Another flatulent day on Wall Street. But just as I was getting Friday's Touts under way, this message popped up on my computer screen: Hackers. You gotta love 'em. Turns out the 'TkBellEXE' referred to in the 'Value' line is yet one more virus out to change the world for the worse. This same nasty little bug tried to infect my computer yesterday, but it failed then as well. I simply clicked on 'Block' and zapped the malignancy into hyperspace. I enjoy seeing these critters vanquished, but there's an auto-kill setting for those who'd rather remain oblivious to the catch-and-destroy process. I can't recommend Ad-Aware too highly. I use the paid version, but the free one, though less featured, does the job just as well. But what I really want to tell you about is an application that will totally and absolutely eliminate spam from your life in just a few minutes. Trust me to know how, since, if I were judge and jury, all spammers over the age of 12 would suffer the same punishment Mel Gibson's William Wallace received at the end of Braveheart. Unfortunately, very few spammers are ever caught, much less get disemboweled, then drawn-and-quartered. The only way we can beat the hackers, really, is to tune them out. Evil Malantha I pondered this goal one day after receiving fifteen virus-laden attachments in the space of just three hours. Someone calling himself 'Malantha' was out to get me. And that's when I began what turned into a months-long search for the deadliest spam-killer in a cluttered market. I succeeded, finally, with the help of the Wall Street Journal's Walter Mossberg, who gave this particular product, Digiportal's ChoiceMail, a rave review in his Personal Technology column. Don't search for it in Consumer Reports, though, because the magazine
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