Lisp to Python translation criticism?

[John E. Barham]

Mark Mceahern wrote:

> This is somewhat orthogonal to the approach Graham suggests--and I
> haven't quite yet finished his article, so forgive me if he addresses
> this--but I wonder:  Why bother filtering the content (it seems like
> so much work and worry) when you can setup TMDA?
>
>   http://tmda.sf.net/
>
> Thanks for any comments or reactions,

TMDA is no doubt very effective at preventing spam, but I see several
problems with it:
- it requires a manual response from everyone who wants to send you email,
at least for the first mail, or some pretty sophisticated configuration
- what happens if someone you've pre-approved mails you from a
temporary/transient/borrowed address?
- what about legitimate email that doesn't have a human at the other end
(e.g., Web forms, mailing lists, announcements, "spam proofed" email
addresses etc.)?

It seems to me that the potential for false positives is much higher using
TDMA than w/ a content filtering technique.