Chris is a fine guy and he has this unique talent: he writes things that make me want to comment. That’s how I got involved with Lockergnome in the first place. I was writing so many comments that Chris figured he might as well capitalize on it.
So here are some somments about his latest posting in Windows Fanatics. One or two might be valuable to some of you and some may spark others to comment. We’ll see.
First off, I’m not sure I agree with Chris that spam filters are useless. In fact, I have to heartily disagree. Do I consider them perfet? No way, but for what they try to do, they’re pretty darn useful. I’ve found that a dual-layer approach is actually about as good as you can get. Now, right up front I’m going to say that this involves liking Microsoft Outlook 2003 (in this respect) so that Chris can stop reading. I do use it on a daily basis and it forms the local part of my spam defense. I leave it set on High, which can result in a false positive or two, but which filters out almost all of the spam. In the past year-plus, I’ve had only 5 pieces of spam sneak through as false negatives. I think that’s pretty darn good. Especially considering the 200 or so e-mails I get every day.
What makes my setup really useful, though, is the remote end of the anti-spam machine. I own some domains. I suspect from the stats that my wife and her friend across town are the only ones who don’t own one or more. It’s something I have to do, but the big plus is that it comes with e-mail boxes that can be protected by the host’s spam filter. So, everything that my host’s filter thinks is spam gets tagged with a header that says “******SPAM*****” :). And I simply set Outlook’s filters to send anything tagged like that to my local spam folder for review about once a week. And there you have it. The only annoyance is that Microsoft’s monthly filter updates mean retraining the filters for a couple of days.
On to other matters. I want to wish Chris and Ponzi all the best. Starting a ‘new’ life together is tough enough without being in the online spotlight as they are. Remember, Chris my friend, that packing is part anxiety and all work. Unpacking is an adventure! You get to see if your tags and labels are really what’s in the box. And no-one in their right mind should move this near Christmas!
That’s enough for today (almost!)
One final note – keep your eyes online. In case Santa needs a few hints, don’t put yourself above printing out certain ads, leaving them in places your significant other can find them. Remember, not every woman is as tech-savvy as Ponzi!