One of the things I do on a daily basis is check out all the new skins people submit to Wincustomize.  I also check out countless other desktop customization sites and I am going to post some of the skins that have caught my eye in the past week or so.

Be sure to click the artist name and check out other creations they have submitted.

 

LightHelix (CP) for CursorXP
by Artur Berk

I'm still amazed at some of the just plain cool cursors that come from the galleries sometimes.  Now you can browse the CursorXP
library at Wincustomize and find things like Guitars, Lightsabers, and everything in between.  However, something
always catches my eye and this is it.

There are 3 different neon colors in this set, and the animation is smooth and easy to work with.

Download

 

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Fett in DX Themes
by mcackerson

It's Fett.  It's Star Wars themed, do I really need to say anymore?  Well probably not, but this is a great theme that is based on the great Windowblinds skin by MikeB314.

Download

 

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iTunes 7 in ObjectDock Icons
by Havell

I'm not a big fan of the icon that comes with iTunes, so I was glad to see Havell step up and create one.  Havell has a very impressive gallery of icons, so be sure to stop by his site and check out all his work.

Download

MP3 Player Icons
by deleket

While we are on the subject of music I found this great set of some of the popular music players available.  The design is very well done, and he has some other packs in the same style.  Head over and check out his page for the others sets. 

Download

 

 

 

---

Coastal Living in Wallpapers
by Kenwas

A beautiful render done in Vue 6 Infinite.  Kenwas has many wallpaper submissions that are just as great as this
one in his gallery at Wincustomize.

Download

 

 

---

VXP for Windowblinds
by vStyler

VXP is a great, minimalist skin that is easy on the eyes, and very usable for everyday use.  Great job on this and I'm looking
forward to more submissions from you in the future.  Be sure to stop by the GUI Champs to see his other skin, Vectra RC2.

Download

 

 

---

Well that's it for this week.  Please add any skins that you caught your eye this week, and don't forget to let me know what you think of these picks.  I thank all the artists for their hard work, and can't wait to see more contributions from them all.

 

 

 

I recently spent the entire weekend building myself a new home office.  I previously had a small, cheap computer desk from one of the big office supply chains, and it just wasn't efficient for doing actual work.  So I went and bought a nice new glass/metal desk, a few accessories, and went to work.  I spent several hours carefully bundling and running wires, and making them nice and neat with wire ties.  I think I actually did a pretty good job of concealing most of the wires, and making any visible ones appear organized.

Now in the next 2 or 3 weeks I need to purchase another computer and monitor.  Space is a big problem because well.....I don't have that much left.  So that also brings me to the next decision of what type of computer I have buy.  That's a whole other article in itself, so I won't get much into that.  However, I still have to plan ahead before I buy.  Another computer means another box, another monitor, another keyboard, and another mouse.  Or does it?

The last thing I want is more clutter and mess, so I found a solution that will fix some of that problem.  I can use Stardocks Multiplicity, and can eliminate the need for another keyboard and mouse on my desk.  I will be able to work with my primary and secondary computers as though they are one unit.  I have been using this with a laptop until I get my new computer, and I have found it to be an invaluable asset to my desktop.  Some of the benefits of running Multiplicity on my desktop are:

• Having dual monitors on my desktop, but each will have it's own dedicated PC without the need for another keyboard/mouse combo.
   
• Clipboard sharing between my computers, and Multiplicity Pro can copy files and directories from one machine to another.
   
• It now supports Windows Vista, so I can have my new machine running Vista and my current one running XP.
   
• The OS X client for Multiplicity is being developed, so I will be able to control my Macs also.
   
• I can play a game on one system, and work with Office or Photoshop on the other, while chatting on IRC on another.

I would definitely recommend this to anyone who uses multiple computers, and for anyone looking to save a little space in your work area. You can view a comparison chart and download a trial version to try for yourself at the link below. 

