Mailing List Archive: SpamAssassin: users

ShortCircuit?

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walterhurry at lavabit

Aug 24, 2011, 1:04 PM

Post #1 of 4 (411 views)
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ShortCircuit?

I have been using SA on my home box for a couple of months now; really
more as a learning exercise than anything else. Having noticed that my
Bayes is almost always right, I tried uncommenting

Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::Shortcircuit
and
shortcircuit BAYES_99 spam

in my local.cf. It seems to be working well, but is there a downside?

jhardin at impsec

Aug 24, 2011, 1:34 PM

Post #2 of 4 (403 views)
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Re: ShortCircuit? [In reply to]

On Wed, 24 Aug 2011, Walter Hurry wrote:

> I have been using SA on my home box for a couple of months now; really
> more as a learning exercise than anything else. Having noticed that my
> Bayes is almost always right, I tried uncommenting
>
> Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::Shortcircuit
> and
> shortcircuit BAYES_99 spam
>
> in my local.cf. It seems to be working well, but is there a downside?

Ya gotta watch your training closely.

--
John Hardin KA7OHZ http://www.impsec.org/~jhardin/
jhardin [at] impsec FALaholic #11174 pgpk -a jhardin [at] impsec
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jump from obvious and correct observations like "Oh my God, this
place is teeming with utter morons" to incorrect conclusions like
"there's nothing of value here". -- Al Petrofsky, in Y! SCOX
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rwmaillists at googlemail

Aug 24, 2011, 2:52 PM

Post #3 of 4 (403 views)
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Re: ShortCircuit? [In reply to]

On Wed, 24 Aug 2011 20:04:28 +0000 (UTC)
Walter Hurry wrote:

> I have been using SA on my home box for a couple of months now;
> really more as a learning exercise than anything else. Having noticed
> that my Bayes is almost always right, I tried uncommenting
>
> Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::Shortcircuit
> and
> shortcircuit BAYES_99 spam
>
> in my local.cf. It seems to be working well, but is there a downside?

I wouldn't use short-circuiting on a home computer, unless it
really can't cope with the throughput and even then I'd start by
short-circuiting ham. If you want to place more reliance on BAYES then
change it's scores.

If you short-circuit on BAYES_99 you lose the benefit of negative
scoring rules. You also lose one of SA's best features: the ability to
distinguish between certain spam and probable spam, and that makes it
much harder to spot any FPs.

walterhurry at lavabit

Aug 26, 2011, 1:45 PM

Post #4 of 4 (385 views)
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Re: ShortCircuit? [In reply to]

On Wed, 24 Aug 2011 22:52:00 +0100, RW wrote:

> On Wed, 24 Aug 2011 20:04:28 +0000 (UTC) Walter Hurry wrote:
>
>> I have been using SA on my home box for a couple of months now; really
>> more as a learning exercise than anything else. Having noticed that my
>> Bayes is almost always right, I tried uncommenting
>>
>> Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::Shortcircuit and
>> shortcircuit BAYES_99 spam
>>
>> in my local.cf. It seems to be working well, but is there a downside?
>
>
> I wouldn't use short-circuiting on a home computer, unless it really
> can't cope with the throughput and even then I'd start by
> short-circuiting ham. If you want to place more reliance on BAYES then
> change it's scores.
>
> If you short-circuit on BAYES_99 you lose the benefit of negative
> scoring rules. You also lose one of SA's best features: the ability to
> distinguish between certain spam and probable spam, and that makes it
> much harder to spot any FPs.

Sorry for the slight delay replying; I noted your comments and have been
monitoring for a couple of days.

No, I'm not short of system resources. I think I'll take your advice and
cease short-circuiting, and increase the Bayes scores a little bit.
Thanks for the recommendation.

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