hashcash.el questions and issues

hashcash.el questions and issues

[Ted Zlatanov]

Paul,

1) is hashcash.el OK to be used within spam.el?  I was thinking of
   just a spam-use-hashcash variable as a check for incoming mail.

2) The definition of hashcash-accept-resources:

(defcustom hashcash-accept-resources `((,(user-mail-address) nil)) ...

does not work for me, since there's no function user-mail-address
(it's a variable).  I'm not sure if this was meant:

(defcustom hashcash-accept-resources `((,(message-user-mail-address) nil)) ...

or this:

(defcustom hashcash-accept-resources `((,user-mail-address nil)) ...

Also, executable-find might be better than hardcoding the location of
the hashcash executable, so maybe this:

(defcustom hashcash "/usr/local/bin/hashcash" ...

could be replaced with this:

;; autoload executable-find
(eval-and-compile
  ;; executable-find is not autoloaded in Emacs 20
  (autoload 'executable-find "executable"))

(defcustom hashcash-path (executable-find "hashcash") ...

Note the renaming of the variable, just "hashcash" is a little
counter-intuitive.

3) I'm not sure I understand how hashcash.el uses resource - they
   don't seem to be used at all when generating the hashcash cookie.

I didn't write a patch for (2) because I'm not sure if my way is
necessarily better :) Also, I cc-ed the ding list in case anyone had
comments.

FWIW, I think hashcash is our best shot at marking ham (non-spam) as
positively ham without whitelists.  Nothing beats cold, hard CPU cash.

Thanks
Ted

Mail-Followup-To in newsgroups (was: hashcash.el questions and issues)

[Jesper Harder]

Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:

> Paul,
> [..] Also, I cc-ed the ding list in case anyone had comments.

OK, so you sent the message as:

,----
| To: mycroft@actrix.gen.nz
| Cc: ding@gnus.org
| Mail-Followup-To: mycroft@actrix.gen.nz, ding@gnus.org
`----

I read ding as a newsgroup from news.gnus.org.  When I followup, Gnus
ignores the MFT, and sends the reply to just the newsgroup gnus.ding.

This is probably not the right thing.  What should it do about MFT in a
newsgroup?

Re: Mail-Followup-To in newsgroups

[Andreas Fuchs]

Today, Jesper Harder <harder@myrealbox.com> wrote:
> I read ding as a newsgroup from news.gnus.org.  When I followup, Gnus
> ignores the MFT, and sends the reply to just the newsgroup gnus.ding.
> 
> This is probably not the right thing.  What should it do about MFT in
> a newsgroup?

Nothing, imho. MFT pertains to mail only, as the name suggests. Silly
header, that. If only mutt and other inferior mailers grokked
Mail-Copies-To.

-- 
Andreas Fuchs, <asf@acm.org>, asf@jabber.at, antifuchs
irc.freenode.net's #emacs - online emacs advice from IRC addicts

Re: Mail-Followup-To in newsgroups

[Jesper Harder]

Andreas Fuchs <asf@void.at> writes:

> Today, Jesper Harder <harder@myrealbox.com> wrote:
>> I read ding as a newsgroup from news.gnus.org.  When I followup, Gnus
>> ignores the MFT, and sends the reply to just the newsgroup gnus.ding.
>> 
>> This is probably not the right thing.  What should it do about MFT in
>> a newsgroup?
>
> Nothing, imho. MFT pertains to mail only, as the name suggests.

But that solve doesn't solve the problem.  Some people read a list as
mail and some as a newsgroup -- so you can't say for sure if an article
is really mail or news.

Re: Mail-Followup-To in newsgroups

[Per Abrahamsen]

Jesper Harder <harder@myrealbox.com> writes:

> Andreas Fuchs <asf@void.at> writes:
>
>> Today, Jesper Harder <harder@myrealbox.com> wrote:
>>> I read ding as a newsgroup from news.gnus.org.  When I followup, Gnus
>>> ignores the MFT, and sends the reply to just the newsgroup gnus.ding.
>>> 
>>> This is probably not the right thing.  What should it do about MFT in
>>> a newsgroup?
>>
>> Nothing, imho. MFT pertains to mail only, as the name suggests.
>
> But that solve doesn't solve the problem.  Some people read a list as
> mail and some as a newsgroup -- so you can't say for sure if an article
> is really mail or news.

GMANE should probably convert MFT to at real FT if the content point
to lists on GMANE and those list are different from the lists it was
posted to.

I.e. it is gateway problem, not a Gnus problem.

Which means the Gnus author can relax and leave the problem to the
GMANE author.

Re: hashcash.el questions and issues

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Thu, 06 Mar 2003, mycroft@actrix.gen.nz wrote:
> On Wed, 05 Mar 2003 11:32:43 -0500, Ted Zlatanov wrote:
> 
>>> The latest revision is at
>>> http://users.actrix.co.nz/mycroft/hashcash.el
> 
>> Is someone assigned to keeping this up-to-date in the Gnus contrib
>> directory?  If not I can do it.  I''ll update it to the latest
>> version when we've worked out the issues (see below).
> 
> Thanks.

I updated gnus/contrib/hashcash.el from your website.  Simon Joseffson
had made some changes in the Gnus CVS, and I think you had already
incorporated those into your code.

I also added spam-use-hashcash to spam.el, but it needs to have
hashcash.el in the load path.  If hashcash.el is not found, the check
is nil.

Ted

Re: Mail-Followup-To in newsgroups

[Kai Großjohann]

Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk> writes:

> Which means the Gnus author can relax and leave the problem to the
> GMANE author.

I'm afraid there might be some finger-pointing involved.  The GMANE
author has previously expressed reluctance at implementing this...

It's not nice when people point fingers at each other.  Always a bad
experience.
-- 
A preposition is not a good thing to end a sentence with.

Re: Mail-Followup-To in newsgroups

[Andreas Fuchs]

Today, Jesper Harder <harder@myrealbox.com> wrote:
>> Nothing, imho. MFT pertains to mail only, as the name suggests.
> 
> But that solve doesn't solve the problem.  Some people read a list as
> mail and some as a newsgroup -- so you can't say for sure if an
> article is really mail or news.

Right. Gnus can't, because it knows where the message will be posted to
but not where it will end up, and gmane can't reliably do it because it
doesn't know the referenced article (and can surely be made to severely
screw up if it tries to do this).

Also, a Mail-Followup-To -> Followup-To conversion is not so easy, as
Followup-To can only be a list of newsgroups or the literal "poster",
plus a Reply-To header which Shall Not Be Mangled.

Tough problem, I'd guess we reduce it to the Incompleteness Theorem and
leave it at that (-;

-- 
Andreas Fuchs, <asf@acm.org>, asf@jabber.at, antifuchs
irc.freenode.net's #emacs - online emacs advice from IRC addicts

Re: Mail-Followup-To in newsgroups

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk> writes:

> Which means the Gnus author can relax and leave the problem to the
> GMANE author.

Thanks!  A lot!

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen