Sprint to Cingular, and they came back and said "not possible", which is bullshit. I decided to just forget that, and port my landline number to the new phone instead, from SBC (which is the parent of Cingular). They said "not possible". I've filed FCC complaints against both Sprint and SBC, and have been hounding SBC customer support for the last 6 days to get this resolved. The long and short of it is, there's a big fine for them to pay if they're not following the FCC mandate, and there's a very easy online way to file complaints with the FCC. Who knows how long it takes for the FCC to actually process the complaints, but I figure it can't hurt the later-adopters for us early-adopters to give the telcos a bureaucratic kick in the ass.
Simple solution: just back-date the invoice, and make sure the accounting system shows that it's been on file for months but hasn't yet been paid. Then call up the accounts payable department, and demand to know why the invoice *still* hasn't been approved for payment after 300 days.
I read through the section on transfers on the mailer I got the other day, and Microsoft appears in their settlement to have thought of exactly this scenario. Vouchers can be transfered once only, to a person or entity that will use the purchased items themselves, and the maximum that any individual or organization can redeem is $10,000. You may use multiple vouchers towards an individual purchase though. But this means that effectively the FSF can only get $10,000 of donated vouchers, anything more than that will be wasted. But, the settlement agreement is not yet final -- this seems like exactly the kind of detail that the judge would like to hear about before signing off on the final decision. It should be entirely legitimate for individuals to be able to contribute their vouchers to a not-for-profit; I can understand why they don't want to have people selling the vouchers, but donation ought to be legit. I would encourage any californians to write to the judge indicating that they feel this aspect of the settlement should be changed.
The idea would likely be to have the plugin only kick in for either certain mime types, or content above a certain size, at least for today. Yes, currently you need to have a bittorrent client installed, or integrated into your browser, but the content is at least available in a slashdot-like situation. I agree that it's likely HTML or small image files will never usefully be conveyed by this mechanism, but larger files, or any content that's rendered inline in a page would benefit.
The way to go here is to make serving content through bittorrent easier. Ideally, as easy as publishing a resource on a web server (that is, copy a file into a directory and figure out what the URL is). This is the goal of the mod_torrent project. We're building an apache plugin on top of libtorrent which automatically creates torrents in response to http requests, and then begins serving them, in response to conditions on the apache server. Load is low? Fine, service with good-old HTTP the normal way. Load is high? Instead of a direct HTTP download, instead have the HTTP GET respond with an application/torrent file, which then launches bt to grab the content (all automatic). Goodbye slashdot effect.
However, if the 3 lines of code are really the only logical way to implement something, and that feature is necessary to the product (but not patented), then the 3 lines of code could be viewed as being legitimately copiable, since the product feature is a scene-a-faire.
SpamAssassin has *great* brand name recognition. Yes, it is heavily amongst slashdot-like crowd, but it's also been featured a lot in the press, plus there are many /.ers who run open-source SA on their boxes at home, but would just love an Outlook/Exchange version to purchase for use at the office where Mr PHB wants something which runs on Windows, or where they don't have the time/personel to install/tweak/maintain/update the open source version.
Deersoft's aim was to provide nicely packaged, GUI-ized point-and-click products for the Windows market, driven by the same high-precision engine that's available to the open-source enlightened through spamassassin.org
Craig Hughes
They have acquired rights to the trademark, those parts of the open source code written by Justin or me, and rights too all of Deersoft's proprietary stuff. Justin and I have also entered into employment agreements with NAI to continue there as employees following the merger.
Since we haven't been at NAI very long yet, many decisions have yet to be made about roadmap, timelines, Justin and my level of continuing involvement in the open source project, etc., but all signs so far indicate the likelihood that NAI is planning to do the right thing, and continue Deersoft's license of the mark to the open source project, as well as allowing Justin and me to continue working on the project, while also working on NAI stuff which is not open source (just like we both were doing at Deersoft).
However NAI ends up using what they've acquired, you be bet they'll be very likely to invest in publicizing (and providing paid support for) whatever products they built based on the technologies.
Of course, all decisions are just my perceptions so far. I'm still chasing around the building (and on the phone to those people who aren't physically in this building) to nail down all the answers. Large companies move slowly though, so final confirmation on all this will likely take some time. I'll keep everyone posted as best as I can.
Craig Hughes
All negotiations with NAI during the merger, and all evidence I've seen or heard since arriving at NAI's offices to start work yesterday, are that both Justin and I will still be working on the OS stuff in the same way we were for the last months while we were employed at Deersoft. I haven't heard the official word confirmed from the right people definitively yet, but that is my expectation at this point. Justin and I will let you all know exactly what the 411 is once we know ourselves.
Craig Hughes
The open-source project used the mark under license from Deersoft. AFAIK Deersoft has always defended the mark when it thought the mark was being infringed.
