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[A comment from elsewhere in response to Obama's statement that we should shift to Afghanistan.]

Well, I agree Obama should have rejected the label "surge" and he should have emphasized the international aspects--but he was speaking the ugly truth. Unless there are more troops deployed in Afghanistan and unless the country is meaningfully rebuilt, it is going to go back to the way it was. I'd say it could wind up worse, but I'm not sure that's possible--though I'm sure it could cause much larger international problems in the future. There really is a broad international consensus that Afghanistan needs to be fixed, and agreement that it is possible but difficult. However the Taliban have very deep roots. Obama understands the mess.

I'm not defending the Taliban, but I actually think there was a time when it might have been possible to disentangle them from Al Qaeda and deal with the two problems separately. The Taliban was originally a local band of religious lunatics with basically local interests and aspirations, and there are plenty of local nuisances that the world manages to tolerate. However, now that they are completely linked to Al Qaeda, the international threat must be dealt with. The rest of the world is trying, but they just don't have that much force to try with.

Meanwhile, back in the incredible mess that the Dick Cheney has made of Iraq, our troops cannot put Humpty Dumpty back together again. The rest of the world accepts that we've created a new little Iran. They don't particularly like that, but they didn't like Saddam much either, even before the puppet got uppity. The rest of the world accepts that Iran has won, but they've been able to deal with Iran in the past, and think that they can deal with Iraq in the future as a kind of junior Iran. Many countries would also be willing to accept the three-way division of the country, with the notable exception of Turkey. (By the way, I think that's the real reason the why many relatively rational Iranians want nuclear weapons. I still rate the Turks as militarily stronger than Iran, but Iranian nuclear weapons would at least help counteract that. Certainly a very strong deterrence against a Turkish invasion.)

I don't think America has any real influence in Iraq now, and it doesn't matter how many troops we keep there. We are just acting as an irritant while the various Iraqi factions squabble about how much autonomy they can have from Iran. Fortunately, there is agreement among most Iraqis that they also don't like Al Qaeda interference any more than they like American interference. It might be expensive to keep the Sunni's firmly against Al Qaeda--and we had better start paying those bribes more reliably--but we get the Shia hatred of Al Qaeda for free.

Actually,the only path to a greater loss in Iraq would be if we somehow pushed the Shia into supporting Al Qaeda, or even one of the major Shia factions. I want to believe that is fundamentally impossible, but George Dubya Bush has abundantly shown that you should never say any miserable failure is too impossible for him. Also, it is rather frightening that Al Qaeda understands the Shia much better than we do, so it is possible they could also change their pitch to them.

Negative mods let lazy cowards censor opinions and stifle discussions. Write well and disappear. Slashdot sickness.

(recording the demise of another sig)

Slashdot as a dating service? Well, if there are many female readers, they are certainly doing a good job of hiding themselves.

However, my speculation on the general topic is that most women are holding out for Mr Wonderful, whereas most men are only Mr Adequate. Many of the women hold out too long and wind up as old maids, even though they'd be happier married, even to Mr Adequate. Why do they make the mistake? Because the women are making false inferences about the availability of Mr Wonderful. Many women base their sampling on movies and television, where the large majority of 'featured' men are Mr Wonderful. How much camera time does Mr Adequate get?

Based on my real world sampling, I would say that there are very few men who actually qualify as Mr Wonderful, and they are all married at a young age. There is a much larger group of men who are skilled at pretending to be Mr Wonderful. Some of them are serial polygamists and the others are just pure cads.

If I'm so smart about these things, why didn't I ever get married? Simple. I'm just Mr Adequate and stupidly honest about it. Or as Popeye put it, "I yam what I yam, and that's all what I yam."

Oh yes, I should note that there's a statistical distortion working against me, too. The fake Mr Wonderfuls "use up" a lot of women. I don't blame them for being once bitten, twice shy--but it makes me think we'd have a very different and less frustrating world if the gender ratio was heavily in favor of the women...

How to make Gmail the spam target of absolute last resort.

The goal of this suggestion is to intelligently leverage and focus Google's expertise and credibility against the spammers and their accomplices. But where will the intelligence come from? From me, from you, from *ANYONE* who has a Gmail account and who wants to help oppose the annoying evil that is spam. Aggressively implemented, it could make Gmail into Spammer Heck--maybe to the point where only a fool would send spam to Gmail. (Yeah, there are plenty of fool spammers--but at least we'd get the laughs without the serious spammers.) Less spam = more value in Gmail.

So do you want to fight against spam? You, too, could become a WSF (wannabee spam fighter).

SpamSlam is my 'working draft' label. The idea is roughly based on other anti-spam systems--but with more smarts. Almost all email systems include one level of feedback in a Spam/NotSpam button. (For relative brevity and because it simplifies the draft implementation, I'm focusing on Web-based email here.) Think of SpamSlam as a report-spam-button on steroids. SpamSlam would report the spam, but also do much more. Essentially this Gmail feature would do some of the automatic analysis that any spam fighter has to do, get some intelligent feedback, and hopefully be able to act immediately against the spammer. Speed of action is actually crucial--cutting off the spammers' income is a key goal of this proposal.

