What will happen, no doubt, is that parents will push these things on their kids in lieu of doing something really useful, like talking to them, or modeling proper behavior for them. In that way, this is counter-productive, and completely misunderstands the nature of the medium.
The worst is possible, but it's not as likely as you think. And if you assume it's inevitable, that there's nothing you can do and the world really is coming to an end, then the terrorists have truly won.
But the most important feature here is who defines spam with Mailwasher. With Mailwasher, you define spam. Not the government. Not the sender. You.
It will take time to get this into products, but Intel's recent financial setbacks give it an enormous financial incentive to accelerate that. The discipline of the market will force the company's hand.
Olbermann himself feels, I suspect, that he is undeserving of this moment, and the praise he will get from history for it. He should remember that Murrow himself was hired by CBS, not to run its news division, but its “education” division.
Georgia Democrats are like a drunk that hasn't quite hit bottom yet. They will in November.
The whole idea of a blog is to sustain readership and interest. That requires creativity. If you're just repeating what other bloggers are saying (or what some politician is saying) you're not being creative. You're not going to increase your readership. You're going to stay in the same little niche with all the others of your ilk.
We get the government we deserve. We deserved George W. Bush just as we deserved Lyndon Johnson and Herbert Hoover and James Buchanan and every other half-wit who ever claimed to serve us by running on the fumes of earlier times and bigger men.
More competition is always better. More goods are always better. More opportunities for more players is always better. This is the message that open source business is giving.
Even The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg refers to the Verizon and Cingular networks as "Soviet Ministries." They decide what online services users will be able to access, and at what price. They also take money from both sides of every information transaction.