Craig Hughes
FWIW, Deersoft claims ownership of the trademark through precisely the prior use argument you're talking about. Justin Mason, who originated the SpamAssassin open source project, assigned the trademark to Deersoft through me. As for NAI's intentions wrt the mark, I'm working on clarifying those now (just moved into NAI's offices yesterday and still don't know everyone's phone number/office location), and will let you all know what's going on as soon as I have definitive information.
Craig Hughes
The SpamAssasssin open-source project is licensed under the "same license as Perl itself" -- ie a dual PAL/GPL where the licensee can choose which license they wish to use. Deersoft used the open-source engine as the spam-identification component of (at time of acquisition) two products: an Outlook plugin, and an Exchange server plugin. There's a lot of windows/outlook/exchange-specific code in there which is covered under a commercial (not currently open-source) license, and these parts of the software are kept quite separate from the open-source bits.
We're currently floating between meeting after meeting after meeting with the Network Associates folks, trying to nail down timelines, roadmaps, etc. and will have more information hopefully soon.
Through the merger process, one of my main concerns was trying to ensure the preservation and independence of all aspects of the open source project. This was partially reflected in the press release announcing the acquisition, but I think that was written by a marketroid who doesn't necessarily understand what Open Source even means.
If you want to contact me directly, please email me at craig@deersoft.com or craig@hughes-family.org and I'll try and get answers to any questions you may have -- be warned though that NAI is a large company with the typical slowness associated with large organizations.
Craig Hughes
The whole point of the monkeys/typewriters/Hamlet thing is as you state -- an infinite number of monkeys typing would *definitely* create Hamlet. The link you point to misstates the issue as being "enough monkeys" and "enough time" -- both of which imply a large but finite number of monkeys and time. The entire point of infinity as a concept is that your rational ideas of what constitute sound integer arithmetic break down somewhat when you talk about infinity.
In fact, if you had an infinite number of monkeys typing, you'll in fact have an infinite number of them typing out Hamlet, as well as an infinite number of them typing out every other thing which has ever been written. An infinite number of them will also be typing out Hamlet exactly right, except they are all misspelling "Ophelia" as "Ophilia". Another infinite number of them are writing a treatise on inifinity, etc.
Infinity is not merely a really big number. It's special.
Read it again guys:
"In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy..."
No mention of citizens, etc. These are not rights of citizens, but constraints on prosecution which apply in *all* criminal prosecutions, and which apply to the accused whether the accused be American, foreign, a turtle, or whatever.
Since the US Government is violating Dimitry and Elcomsoft's rights, I can't imagine many judges not dismissing the case if the visas remain ungranted:
Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
If you use Outlook, and you like SpamAssassin, then you can use SpamAssassin Pro from Deersoft instead of SpamNet -- seems to work much better for most people in terms of false positive/false negative rates.
Paul is taking an interesting approach here, but he's not correct in saying that SpamAssassin doesn't use a statitstical approach. He has a bit of a point in noting that his system will generate a prediction probability which is more intuitive than SpamAssassin's scoring system in terms of determining how likely a message is to be spam, but there is also an attractive element to the simplified, non-math way that SA uses scores, which allows them to be more understandable to non-math people.
Seems like a number of the points which Paul makes in the article about spammers being defeatable, about the basic premise that they must get their message through in order to be successful, and that the war on spam is winnable are extensions from my interview with Salon a few months back, but his statistical approach fails to make use of one factor which I believe is critical (and which SpamAssassin attempts to exploit), which is that those commercial messages must convey a commercial message, in other words, they have to be a message, and have some sort of linguistic component which encourages the reader to do something. A purely statistical approach to spam filtering will lose the power of doing analysis of higher-order linguistic concepts.
SpamAssassin's approach is to use the universe's best known natural language processors (humans) to build rules which they believe can differentiate linguistic elements of spam vs nonspam messages, and then use the best optimization and statistical tools we have (currently only using decent tools, not the best tools) to determine how to score those rules against individual messages. The scoring system is very simplistic today, just being a simple sum of the scores of the various rules (though it's slightly nonlinear because of the properties of some of the rules, like the auto-whitelist). Future SpamAssassin development directions include extending the scoring system to be much more non-linear, including examining statistically the frequency of occurrence of combinations of rule triggers.
Automated rule-creation certainly has its place (for example, SpamAssassin's spam-phrase rule, or the auto-whitelist), but I truly believe that the ideal spam filtering system will always have to make the best use it can of human language processing skills. Using this combination of human/computer power, I believe that SpamAssassin can (and often does for many existing users) achieve better ROC performance than anything else.
Now we're getting at what they mean by "restrictions". But the original point I was making was in response to a comment about a person buying their own ad personally. And that you will remain free to do (and it probably won't even be very hard).