[Spambayes] can't get spam bayes to work

[Tony Meyer]

> Verizon is one of the major players here in the U.S.

Which doesn't help me, of course, since I'm halfway across the world from
the U.S.  IMO going to Verizon's website and digging through it to find
information about the correct POP server details is pretty generous help.

> and checking with a few friends who use it, it appears
> that when you set up the incoming mail account, the user
> inputs incoming.verizon.net.  However, as you correctly
> noted on your response to her, it shows up as pop.verizon.net. 
> That's just the way program operates, and nothing should be
> made of it.

I don't understand this at all.  The way SpamBayes operates (the error was
from a SpamBayes log file) is that it prints out the exact server name that
was in the settings.  That means that she entered "pop.verizon.net" as the
POP server to connect to.  Verizon's website indicated that
incoming.verizon.net was the correct address, although it didn't say whether
pop.verizon.net was *also* valid (ping results hint at 'no', but aren't
definitive).

ISTM that a great deal, rather than "nothing" should be made of this.  It's
by far the most likely explanation for the problem, given the available
information.  If you believe it isn't, then please make a suggestion to her
yourself about how the problem could be solved.  The mailing list is a place
where *everyone* is free to help others.

> I'm sure she has her OE settings set up as incoming.verizon.net. 

Which would mean that she entered in the wrong details in SpamBayes, and
that the steps I gave would almost certainly fix the problem.

> Now we all gather from reading her e-mails that she's not
> very computer literate.  That being the case, I'm not certain
> what she could gather from your above statement.  I'm sure she
> doesn't know what a DNS lookup problem is, or for that matter,
> what 206.46.232.10 is either.

That's why I included a link to a page explaining what an IP address is, and
explained how to use Google's define to figure things out.  If she doesn't
want to know what the problem is, then she can skip the bit where I explain
the problem.  For the sake of other people reading these messages, I *will*
continue to explain what I think the problem is.

> What she needs to do is to configure SPAMBAYES to work on her
> computer.  You told her that she has a DNS lookup problem, but
> you didn't tell her what to do about it. 

No, I said that it's possible if the steps I outlined didn't help.  If that
was the case, then she can explain that the steps didn't help and ask for
further help.

[...]
> And it could easily bring this thread to a close. 

What would help bring this thread to a close is a lot less taking about the
thread and participants and a lot more talking about how to solve problems.
Has anyone apart from me suggested even one thing to attempt?

> The fact that we haven't heard from her in response to your last
> e-mail several days ago tells me that she's probably given up in
> exasperation. 

If that's the case, I really don't care.  There are a lot of other spam
filters to try:

<http://spambayes.org/related.html>

If she pays for one, then she can purchase the right to berate the support
staff as much as she likes.

FWIW, it seems much more likely to me that the instructions I gave actually
fixed the problem.

[...]
> you gave her technical info about a DNS problem without providing
> anything close to a solution.

Actually, I gave a series of very simple steps that outlined either a
solution or a method of determining more information about the problem
(depending on whether it worked or not).

[...]
> I'd tell her to use Outlook, a far better program than the
> braindamaged OE, and one where installing SpamBayes is a
> piece of cake!  I don't know why anybody would want to use
> OE, but that's another story entirely.

OE is free and comes preinstalled with any Windows installation (AFAIK).
Outlook is pretty expensive for most people.  That leaves programs like
Eudora and Thunderbird, of course, which at least would avoid the notate
subject/to requirement, but installation would be more-or-less as
complicated as with OE, and a new UI would need to be adjusted to.

=Tony.Meyer

-- 
Please always include the list (spambayes at python.org) in your replies
(reply-all), and please don't send me personal mail about SpamBayes.
http://www.massey.ac.nz/~tameyer/writing/reply_all.html explains this.