2003-04-15»
the hinternet»Much of the angriest mail I get from Sunday Times readers is about pop-up windows and spam. Weirdly, given how often I rant against both in the column, they often they blame me - or the "Internet nerds" I'm seen to represent. It's the nerd's fault the Internet is this blighted; something should be done; why doesn't the government do something?
I spend a lot of time trying to explain that "Internet nerds" are cursed with the same burdens - more so, since they spend more time here. And that most of my friends devote their time to fighting these problems, and their solutions are often more effective than any government. And that they're free.
There's a bit of me that does feel guilty. While I manage to fend off pop-up windows with Mozilla, and spam with Spamassassin, most people don't know about those programs. They live in the "hinternet", that shanty-town of X10 pop-ups and porn adware, and endless, endless Hotmail and Yahoo spam. They're tourists in the world of the Net, and like any tourist, they rarely get a good guide. They're just taken down the back streets by disreputable but flashy showmen, and robbed for everything they're worth. And it's true, we don't do as much as we should for them, because we're okay in our little burbclaves.
I can't recommend Mozilla until it stops changing its name. But I could recommend Spamassassin , because Deersoft produced a version for Outlook. It even cost money - the true sign of quality in that weird topsy-turvy hinternet. Finally I could give friends and family a recommendation to fight the tons of crap entering their inboxes, instead of just shrug and say "Well, err, I don't have that problem anymore. Sorry!"
But now, I discover, the showmen have grabbed that. Network Associates McAfee bought Deersoft in January. They've shelved Spamassassin Pro. They've promised to release a new version in a quarter or so, under their SpamKiller brand. I'm really happy for Justin and Craig, who now work for NA on SpamKiller. But now I don't have any software to recommend for another quarter - and I don't trust Network Associates to do a decent job in the future. Even if they hadn't fucked over PGP, they're still exactly the kind of company that doesn't fix these endemic problems, but tries to profit from them, appearing as if from nowhere to save those poor tourists while relieving them of their wallet.