Bill Gates Forecasts Victory Over Spam 445
nfk writes "BBC reports from the World Economic Forum at Davos, where Bill Gates said spam will be a thing of the past in two years' time, thanks to a three-pronged approach to the problem: filters, expensive computation for e-mail and the digital equivalent to stamps, paid if the receiver considers he is being spammed. He also expects to catch up with Google, although he praises the company and the IQ of its research team. Finally, he announces mind blowing developments for the next XBox generation and says that, in a decade from now, 'we will laugh at personal computing as we know it.' No need to wait, I do it every day." (We've mentioned Microsoft's sender's-option payment scheme before.)
Bill Gates forecasts victory over spam... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't laugh, it could happen!
Re:Bill Gates forecasts victory over spam... (Score:5, Insightful)
E-Mail has an enormous and heterogeneous install base, and while outlook has a strong grip on the client market, that's not the only place where it counts. There are a lot of servers which use non-microsoft software, and making even a sizable majority of them swap will be a daunting task.
That said, for one time i hope Bill is right.
What's funny (Score:5, Interesting)
1: Filters (Since when does Outlook or OE have Bayesian filtering capabilities?)
2: Causing spammers to pay a certain price. This is also being done for example, by requiring every subsequent attempt to send an email to a non-existant address forceing a cumulative delay in responding to the next attempt from the same host (this has been discussed on the Qmail lists quite a bit).
MS EXchange, IIRC, doesn't even check to see if there is an MX record for the originating domain! Sendmail even does that. How many hotmail messages do we get from xdtty@weftre.wdt (obviously nonexistant domains). Obviously Hotmail doesn't check either (when I pointed this out to them, I also pointed out that Sendmail DOES check these things)
Bill should mean "We want to be the first proprietary vendor to copy the methods of the Open Source solutions to the Spam Problem." It would have been more accurate.
Note that the above solutions are SMTP compatible and require no protocol extensions. They would have the effect of rendering SPAM less effective, and harvesting email addresses more costly.
Re:What's funny (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Bill Gates forecasts victory over spam... (Score:5, Funny)
I've heard the name will be "VisualSMTP.NET".
No (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Bill Gates forecasts victory over spam... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Bill Gates forecasts victory over spam... (Score:5, Funny)
I want some of what you're smoking.
Re:Bill Gates forecasts victory over spam... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, but remember that ten years ago all webbrowsers were non-ms. You can't just rule it out that easily. I could imagine that many users would change their mail-provider if they would get rid of all that spam
Yeah, spam filters. (Score:5, Insightful)
And I don't think micropayments will stop spam - wouldn't the spammers just use servers that didn't require that? And would email be as useful if you could only get mail from someone who bought into a particular micropayment system?
Re:Yeah, spam filters. (Score:3, Interesting)
I am more intrested in an approach that can rank the level of attention that I should pay to e-mail. I'd like to have a white list that allows me to set different priority levels based upon the sender. I'd like to give a higher priority to mail that has a valid signature. I'd also give a higher priority to mail from people in my address list.
By the way, which e-mail clients meet yo
Re:Yeah, spam filters. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yeah, spam filters. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yeah, spam filters. (Score:3, Informative)
That said, I didn't want that last 1/3 to 1/4 of spam, we all know that it can be a LOT better than that. I used Cloudmark's SpamNet, which was great untill they charged for it and turned their back on their community. So from there I went to SpamAssassian which was nice but still not perfect or right. Next I went to Popfile which I have fell in love with. Great UI, f
Second or two of processing time (Score:4, Insightful)
Effective countermeasures to spam include better spam filters (like Popfile [sourceforge.net], as you mentioned), and ensuring that all routers drop invalid packets: packets with impossible (from a subnet stance) source or destination addresses. The latter will prevent most forged headers.
Micropayments cannot work unless SMTP is redefined. Switching over the installed base (it has to be all-or-nothing, or it doesn't work because you can't have a micropay server talk to one that is not, or the whole scenario breaks down) will be problematic at best.
