Bill Gates Forecasts Victory Over Spam

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.)

Comments

Re:Call Me Now!

[scrytch]

Bill Gates also forecasted that 640KB should be "enough for anybody".

For the millionth time, no he did not. He denies it, and no one has ever dug up a source for this quote.

Re:Yeah, spam filters.

[MBCook]

I USE Outlook 2k3 and have used it's spam filtering. It does work, cutting my spam down to 1/3 to 1/4 of it's volume, and it's simple to use.

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, fantastic (98-99% correct) accuracy, and it's free (and always will be, stupid Cloundmark).

As for micropayments in the way Gate suggests, I don't like that. What is to keep someone from deciding they don't like me and charging me money? I DO like the idea of requiring a second or two of processing time per e-mail sent (especially if you could choose what it does, say Seti@Home or folding), but as soon as spammers found a way around it it becomes useless, and what would happen to mailing lists?

what spam?

[ejaw5]

not to serve as an inviation for any, but I don't get spam in my primary email address, and maybe just a few in my free web-based email that go to the "bulk folder" ...which is far from what the media and everyone proclaims how bad spam is. If you're haphazardly posting your email address in public forums, websites, contests, etc etc then you probably get spammed a lot. Just be careful who/where you give out your email address, and if you do get any spam, don't load the images (or any HTML content for that matter), and certainly don't click on the "remove from list" link.

The Story of 640K

[KalvinB]

That quote is in context about the first 8088 or 8086 chip. The manufactures we debating how much of the 1MB addressable memory should be allocated for what.

*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

A whole two second search on Google cleared that up.

Ben

Re:xbox n stuff

[Judg3]

Although, compared to other consoles it is quite powerful, its still fairly weak. 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).

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:Not filters

[Kyouryuu]

I think a "puzzle" would be more like the randomly-generated authorization codes that we frequently see when we sign up for free services in order to verify that a human signed up and not a bot.

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:And he can use his 640K of ram to ensure it!

[kamapuaa]

You might find this - Bill Gates never made such a claim.

Re:Google isn't the be all and end all.

[Ageless]

Maybe I missed something but I searched Google for "sheena stuntwoman" and the first link I got was her resume with links to tons of pictures and BIO.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=U TF -8&q=sheena+stuntwoman&spell=1

http://www.v10stunts.com/gloria_fontenot_resume. ht m

Re:no more spam?

[Ruliz Galaxor]

Hotmail is since a few months already a lot better already. I received 200+ spam-emails a week on both hotmail-accounts I have, and now it's about 5 each week. This is _not_ the spamfilter which you can choose to use, but rather a spamfilter valid for all Hotmail users. I don't know what they did, but they should've done this already a few years ago. :) Really, it sounds stupid maybe, but hotmail has now one of the best spamfilters I know. sig(h)

Re:Second or two of processing time

[esj at harvee]

camram project has successfully used hashcash for stamp generation and message acceptance. We find that about 15 to 20 seconds computation is about the right amount to seriously bankrupt spammers. (paper on this coming soon)

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

End spam - Open Source

[NewToNix]

First, on an old computer I had that was just sitting around growing dust, I set up my own "in house" email server using qmail , on GNU/Linux/Mandrake. It was dead easy to do.

I pluged it into my router and opened ports 25 & 110 for it.

Then I added Fetchmail .

And then the neatest thing since sliced bread; TMDA.

4 months now - zero spam, zero lost valid emails.

I didn't have to give up any existing (POP3) accounts, and gained as many as I want to create, because I now have my own email server.

This is easy and cures spam, period.

I'm on DSL, with dynamicly assigned IP, so I use a free DNS service no-ip.com.

This really is simple to do, all were RPM's and I mostly just took whatever default was offered.

I really am New To Nix, so if I could do this, then anyone can.

And it was free.

I am so happy - 40 - 50 spam emails a day, went to ZERO spam. And I still have and use my same email address! Plus some special occasion ones I create as needed (timed experation for usenet, etc.).

And the disclaimer - I have nothing to do with any program mentioned in this post, other then being a happy user of same.

NewToNix (668737)

Re:Yeah, spam filters.

[meta-monkey]

Mail.app uses a Bayesian filter to filter out spam. That means it has to be trained. The training refers to the filter, not the user. When you get a spam email, you click a button that says "This message is junk." When you get an email marked as junk that is not junk, you click "this mail is not junk." That's the training period. Once the filter has identified the common themes in mail you think is junk (penis enlargement, URGENTLY REQUESTING YOUR HELP FOR AN IMMEDIATE FINANCIAL TRANSACTION, etc), you set the filter to active mode, where it automatically stuffs the junk mail into a junk folder, hiding it from you.

Vanquish

[ashot]

There is already a program that does this actually, a little bit of a nuisance, but you can try it out: www.vanquish.com