OK, so Justice Scalia was gesturing to reporters, a subspecies of homo sapiens slightly less annoying and more evolved than spammers. Still, the gesture sums up neatly my feeling about spammers, especially now that Blue Security has wussed out.

"Israeli anti-spam firm Blue Security is ceasing operations after a crippling series of attacks launched against its services earlier this month by a Russian spammer named PharmaMaster."

"The episode serves as an alarming reminder of the challenges involved in dealing with spammers and the resources the spammers have at their disposal to deter those trying to stop them, analysts said."

"In a statement, Blue Security, which has its U.S. headquarters in Menlo Park, California, said it can no longer ‘take the responsibility for an ever-escalating cyber war through our continued operations’."

"’As we cannot build the Blue Security business on the foundation we originally envisioned, we are discontinuing all of our anti-spam activities on your behalf and are exploring other, non-spam-related avenues for our technological developments,’ the company said."

This sucks. I really liked Blue Security’s idea of giving spammers a taste of their own foul medicine. Unfortuntely, they were ill prepared for the consequences of their efforts. So instead of gearing up for a prolonged battle, the folks behind Blue Security cried uncle gave up. Tiny dogs are often rather fiesty and provoke bigger dogs, but when the bigger dog takes notice and asserts itself, the little dog quivers like jello and pees on itself. Blue Security was that little dog. Thanks for nothing, you cowards.

By the way, the big dogs didn’t just frighten away their yipping diminutive adversary, they killed it and devoured its corpse.

"Hours after anti-spam company Blue Security pulled the plug on its spam-fighting Blue Frog software and service, the spammers whose attack caused the company to wave the white flag have escalated their assault, knocking Blue Security’s farewell message and thousands more Web sites offline."

Well, until a big dog with big cajones comes along to eviscerate these foul beasts, at least there’s still SpamCop.