6 ms·

Are you saying that gmail are the only ones who know how to run a mail server?

ivanca 10y ago
You were claiming "they could just as well package into, say, an install CD image" which is likely not going to happen, so he was just giving an example. The perfect spam filter Gmail has its probably based on data and ML analysis, not a simple software you can put on a CD and install on some little server; so even if someone who works there wanted to help you they probably can't do it.
- stonogo 10y ago
  GMail's "perfect spam filter" is so bad that it is the reason my institution moved away from Google services. It's also the main reason so many people consider it 'impossible' to host your own email. It's anything but perfect. It's a black box, with no user-serviceable parts inside. Completely useless for any organization with needs that deviate from Joe User.
  - newjersey 10y ago
    How would you implement a spam filter? You can sort of turn off spam filtering on incoming emails but I don't most people or organizations would want that. > Completely useless for any organization with needs that deviate from Joe User. Maybe but being slightly over aggressive means a world in terms of user happiness. Think about email before Gmail. How much junk did you see in your inbox? There is a lot LESS today. Joe User would be very happy if they dried to think about it for a second.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
      > How would you implement a spam filter? What do you mean "implement"? You are aware that there exists free spam filtering software that you can install, like, say, spamassassin (which has been around longer than gmail)? > Maybe but being slightly over aggressive means a world in terms of user happiness. Dropping legitimate emails is good for user happiness? You have strange users. I imagine if the post office decided to throw away some letters "slighty over aggressive[ly]" ... there are people who would be happy if that happened? > Think about email before Gmail. How much junk did you see in your inbox? There is a lot LESS today. I see maybe one to three spam mails per day, with nearly zero false positives (maybe one per year). And that's without gmail. Obviously, I could reduce that to zero spam, at the cost of increased false positives, which is not a sensible option as far as I am concerned, deleting three mails per day isn't really all that much work.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
  > You were claiming "they could just as well package into, say, an install CD image" which is likely not going to happen, so he was just giving an example. What's the point of pointing out the one example among millions of email server setups that is most likely to not be published? Especially so, given that that would be about the most useless setup to replicate, as noone needs the scalability of gmail for their own setup, and thus the complexity that would come with it. > The perfect spam filter Gmail has its probably based on data and ML analysis, not a simple software you can put on a CD and install on some little server; so even if someone who works there wanted to help you they probably can't do it. If you think that gmail's spam filter is perfect, I have a very simple even more perfect spam filter: Just throw away all emails. Gmail has massive false positive rates, that's not a perfect filter, that's just a filter that throws away a lot of emails. If anything, the control that google has over which emails it arbitrarily labels as spam is completely unacceptable, especially so given that they don't even accept liability for incorrectly filtered emails.
- Joof 10y ago
  We could probably build a distributed version of a spam filter by using a fancy online (single sample batch) training algorithm and combining models. I'm tired, so that exact solution may be infeasible, but I'll bet something similar is.
ikeboy 10y ago
No, only that their security is better than anything you'll manage alone.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
  1. Security is not some magical property of software created by large corporations. Neither are they perfectly secure, nor is it that hard to even write your own secure mail server, alone. 2. They are by themselves a major security problem because they necessarily have access to all your email. And what's worse, if everyone is using them, they have access to everyone's email. That's a huge amount of power waiting to be abused, if not directly by them, by someone bribing them, putting pressure on them, or simply by infiltrating them.
  - sanderjd 10y ago
    > Neither are they perfectly secure, nor is it that hard to even write your own secure mail server, alone. The first part of that may be true, but the second part is definitely false. It is very hard to write your own secure anything-connected-to-a-network.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
      > The first part of that may be true, but the second part is definitely false. It is very hard to write your own secure anything-connected-to-a-network. No, it's not. Where did you get that idea?
      - sanderjd 10y ago
        From years of using, writing, and reading about network software. I'm not sure if you're being obstinate or naive, or if you actually have some silver bullet for writing secure network software, but if it's the latter, I'm sure lots of people would love to pick your brain!
        10y ago

