January 26, 2004

Bill Gates attempts to save the world...again. "...a "payment at risk" system...would mean the senders of e-mail would pay a fee if their mail was rejected as spam. The system would not deter genuine e-mailers, such as friends and relatives, who would be confident their mail would be accepted." [Via Neil Gaiman's blog]

I don't know about anyone else, but I check my trash every day for emails from friends and family that have been rejected as spam. I think this might have a long way to go.

posted by tracicle 20 years ago
  • Also in the NYTimes Business section today.
  • You'd think that if it were that easy to find these people to fine them, that they could have done that to shut them down in the first place. I'm going to file this under "Sounds too good to be true, but here's hoping!"
  • All attempts at killing spam are doomed to failure. It cannot be stopped.
  • "It can't be reasoned with! It can't be bargained with! And it will not stop. Ever. Until you [buy Viagra/Re-finance your home/look at Jenny and her amazing *****]!!"
  • I feel the steps of a big smelly lawsuit stomping its way to Redmond, WA. I see two things coming: 1. My sister will stop sending fowards which always end filtered no matter she is on my accepted address list. Which is good. 2. She will send me the bill for everyone of them. Which is bad.
  • Bill Gates should read this.
  • I don't mind paying .01 of a cent for every email I send. People who send millions of emails will notice it, but nobody else will.
  • And, of course, it will just happen to require using a Microsoft mail client, Microsoft mail servers, and, in order to preserve the reliability of the system, bounce non-Microsoft sourced email! (And, of course, there's no risk that you'll end up with a significant bill if the system goes haywire. Software is 100% reliable)
  • Security update #33862 should now have been implemented. User error.
  • Wolof: I mind my ability to operate on the 'net being tied to the whims of a handful of large companies who will operate these kind of schemes. I mind requiring people operating mail servers to register with the authorities, as it were.
  • Microsoft has to solve the problem, for a number of reasons: 1. Compelling feature to motivate user OS platform upgrades, necessary for their revenue model. There's not much else that we (at least, a critical-mass subset of "we") really want desktop Winders
  • I mind requiring people operating mail servers to register with the authorities, as it were How about if said authority was www.w3.org?