Word: use
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...that's just e-mail spam. The growth of sites like MySpace and Facebook has opened up a whole new subindustry for spammers, who trick users into surrendering their passwords and then use their accounts to plaster advertisements everywhere. Automated spam programs attack instant-messenger conversations too, randomly generating screen names and sending messages in the hopes they'll find someone on the other end. Bloggers aren't safe, either - makers of the spam-filtering tool Akismet estimate that 93% of comments on all blogs are spam; their software has caught more than 13 billion...
...SPAM Act, which gives the Federal Trade Commission some regulatory power to curb spammers. CAN-SPAM regulations require that any commercial messages provide a means for recipients to opt out, prevent the modification of e-mail headers to hide the identity of a sender and stop the use of e-mail addresses harvested from the Internet without permission. Still, there's a very clear loophole: nowhere in the CAN-SPAM regulations does it say that spammers need your permission to send you an e-mail...
...surprisingly, foreign companies think they are being blocked from the mainland market. The European Union Chamber of Commerce in China has complained China has erected alternative-energy trade barriers, focusing specifically on the treatment of wind-turbine makers. In a position paper released in September the group said, "The use of bidding requirements to bar international [wind-turbine] companies from competing is a cause for grave concern for these players who have all invested heavily in the market to live up to stringent local content requirements...
...Some overseas firms insist that China is simply repeating an economic development strategy that has propelled the country's rapid progress in many other manufacturing sectors. The country has been able to use the lure of huge potential markets to entice foreign companies to hand over technology and know-how in exchange for lucrative deals, later using that knowledge to produce competitive products cheaper than those of overseas originators. Foreign companies built the generators for the first stage of the massive Three Gorges hydroelectric dam, but the generator contracts required the foreign makers to transfer technology to Chinese partners...
...what if Sarkozy has a point? After all, the figure at which he was taking aim - gross domestic product - was never intended to gauge anything other than how much money was changing hands. Yet we routinely use economic growth as shorthand for how well a country is doing. If we're going to use a metric to track our progress, shouldn't we choose something that measures the things we care about? (See pictures of President Sarkozy...