My solution to this problem (in addition to Akismet) is just to manually moderate all comments; it works for smaller blogs like mine ( http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/ ).
This prevents pointless comments and flamewars--of course, it also means I probably won't let you flame me baselessly in my blog comments, but there's no free speech on a private website anyways.
There wouldn't be free speech on the private site, but there's nothing stopping a would-be commenter from writing their own rebuttal article, were comments disabled.
I like this better because there's a much smaller chance of a flamewar happening, and the responses will generally be well thought out.
This prevents pointless comments and flamewars--of course, it also means I probably won't let you flame me baselessly in my blog comments, but there's no free speech on a private website anyways.