You were claiming "they could just as well package into, say, an install CD image" which is likely not going to happen, so he was just giving an example. The perfect spam filter Gmail has its probably based on data and ML analysis, not a simple software you can put on a CD and install on some little server; so even if someone who works there wanted to help you they probably can't do it.

stonogo 10y ago
GMail's "perfect spam filter" is so bad that it is the reason my institution moved away from Google services. It's also the main reason so many people consider it 'impossible' to host your own email. It's anything but perfect. It's a black box, with no user-serviceable parts inside. Completely useless for any organization with needs that deviate from Joe User.
- newjersey 10y ago
  How would you implement a spam filter? You can sort of turn off spam filtering on incoming emails but I don't most people or organizations would want that. > Completely useless for any organization with needs that deviate from Joe User. Maybe but being slightly over aggressive means a world in terms of user happiness. Think about email before Gmail. How much junk did you see in your inbox? There is a lot LESS today. Joe User would be very happy if they dried to think about it for a second.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
    > How would you implement a spam filter? What do you mean "implement"? You are aware that there exists free spam filtering software that you can install, like, say, spamassassin (which has been around longer than gmail)? > Maybe but being slightly over aggressive means a world in terms of user happiness. Dropping legitimate emails is good for user happiness? You have strange users. I imagine if the post office decided to throw away some letters "slighty over aggressive[ly]" ... there are people who would be happy if that happened? > Think about email before Gmail. How much junk did you see in your inbox? There is a lot LESS today. I see maybe one to three spam mails per day, with nearly zero false positives (maybe one per year). And that's without gmail. Obviously, I could reduce that to zero spam, at the cost of increased false positives, which is not a sensible option as far as I am concerned, deleting three mails per day isn't really all that much work.
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
> You were claiming "they could just as well package into, say, an install CD image" which is likely not going to happen, so he was just giving an example. What's the point of pointing out the one example among millions of email server setups that is most likely to not be published? Especially so, given that that would be about the most useless setup to replicate, as noone needs the scalability of gmail for their own setup, and thus the complexity that would come with it. > The perfect spam filter Gmail has its probably based on data and ML analysis, not a simple software you can put on a CD and install on some little server; so even if someone who works there wanted to help you they probably can't do it. If you think that gmail's spam filter is perfect, I have a very simple even more perfect spam filter: Just throw away all emails. Gmail has massive false positive rates, that's not a perfect filter, that's just a filter that throws away a lot of emails. If anything, the control that google has over which emails it arbitrarily labels as spam is completely unacceptable, especially so given that they don't even accept liability for incorrectly filtered emails.
Joof 10y ago
We could probably build a distributed version of a spam filter by using a fancy online (single sample batch) training algorithm and combining models. I'm tired, so that exact solution may be infeasible, but I'll bet something similar is.

ikeboy 10y ago

No, only that their security is better than anything you'll manage alone.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
1. Security is not some magical property of software created by large corporations. Neither are they perfectly secure, nor is it that hard to even write your own secure mail server, alone. 2. They are by themselves a major security problem because they necessarily have access to all your email. And what's worse, if everyone is using them, they have access to everyone's email. That's a huge amount of power waiting to be abused, if not directly by them, by someone bribing them, putting pressure on them, or simply by infiltrating them.
- sanderjd 10y ago
  > Neither are they perfectly secure, nor is it that hard to even write your own secure mail server, alone. The first part of that may be true, but the second part is definitely false. It is very hard to write your own secure anything-connected-to-a-network.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
    > The first part of that may be true, but the second part is definitely false. It is very hard to write your own secure anything-connected-to-a-network. No, it's not. Where did you get that idea?
    - sanderjd 10y ago
      From years of using, writing, and reading about network software. I'm not sure if you're being obstinate or naive, or if you actually have some silver bullet for writing secure network software, but if it's the latter, I'm sure lots of people would love to pick your brain!
      - 10y ago