Terry Blanton wrote:
> I only use gmail for vortex-l which would explain why I get no spam to > the inbox. > Do you get spam on your other account? It occurs to me that I have not seen any for months, and the amount captured by the filter seems to be declining. This is despite the fact that my e-mail address is plastered all over the internet, in documents and websites. I make little effort to hide it. I conclude that the "spam problem" is pretty much licked. Years ago, experts were saying that spam was a major threat to the use of e-mail, and to the internet as a whole, since it generated so much traffic. There were technical conferences, proposals to pass laws, and many start-up companies to deal with the problem. It seems to have faded away. Obviously it still exists because the spammers still send messages, so it must be a way to make a living, but I doubt they are making millions like the "spam king" Sanford Wallace. We often think about difficult problems that took great effort to solve, or problems we fear we are incapable of solving, such as the population explosion or global warming. It is good to bear in mind counter-examples of problems that seemed worse than they turned out to be. The "software crisis" of the 1960s is a good example. Several important development project such as OS/360 were late and of very poor quality; in-house production of application software was chronically inadequate; and there were some spectacular failures such as the Mariner 1 spacecraft, destroyed by a software error. Even though hardware was improving by leaps and bounds and Moore's law, people worried that software would permanently lag, and that sophisticated systems would not be possible. Fortunately, the problem was largely ameliorated by two things (in my opinion): structured programming, and the emergence of a mass market for software, which allowed vast amounts of money and manpower to be concentrated on a single product such as Microsoft Word, the Google search program, or voice input. The problem has not gone away but it was ameliorated. I think the energy crisis and many other big-ticket problems can be fixed more easily than most people realize. Arthur Clarke thought so too. Both of us were keenly aware of how difficult it is to invent, engineer and build the gadgets essential to civilization, we were also keenly aware that people succeeded in remaking the world in the past, and that we are surrounded by thousands of gadgets that work splendidly most of the time. A book about the era of Theodore Roosevelt described some things people worried about back then which seem silly now, such as the "Christmas tree shortage." People thought that the tradition of decorating a Christmas tree might come to an end because it was increasingly hard to find trees growing in the woods. It did not occur to people that trees might be farmed like anything else. Nor did they imagine artificial Christmas trees. Another prominent non-issue was "the Irish maid problem" that is: How will wealthy people find cheap labor to do housekeeping, now that Ireland's economy is starting to recover? Several answers emerged, such as vacuum cleaners and washing machines to eliminate most of the work; the black population fleeing Jim Crow; and decades later, illegal immigrants. Apparently it has still not occurred to these people that paying a decent wage would solve the problem, until robots can do the work for free. - Jed