Recently Microsoft announced licensing terms for Windows Vista which made many users cringe -- your Vista license was essentially tied to a single machine. You could upgrade the machine -- some -- but the activation was pretty strict on how much you could change and how often.

Many users were understandably upset.  Microsoft was thinking of piracy while many hardware enthusiasts felt that they were being left out in the cold.  Many MANY users rebuild machines and don't want to pay hundreds of dollars for another copy of the OS.

Microsoft's new system is much more fair and, in my opinion, quite impressive in the technical work that had to be done to make the change on such short notice. 

With the new license, you can uninstall the software and install it on another device instead. But you can't have it on two machiens. That is what is nice about activation when it reaches its potential -- since it's "Calling home" upon installation, it can tell how many devices it is being put on and you can (one presumes) deactivate it on the previous machine.

This is similar to what users already see with products like iTunes where users can deauthorize a machine when they upgrade.

So hooray for Microsoft for this one thing.

Now, if they can listen to Robert McLaws suggestion that they make family upgrade pricing more affordable (so that a household with multiple computers can get multiple licenses very cheaply) then we'll be really talking (my household has 4 machines plus I have 2 laptops on top of it, would be nice to get a discount for those 6 machines that are only going to be used by 3 people).

 

 

Today I thought I was going to just crawl under my desk and die.

I worked from home today and was using a VPN to connect to my work machine.  I was working on a lengthy documented in Microsoft Word and had been saving periodically during the day.  On my last save, Word locked up. Locked up hard.

It turned out that my VPN disconnected me during the middle of the save. No warning, it just had. But Word didn't handle the lost connection gracefully and it died taking out not just my recent changes but the entire document itself.

Because the document was confidential in nature, I didn't have it on the network, only my work computer and now the file was gone. I had a USB backup from some months ago but I'd made so many changes to it that that would have been useless.

What saved me was KeepSafe.  I have it installed here and every time I had made a save to the document, KeepSafe had made an archive of each one (I have it set to save the last 10 revisions of .DOC files).  So I pulled up KeepSafe, typed in the name my document and pulled the one up the version from 17 minutes before the disaster.  I still lost 17 minutes but I could have lost the document entirely (or even if I had daily backups, I would have lost many MANY hours of work -- creative work at that).

I have to say, of all the software I use on my computer, the one I absolutely must have on there is KeepSafe.  I've had it save me in the past from more minor stuff but never from a disaster of this magnitude.  I had forgotten I even had it installed almost until the sweat was coming down my forehead and I was trying to think of some way to get my file back.

Yesterday, I reformatted my main work PC.  It had belonged to someone else before I started working here, and when I started, I didn't think to take the time to wipe it down and rebuild it to make sure there wasn't any lingering wonkiness from old applications or files.  Well, after three months of me adding and removing my own software as needed, the system reached a point where pasting an image into Photoshop to resize was a serious undertaking that pushed the machine to the very edge of its capabilities.  Now, I know Photoshop is a hog, and it's the age old joke of no matter how much RAM you have, it's only "almost" enough to run Photoshop, but this was just embarrassing performance for a Pentium D 2.8GHz with a gig of RAM.  This sluggishness showed up when doing other taxing tasks such as loading up Firefox or IE.  The hard drive was continuously thrashing, even though the disk was showing only 20% full and wasn't fragmented in the least.  So yesterday, I bit the bullet, backed up all my files to an external drive, and started over.

Now, installing Windows XP is just old-hat.  I've done it countless times on my home machines, for friends, family and in my various jobs in the past 5 years.  There's nothing tricky and I had all my drivers on a USB flash drive ready to reinstall when I was done.  I started backing up a gig of files around 1:00pm and by 2:00pm I had Windows running largely configured.  By 3:00pm I had almost all of my basic software reinstalled (Firefox, Photoshop, Office, FrontPage, IM apps, IRC etc...)  The last task was to restore my email.

