DescentBB

Bill Gates is suggesting:

Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates, among others, is now suggesting that we start buying "stamps" for e-mail.

What should we suggest he do with his idea?

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/0 ... index.html

And I thought you were talking about Stress for a moment. Bite me Bill!

look at me, i'm the head of the "microsoft has no say in the matter" conga line.

(mobi's just playing teh drum)

greedy piece of ★■◆●.

if i was bill, as in the richest man on the world, i couldn't care less but paying money to send emails. but since i'm not the richest ...

at least he's got finally an acceptable hairdo.

Never gonna fly. Neither will his proposed Caller-ID system, because he insists that one company (i.e. Microsoft) has control over the system.

I read this the other day and had the usual knee-jerk reaction that someone was once again trying to claim ownership to part of the Internet and we should resist it. But then I thought better of it. Spam is so out of control that I find myself accidently deleting legit e-mails rather than wade through the hundreds of junk e-mails I get each day. The anti-spam legislation obviously hasn't worked because most of them just changed where it's sent from. Most of my junk now lists Euro domains but my guess is it's still the same old slimey crew of Americans just circumventing the law. Something has to be done and at least Gates is proposing a strategy that isn't going to cost you anything except a little computing power.

This is a ridiculous idea. What about children who use email. They are expected to pay as well? How? Not every kid gets allowance.

What if children don't have to pay? How then would you prove you a kid?

If the Internet is ever regualted it will just be a matter of time until the Outernet comes to be.

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.

That sounds like an okay idea, but how would you do that without somehow replacing every E-mail program out there with new ones? The server does that calcs? That would just slow down the server, not the mailing computer.

Nitrofox125 wrote:

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.

That sounds like an okay idea, but how would you do that without somehow replacing every E-mail program out there with new ones? The server does that calcs? That would just slow down the server, not the mailing computer.

Wouldn't that essentianly turn e-mail into just a slightly quicker version of snail mail? Or would that mean that everytime I wanted to forward something funny to my friends, my own PC would bog down for 10 seconds for everyone I sent the email to? People with outdated PC's would be fuxored.

And what kind of "math puzzle" would it be? Who would be the beneficiary of my PC's time? Seems like Gates has found a new way to cut labor costs.

How many of you actually read the article before you started complaining?

I actually like the idea, though I think it needs some work -- essentially, that you have to compute some fraction of a SETI unit or some other mathematical calculation, and that by doing so, you earn the ability to send some e-mails. As long as it's easy to earn a hundred e-mails but prohibitive to earn a million e-mails, I think it's a good idea.

Implementation, of course, is a hard question. You have to answer questions like
- is verification done at the server level, or at the ISP level, or what? (In other words, could spammers just set up an SMTP server? Would they need to infiltrate an ISP?)
- would there be exemptions if one could demonstrate they had a legitimate business license and a legitimate purpose for sending masses of e-mail? (For example, could my bank send out all the e-mail they wanted, without devoting computing time?)
- if a certain server or ISP was continually sending e-mail that wasn't verified "sendable" could they be shut down?

Give this idea a couple years and I think it might actually go somewhere.

that is an absolutly horrible idea

The only effective way to stop spam is replace the current email system with a very strict whitelist approach.

Spammers can afford to build huge farms to crank out the work units for these distrubted computing projects, cause the DC projects aren't going to give up effiency to become postage proxies.

Exactly. And ontop of flip's idea, we need to totally revamp SMTP and actually give it *gasp* security features, such as having it use PGP encryption all the time the entire way to the mail server and beyond.

bash wrote: someone was once again trying to claim ownership to part of the Internet and we should resist it.

and of course the only "owner" of the Internet is D.A.R.P.A. of the US Military

AceCombat wrote:

bash wrote: someone was once again trying to claim ownership to part of the Internet and we should resist it.

and of course the only "owner" of the Internet is D.A.R.P.A. of the US Military

What?

