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WalMart's 460 TB of data, shared among about 300M Internet users, would spread about 1.5MB to each person. That is, of course, a tiny amount of data - probably just the indices on each person's inbox, let alone their email data itself. Each of those people average storage capacity is over 20GB, on new computers, excluding upgrades which are probably usually about 80GB. So just typical end user computers alone account for at least 10,000 - 40,000 times WalMart's big data dump. And then of course there are all the other servers on the Internet, like the SABRE airline reservation system, the US Federal databases of publications, Google's image cache, all the albums and other MP3/SHN/FLACs in P2P, and of course the endless stream of porn.

WalMart is trying to make itself look like it is turning its customer data into success, and benefits for its customers. That serves to downplay its reliance on labor exploitation, monopolistic competition when it enters local markets, and political favors that structure labor and market laws to give it a competitive edge. And WalMart might just be believing the IT sales hype that it spends millions of dollars on. But that's no reason we should buy their IT BS as much as we seem to buy their wares.

Microsoft has predicted the Victory over Sun over Java in 1997, The death of the password in Feb/2004 (also on CNet), and the Death of SPAM by 2006.

Yeah, the same man who said 640K would be enough for everybody. Let's put him on a pedestal and proclaim him messiah, yay!

A Dog Day For New Lycos Campaign
-- ClickZ News

By Beth Cox | November 6, 1998

Lycos Inc. which just launched a nationwide ad campaign featuring a Labrador retriever as a logo, was sued for trademark infringement by Labrador Software Inc.

You guessed it, the software company wants the Internet search directory to halt its advertising campaign that features "Lycos," the expert-fetching retriever. ....

Verizon Wireless hasn't made any noise about this yet, but the carrier last month filed a lawsuit

You are an idiot. Microsoft and BMW are already partners.

Also, an on board auto-PC is much, much more sophisticated than being able to hook up a music player to a car radio.

Here's the original Earthlink case.

Well, he needs the work since he was fired from Priceline.com.

The fact that he's found new work so quickly is a sure sign that the economy really is on the rebound...

If so, they got screwed, as MSN is going to switch from ESPN to Fox Sports as their sports site of choice here shortly.

A temporary restraining order (TRO) granted Monday against SpamCop in mass e-mailer OptInRealBig's lawsuit against the anti-spam service has been dissolved and an expedited hearing has been scheduled on the issue.

Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California on Tuesday dissolved the TRO she had issued against SpamCop, whose parent company is IronPort, just the day before. She also scheduled an expedited hearing for May 18.

One interesting point is that the first lawyer listed is Steven S. Richter - Snotty Scotty's daddy. Sounds like a nice family - lawyers *and* spammers.

I'm sure many of you know, but since I haven't seen it mentioned in this discussion, I'll point out that Richter was probably talking to his lawyers before filing suit on SpamCop. He's being sued by Microsoft and the New York Attorney General. Trying to cause trouble is just his way of fighting back. For more info, see the article.

It's funny that while MS makes a lot of noise about their google-killer 'coming soon', Google brings a revolutionary (hotmail-killer?) webmail service to Beta.
I just hope when they take over webmail like the search-engines, they won't abuse their monopoly like certain other corporations.

On the other hand Italy has a law (since September 2003), which seeks up to 3 years in jail and fines up to 90.000 Euros!

Guess, which law I find better? Jail-time would be payed by us, the innocent citizen, while fines weight on the offenders pocket!

:-)

It does put some burden on the sender as well though. These are the options I see:

• The sender manages to keep your address confidential (meaning no catching outlook viruses, no cc'ing you along with 20 of their friends, no using it to send you stupid postcards). Not bloody likely for very many people.
• All spams are responded to with a URL that users can use to get a new address from a warped GIF. Unfortunately the ISP has to pay doubly for spam.
• The server simply drops spams (or puts them in a separate box that you never check since its S/N ratio is SOOOOO bad, curiously because this method is so effective). If that was the last contact info of you they had, they have to google you and find the above URL. For the masses, this would involve one or more email registries that people would have to remember to keep updated, including some of their personal info to differentiate David H. Newcum in illinois from David L. Newcum in Missouri. Unfortunately this means you have to give up a little extra private info, and it means you have to remember to keep the site updated in case your email address or domain changes (it would generate new disposable addresses periodically, so it wouldn't be THAT tedious). But this option also makes it slightly more likely that people will lose contact with you because googling isn't always easy.

Back in the .com craze there were a number of companies that made money solely by running large, popular, opt-in email lists. While the dot com crash surely killed off the poorly managed ones, the ones that were run modestly by a few folks from a small office in some cheap location still hung on... although I would wager such companies are hardly around anymore with the way spammers have effectively killed off opt-in email....... drag

Excellent idea! Given the fact that 56% of all spam originates in the US, I already know which country to block off first.

...to a young audience.

But it's NOT a young audience. The audience has grown up.

Links even a year or two old, I saw more recent demographics from neilson that had even more in the 18-25 category.

Anyhow, fact is, the big money is in that 18-25 year old male demographic. That's where the money is.

GTA has an M rating. Parents know what this means.

The old-school plots and family-friendly characters are still around in droves. Sonic, Mario, Spyro, Crash Bandicoot, Rayman, etc, etc..

But the simple fact is, that now there is a very large adult audience for video games. Those of us who grew up playing Adventure and Pitfall are still around, just older.

GTAs appeal was its immersive environment and sense of humor, btw, not simply over-the-top violence, titles of which are a dime a dozen.

I just want to get a word in edgewise: The main reason the US is the leader in spam is because it is the leader in internet users.

look at this table (clickz is a stat site)

The most interesting thing about spam is that it's not very effective. Legitimate, opt-in email marketing opens you up to much better responses. At our company New Media Worx, we help people send email to opt-in lists they make themselves (i.e. not rented lists), which usually result in 10-50% click-through rates, as opposed to spam, which tends to get 0.2% for a really successful campaign.

If you want to know more about sending legitimate email marketing, check out my book, Email Marketing without the Spam.

Google for "spam economics". Here are some of the links you'll find.

Even if I'm out by a factor of 40, my figures were based on a tiny 60,000 mails, and the only reason for this was the assumption that the ISP would be proactively monitoring traffic through its MTA or network in order to prevent policy violations, and would pick up attempts to send a number of messages unreasonably large for an opt-in list.

Erm. It was Benjamin Disraeli, not Sam Clemens.

One great thing about being a wit like Sam Clemens is that when you quote other witty guys, such as Benjamin Disraeli, people assume you made the quip up yourself.

Kim Brooks identifies the problem well in the article "Advertising: A Cry for Usability." Brooks points out that advertisers are trying too hard to get their message in front of the consumers, and in so doing, they turn off the consumers. She continues suggesting the best advertisements are those designed to help the consumer, enumerating targeted search results, e-mail list sponsorship, and sponsored default web bookmark lists as laudible forms of advertising. If only the advertisers would pay attention!

[BTW: You can get rid of those pesky X-10 ads for 30 days at a time by visiting their opt-out page which I found in their customer service FAQ.]