Up to this point, I had been using Mozilla Thunderbird.  It's a nice, basic mail application that doesn't have any bells or whistles.  It runs well and does the email thing just fine.  However, as I find myself with more and more on my plate, more tasks to keep track of, and in general trying to keep sorted a growing amount of information, Thunderbird was showing some significant weaknesses.  It just doesn't have the additional features I needed, namely calendaring and a task list.  So, it's back to Outlook for me.  Despite my irritations with how it handles some things, and how it has the typical MS interface design stupidity, Outlook is probably the best overall information management app for Windows at the moment.

I fire up Outlook and go to import my Thunderbird mailboxes and contacts.  The contacts would only transfer by doing them as a CSV and then doing about 20min of editing in Outlook to make them work right again.  The mail itself though?  Not quite so lucky.  Turns out that Thunderbird, despite many complaints from users, has NO EXPORT FEATURE!

Yes, that's right.  A feature that every mail client I've used since Eudora 1 is missing from Thunderbird.  The ability to quickly and easily move the contents of my mail from Thunderbird to another mail application does not exist.  I have been "locked-in" to Thunderbird.  Let us pause for a moment to reflect on the irony of this situation.

Ok... moving on.

My messages are all there, I know they are, I can see them with Thunderbird.  But I can't get them into any format Outlook can import (and outlook can import a fair number of file types, and export a few too).  I know there's a way to get this all working, so I turn to Google, the repository of all human knowledge worth knowing, for the answer to this issue.  Turns out this is a very common problem people run into as I found numerous forum and blog posts bemoaning the fact that they can't get their email back out of Thunderbird in any easy manner.  A little more digging turned up the solution.  Here are the steps in a nutshell:

1. Open your c:\Documents & Settings\%user\%app_data\Thunderbird\xxxxxx.profile\ folder
2. Find the file names for your mail boxes, the boxes themselves have no file extension (i.e. Inbox, Sent, Trash...)
3. Copy the folders you want to recover to another folder on your PC
4. Rename the folders to %Folder_Name.mbox
5. Download a freeware program called mbox2eml, install
6. Run mbox2eml on each of the .mbox files
7. This will result in a folder with individual .eml files for every email message in the mailbox
8. Open Outlook Express
9. Select all the .eml files in the folder, and drag them over the open Outlook Express window.  This will import them into Outlook express
10. Export the contents of Outlook Express to Outlook.
11. Cry as about a quarter of your emails are gibberish now since there is no direct translation from mbox to eml files, and some of your messages had a flaky character or bit of formatting that it couldn't handle.  If you want those messages, you'll have to read through the raw text of the message to get all the data, but you won't be able to fix the headers in your mailbox.  Those messages, for the average user, are gone.

There is absolutely no reason on earth I should have had to go through all of that to get my messages into Outlook.  It should have been a matter of exporting from Thunderbird and importing into Outlook.  Done.  No muss, no fuss.  Especially since so many people love to tout Thunderbird as being ready for the average user.  That it's just as full-featured and stable as anything you could want in that market-space.  Well, if the average user ever has to switch email clients for any reason (like lets say, their job requires it, or say Thunderbird development ever stops moving forward and the app gets abandoned), they're up a creek without a paddle unless they can find a computer geek nearby to take them through the arcane steps listed above.  Even moderately technical users familiar with the workings of import/export features in their office apps won't be able to puzzle that one out.

Ultimately though, the biggest issue I have is that so many Open Source apps tend to make it difficult to abandon them and move to an alternative product.  Settings, data files etc don't export, they're in some "open" format but no other application out there uses it or knows how to import it, or they're crippled when converting to certain applications.  When anyone points these sorts of issues out, they get one of several responses:

• Want an export feature? Code it yourself!  It's Open Source, you have the code right there, make it yourself.
• Why would you want to go from Thunderbird to Outlook?  Outlook is just a part of the M$ vendor-lock-in monopoly!
• None of the developers see any reason why anyone would want to export their mail, since Thunderbird is just the best there is.
• It's Microsoft's fault for not building a translator to import our files!