Re:Second or two of processing time (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Second or two of processing time (Score:3, Insightful)
Bill did not suggest Micropayments. He suggested great big honking huge penalty payments to be paid by spammers. Completely different issue.
I have spent a lot of time trying to get micropayments to work and it is a really hard problem. Applied to email it would raise costs to levels that would eliminate many of the current uses of the net. Nobody could ever afford to run a mailing list like cipherpunks as a hobby.
Penalty payments is another issue, that c
Re:Second or two of processing time (Score:5, Informative)
zombies are a problem but the nice thing about proof of work puzzles such as hashcash is that they make the zombie machines get hot which is noticeable by normal users. They also run real slow. Again something to draw the users attention to a problem. in any case, the numbers are real close. There's still more spam than the number stamps generated by the number of known zombies. Since the upper bound for spam is set by the number of zombies, this is a serious incentive to kill zombies.
Mailing lists are problematic but if one uses a second type of stamp based on signatures, then the problem goes away. In the meantime, using hybrid system, you do not require anything special of mailing lists and you are no worse off than you are with typical content filters.
www.camram.org
Re:Second or two of processing time (Score:4, Interesting)
I suggest you try this using the hashcash executable. Run the process for about a week and log the number of collision bits found versus number of times it was found. Its quite illuminating.
Re:Second or two of processing time (Score:3, Interesting)
Correct me if I'm wrong - but surely a collision of 6 bits could not take any less time to find than one of 5 bits, and quite likely would take longer. So, a longer collision sho
Re:Second or two of processing time (Score:3, Interesting)
This is true of all proof of work systems. You could get really lucky and meet the criteria for "done" on the first try. On average however you will take the target amount of time. Which means sometimes it will take longer and sometimes it will take shorter to reach "done".
Now on average, every time you increase the cost of a stamp by a bit, you double the avera
Re:Yeah, spam filters. (Score:5, Interesting)
For Mac users, spam is already a thing of the past.
Re:Yeah, spam filters. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Yeah, spam filters. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's your server at mailinator.that counts. It can refuse to accept email except from people (or other mail servers) who pay.
And would email be as useful if you could only get mail from someone who bought into a particular micropayment system?
The payments Microsoft is proposing aren't necessarily monetary. Sometimes it can be a hard computational problem, which takes you a few seconds to compute. Spam depends on the very low cost of email. If you have to buy 10 computers to send your spam, instead of just one, it's suddenly far less profitable. Whereas you yourself can easily afford a few seconds added to each of the few dozen emails you send each day, since almost every personal computer has free cycles.
Of course, that depends on spammers to use their own computers. If they're using yours, a problem which plagues Microsoft-based computers, you're still stuck.
congrats (Score:2, Interesting)
"We took an approach that I now realise was wrong," he said.
I may not like Bill Gates and the way his company acts, but I have to give credit to a man who can admit his mistakes. It's not an easy thing to do.
--
In London? Need a Physics Tutor? [colingregorypalmer.net]
American Weblog in London [colingregorypalmer.net]
Re:congrats (Score:2)
Re:congrats (Score:2)
Really ?? Please go a bit down and see what is he saying about google
Mr Gates claimed that Microsoft was better on the 80% of common queries, although Google was "pretty good" as well.
Now tell me what does this 80% include ?
Re:congrats (Score:3, Funny)
Re:congrats (Score:2)
Out of the mouths of billionaires (Score:5, Insightful)
So kindly get out of the way, and let the rest of us fix it.
Re:Out of the mouths of billionaires (Score:5, Interesting)
In what ways do Bill and/or Microsoft impede yours (or anyone's) ability to improve software?
I'm not trolling here, I'm seriously cusious. Thanks in advance for your reply.
