When I think of "Microsoft" and "spam" in the same breath, I remember my email inbox minutes after I signed up for my first free hotmail account: with spam already trickling in. Even the medium security filter was wrong a good 30% of the time.

Salon has an article today that pokes fun at Bill Gates' bold prediction: "spam will be solved" by 2006. They argue that the biggest problem facing spam-fighters today is all Microsoft's doing thanks to Windows zombies. According to one source, "over 60 percent of junk e-mail now originates from home PCs that spammers have commandeered with the help of virus writers and hackers."

Why isn't Microsoft doing more? John Levine, chairman of the Anti-Spam Research Group, says the company is acting as if software piracy were a much bigger problem than protecting users against spam and viruses. Witness Service Pack 2, which users of pirated copies of Windows weren't allowed to download - effectively rendering those users' machines as drones on the spammers' side of the war.

Microsoft's other crimes, according to Salon, are its lack of participation in the creation of email standards, and its attorneys' inability to win a single legal battle against major spammers.

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