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Going spam free

A recent industry study predicted that in the next three years, more than 60 per cent of all e-mails sent via Internet will be spam.

A recent industry study predicted that in the next three years, more than 60 per cent of all e-mails sent via Internet will be spam. Looking into my own Hotmail account, the number is closer to 90 per cent, but then I’ve made the mistake of buying tickets online from Ticketmaster, bidding on items on eBay, purchasing books from Amazon.com, signing on to mailing lists, registering for free online magazines, and booking at least three flights through different online services.

I put my name and address out there, and the chickens are coming home to roost – because I’ve spent money online before, the spammers are hoping that I’ll do it again. In the high-stakes carnival of online marketing, I’m what they would call a complete cyber-rube.

There are ways to cut down on your spam, however. Many of the services cost money, generally on a monthly basis. These scour through messages looking for giveaways in the Subject window and message text, as well as suspicious mailing addresses. As a result they have to be constantly updated to keep up with the spammers.

An interesting new service recommended by PC World Magazine (www.pcworld.com) to Outlook Express users, is SpamBayes.

Based on a theory espoused by an 18 th century mathematician by the name of Thomas Bayes, the program doesn’t accept or reject e-mail messages based on keys, but rather based on mathematical probability.

Each incoming message is scanned a number of different ways and assigned a number between 1 and 100. If a message scores a 90 or higher, it is automatically moved to a spam folder. If a message scores a 15 or lower, it’s moved into your inbox. All other messages are moved into a third folder where they can be sorted once again.

SpamBayes learns as it goes, getting to know what spams look like over time.

According to the author of the PC World report, the program is about 99 per cent effective, letting through the occasional spam. It has never done the opposite, channeling a genuine e-mail into a spam folder.

Based on open source codes, you can find SpamBayes at http://starship.python.net/crew/mhammond/spambayes/.

SAproxy by Stata Labs is also a good free choice, after coming out on top in Comsumer Reports’ latest antispam software tests, where it fared better in tests than no fewer than eight commercial anti-spam programs.

If you’re desperate and willing to pay for spam filtering, a good option might be Sunbelt Software’s IhateSpam (www.sunbelt-software.com), which is available for $30.

P2P or not P2P?

Sick of getting dragged through the mud, the Peer to Peer giants formed an alliance last week to challenge the recent spate of lawsuits against file swappers using their services.

Comprised of Blubster, Grokster, LimeWire and Morpheus, P2P United accepted that their services were being used illegally, but blamed the music industry for being slow to react and adapt to new technologies.

While the Recording Industry Association of America claims that music sales are down more than 30 per cent overall, P2P United believes that the sales could have been saved if music companies embraced the Internet. The success of Apple iTunes is proof that people are willing to spend money to download digital music, they claim.

Targeting individuals in lawsuits, and threatening Internet Service Providers to reveal the identities of downloaders will not help the problem, says P2P United.

In an interview with CNN, Stephen Keating of the Privacy Foundation noted that movie studios once feared that VCRs would kill their business, "then found that a whole new billion-dollar market in home entertainment had been created."

If the music industry gets more creative and acknowledges that P2P is here to stay, P2P United believes the industry will be profitable again.

Rugby Rules

The World Cup of Rugby gets underway this Friday, Oct. 10, with 20 national teams going head-to-head Down Under. The event will run for a month, wrapping up with the finals and runners-up games on Nov. 9.

The official site can be found at www.rugby2003.com/au.

If you want to support the Canadian team, visit www.rugbycanada.ca.

For news and updates, you also might want to bookmark the International Rugby Board site at www.rugbyworldcup.com.

For television schedules, visit Sportsnet at www.sportsnet.ca/tvschedule/ and select Pacific Region. The first game of the tournament, Australia versus Argentina, will be shown at 6 a.m. on Oct. 10. New Zealand versus Italy will air at 9:30 p.m. and Ireland versus Romania at midnight.

A solar solution

STMicroelectronics, a European semiconductor manufacturer, has announced the discovery of a new way to produce solar cells that is 20 times cheaper than the conventional methods. That brings the price of producing a single watt of solar electricity to $0.20 compared to $4 over 20 years – the accepted benchmark period to judge the cost of power generation, factoring in the investment costs and payback period.

By way of comparison, it costs oil and gas generators about $0.40 a watt over 20 years.

The company hopes to start building prototypes next year, essentially using cheaper materials like plastic instead of silicon to build solar cells. The cells themselves will also be twice as efficient at producing power as existing solar cells, according to scientists.