Special delivery

Regarding "Which standard is better for teleworkers: Wi-Fi or HomeRF?":

As I see it, Wayne Caswell is trying to combat the Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) standard by arguing that HomeRF is technologically more advanced. Even if this is true, it's really irrelevant. History has shown countless times that it doesn't matter whether your technology is superior to others. In the end, it's about who delivers it first, fastest and knows how to market it well. And here's where Wi-Fi is clearly way ahead of HomeRF. If HomeRF had delivered their technology sooner with actual working products, then this would've been a much more interesting debate.

In his "Backspin" column "The right to write", Mark Gibbs states, "If you purchased a list that I double opted into, and I agreed that the list owner could sell my name to other companies, that's fine." I receive a lot of spam from companies that claim they got my address from an opt list, and I've encountered two problems. First, often I don't remember intentionally opting into the list, and in many cases the company doesn't precisely identify which opt list they are supposedly using. I suspect they are just claiming affiliation with an opt list to beat the system. Second, the unsubscribe at the end of the e-mail is only for that company, not the entire opt list. Thus, it's difficult to identify, find and opt out of those lists once you're in.

Regarding Mark Gibbs' "Backspin" column "Relentless illogical spam":

Spam is just like TV or radio: Each of us controls the channel selector and the on-off switch. I control spam with a delete key or by notifying a persistent sender if I want off their mailing list - just like I've done for years with snail mail.

If I continue to receive unsolicited mailings, the gloves come off. I have a letter that describes my fees for time spent dealing with unsolicited marketing after I've requested it to stop. This action has court precedence and was upheld on appeal. It instantly stopped The Rocky Mountain News from spamming me and generated a formal apology from its editor.

Gibbs' point about the ease of e-mail deletion is the simplest handling procedure. Most solicitors have sites to remove your name from their lists.

Rob Cosgrove's defense of spam is self-serving. It takes electricity to produce, deliver, reject and delete his spam, and that requires consumption of precious fossil fuels in most cases. Any spammer can justify his actions by finding some reason why the rules of normal social discourse do not apply to him. Cosgrove also obviously does not have to personally delete a few hundred pieces of e-junk per day from his in-box. It takes time, which is everyone's most valuable commodity, to purge e-trash. Cosgrove can rest assured that I will never willingly be a consumer of his company's products or services, and shall actively encourage all of my colleagues to be of like mind.

Since, in Rob Cosgrove's opinion, spam is OK, it's just as reasonable for Mark Gibbs' readers to personally share their opinions on the subject with him. Publish Cosgrove's e-mail address. I'm sure he won't mind (he's well-adjusted, after all), and may be enlightened by the point of view offered by those who are affected by what he so easily justifies. I anxiously await this opportunity.