I can't remember when I started using Akismet + Spam Karma...The move away from a machine I controlled to a machine that someone else controls has really opened the floodgates for spammers to try to spam ultramookie.com. Comment spamming, trackback spamming, you name it, they're trying it. When I ran my own server, I had a nice little script that scraped through the mod_security logs and parsed out spammers. I then put those spammer IP addresses into an iptables packet dropping rule. That really limited the amount of spam that the system had to process through. Now, Akismet + Spam Karma are really doing a lot of work blocking these damned spammers. 1007 spams blocked by Akismet and 2000+ for Spam Karma (I had been using Spam Karma longer than Akismet and that explains the difference). Not many have slipped through this dynamic-duo! I can only remember one that got through in the recent past -- and that one looked as though it was hand-typed into the comments section. Spammers need to die.