This eWEEK: May 5, 2003

Congratulations, spammers. Youve just superseded smokers as the most universally loathed social outcasts. Worse, you could soon be on the receiving end of more lawsuits than the tobacco companies. And if youre ever taken to court, you may have a hell of time finding a lawyer willing to take on your case.

Its rare when there is such unanimity about anything—which may in itself be cause for worry: Shouldnt we care about defending the rights of unpopular minorities? But even though most of us are justifiably angered by spam messages, what to do about them is not obvious. Unleashing 18-year-old bounty hunters, as U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., proposes, might launch a “spam-witch” hunt of greedy teens that could prove a far worse scourge than the original rogue e-mails.

As Caron Carlson and Dennis Callaghan report, first a suitable definition of spam is needed. Is it all unsolicited commercial messages, or must it be sent fraudulently to qualify? Thats a debate that will get louder this year. Unless something is done, Ferris Research predicts that the typical North American business user will receive 41 spam messages per day in 2008. Many people are surely at that level now.

Theres plenty of software available to combat spam and more on the way. As Dennis reports, Ipswitch will roll out Version 8 of iMail this week. Id spill more ink on the AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo tripartite alliance, but lets wait until they actually do something.

NetWorld+Interop was held last week in Las Vegas, and even though attendance, as rumormonger Spencer F. Katt notes, was predictably below that of peak years, product innovation continues to march forward. Foundry Networks, as Paula Musich reports, debuted the BigIron MG8, an enterprise switch based on 10G-bps technology. BigIron indeed, but small compared with the 40G-bps technology Foundry is developing.

Network mavens should spend some time with this weeks Labs section. Henry Baltazar reviews the Cisco MDS 9216 Multilayer Fabric Switch, which melds SAN and IP traffic via blade technology. The blade approach affords scalability. Compare with Nishan Systems IPS 3000, released last year.

Till next eWEEK, send your comments to me at stan_gibson@ziffdavis.com.

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