OK, 3G was overhyped few years back... but so the whole internet buzz was overestimated. During the last 5 years the so called 1G seriously evolved... now in some countries the 2-2.5G _is_ happening already. GPRS and bigger color display on mobile devices is out and it is usefull. Even commercial handheld devices with linux are available on the market... only the bandwidth is missing and that is called 3G and it is coming. Maybe not with stupid hype as the net boomed 5 years ago but smarter. :) and anyway.. it is way more realistic then a bugfree Longhorn on time :)

[...] usually hide in places (Russia, Hungary, China etc)where it's hard to enforce international laws, esp. spam laws.

Just a quick side note regarding Hungary:
(1) Hungary is the member of the European Union as of 1st of May, 2004, and as such is subject to (almost) all EU laws, therefore it's no longer a "spammer haven".
(2) international outgoing bandwidth is still very limited: currently the larger ISPs bill for international traffic if it exceeds 64 kbps at a monthly average.
(3) the "network guys" of the larger ISPs pull the plug of suspicious computers (or put them on the "pr0n/w4r3z segment" [~=8-16 kb(!)ps]) without warning.