Study:
U.S. accounts for 57 percent of spam
If
Americans want to complain about the spam problem, and they clearly do,
they have no one to blame but themselves. A new report from anti-virus and
anti-spam company Sophos found that 57 percent of worldwide spam is
generated from the United States. There’s a huge gap between No. 1 U.S.
and No. 2 Canada (6.8 percent) and No. 3 China (6.2 percent). Sophos
analyzed spam collected last week and determined which country the
senders’ machines’ internet protocol address came from. Even taking
into account the fact that as much as a third of spam is sent unbeknownst
to the sender because of infected computers, the U.S. is still a hefty
contributor. By measuring the ownership of spam-associated sites, Sophos
found that 67 percent came from the U.S., with 5 percent from second-place
Germany.
Blogs
not as common as they might seem
If you believe the hype, just about any Jane or Joe with an
opinion and access to FrontPage has built their own blog. Don’t believe
the hype. A new study by The Pew Internet
and American Life Project found that between 2 and 7 percent of adult
Internet users in the United States maintain their own web journals, or
“blogs.” The random telephone survey of internet users concluded that
only 10 percent of blog users update them daily. Eleven percent of
Internet surfers visit blogs written by others. Other findings were that
21 percent of internet users have posted photos on Web sites, 20 percent
have allowed others to download video or music files from their computers,
and seven percent have web cams that let others see live pictures of them.
Once-flailing
GameCube nears U.S. sellout
A
price slash can do wonders for moving merchandise. Nintendo’s Game Cube
has revived after some publishers had stopped even making the game
console. Nintendo said this week that it is nearly sold out of GameCubes,
which it introduced to answer market leader Sony’s PlayStation 2 in
November 2001. Nintendo claims that half of its U.S. suppliers are out of
stock of the game players. That came at a price to Nintendo, though. The
company slashed the console’s price from $149 to $99 in September 2003.
January software sales jumped 60 percent year to year while software
increased 101 percent.
Russian
candidate stages virtual debate
Vladimir Putin refuses to engage in televised
public debates before the March 14 Russian election, so liberal candidate
Irina Khakamada is doing her best to conjure up a virtual one. The former
leader of the Union of Right Forces has launched a virtual debate with the
country’s president on her web site, www.putin.hakamada.ru,
by matching her quotes regarding several issues against his. Issues such
as military, corruption, the intelligence services, poverty and terrorism
are addressed, and viewers can vote on which candidate’s stances they
favor. Although Putin won’t go toe-to-toe with his opposition, he is
still the most popular candidate,
with 80 percent of the population's
favor according to
recent polls.
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