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Hey, I wrote a cover story about that for "The Net" magazine (now defunct) way back in 1995ish! :)

The saddest part of the spam problem is this: The "technical solutions" you name above already cause entire nations to be blackholed in thousands of servers around the world. Many postmasters have received only spam from .cn and .kr, so they dump all mail from those TLDs in the trash.

Article 13
Unsolicited communications
1. The use of [...] electronic mail for the purposes of direct marketing may only be allowed in respect of subscribers who have given their prior consent.

Blacklists are a bad idea in the first place, but if legitimate eMail gets blocked because a provider fails to fight spam, it is that ISP (rather than the blacklist operators) who deserves all the wrath of its customers.

Sad as the current situation is, combined with the onslaught of Trojan eMail it will hopefully make Spanish businesses and citizens pressure their authorities to enforce a draconian crackdown on the perpetrators - finally treating spammers as the cyber-terrorists they are.

here was a text-based game format called SPAM (just try and google that now.)

I love a good google challenge

*grin*

Triv

But it's clear that technical solutions alone have a limited effect. Filtering solutions may stop up to 95 percent of the spam, but that doesn't keep it from clobbering those who can't install a filtering system, whether due to lack of ability or lack or resources.

The technical community has been guilty of terrible arrogance in this area. Spam is both a technical and a social problem. If you don't address both causes, you'll never get anywhere. Of course, lots of policy folks don't know squat about technology, and their short-sightedness is just as much of a problem. ("When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.")

--Tom Geller, Suespammers.org Founder and Administrator

P.S. Full disclosure: Brightmail is a P.R. client of mine, and I wrote the press release referenced above :). I see systems like Brightmail's as important and worthwhile tools, but not the complete answer.

You can see over 600 reviews of mine on my Web site.

Having said all that, back to the question: Are Linux reviews fixed? The answer: It depends on the integrity of the individual journalist and publication. For the most part, very few reviews are fixed in the sense that there's pay for a positive evaluation.

When it does happen, it's usually for one of two reasons. The most common reason is that the media outlet is actually an advertising vehicle, and this fact is given up front. One example is "Bunting's Window", the high-tech products show that appears on most in-flight video programs in the U.S. If you look carefully, there's a statement in there about how "promotional consideration" has been paid by companies whose products appear in the show. That promotional consideration is typically in the 5-6 figures. The producers know that most viewers don't know what "promotional consideration" means -- but hey, at least they said it.

The second way that reviews are "fixed" is in media outlets that are less open about their pay-for-play policies. That's considered unethical almost universally in the U.S., but not overseas: For example, the (now-defunct?) Japanese print version of MacWEEK ran positive reviews face-to-face with a full-page ad for the product reviewed. In the U.S., it's often smaller and more cash-strapped publications that tie advertising and gifts to reviews results. These publications deserve their (generally low) reputations.

O.K., so there's little out-and-out fixing. However, reviews often skim over negative points. Again, there are two common justifications. The first reason -- and one that affects "community" publications, such as those in the Mac and Linux worlds -- is that readers really *want* to hear good things about their community, rather than serious evaluations. That's understandable, but not (IMHO) good: Saplings may need protection, but they also need a chance to grow into storm-weathered oaks.

The more pernicious sort of "fix" is when journalists abandon their evaluative senses because of peer pressure. We all know the big example: Microsoft Windows. [Insert here description of bugs and security holes ignored by the media.] Why do they do this? Because... well, because they're human. They may have friends at the company, or have personal (non-financial) reasons for wanting the product to succeed, or whatever -- the fact is, it happens.

However, *almost never* do journalists give good reviews for financial reasons, or for gifts, or for fear that the company will "dry up" if they slam the product. If it's valuable for a company to have its products appear in a publication, they'll be back with the next version, no matter how bad past reviews have been. And if it's not valuable to have reviews in that publication... well, then, why would companies bother with it in the first place?

--Tom Geller, Geller Communications, http://www.tgeller.com

You can see over 600 reviews of mine on my Web site.

Having said all that, back to the question: Are Linux reviews fixed? The answer: It depends on the integrity of the individual journalist and publication. For the most part, very few reviews are fixed in the sense that there's pay for a positive evaluation.

When it does happen, it's usually for one of two reasons. The most common reason is that the media outlet is actually an advertising vehicle, and this fact is given up front. One example is "Bunting's Window", the high-tech products show that appears on most in-flight video programs in the U.S. If you look carefully, there's a statement in there about how "promotional consideration" has been paid by companies whose products appear in the show. That promotional consideration is typically in the 5-6 figures. The producers know that most viewers don't know what "promotional consideration" means -- but hey, at least they said it.

The second way that reviews are "fixed" is in media outlets that are less open about their pay-for-play policies. That's considered unethical almost universally in the U.S., but not overseas: For example, the (now-defunct?) Japanese print version of MacWEEK ran positive reviews face-to-face with a full-page ad for the product reviewed. In the U.S., it's often smaller and more cash-strapped publications that tie advertising and gifts to reviews results. These publications deserve their (generally low) reputations.

