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Aug 7, 2012 4:00 PM   We all hate spam. But we figure it must be worth it to someone since there's so damn much of it. But... apparently not. A new paper from the Journal of Economic Perspectives estimates it brings in a total of $200 million in revenue worldwide per year. And then the rest of us spend $20 billion cleaning it up. Ugh. How is that possible? It's insanely cheap to send spam, that's how. The paper suggests that things like raising the cost of payment processing would have a dramatic effect on spammers' overhead, and would probably be more effective than, say, government intervention. [Journal of Economic Perspectives via Atlantic] View the original article here This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Jul 27, 2012 7:20 PM   Remember the whimsical sounds of your 56k modem made as it connected to AOL? BADONG-BADONG! Then a semi-officious voice announced you were online, "Welcome!" Yeah, that was in the 90's. Well according to the company's latest earnings report there are three million fools who are still paying for AOL dial-up Internet. WHHHHHHY? According to Dan Frommer the current 3.03 million "access" subscriber number is down 84,000 users from the previous quarter and down 400,000 from a year ago. AOL has been bleeding subscribers for ages, and it's nowhere near its 25 million subscriber apex a decade ago, but three million? Seriously? In fairness, maybe some people just don't have access to broadband. [SplatF via BGR] View the original article here This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.