Bill Gates...Bill Gates...hummmm.

Not the same Bill Gates that predicted that computers would never need more than 64k worth of memory?

Naw couldn't be. ;)

Laugh away Jo. The scary thing is that Bill's master plan relies in part on redefining "spam" as "unsolicited commercial e-mail from either small businesses or people perpetrating fraud". A large part of MS's "anti-spam" effort involves identifying "legitimate businesses" (i.e., fairly big businesses) which will "partner" with MS to make sure that their unsolicited email gets through.

Let's see, this solution will either require MS Server software or a standard that involves an MS perpetual license agreement.

First, I would like to see a comprehensive definition of "spam". If you call it "unsolicited electronic mail", it would outlaw any e-mail that you receive that you didn't first request. Of course, you couldn't request it by e-mail, because that would be "spam".

How about people learn how to use their mail filters and automatically delete e-mail they don't want.

Well, first of all, you have the quote wrong. It's 640k, not 64k. Second of all, Gates never said it. It's an urban legend that was started up in an attempt to make him look dumb. Rather like "dos isn't done until lotus won't run", which is a quote from a Novel exec, and the exact opposite of the truth.

As for whether Spam can be ended, I think Len probably has the right of it. MS plans to end Spam in part by definining it not as unsolicited email, but as fraudulent email. And then going after the fraudulent part.

I think that is completely doable, and would be a huge improvement over what we have right now. In my experience, fraudulent email's are 95% of spam.

this isn't as laughable as you might think. A
technical solution to spam exists. see here:

"For any piece of e-mail I send, it will take a small amount computing power of about 10 to 20 seconds." "If I don't know you, I have to prove to you that I have spent a little bit of time in resources to send you that e-mail.

"When you see that proof, you treat that message with more priority."

Once senders have proved they have solved the required "puzzle", they can be added to a "safe list" of senders.

It means the spammer's machine is slowed down, but legitimate e-mailers do not notice any delays.

Mr Wobber and his group calculated that if there are 80,000 seconds in a day, a computational "price" of a 10-second levy would mean spammers would only be able to send about 8,000 messages a day, at most.

"Spammers are sending tens of millions of e-mails, so if they had to do that with all the messages, they would have to invest heavily in machines."

As a result of this extra investment, spamming would become less profitable because costs would skyrocket in order to send as many e-mails.

All this clever puzzle-solving is done without the recipient of the e-mail being affected.

Note: this is a 3-step process.

1. sender sends email to recipient

2. recipient notes sender, sends back a cryptographic puzzle which takes 10-20 secs to compute

3. sender sends back answer to puzzle. if answer is correct, recipient puts sender in "trusted" category and displays email.

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Hi John

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