Re:Out of the mouths of billionaires (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Out of the mouths of billionaires (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Out of the mouths of billionaires (Score:4, Insightful)
First, understand that it was a silly request, on par with asking [insert political party here] to get out of government and let the [insert another party here] fix everything. I don't seriously expect it to happen, and yeah, there'd be bad side effects. But to answer your legitimate question:
One of the most obvious ways they impede us is by denying us access to the source code for their software. I can't (for example) fix the security holes in IE, because it's closed-source.
Another way is by requiring - by dint of their command of the marketplace - that software to be written for - and deployed on - their operating system. If I need (for example) a real-time, never-gonna-crash platform for my better mousetrap to work, and all that's out there in sufficient numbers is Windows, I'm stuck.
Another is by keeping competing products from reaching their intended market. I might develop a superlative word processor, but when MS Office is included "free" (i.e. bundled and included in the price) with so many PC purchases, I have little chance of successfully marketing it. Like happened to Netscape, or BeOS.
Sure, it's theoretically possible to get around all of these obstacles MS presents to innovation. And one could argue that some of them aren't necessarily MS's fault. But it would be so much easier for others to improve upon what we have now if Microsoft were to (as I kiddingly put it) "get out of the way". Release the code, shut the doors, and retire. If you really want revolutionary advances in software, that'd do it.
If Gates says that the software is holding us back, and it's mostly his software, doesn't that suggest that maybe he's part of the problem?
Re:Out of the mouths of billionaires (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Out of the mouths of billionaires (Score:3, Interesting)
That sounds like a false premiss.
Current Baysian (sp?) filtering works just fine without a lot of users. In fact, now that so many mail programs are using this technique the spammers have adapted to it by including words in their messages
Neat (Score:5, Funny)
Next thing you know Bill will show the world Microsoft Cold Fusion Reactors, the Microsoft Space Agency, Microsoft Manual of Women and Microsoft Anti-Hangover Tablets! Go Bill!
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
catch up with google? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:catch up with google? (Score:5, Funny)
Hell, it would be cheaper then inovating?(and easier then spelling)
Obligatory quote:
Bill Gates: Mr. Simpson?
Homer: You don't look so rich.
Bill Gates: Don't let the haircut fool you, I am exceedingly wealthy. Your Internet ad was brought to my attention, but I can't figure out what, if anything, Compu-global-hyper-meganet does, so rather than risk competing with you, I've decided simply to buy you out.
Homer: I reluctantly accept your proposal!
Bill Gates: Well everyone always does. Buy 'em out, boys!
[Gates' lackeys trash the room.]
Homer: Hey, what the hell's going on!
Bill Gates: Oh, I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks!
Re:catch up with google? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:catch up with google? (Score:5, Insightful)
You know building a better mousetrap starts with the basics and if another company or project has the basics down pat you pretty much have to re-invent that wheel before you can innovate. It's why being able to read MS file formats has always been pretty high on the list of features that have to be working for all of the MS Office knock-offs (until they get the basics down pat and begin to really innovate).
Re:catch up with google? (Score:2)
I'm afraid it is too late Bill...good luck.
Re:catch up with google? (Score:2)
Well, Google has been sliding lately. They are not quite as intouchable as they were only a few months ago.
Re:Google isn't the be all and end all. (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=
http://www.v10stunts.com/gloria_fontenot_resume
Simple, for MS (Score:2, Funny)
Will "e-stamps" eradicate spam... (Score:4, Insightful)
But ultimately, Mr Gates predicted, spam would be killed through the electronic equivalent of a stamp, also known as "payment at risk".
This would force the sender of an e-mail to pay up when an e-mail was rejected as spam, but would not deter senders of real e-mail because they could be confident that their mail would be accepted.
"Microsoft is pursuing all three approaches, and spam will soon be a thing of the past," Mr Gates asserted.
I'm going to create several hotmail accounts, send hundreds of e-mails between them, and then reject them as "spam".
