We already have several reputation-based countermeasures, but inevitably these will be bypassed. And we also have some tools for dealing with potential new floods of spam from given IP addresses or forum posters when they are identified, at the time they are identified.
But basically, we're just as aware of spam as you are. That is, either we see the spam ourselves, or somebody reports it. Apart from, as suggested, a pre-flight moderation period, I really can't imagine what we would do to improve this situation aside from detecting particular features of posts, and all the ones I can think of or that have been suggested over the years are either controversial or likely to be trivially defeated. It is also the case, and this might not be apparent to most, that many spammers actually are real human beings--that is, they actually build up a reputation manually, before flooding the place with spam. This is simply not something we can do anything about because it's clearly intentional.
We'll keep on the lookout for options for identifying spammers before too many people notice, but inevitably some of it is going to slip through the countermeasures we already have. There are discussions on the moderator mailing list as well about improving the software so we can respond more rapidly when the spam is identified. In the mean time please keep reporting the spam you do find. I can assure you that we take great pleasure in nuking it.
Just myself, as usual.