I'd say that there's little difference between my saying that SA 2.44 is not as good as commercial products without noting that it's an out of date version and saying that I'm a poor journalist because you disagree with my methods and findings, except that my statements were not made against a person, but against a product. Suggesting that I'm a liar as well does not constitute a rational argument. Along with the previous nasty remarks copied below, it's clear that any writer who says anything that John Parken disagrees with is a clueless idiot, a poor journalist, a liar and incompetent. It must be nice to be perfect and omniscient.
Most of the members of this group have been quite polite, even if they disagreed with me, but this seems extreme to me.
logan
I have read your recent article about Spam Filtering products. You are either strongly biased in favor of commercial products, hopelessly opposed to Open Source, or totally clueless.
Some of your more egregious errors include your statement that
"SpamAssassin represents an older, first-generation anti-spam solution, and its age showed in my tests."
The current version of SA is 2.60. To review a much older version, without even checking to see if a newer version was available, is like reviewing Word97 and then claiming in 2003 that Word "represents an older, first-generation . . .solution> In other words, your statement might be technically true but is true only because you reviewed a long-outdated version and useless to your readers because your article is comparing fresh oranges with stale apples. Not a work of which any author should be proud.
Another issue that you bungled badly is your claim that
"The whitelist is not difficult to add to, but there is no mechanism for end-users to add to the whitelist or to automatically notify the administrator to add senders. Filtering rules are relatively basic, and although there is a Bayesian filter available, it is not part of the distribution -- and I wasn't able to get it working for this review.
Whitelists are in fact supported and easily maintained. You failed to appreciate, apparently, that SA is configured both on a server-wide and an individual user basis.
I am afraid that I have lost any respect for your professionalism as a journalist and lost much of my respect for InfoWorld.
/s/ John Parken
-----Original Message-----
From: John Parken [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2003 8:53 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Logan G. Harbaugh
Subject: RE: [SAtalk] Re: An Open Letter to the SA-talk forum
Well, it's very easy to blame the copy editor, especially an un-named one
that can't defend herself.
Seems awfully convenient, too, given that there is really no point in using
SA for the purpose which Logan claims (and which the copy editor supposedly
trimmed out of the article). When you stop to think about it, what
conceivable purpose would be rationally served by comparing an out-of-date
open source product with several current commercial packages for the purpose
of showing the tremendous growth in the industry in the intervening time?
Even for that very strange purpose, Logan's work would clearly be
pointlessly comparing apples with oranges. Any discrepancy between current
commercial packages and an obsolete open source package might be either (1)
because of the time difference and change in state-of-the-art or (2) open
source versus commercial. Even accepting his explanation, his work product
seems fatally flawed.
Personally, I think that Logan's explanation for his poor journalistic
effort is just as weak as his initial work product after whatever effect his
copy editor may have had on it.
/s/ John Parken
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:spamassassin-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Justin Mason
> Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2003 10:32 PM
> To: Dan Wilder; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Logan Harbaugh
> Subject: Re: [SAtalk] Re: An Open Letter to the SA-talk forum
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
>
> Dan Wilder writes:
> >On Tue, Nov 25, 2003 at 06:04:13PM -0600, Scott A Crosby wrote:
> >> To everyone here, give the guy a break.
> >
> >Hear, hear!
> >
> >It's all too easy to make a mistake in print. Give Logan
> >some slack for being professional enough to step forward
> >and admit it. And some extra points for being willing to
> >join the fray that ensued. A lesser soul would just run
> >away and hide.
>
> Yeah, agreed! Posting to the list was a good (and, TBH, brave) thing to
> do.
>
> PS: And "boo" to the copy editor who trimmed that key line...
>
> - --j.
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux)
> Comment: Exmh CVS
>
> iD8DBQE/xB6dQTcbUG5Y7woRAupxAKCLI7TB353RlDmAUPu/wr0SMLSb9gCgtSgK
> dLfHRt4R4S+x2U1XofoxY0s=
> =TR0N
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------
> This SF.net email is sponsored by: SF.net Giveback Program.
> Does SourceForge.net help you be more productive? Does it
> help you create better code? SHARE THE LOVE, and help us help
> YOU! Click Here: http://sourceforge.net/donate/
> _______________________________________________
> Spamassassin-talk mailing list
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/spamassassin-talk