Re: (Score:2)
Three Pronged Response to Spam (Score:5, Funny)
myke
Re:Three Pronged Response to Spam (Score:2)
no more spam? (Score:5, Funny)
Not filters (Score:5, Insightful)
From this article: [realcities.com]
None of his solutions are very new or stunning. All of these have been subjected to the Hash of Death on Slashdot before. I'd say step one should be to fix all those trojaned boxes acting as spammer proxies. Can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Gates?Re:Not filters (Score:5, Informative)
For example, if you sent an e-mail, you'd be hit back with some alphanumeric code to put into a box in order to verify the ongoing mail.
It would work in theory, until the criminal spammers figure out how to read the incoming code and enter it automatically. I have a feeling that it works on Geocities because, short of link farms, there's little virtue in signing up for a hundred Geocities accounts. But if a code blocks the way between the spammers and the people they harass, they'll no doubt dedicate their efforts towards breaking it.
For reasons like this, Gates is right to assume that a "puzzle" alone would not be the sole solution. We'd still need intelligent spam filtering on the client end that learns to classify spam by example. We would also need significant and prompt fixes to any exploits in the dominant operating system so as to prevent this new wave of Sobig virus-spam hybrids from proliferating any more than they already have.
It is also mandatory for that above reason that we diversify how we use the Internet, e-mail, and the computer in general. This need not necessarily mean "switch from Windows to Linux." It could be as basic as "use Mozilla instead of IE." By introducing variety, it becomes more difficult for spammers to lock onto a single exploitation.
It is unfortunate that our "representatives" in the federal government, instead of fighting spam, have instead gone out and legalized it. The fight against it is something we have to do ourselves because we clearly cannot rely on the government to institute any meaningful legislation.
Re:wild (Score:3, Funny)
You won't. Your computer will have to. Example from RFC-4821:
R: 220 BBN-UNIX.ARPA Puzzling Mail Transfer Service Ready
S: HELO USC-ISIF.ARPA
R: 250 BBN-UNIX.ARPA
S: MAIL FROM:<Smith@USC-ISIF.ARPA>
R: 503 Polite people solve a puzzle first
S: ASKME
R: 366 Why did the chicken cross the road?
S: ANSWER To deliver the mail!
R: 250 OK
S: MAIL FROM:<Smith@USC-ISIF.ARPA>
R: 250 OK
Re:Not filters (Score:3, Interesting)
Even XP SP 1 was known to prevent some of our office systems from booting.
The problem is alack of Q&A.
we will laugh at personal computing as we know it. (Score:2, Funny)
Won't work I bet (Score:3, Interesting)
If microsoft managed to find a way to make money off of spammers then "geeks" who don't currently spam now, may start doing so just to mess with them.
Sort of like trying to thwart the microsoft security initiative.
I am not saying it is right, but that it would happen.
However, spam is a problem. It is almost impossible to have a "permanent" address anymore and that sucks.
I would like to hear about solutions that don't involve paying microsoft anything.
--ken
--ken
Bill Gates Forecasts... (Score:3, Insightful)
surely charging for email delivery will stop spam (Score:5, Funny)
Re:surely charging for email delivery will stop sp (Score:3, Insightful)
what spam? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:what spam? (Score:5, Interesting)
I applaud any effort that will reduce spam and send the spammers to jail. Perhaps some day, we can have spam-free email again like in the good old days...
no no no... (Score:2, Funny)
Parent pretty funny... (Score:2)
--ken
Lots of filtering available for UNIX (Score:5, Interesting)
Now an appeal to you folks out there who use these filters I've mentioned with similar good results (w.r.t. accuracy): we no longer see spam thanks to our filters. How about taking it one step further? Join the WPBL project [pc9.org] and help us centrally collect IP addresses of spammers. It's an automated system to determine real-time spam sources using reliable, trusted data contributors. We are currently tracking over 15,000 IPs.
Microsoft victory over spam? (Score:2)
Yea right, what are they gonna do, buy out Hormel or something?
SPAM could be solved much faster... (Score:3, Insightful)
No more:
Re:SPAM could be solved much faster... (Score:2, Troll)
money where his mouth is (Score:2)
but what about typos? (Score:5, Insightful)
What if I accidently type in "joe@yahoo.com" instead of "joel@yahoo.com" and joe decides I am spamming him? Should I be required to pay up becuase of a mistake? Who's going to enforce payment (really)?