Not a single one of those is a valid or reasoned response to the request for a BASIC feature that everyone else seems to have mastered.  It's all a part of the high-and-mighty "Our way is the best way, because it's ethically and morally superior to proprietary, closed-source software" attitude that seems to permeate every nook and cranny of the open source world.  It results in its own form of "lock-in", that dreaded and evil concept where a vendor makes software such that you can not switch to a competitor without losing a significant amount of time and/or data.  Guess what?  I lost a few hours of my time getting my email sorted out because of this, and lost several dozen messages to an inaccurate conversion between formats.  Imagine the kind of cost this task would incur for any organization trying to make a similar transition... it would be horribly expensive in terms of lost productivity and data. 

But I guess lock-in is OK, if you're locked in to software that is "morally superior"

Don't get me wrong, I like Open Source Software and the ideals behind it.  I use it when it fits my needs (I love FireFox) but I'm not brainwashed on the whole absolute superiority to proprietary software thing.  If a tool provides better features, usability and performance, I'll go with that, regardless of who made it and how.  But I can't stand it when OSS pulls the same dirty tricks as closed-source software, but it's considered OK when OSS does it.

A little while ago, Brad started talking up the upcoming refresh to WinCustomize.  He mostly talked about features and some cool stuff you could expect from the new site, but so far, all you've had are lines of text, nothing to really sink your teeth into.  Seeing as how we're all about the visual aspects of our computers, I thought it might be nice to give you a little taste of what the site is looking like at the moment.  Overall, better usability, and a slicker look and feel.

This is part one of the article series.  Today we're looking at the front page and the gallery views.  The next article will look at submitting work, and some of the personal page and account views.

Disclaimer:
This article won't even begin to address features or functionality since the site is still being worked on.  Even the visual elements and layout you will see in the screenshots below are considered to be under development still and are NOT FINAL.  Something you see here in a shot may not actually be on the site when it goes live.  These screenshots are based off of our internal test build of the new site and you shouldn't take anything you see here as a promise of functionality or features.

In a few places, I'll put up a side-by-side comparison of the new site with the old site to give you an idea of how drastic the improvements are.  For the most part you'll only be getting slices of the page at a time.  Eventually we'll be posting full screenshots as things become finalized and our web devs sign-off on pages as "done"  But until then, enjoy the little snippits below.

The Front Page

The first thing everyone sees typically when they come to WinCustomize is the main page.  A lot has been changed in how the information is presented.  Some people felt that the left and right navigation menus in addition to the header navigation links was just too much to keep track of.  The new design does a lot to streamline the main page to make it as easy to scan and navigate as possible.

The current WinCustomize header navigation space.  There are a lot of tabs to click through

The new and improved header navigation space.  A lot cleaner, and fewer sections to have to navigate through

 

Current Popular/Featured space on the main page	The new Popular/Featured space.  A lot more information is accessible but it manages to look less cluttered
Current News Listing	New News Listing

Gallery Views

Navigating the galleries on the site has always been a bit overwhelming.  There's a lot of information to scroll through and some times you need to dig through multiple pages to find what you're looking for.  The new gallery pages are designed to make it easier to quickly scan through what's available.

Current WindowBlinds Gallery view.  Notice how much space is taken up to show each skin, and how much information is tossed at you right off the bat	The new WindowBlinds Gallery view.  In less space than the old view, you see several times the number of skin previews.  Much better for quickly browsing a library
Current Detailed view for an item in the library.  A lot of whitespace and a blocky layout.	The new Detailed view.  Cleaner, uses screen space better, makes it easier to spot the rating and the download link.  Also puts comments on the detail view so you don't have to click a second link to view them like on the current site.

 

So there you have it, your first glimpse at the new WinCustomize.  Check back next week for another look at what nifty new things we're putting in. 

So I went ahead and bought this new Intel iMac.

