A filtering question, not taxonomy

[Curtis Clark]

At 04:09 2002.12.30, Jacques Melot wrote:
>    Bien que je comprenne très bien le désagrément de Mary Barkworth,
>je vois aussi, au plan général, immédiatement un danger à réagir
>comme elle le fait : la tentation de couper toute communication avec
>une partie du monde, avec celle dont on ne comprend pas le langage
>(ce qui n'est sûrement pas l'intention de Mary, comme j'ai de bonnes
>raisons de le penser).

It amazes me the arrogance of those who would criticize others dealing with 
spam. Perhaps it was wrong of Mary to post here, but she perhaps believed 
there would be some expertise in this international list that she could not 
find in her local IT department.

I replied to Mary privately. I also replied to Ricardo privately, pointing 
out that around 50% of my spam messages are in Korean. And, no, I won't 
filter out the entire .kr domain, because some of my students use Korean 
Yahoo as a means to get email in their native language, and because most of 
the Korean spam, as well as American spam, Russian (english-language) spam, 
Argentine (español) spam, and other spam I get comes through unsecured open 
relays, which can be in any country, but a plurality of them are in Taiwan.

And for those of you that might still be thinking "arrogant American", the 
spam has prompted me to begin learning the Hangul syllabary, and to put 
learning Korean on my "to-do" list if I ever get to retire. Scoundrels are 
scoundrels, whatever their language or country of origin, and friends are 
friends, and making judgments based solely on language or nationality is 
unworthy of Jacques, or Ricardo, or anyone else on this list.


-- 
Curtis Clark                  http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/
Biological Sciences Department            Voice: +1 909 869 4062
California State Polytechnic University     FAX: +1 909 869 4078
Pomona CA 91768-4032  USA                  jcclark at csupomona.edu