I fear that if we make email more difficult to use then it begins to lose its appeal (think instand messaging alternatives).
Re:but what about typos? (Score:3, Interesting)
For a micropayment, the cost to a single mistake would be small enough that you wouldn't care. It costs me about 30 cents to mail a letter, if once in a while I had to pay 2 cents because someone mistook my email, I can afford it. A spammer cannot however afford all the recipents of his spam charging 2 cents because it adds up
Unfortunatly I don't know if it is worth the effort to hit the charge sender button. Means I have to sign up for a lot of things, for little appearent gain.
The bigger problem w
Email strategery questions (Score:2)
That said, this system does seem to be pretty good.
Fees, with benefits? (Score:2)
Most times that I've heard the fee mentioned, it's been a fee that's levied on every e-mail, not conditionally. The conditional model is a little more acceptable to me, if implemented nicely. Though I still prefer non-monetary methods.
What would be really nice is if some percentage of the spammer's fee went to the spammee. So, for those spammer's not dissuaded by it, we at least get something in return for having to deal with the junkmail. There would of course need to be a lot of extras to guard agai
SPAM is our friend (Score:5, Funny)
Don't bomb me - the above is a joke.
Finally, a use for "grid computing" - spam keys (Score:4, Insightful)
If it takes some massive computation to generate a key to send an e-mail, spammers will just have their captured zombies do it. All on Windows home machines, of course, where most users won't notice.
For the "legal" spammers (as legalized by the CAN-SPAM act), there's another alternative - unloading the task onto customers. Sharman Networks could make all tke Kazaa clients do it. Legally - read the Kazaa EULA.
Stop spam, how? (Score:3, Interesting)
A ban against email while regular IRL spam is allowed is also pretty inconsistent. Maybe if we put some pressure on the companies SENDING the spam we could get some results. Just plain boycott any company that sends spam and the problem will stop pretty fast. Why not start a list with the worst offenders (companies, not the spammers).
Without companies giving the spammers money the problem wouldnt exist.
Cure the illness not the symptoms!
So what's wrong with... (Score:4, Interesting)
I own all email sent from schmerg.com, so I add a (new type of) DNS record of my public key, and then every email that I send I add a header "X-WonderSchemeEncyrptedChecksum" with the value of the SHA-1 checksum of that message's body as sent, encrypted with my corresponding private key.
If your mail system doesn't know about this, nothing changes, but if you DO know about the scheme, then whenever you receive an email you do a DNS lookup on the sender's domain. If that domain has no key listed, then you're none the wiser, but if they DO have a key listed (and here my domain schmerg.com does) then you can safely reject any emails that don't have the new header, or where decrypting the checksum fails to match the body.
This way an organisation can still add their crappy sigs or whatever, and then sign all their email, and spammers will learn not to use that domain in their From address.
Big ISPs and people like HotMail can sign all the email their users send thru their system, and we start to reduce the ability of spammers to have false From addresses. If you want to send email claiming to be from a domain protecting itself in this way, you have to send it thru that domain at some point (or know the private key yourself).
It's nowhere near a complete solution to spam, but it makes life harder for spammers (and phishers and the rest), and it rewards those willing to make the effort without punishing those who don't.
To get round various implementation issues you'd probably want to add multiple keys to your DNS record and then describe which one you were using for each email (so you can rotate keys, or use different keys for different locations, and phase out old keys regularly if you're Hotmail.com or similar), but DNS propagation, caching and lookup is a given on today's internet.
If you can't be bothered checking the identity of the sender you don't have to, but if you want to (and you can afford the DNS lookup and the cycles to checksum the message etc.), then you can.
--
Tim
Re:Lots of stuff is wrong with Yahoo's DomainKeys (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, but it would give people a reason to reject the email properly as being invalid rather than bouncing it. This in turn would turn the spammers away from using my domain, so in the end I stop getting bounces (the bounces aren't really the problem, it's the fact my domain name is being maligned).