Xerxes is its name and its bio id would say the following:

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.16 GHz w/ 4 MB L2 cache
2 GB RAM (3 GB is too expensive in the Apple Store)
500 GB hard disk
SuperDrive (DVD+-RW/CD-RW)
17" screen
USB 2/Firewire 400/Gigabit Ethernet/802.11b/Bluetooth

I also bought Parallels Desktop and pre-ordered Crossover Office Mac.


THE BAD

The new iMac doesn't have a built-in modem any more. I want a modem because it allows me to send and receive faxes and to wake up the computer remotely (also to check whether the computer is OK). I ordered a USB modem hoping it would work in the keyboard USB ports (I need the two available ports at the back of the computer for camera and PDA). But Apple decided not to send it. (They took my money though.)

As everybody and myself knew Classic programs do not run on the new Intel Macs. Two of my favourite games are Colonization and Alpha Centauri. Dang!


THE GOOD

The PowerPC runtime "Rosetta" is excellent. Much much better than I had even hoped. StarCraft works. Hexen II works. Quake 3 works. We played Quake 3 between the PowerPC G5 iMac and the new iMac and everything worked perfectly. Microsoft Office works.

Parallels Desktop is faster than Virtual PC (on an Intel machine) and allows for more configuration (I can add hardware). Windows XP installed without problems, the Parallels tools installed without problems. I installed Dark Forces II Jedi Knight to test it a bit and apart from general incompatibilities of Jedi Knight with Windows XP everything works fine. I also installed Visual Studio Professional (for work).

Crossover Office runs the odd Windows program, although I found it hard to find Windows programs (where do people get them from?). But apart from Microsoft stock software and Jedi Knight I found nothing I needed or wanted. And for the latter two Parallels and Windows XP is better.

I also downloaded and partly installed Mono (Novell's .NET VM and devtools) for Mac OS X Intel and Windows XP plus Visual Studio integration. No problems there.

I downloaded and installed Fink (Debian package manager for Darwin). Gimp downloaded and compiled. Everything works. I think I cannot easily run Windows and Darwin programs side by side as both use X11.app.

FrontRow is fantastic, as are the graphical effects Parallels uses for switching between operating systems. FANTASTIC! I could hardly have been more impressed.

Apple Xcode was not installed for some reason so I had to download it. But no problems since then.


THE UGLY

I couldn't install eComStation 1.1 in Parallels. It just wouldn't boot and the VM crashed. OS/2 Warp 4 installed and sits there without graphics drivers.

Parallels has no protection against user errors. I had to be careful. I am not kidding.

iChat fails with my firewall. I don't want to manually open over a thousand ports.


I originally wanted to replace my 5-year old iBook 600, but Apple's current laptops don't do it for me. And I love my iBook. It is the most stable and reliable computer I have ever had, and it has travelled with me everywhere (with "everywhere" being Germany, Ireland, and Israel).

Well and Now here is Vista Review Part 2 -the compatibility issues
here i will write about the most common used programs and if there is errors in
installation , use ,.... etc

i have tried many programs and their different versions to try making a full
resource for you about compatibility issues so it took me a while after my
Vista New Features Review

First to Start with is the security programs to clear some points in that wide discussion
i have tested many programs of different Companies



1- Symantec Products as you see in the screen shot Vista refuses even starting installation
for any Symantec internet security and included products dated from 2003 to 2006



- and so i tried Symantec NIS 2007 .. now NIS was the one to refuse installation!!!



