Spam, spam, spam. I've been getting more and more spam these days. One spammer in particular has been offering me a "free trial of HGH" every day -- sometimes two or three times a day -- for the past two months. He keeps varying his mailings to sneak around the filters I have set up. If they ever catch him, I hope it's in Singapore, although maybe a thorough caning is too good for him.

Bossman is reconfiguring our web site and mail server. He says that "dictionary attack" emails (which come from spammers who are trying every stinking word in the dictionary at your hostname -- like aardvark@yourhost.com, abacus@yourhost.com, abalone@yourhost.com -- in an effort to discover addresses they can send spam to) are coming in at a rate of more than one per second.

I can't believe this problem is still ongoing. In fact, it's getting worse. Spam accounts for something like 40% of all email traffic these days. Why can nothing be done? I've seen proposals for a pay system -- where it would cost you something like a nickel per email. I would be in favor.

By the way, it's a bad idea to leave your email address when you post comments; spammers seek them out and add them to their lists.