[Spambayes] SpamBayes questions

[Neville Franks]

Hi Mark,

Monday, May 12, 2003, 12:57:32 PM, you wrote:

MH> Hi Neville,
MH>   You may remember me from years ago when I was using ED4W while working
MH> with Paul Foxworthy at Colonial.  Funny how small the world is! :)

Yes indeed I do. When I discovered SpamBayes yesterday I saw your name
plastered all over the place and thought I wonder if that's the same
Mark Hammond. Last I remember you were going to write a killer GUI
Make program, now it is Python IDEs :-)  Hope all is well.

>> I have recently found your SpamBayes program and it looks very
>> interesting. I'd like to be able to run SpamBayes on our Web server
>> and wonder if this is possible. In particular can you access the Web
>> interface from your local PC when SpamBayes is running on a remote
>> server.

MH> I'm much more involved in the Outlook part of this project, but seeing as I
MH> was saying "hi", I will do my best to answer.

FYI I don't use Outlook.

MH> As far as I know, the pop3proxy application (which I believe you are
MH> referring to) will allow you to run its existing web interface from a remote
MH> machine.

Thanks, Tony responded as well. See my reply to him.

>> >From reading the Installation notes SpamBayes requires Python V2.2 or
>> later. I assume from this there is no way to get it to run on V1.5.2,
>> which is what is installed on our Web server and unfortunately can't
>> be upgraded?

MH> Unfortunately not.  1.5.2 is very old and no longer being maintained.  This
MH> project requires Python 2.1 or later.  Note that it is generally not
MH> necessary to upgrade - a Python 2.x installation should be able to sit next
MH> to Python 1.x.

Seeing I have no way to run Python V2.x at my hosting company at
present I've set it up on a machine here and have got everything work.
So far I am most impressed. Know if only ...

>> One of my big hassles with Spam is the cost in money and time
>> downloading email when I'm on a slow expensive Internet connection,
>> such as in a Hotel or using a mobile phone.
>>
>> What I would really like to see is a way to skip downloading email
>> flagged as spam. Maybe something as simple as using a different pop3
>> port which only gets ham. Or the option to redirect all spam to
>> specified email account, which I could then check when I have my
>> normal broadband connection available.

MH> This sounds like a reasonable idea, but I certainly haven't heard of it.  Of
MH> course, the classifier has to download the mail from the original pop server
MH> to perform the analysis, so this gets a little tricky - pop3proxy will then
MH> need to simulate a complete pop server (to pretend the spam doesn't actually
MH> exist) or download and delete from the original, maintaining its own
MH> database.

MH> Hopefully someone more involved in pop3proxy will give a better answer.

I'm really very surprised that none of the Spam packages I've seen
have any option to skip "spam" messages. It just seems like such an
obvious thing to do to me.

Thanks for your comments. Again see my reply to Tony.

-- 
Best regards,
 Neville Franks, Author of ED for Windows - the programmers editor, an indispensable tool for great software development.
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