2- & for McAfee2006 Vista Refuses to install this version



- But in this screenshot Vista accepted the last version of McAfee security suite 2007



3- & "Trend Micro PC-cillin Internet Security 14" went with no problems all



4- and if we take a look about ad wares protection programs I have tried one program in that
field (well maybe i didn't try another program as I see adaware is doing all the job perfectly)
i simply didn't find any errors in SE version 1.05 & 1.06 installations






Let us enter another important field specially for the designers and skinners : the Graphics Programs
We Will talk about:
Adobe Photoshop CS2 , Paint Shop pro , ACD 8 Pro , WindowBlinds 5 & Skin studio



1- here i started with Adobe Photoshop everything was working perfectly here until i came to the update part
as u see from this screenshot there is an error in the PS update but for truth there isn't any other errors
except that update



2- in this screenshot here is my test for the Paint Shop pro well after setup version XI i launched the program
it said that this version is expired !!! and so after a little thinking i tried to right click
the program and choose run as admin (although i am really logged on using admin account )
and... it is done everything went right after that



3- and ACD while running installation and every time you will run ACD Vista will give warning about compatibility issues
but.... i have been testing it for a reasonable while and nothing happened every thing is working smoothly without any
errors

4- and the well Known WindowBlinds 5 Vista will give warning about compatibility issues i tried to pass this warning
and continue installation but this time this didn't work at all
by the way skinstudio worked if you still wants to make skins for XP using Vista


and also we will Not forget the Internet related Products here
of course Vista comes with the great IE7 and i will not talk about it here (of course there isn't any compatibility issues here
but also if u still want to read about IE7 you can read my Vista Review you will find it here in the same site
and many other sites that is discussing Vista you will find it under the name of "Vista Review BY MM" )
and now but to the other products

Messengers:



1- well first to start with and the most strange is Microsoft Windows Live messenger yes it didn't work (at least in my test)
when you try to sign in it gives an error message as u see in the screen shot



- but when I run the troubleshooter it didn't find anything interfering with its connection !!!!



2- Google talk working perfectly

Browsers:



1- here is opera 9 without any problems



2- and the new growing FireFox without any problems too


well and as i thought for zipping programs there isn't any errors i have tried Winzip and Winrare and i think they don't
need screenshots we all know them well

a small tip: if you tried a program in Vista and it didn't work don't give up that ey
but take an extra moment trying to pass compatibility warning if there is any and
try also right clicking the lunch file (exe) and choose run as admin
that what i did with ACD & Paint Shop Pro
did i hear you saying that this will be a silly thing to do every time!!
well vista is doing such things due to a new feature that is called "user account control"
Microsoft thought this will be safer that vista will always ask your permission to do tasks
but you can easily turn this off from the user accounts in the control panel

and if you want to know more about Vista features you can read my review under the name "Vista Review By MM" you will find it
here too

at last thanks for your Valuable time reading my compatibility Review hope you enjoyed it and also wish i have answered many
of your questions

Every so often you will hear people loudly and broadly argue that such and such customization feature should be done by the OS maker instead of some "bloated, buggy third party app".

And as if to say "Your wish is our command" Microsoft has not only introduced gadgets into Windows Vista (yay?) but also created a skin site.  I'd show you that skin site but it's down right now. Perhaps you can get to it when you read this: http://gallery.live.com.  They have a developer's area too: MicrosoftGadgets.com.

Now, a couple years ago, mini-applications were the hottest thing. Konfabulator (now Yahoo Widgets) was getting a lot of press. Kapsules had just come out. .Widget was announced. AveDesk was in development and of course DesktopX was growing in popularity too.  But then... well...

Apple came out with Dashboard and then Microsoft announced gadgets would be in the OS.  Yay for users right? I mean finally, FINALLY real good stuff would be part of the OS and users wouldn't have to put up with that "bloated" third party bugfest crap. So..how has it worked out for users? Well, Apple Dashboard was used as a marketing bullet point, put into Tiger and then..well forgotten.  Apple put up a...um, website for Dashboard widgets here. 

But since this stuff is part of the OS, the incentive to keep innovating basically dried up.  Remember how Konfabulator was being updated constantly?  Well, since Yahoo got it, it released 3.0 and then 3.1 and that's about it.  The featured widget on their page is...(wait for it) a media player.  Not that Stardock should get cocky, a quick trip to the DesktopX widget area gives us...more weather widgets.