Here is an approach to implementing it:

Clicking on SpamSlam would first trigger a low-cost automatic analysis of the email, including the headers. Let's call this Pass 0. Basically this is just using regular expressions to find things like email addresses, URLs, and phone numbers. The results would be used to generate a Pass 0 webform with comments and options (and explanations and links). This pass should also look for obfuscation and ask the wannabe spam fighter (WSF) to help break the spammers' attempts to evade the spam filters. (This is leveraging the spam's features against the spam--if a human can't figure out the spam, then the human can't send money to the spammer.) In many cases, this Pass 0 analysis may be able to suggest answers. If something like "drop@dead.com" appears in the header, then the WSF should just click the option 'fake email'. Perhaps the WSF would only need to click a check box to confirm that "V/1/A/6/R/A" is a drug and categorize the spam. Other times the WSF can actually type in the answer to the spammer's quasi-CAPTCHA, and then the SpamSlam function can do something. At the bottom of the 'exploded email' in Pass 0, there will be the usual submit button.

After the WSF submits that Pass 0 form, more analysis can begin. The data is no longer raw, but partly analyzed, and the system can start checking domains, registrars, relays, fancier types of header forgery, MX records, categories of crime, email routings, and even things like countries hosting the spammer. This kind of analysis will probably take a bit of time, but a new Pass 1 form will be prepared for the WSF to consider. Basically, this would mostly be a confirmation step for the obvious counteractions. That's stuff like complaining to identified senders and webhosts, but also things like reporting open relays and spambots. It also needs more flexibility and 'other' options in the responses at this point--we all know the spammers are constantly going to try to devise new tactics. Again there will be a submit option at the bottom for this Pass 1 form.

That will probably cover most of the responses, but in some cases there may still be a need for a Pass 2 form. I imagine that would be a kind of escalation system, mostly to address new forms of spam. There is no closure on spam, there will always be new kinds of spam, and the responses to spam need to be open and flexible, too--but fast. The spammer is trying to open millions of little windows of economic opportunity--and in an ideal world we should slam all of them before a nickel gets through.

Beyond that? I think Gmail should also rate the WSFs on their spam-fighting skills. Some people are going to be much better at fighting spam. I admit that I want to earn a "Spam Fighter First Class" merit badge. Come to think of it, I also want the system to keep records of the spam I've slammed and how it was dealt with. Maybe they'd even spot cases of lawsuits against "my" spammers? Gosh, I'd love to join in and personally help put a spammer in jail. I know we're supposed to hate the spam, not the spammers--but I confess. I hate the spammers, too.

An earlier version of this idea (SuperReport) had a somewhat different focus and more details, especially for the Pass 0 webform--but obviously none of this is set in stone. If you agree with these ideas--or have some better ones, I suggest you try to call them to Google's attention. Actually, in my pursuit of this idea, I have been surprised to encounter a lot of anti-Google sentiment--though not surprised that much of the ill will was spam-related. However, I think Google is still an innovative and responsive company--and they claim they want to fight evil, too. Will they try harder to fight spam if many people like you and I write to them? I hope so, but it doesn't really matter where ideas come from or who gets credit--what matters is annoying the spammers more than they annoy us.

By the way, thanks to the people who offered thoughtful comments on the earlier draft. I'd like to thank you more personally, but you basically got lost in the flood of hopeless fools and sock puppets. That's a separate SNR problem.

As SMTP exists, we can never eliminate spam or spammers--but we can give them heck. If this suggestion is aggressively implemented, then spam sent to Gmail would almost immediately result in a flood of highly focused and thoughtful complaints against the spammer--before the spammer can get *ANY* money from the spam. Hit the spammer in his wallet *BEFORE* he can pocket anything.

The summary: Do you hate spam? Do you want to help fight the spammers? Yes, we can. If Gmail was the spam target of last choice, then it should be our email service of first choice!

Old sig: The truth alone will not make you free, but it's a prerequisite.
Only by knowing the truth can you choose freedom.

We don't need no stinking bio! Seriously, mine is too confused for this possibly mixed company. Been there, done that, wound up in Japan? Dumbest hobby was probably the pilot's license. Almost all of the "real" stuff involves computers, however: programming, sales, technical editing, whatever.

Old sig: The thoughtful we write at once, but insightful takes a little longer... Too bad the moderators have already left.

Longhorn? But a steer has no balls! It takes REAL balls to claim Microsoft software "just works"! The modern BIG lie.

The thoughtful we write at once, but insightful takes a little longer... Too bad the moderators have already left.

Everyone's crazy save thee and I, and sometimes I wonder about thee.(Always a metamod, never a moderator (but once).

Microsoft presumes I am guilty of "non-registered" Windows after they rammed it down my throat! I refuse to REregister!

Everyone's crazy save thee and I, and sometimes I wonder about thee. OTOH, Microsoft is crazy, greedy, monopolistic,...

Insight here? Why would anyone put so much effort into Slashdot? The anonymous and elitist mod system is borken (sic).