Quick Note to Charles Stross
Posted on February 11, 2008 Posted by John Scalzi 15 Comments
Dear Charlie:
Your new spam service may be mighty, but it just bounced back the reply e-mail I sent you as spam (specifially, it bounced it back with this technical notation: “PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 16): 552 spam”). Please ask them to let me in. I promise not to sell you any V1@gra.
Maybe Charlie is mad at you. I think you should wrestle him. You can wear the tiara until you get in the ring. Lets get ready to ruuuuumble!
Yeah, not so much.
I was having similar problems emailing Charlie last week. I suspect his hand-maintained email system takes a kind of austere and rigorous attitude to the official RFC-compliant specs of valid email which is increasingly uncommon on our corrupt and fallen Internet.
This would be entirely like Charlie, which is of course part of why we love him.
Maybe no spam… but all that bacon could have set off a general pork detector.
Yay, I have something in common with PNH and John Scalzi!
I sent a note to postmaster@, um, mail-scanning.whatever it was. They responded fairly promptly and whitelisted my system until they could figure out why the filter tagged everything I sent as spam.
Unless Charlie has extremely high expections for his spam filter, I don’t see a need for him to wrestle with a custom system. I use a Bayesian filter as a plug-in to my e-mail software that works quite well – IMO.
I average about 500 e-mails a day, of which about 70 percent are spam, and the filter misses less than one-tenth of one percent of the spam. The false positives amount to perhaps one message per month, if that, and all come from postings by new members on one of the discussion forums that I follow.
Admittedly, my e-mail program is rather obscure software from Roumania rather than a “name” program, but my point is that it is commercially available software sold at a very reasonable price – as is the spam plug-in – and there should be no need to attempt to re-invent the wheel. If Charlie has a need to feel special, he could console himself with the thought that he would be using software that is named “The Bat!”. (As far as I know, none of the programmers that have created this software is named “Vlad”.) :-)
With best wishes,
– Tom –
Would you sell me some \/1@gr@?
No.
Friendly tip: I would suggest that people wishing to recommend a spam solution to Mr. Stross first read his blog where he discusses what he’s used and also note that he is operating a server-wide solution, not merely a filter in his email client. He also uses a couple of different operating systems, so unless the commercial client you are recommending likes penguins, it may be a poor choice.
Hey, you already installed Linux on your PC, now you have to take the next step and start using Pine.
I’m sure Charlie will get any email you send using Pine.
Heh heh heh.
Pffft Pine. Elm FTW!
PERM_FAILURE: BLOG POST Error (state Ohio): 666 john spamzi”).
Failed one provider: V1@gra! Make P3n!s larger – Add length, thickness and girth to your manh00d in just a few short weeks.
Based on this post I’ve just bought a new Charlie Stross book off Amazon… yes, strange criteria I know, but the world works in strange ways.
Pffft Pine. Elm FTW!
Ahem. I am now contractually obligated to quote from the Mutt documentation: “All mail clients suck. This one just sucks less.” Now run back home to yer mammies.
Ahhh, it’s like Usenet was never eclipsed.
Whoops! The increasing electric shocks are reminding me that this is probably off-topic. But what would be on-topic? Oh, wait:
Maybe Charlie is mad at you. I think you should wrestle him. You can wear the tiara until you get in the ring. Lets get ready to ruuuuumble!
If this can be set up for Boskone, I’m totally there. (No, not just partially. See, e.g., Paul Melko.)
John, promise him free money. With lots of ‘!’, so he’ll know you’re serious :)
I’ve heard Nigerian money is the best; mention that. It’s also longer and bigger and harder than other free money (!!!!!!!!!!!!).