So what's the problem? The problem is that the OS vendor will never care about a niche as much as the people who live and breath that niche every day.  So when the OS vendor puts in a niche feature like widgets/gadgets, they include enough features to suck out the bulk of the casual users (known as "low hanging fruit" in sales terms) that the incentive to keep innovating almost completely disappears.

It's even worse when the OS vendor puts up some gallery since it takes away traffic.  WinCustomize.com will probably have a MS Gadgets section but talk about a lost opportunity. Microsoft's gallery is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.  It splinters the community up so that you can't quite get critical mass for good stuff to be made and the sites won't ever get the kind of budget or attention that a site that is dedicated to the topic is going to do. 

The net result is that widgets/gadgets, which two years were the HOT item are basically dead, killed by Microsoft and Apple. Innovation has just about stopped. That doesn't mean that Yahoo Widgets or DesktopX and such are "dead". New stuff is being made for them (and I know DesktopX is being updated in a big way still). But it has definitely put a big wrench in the market and I doubt you'll see any new widget/gadget enablers. Which is a real shame.

So next time some user demands that Microsoft (or Apple) toss some niche feature into the OS, point out what has happened to widgets. If someone had said 2 years ago that widgets would basically be dying on the vine, I think most would laugh at that.  And yet here we are, two years later, Yahoo Widgets basically in stasis.  Dashboard in statis.  Avedesk 1.3 (January 2006). The Kapsules site is currently down. DesktopX 3.2 was just released but I can tell you it's future is going to concentrate on creating stand alone gadgets (DesktopX Pro), building desktops, and providing libraries to make Microsoft .gadgets (so that hopefully it can generate more revenue to justify further development).

I submit that the worst thing that can happen to a niche customization community is for the OS vendor to put it in.  What do you think?

 

 

The spam watchdog group spamhaus.org was recently sued by "Bulk Emailer" e360Insight in an Illinois court. Because spamhaus.org is based in the UK, spamhaus.org simply did not "accept U.S. jurisdiction." As a result summary judgment was issued, to the tune of $11.7 MILLION dollars, and there is a chance that the judge may further punish spamhaus.org by forcing (or attempting to force) the powers that be to delete spamhaus' domain name.

I'm not a lawyer, certainly not an international law lawyer. I'm not British either, so I hope I am using this right when I say to spamhaus, "Bully for you!"

Not being a lawyer, I find much of the legalities too boring to get into. But the gist of the case seems to be, spamhaus.org called e360Insight, a company run by one guy, David Linhardt, a spammer. And in so doing blocked many of the millions of emails this creep sends out from reaching the mailboxes of folks like you and me.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once wrote an opinion on the difference between art and hard-core pornography, saying of porn, "I know it when I see it." Apparently he later realized that was not a tenable legal definition, but the basic idea still fits, especially for us laymen.

Linhardt claims his massive mailings are not spam. Well, again, I don't know the legal definitions. But here is a list of some of the emails e360Insight sends out.

And that, my friends, is spam.

Spammers claim that people want their mail. Yet they falsify their email headers and alter the email content constantly, in an attempt to get past our spam filters. If we wanted their mail, we wouldn't be trying to filter it out. So no, spammers, we don't want it.

I don't think I need to tell you all how irritating spam is. What a drain it is on the internet, sucking bandwidth from legitimate use. Remember, we are talking about billions of emails a day.

I hope that spamhaus.org eventually prevails, that the Judge in Illinois realizes he has no jurisdiction, and that David Linhardt is a spammer.

But I also wonder one thing. How do spammers make money? Who is out there buying penis enlargement creams? Who buys stock based on a misspelled multicolored gif stocktip? We should continue, as netizens, to encourage legislation to deter spammers. We should encourage grass-roots efforts like spamhaus.org. But I think we should also wonder, who the heck are these idiots who keep spammers in business, and how can we educate them.

Keep the faith, spamhaus.org. We're on your side.