Another Brilliant Solution to Spam

This one comes care of Microsoft. The solution to spam? Start charging to send an e-mail. Even at a penny per e-mail, it'd be around 75-cents per day for me, which means I'd pay around $22.50 for e-mail per month.

I can see this hurting the spammers, but what about us common folk? What about legitimate e-mail newsletters that send out e-mails to 100,000+ folks? Those folks wanted to be on that list, so why should folks like Lockergnome have to pay a fee? They're already having to deal with fart-knockers like AOL who block their legitimate e-mail anyway. And what about this site's daily newsletter? It's only going to 64 people, so do I have to pay for them, too? Micropayments ain't ever going to work.

So Microsoft's other solution?

Instead of paying a penny, the sender would "buy" postage by devoting maybe 10 seconds of computing time to solving a math puzzle. The exercise would merely serve as proof of the sender's good faith.

I quit taking math classes years ago, and I certainly don't need to waste 10 seconds doing a math problem so I can send a frickin' e-mail.

Needless to say, none of these solutions will be implemented any time soon. SpamBayes (on the client end) and Spam Assassin (server-based tagging) keep my spam at bay. I would love if it weren't even making it across the 'net to begin with, but there's nothing I can do to stop that.

Posted by Jake on 03/10/04 @ 04:19 PM
Posted in Moronic | 5 Comments | Permalink

5 Comments

Russ said on 03/10/04 @ 04:40 PM:
They don't mean >you< solve the math puzzle. They mean you donate computer cycles to the cause, like the Seti@home project. However, they can still go piss up a rope.

Jake Ortman said on 03/10/04 @ 04:41 PM:
Ah...OK, thanks for clarification.

kentfx said on 03/11/04 @ 02:56 AM:
Your rant about charging a penny for email overlooked the very point that the originators of the idea were hoping would be overlooked, IMHO. Microsoft's suggested tariff for email needs to be managed by some organization that is equipped to deal with hundreds of millions of micro-payments every day. In an article I read a week or so ago about this, it was implied that Microsoft itself might be just the administrator for such a task. That would make the world's most wonderful company the biggest post office in the universe too, wouldn't it? A few tens of millions of dollars a day in revenue -- AND the gatekeeper for everything anyone mails across the airwaves -- what an opportunity for doing good in the world!

Jake Ortman said on 03/11/04 @ 08:43 AM:
Microsoft doing good for the world? If they really wanted to do good for the world, they'd give away Windows source code, sell compiled versions dirt cheap, and wouldn't be hell-bent on destroying all competition. There's only so much that company can monopolize, and if they were to the manager of such a thing, I certainly wouldn't be giving them my credit card number.

qdl said on 03/11/04 @ 07:55 PM:
i read about this at work last week and was appalled. bill gates needs to go back to hell. charging for email? fuggettaboutit. i hate spam too, but thee powers-that-be have gotta come up with a a better solution than "let's make EVERYONE pay ".

Post a comment

What are you doing down here? Don't you have something better to do? Like Go Back To The Top of the page, or even see who created this site? This site is © 2001 - 2012 by the Utterly Boring folks at UtterlyBoring.com. Steal my content, as I probably did, too, just link to my site or the original site. Batteries not included. One size fits all. Not for off-road use. Not for internal use. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.