A spammer who can get an account on your system (think Yahoo here), can send emai
and if your email addr gets hijacked? (Score:4, Insightful)
The real and only solution is email sending authorization. If you are going to get your pop mail you must send USER and PASS commands. These need to be part of the SMTP somehow. Then they need to be adopted by ISP's across the GLOBE. Then they need to be required and any email that does not meet this does not get sent. Yes people will have to upgrade email programs, but it is a small price to pay!
spam fines (Score:3, Insightful)
Aren't most spammers criminals? In future, if legislation continues as it has recently, won't all spammers be criminals? Therefore, doesn't it make sense that these criminals will find a way to avoid paying the fines?
On the other hand, with an up-front payment scheme, costing say a tenth of one pence per e-mail, that at least removes the option for criminal spammers to simply not pay. Of course they may pay using stolen credit cards or some other form of fraud, but that exposes them to an even greater wrath of the law and may lead to them being stopped a lot sooner than if all they had done was refuse to pay an ISP's e-mail fine.
How to solve the spam problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Solution: make email cost something.
How?
Government? No no no no no. We want full control over our own email. Government should only be used to solve problems that only government can solve, and email doesn't rise to that level.
So, the solution:
A new protocol to replace SMTP. Someone sends you an email, and your server replies with the amount of the micropayment required for the email to go through. Then they can pay or decline. Most people would leve this set to a low amount (five cents sounds good to me), but famous people might set the bar higher to reduce the amount of email they get. The server has a "white list" of people you won't charge for email; this will use digital signatures, not an easily-forged header field.
Your email client has three toolbar buttons: refund the fee for this message and add the sender to the white list, refund the fee for this message, and delete message without refunding the fee.
We would have to run this in parallel with SMTP for a while, but it will be hugely popular. People using this will find no penis enlargement (excuse me, "pen1s en.la.rg.em.en.t") emails in their new inbox, even as their SMTP inbox gets worse and worse with spam. The word-of-mouth on this would be incredible: "I only check my spambox every other day or so, if you want to get in touch with me quickly you will need to use the new email format."
Quick numbers:
Let's assume some wild numbers (I have done no research, I just made these up). Suppose a typical spam run sends out 100,000 pieces of spam, and 30 people are dumb enough to bite (sounds high, but let's assume it) and each of those people sends $30 (hoping to "get bigger now"). That's $900, which is a clear profit if you are simply blasting emails over SMTP. But if the average person charges five cents to receive an email, it would cost 5,000 dollars to send out that spam run, for a net loss of $4,100. This is why spam would no longer work.
Note that you might receive ads in your inbox, but they would be ads where the sender is confident that the ad is worth five cents. If someone sent me a coupon good for $20 off something I actually want to buy, I'd even refund the five cents.
steveha
Lets make a FAQ (Score:5, Insightful)
SPAM-Solution FAQ v.01
Congratulations, you have an EMAIL SPAM Solution.
Now, before you release it to the world, why don't you consider these points:
(c) 2004 by Jesse Meyer ( dasunt [a] hotmail [.] guess ).
Permission to redistribute is freely granted as long as this disclaimer is included.
PS: Feel free to suggest other points, I'll add them to the list.
It has to be said - Gates misquote (Score:4, Funny)
And how, exactly? (Score:3, Insightful)
Reminds me of an old joke... (Score:3, Funny)
Microsoft has always been good on promises. The fact is that spam is getting worse and worse. Microsoft at the moment does absolutely nothing about it. I had to let go of my hotmail address because I got so much spam in it that the mailbox would overflow twice a day. I have tried several freemail providers and hotmail is absolutely the worst in every respect, certainly regarding spam.
But Gates flashes a big smile and says Microsoft solves the spam problem! Yes, it will be gone Real Soon Now. Don't worry but trust Microsoft! Have we ever let you down?
