At this point, GMail4Troops has stopped taking donations, the GMail-O-Matic has somewhere between 1.5 million and 5 million invites (compared to 280000 when I donated 3 to it last week), and GMail itself has added a "quick invite box" to its sidebar.
GMail is the new post-WWI German money! Or giant bamboo. Or zucchini.
Once a goodie, now a pestilence! Or, as Nigel "The Nose" Williamson put it as Merlin in Excalibur: "A dream to some; a nightmare to others!"
Here's proof: This site is now around #3 on the "Donate GMail" hits in Google - you put in an invite and you get one point to vote with towards your favorite web site. Yes, you guessed it: 48 votes "purchased" for our
bayesnets site, BayesNetsJava. That's what a GMail is worth now!ETA, 15:50 CST: Just in case anyone still has a use for one, I still have a few. Say the word and they're yours.
Don't get me wrong, I love my regular
banazir GMail, spam-ridden as it is. My hobbit accounts sit awaiting their use during the Great Famine (see Plots, World Domination: 
zengeneral). My secret accounts are seeing plenty of traffic: puppy and baby pics and all! But at some point, GMail's "cash value" starts to lag the woolong from Cowboy Bebop. For calibration, see this page of bounties from Cowboy Bebop: The Movie : the petty robbers who knock off a convenience store are worth 500000; the hacker, 5 million; and the master criminal, 300 million. Faye Valentine's bounty in the series was 6 million, and Ed's dad, if you recall, was worth 50 (hey, just like the amount GMail gives out as a unit now).Coda: I am amused that invites, which once sold for between $65 and $125 apiece on eBay last May, are still going for $0.16 to $0.80 each.
In other news: Is it just me, or was last night's Lost even more
In the immortal words of Hurley, "Woah, duude." Shoot me, damn you!
Well, now we know why Charlie seems to be a man on a mission. The self-reformation makes more sense here than in the original Driveshaft episode.
twinbee, do you watch Lost? Because you know, I think the tea icons are going to be in plentiful supply after this! :-D--
Banazir
