We Can Change The World

We Can Change The World


This morning I arose at my usual hour, five AM and opened my main email account. Ten messages awaited me. Each had a different persons name in the "from" line, a first name, and each had a different subject. Guess what, they were all selling the same product, Sildenafil.

The going price seems to be three dollars and forty-nine cents and it does not matter what brand you buy. In each case I was supposed to click on web address, which of course would increase the number of these selling efforts. No spam filter can filter these because the sending computer uses a random selection algorithm on a database of names and subjects.

Some would say that we need a law to prevent this; a law won't help. We are always expecting government to solve our problems, which of course creates more problems. I prefer to simply delete them without ado, and of course, if I needed the product, never buy it on line. But it is a pain in the annus.

In the early days of computers, when computer engineers and salespeople were teaching and learning together, we tried to imagine all the ways computers would be used in the future. We never thought of this way to annoy people, yet it is the price we pay for freedom of speech in this great land and worldwide. If we choose the right messages, we can change the world because no leader can devise a way to stop good messages if we use the methods the spam senders have devised.

Wes Zimmerman