engine - 8:16 am on May 17, 2000 (gmt 0)

Fantomaster, I'm glad you finished your post with the last line.
It seems to me that the SEs will have to do some more shaking of the tree before cloaking in the old sense dies entirely. Why? There are just so many pages out there and it will take some time for everything to filter through. By then, I'd guess those "experts" on cloaking will have leaped ahead.
Personally, I hate the idea of cloaking fooling a surfer to vistit an irrelevant site - such as switching the surfer to a porn site. I've been a "victim" of this trick and it ####s! On the other hand, when there is a relevant page/site, I see no reason not to use the techniques at your disposal (cloaking or otherwise). They are not "illegal" techniques, but are contrary to the SEs Terms and conditions we all agree to when we use the SEs. Therefore - don't get caught out otherwise you'll pay the penalty.
I do not use cloaking because the majority of KW I focus on are not ferociously competitive (up to 1-million returns). I'd hate to be in the "real estate" sector where it's probably compulsory to use cloaking.

As surfers become more sophisticated at searching (ha ha) they will learn better techniques. If you ask ten ordinary surfers how to search properly, you get nine out of ten with little or poor knowledge.

I'm doing my best to educate my clients how to search.

Just my 2-cents worth.