Cringely: spam is the only internet advertising that works, and it is killing email
“ At the same time that the sheer volume of spam is clogging networks and demanding server upgrades to handle all the sludge, crude anti-spam techniques are making our Internet communications less effective and less efficient. We are both drowning in spam and trying to stop it by hitting ourselves in the head. But wait, there’s more! Politicians, who think their job is to make laws that tell us when to breathe, now want to make spam illegal, which might be nice if it didn’t at the same time trample on the U.S. Constitution. One minute spam will be illegal and the next minute it will be against the law to say vice president Dick Cheney really ought to lose a little weight. Killing spam isn’t worth the loss of free speech, at least not to me.”
