A main complaint of email users is that they have to waste time every day deleting spam messages from the servers on which they lease their little online garden plots -- but such deleting is only necessary because the industry has its head screwed on backwards. In our universe (right here, right now), data storage is dirt cheap and getting cheaper. Disk storage per bit is in effect too cheap to meter, so no one should have to waste time deleting anything, unless he feels like it. No one should ever have to do anything with a mail message except ignore it, read it, or read and respond. When I see people "cleaning up" their mail files, faithfully stuffing each message into a folder or otherwise file-clerking for a machine, acting as their computer's loyal (albeit menial) employee, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. (Laugh is usually the right answer.) Software should be doing this for you. That's why software exists. It's funny. It's sad. It's true. It's David Gerlenter on spam. Sharing David's observations with system administrators seems to have little effect on the situation. Users seem to be stymied by the fact that IT and computer science are now completely unrelated fields of study and lines of work. It boggles the mind, and yet remains somehow entirely unsurprising, that large organizations are knowingly paying skilled professionals to spend valuable time each day ensuring that their mail boxes at no time consume more than ten cents worth of online storage space. If, at any time of the day or night, the accumulation of one's meager and modest intellectual efforts should by some action at a distance happen to consume more than a dime's worth of the world's precious disk space, it should be obvious that the only sensible response -- indeed, perhaps the only humane response -- is to immediately relocate the offending individual to the electronic equivalent of solitary confinement until this monstrous demonstration of conspicuous consumption has been remedied by a prompt eradication of the least invaluable intellectual property currently in one's possession. In order that others may learn well the lesson of this most egregious abrogation of the well-known compact regarding the tragedy of the Common Internet File Server, a stern warning will be issued to all those who would seek to conduct business with the temporarily incarcerated. It is hoped that such proactive measures will encourage all fine, upstanding free speakers to watch what they say and mind their own electronic business. Apres Spam | 
