I'm against the practice of every hardwaresite giving out awards. I'm not going to go deeply into the reasons, because that's not what this post is about, but basically I think it's just a cheap way to raise some pageviews. I'm also very much against letting the readers vote. I'm not going to go deeply into the reasons, because that's not what this post is about, but basically I believe that not all opinions in these matters are equal, and awards with your name on it should be awarded by your own experts, not by whichever company's marketing director has the most succesful facebook campaign for bullying people into voting. I'm also very surprised you are trusting your readers to make an informed decision on 2011's best [whatever] in AUGUST. I'm not going to go deeply into the reasons, because that's not what this post is about, and because Batman. What this post IS about, is the unsolicited begging mail I received yesterday. You guessed it, i don't really take kindly to those kind of emails either, but I can find the "report spam" button when i need it, so I'll get over it. What i mean to ask you guys is, why in the name of Relix are you sending the mail from mail.bajjztteudwwjlejipa@dennisnet.msgfocus.com Are you guys trying to look like a bunch of cheapass Indian spammers? Really guys, I'm sorry if this sounds overly offensive, but it's the shift towards this hyper-commercialised bull that's kept me away from the site for a long while. I understand the need to sell and to be commercially viable to your Dennis overlords, but can you please try to be a little less thoughtlessly obvious about it? Thanks.
Actually, most spam originates in the US The Russians mainly have mafia gangs who deal with financial fraud and botnets. And the Chinese just break into various systems to dig up dirt on Chinese dissidents (covertly funded and supported by the MSS).
There is the need for a commercially viable range of products and marketing them, then there's aquiring decent products and rolling them tightly into a big monetized ball and then shitting all over it. That's what you've done.