The article and the study it covers have nothing to do with commercial spam. The researches sent mails to people, in the name of a fake student, asking them a question, then analyzing the replies they got. Their conclusion is NOT that spam does not work, but that if you are a person that wants to ask a group of people a question, you'll get the most replies if you send each of them a different message, instead of putting everyone in the "To:" field of the same message. Sometimes, you really do have to read the article body, rather than its title.
At first I thought it was another April Fools joke. But I found the following paragraph in the "terms of use" for Kazaa: === (b) You hereby grant BDE the right to access and use the unused computing power and storage space on your computer/s and/or internet access or bandwidth for the aggregation of content and use in distributed computing. The user acknowledges and authorizes this use without the right of compensation. Notwithstanding the above, in the event usage of your computer is initiated by a party other than you, BDE will grant you the ability to deny access. ===
Slashdot Mirror
The article and the study it covers have nothing to do with commercial spam. The researches sent mails to people, in the name of a fake student, asking them a question, then analyzing the replies they got.
Their conclusion is NOT that spam does not work, but that if you are a person that wants to ask a group of people a question, you'll get the most replies if you send each of them a different message, instead of putting everyone in the "To:" field of the same message.
Sometimes, you really do have to read the article body, rather than its title.
At first I thought it was another April Fools joke. But I found the following paragraph in the "terms of use" for Kazaa:
===
(b) You hereby grant BDE the right to access and use the unused computing power and storage space on your computer/s and/or internet access or bandwidth for the aggregation of content and use in distributed computing. The user acknowledges and authorizes this use without the right of compensation. Notwithstanding the above, in the event usage of your computer is initiated by a party other than you, BDE will grant you the ability to deny access.
===