Am I the only one who doesn't see this as such a bad idea? I see where he's coming from and yes, it would certainly help stop the 10 trillion spam emails that get fired off on a daily basis...

JMEaT wrote:

AceCombat wrote:

bash wrote: someone was once again trying to claim ownership to part of the Internet and we should resist it.

and of course the only "owner" of the Internet is D.A.R.P.A. of the US Military

What?

yes....D.A.R.P.A., a branch of the US Military that creates new prototypes and concept weaponry, is the real owner of the Internet. Back in the 1960's D.A.R.P.A. worked to create a network for the military missle guidance computers and a communication system for all US MIL Bases in the CONUS, Alaska, and Hawaii, to enable the use of near instant and real time communications with eachother. sometime around the 1970's passing into the 80's they released this network to the business world and thus the "Internet" was born. only a short time after that, it was released to the general public and soon the world.

so DARPA owns their servers and some backbone.

Most everything else is owned by ISP's. Whoever owns the physical piece of hardware owns that piece of the Internet. Doesn't matter who came up with the idea, or who set the ball rolling, it only matters who owns the physical hardware.

dood Cougar that is a l33t avatar.

Not for me, thanks.

Performing calculations is acceptable. But I don't get any spam on my personal accounts, so it's simply not worth any money at all to me.

E-mail providers, on the other hand, will probably quite like the idea - if they get part of the fee.

it does seem sensible, but the fact the article is about "gate's" idea is a turnoff.

he is a greedy scum fucker.


yes, i use windows, yes i hate it.

I use e-mail all the time...and I don't have money to throw away on something that should remain free (as long as one pays for your internet service!)

BAD idea... I don't get SPAM of any appreciable quantity on any of my e-mail accounts- EVEN my free HOTMAIL account!

There are better ways to fight spam...like re-vamping the e-mail system. Perhaps people that wanna pay for "postage" would go for that system, using the money to pay for it. I'm fine with the current FREE one.

There must be other ways to verify and control mail traffic than paying or calculating to earn mail credit. Both ideas are actually absurd.

I agree when Tom says we need a system that makes sending 100 emails easy but a million prohibitive. But that can be done differently.

Email as we know it is a dated concept anyway. I'm sure that the next generation of "email" will utilize a security layer envelopping XML.

Lothar wrote:so DARPA owns their servers and some backbone.

your missing the whole point of my post Lothar, DARPA is the sole creator of the netowkred system in the CONUS for COMPUTERS, ISP's only own their rights to their software and certain aspects of their equipment, but the name "Internet" Belongs to DARPA and the engineers that designed the system to communicate digitally and with computers

The Internet isn't a trademark.

No one owns it.

Ace the whole purpose was to keep the 'network' alive regardless of how many hard targets were hit. By design the internet is everywhere and nowhere in particular at the same time.

It's a concept not a network.
The government could shut down all it's computers and the 'internet' would be fine without them.

come-on ace, it's the simple difference between INVENTOR and OWNER. you'll get bitchslapped (more) if you don't learn to shut up and listen.

then tell all the publishers of my CompTia A+ books that very same thing, and maybe i will listen

DARPA funded ARPAnet

The rest goes from there.

Its even got a history of the internet.

ACE: then tell all the publishers of my CompTia A+ books that very same thing, and maybe i will listen

ace you should be listening anyway, lest you never learn anything. you'll find that books are not written by the hand of god and/or can be misunderstood by the reader. i'm glad you're learning with your eyes, but it's best to always keep your ears open to alternate opinions as well. you'll attract friends and women will want to sleep with you.

It would mean the death of e-mail and the rise of Message Boards.

i stand corrected, i thought it was called DARPANet,

nice site too, i could read on a few things i have questions about

The point of charging is that all mail would flow through a 'mail' server, as it does a router. By charing even 1/10 per email, the concept is to prevent spam.

I could care less, but i would prefer to simply track down all the spammers and ram a shotgun up their ass and pull the trigger twice

Nitrofox125 wrote:dood Cougar that is a l33t avatar.

Thanks bro.