O.K., so there's little out-and-out fixing. However, reviews often skim over negative points. Again, there are two common justifications. The first reason -- and one that affects "community" publications, such as those in the Mac and Linux worlds -- is that readers really *want* to hear good things about their community, rather than serious evaluations. That's understandable, but not (IMHO) good: Saplings may need protection, but they also need a chance to grow into storm-weathered oaks.

The more pernicious sort of "fix" is when journalists abandon their evaluative senses because of peer pressure. We all know the big example: Microsoft Windows. [Insert here description of bugs and security holes ignored by the media.] Why do they do this? Because... well, because they're human. They may have friends at the company, or have personal (non-financial) reasons for wanting the product to succeed, or whatever -- the fact is, it happens.

However, *almost never* do journalists give good reviews for financial reasons, or for gifts, or for fear that the company will "dry up" if they slam the product. If it's valuable for a company to have its products appear in a publication, they'll be back with the next version, no matter how bad past reviews have been. And if it's not valuable to have reviews in that publication... well, then, why would companies bother with it in the first place?

--Tom Geller, Geller Communications, http://www.tgeller.com

The real action's in the mailing list. :)

--Tom

I've made a few calls to price this all out. If it looks possible, you'll be hearing from me. :) But to tell the truth, I'm not too optimistic about being able to match x86's price/performance ratio. (I'm especially interested in entry-level boxen.) And if you can't do that, why bother?

If any businesspeople are interested in helping out with getting cheap PPC boxen together, send me a note. The e-mail address is on my site.

--Tom

What rason do Microway, DCG, VA, etc. have to move away from their i386 boxes? Would they sell more computers? Have a bigger profit margin? Could they make up the *huge* development costs that would be involved in gearing up a PPC production line?

Ultimately, they have to look at what people want: The market bats last. And I just don't see enough of a popular groundswell to justify such a switch. If somebody could come up with numbers that show otherwise, I'll happily work to bring the plan to fruition. (I did some OEM negotiations with UMAX back when they did PPC clones.)

-- Tom Geller

How can you say that a G3 with a Seagate Cheetah (ultra2 wide of course) is not fast enough for a disk system.

I didn't.

How can you say that a G3 with an 100Mbit card is any slower than what you can get with Linux for the x86?

I didn't.

What you forget is that we are not comparing the MacOS to windows here. We are comparing Linux on x86 to Linux on PPC. There is a big difference between these two comparisons.

Duh.

If you really say that bandwidth and harddrive speed are at the crux of the situation, then you are truly mistaken to claim that one should never use PPC hardware.

Never said that, don't believe that.

There simply is no difference!!! [between PPC Linux and 386 Linux]

Except for price, availability, diversity of vendors and configurations, and support. Those factors outweighed the superiority of the PPC architecture for me. I hope that won't always be the case.

-- Tom Geller

I won't bore you with the details, 'cause I'm sure you know them. Price, component availability, a community of support, yadda yadda yadda. Although I really wanted to use a PPC-based machine, I had to ask myself: What advantages would I gain?

Speed? Processor speed is virtually irrelevant in Internet serving, as bandwidth and disk access are the gating factors. Striking a blow against an evil company? Apple's not so clean, and certainly can't claim better corporate morality than AMD or the screwdriver shop where I bought my Linux box. (Needless to say, there will be no Microsoft code on it. :) )

Having said that, I'm glad to see Yellow Dog continuing with its plans. Until now, there have been three PPC Linux vendors that I know of: TurboLinux, mkLinux, and LinuxPPC Inc. (not the same as LinuxPPC.org). Frankly, none of them have approached the market with the resources, experience or commitment needed to make an impact. mkLinux is the side project of a book publisher; TurboLinux does PPC support as an afterthought (and devotes $0 to PPC Linux promotion AFAIK); and LinuxPPC Inc. has problems best not discussed in public. Yellow Dog seems to be making the first real stab at the market: I hope they can eventually convince people like me that running Linux on PPC is the best deal.

-- Tom Geller

I won't bore you with the details, 'cause I'm sure you know them. Price, component availability, a community of support, yadda yadda yadda. Although I really wanted to use a PPC-based machine, I had to ask myself: What advantages would I gain?

Speed? Processor speed is virtually irrelevant in Internet serving, as bandwidth and disk access are the gating factors. Striking a blow against an evil company? Apple's not so clean, and certainly can't claim better corporate morality than AMD or the screwdriver shop where I bought my Linux box. (Needless to say, there will be no Microsoft code on it. :) )

Having said that, I'm glad to see Yellow Dog continuing with its plans. Until now, there have been three PPC Linux vendors that I know of: TurboLinux, mkLinux, and LinuxPPC Inc. (not the same as LinuxPPC.org). Frankly, none of them have approached the market with the resources, experience or commitment needed to make an impact. mkLinux is the side project of a book publisher; TurboLinux does PPC support as an afterthought (and devotes $0 to PPC Linux promotion AFAIK); and LinuxPPC Inc. has problems best not discussed in public. Yellow Dog seems to be making the first real stab at the market: I hope they can eventually convince people like me that running Linux on PPC is the best deal.

-- Tom Geller

Hey, it's Open Source (TM), right? That means we can create "derived works".

:-)

--Tom