Another 640k quote... (Score:3, Interesting)
The biggest problem that they all break the simple model that makes email work. Users can pass an "email address" by any means (inband or out of band) they want, and then they can exchange messages. Any kind of payment system will require a security relationship between the email-exchanging parties. Security realationships are expensive, and tend to scale as O(N^2).
Increasing the cost (CPU or money) would still let "rich" spammers spam, but would shut down mailing lists, and make a big extra barrier for people to freely email each other. (And no, whitelisting the mailing lists won't work -- because the spammers would just forge mail from those mailing lists.) Getting rid of the "poor" spammers would be nice (no more herbal viagra...) but would encorage big companies to spam (and they would claim that this is legitimate.) Consider this, as well: much spam these days is delivered by zombies -- is it really costing the spammer anything if his network of zombies has to do a little more CPU intensive work?
If you require a micropayment with each email, that means you either have an extra step to take with each email (insert smartcard, type pin, or whatever) or your MUA does that for you. The previous is enough difficulty to kick many non-technical users off the 'net. The later would imply that malmalware or a social engineer can steal all your email money.
There are lots of ways to help reduce spam (currenly more than 50% of email is spam.) Filters help a lot, and the ASRG is working on new barriers to spammers. If CAN-SPAM were enforced, it would make a large dent in the amount of spam (and make the rest easier to filter.) I think that has to be the magic bullet for spam, if there is going to be one. Filters and other barriers may slow spammers down, but if there is no penalty for trying, they'll keep coming until they find a way to circumvent the filters, the payment schemes, etc. The magic bullet canot be filtering alone -- I'm pretty sure that well-written spam would require a turing test to distinguish from ordinary email.
Mind the source (Score:4, Funny)
Microsoft will accomplish this... (Score:3, Funny)
Baysian... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Call Me Now! (Score:2)
The anti-spam technology, on the other hand, might be based on being able to factor primes
Re:Call Me Now! (Score:3, Informative)
For the millionth time, no he did not. He denies it, and no one has ever dug up a source for this quote.
The Story of 640K (Score:3, Informative)
*at the time* 640K should have been enough for anybody so they went with that and dedicated the other 384KB for other things.
And this has been addressed on Slashdot before. But the existance of facts has never stopped anybody from perpetuating myths if they think it proves a point they'd like to make.
The WHOLE story [urbanlegends.com]
A whole two second search on G
Re:fp (Score:3, Interesting)
As much as Bill Gates and Microsoft get group-hated there are some good ideas and some possibilities for decent implementation here, such as this. It is the darker side of MS that holds them back; if they could make great software that was fully transparent (I'm sure most of the developers would be happy with this) they would be totally win-win,
Re:fp (Score:2)
This is a nightmare.... I am sorry.
Reminds me of what Torvalds said about SCO.
Something about "smoking crack".
--ken
Re:xbox n stuff (Score:3, Informative)
Eh? Ps2 uses a 300Mhz CPU, and the Gamecube uses a ~500Mhz CPU. Neither of those platforms have upgradeable RAM or CPUs either.
So tell me again how the hardware is weak compared to the others?
Re:xbox n stuff (Score:3, Insightful)
Although, compared to other consoles it is quite powerful, its still fairly weak.
When it comes to hardware specs it is not weak. It's marginally better than both the GC and PS2. It lacks the possibility for upgrades (such as the processor or memory) and by today's standards 800mhz is hardly anything (i think thats what the clock speed is off the top of my head).
You make two point here and I'll
Re:xbox n stuff (Score:2)
Re:xbox n stuff (Score:3, Insightful)
Trying to say that an 800mhz processor in a console is going to hold it back is totally asinine. So far we've seen just the first generation of games, developers have not yet come close to utilizing all that the xbox has to offer in terms of hardware. This year you'll see the new games that just start to unleash the potential this system has to offer (HALO 2 and Fable among others...).
Now if you wanted to bash the xbox, you mention:
Re:Victory over spam? (Score:2)