Gates on Spam

pvt_medic writes "Microsoft is proposing a new system that would require people to pay to send e-mails. Postage would be in the form of allowing others to use your computer to make calculations, similar to the SETi@home project. There are other systems being suggested that would include monetary stamps and people could decide on accepting an e-mail based off the value of the stamp. (story has great picture of Bill Gates as well)" Gates' proposed system will be Microsoft patent-encumbered, unsurprisingly.

Comments

I say

[Soporific]

We use his personal bank accounts to pay for the postage.

~S

Dear Bill:

[mrpuffypants]

No.

Love, Tom.

Another suggestion from Bill

[burgburgburg]

Those agreeing to receive the Mark of Microsoft will have dominion over the earth.

The rest will burn in the Final Conflagration between the Dark Prince's OS and the upstart Penguin!

Muwahahahahahahahaha!!!!!

Re:Cha ching, reloaded.

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

Also, what is Gates holding in that picture? A joint?
Shhh... It's an iPod mini

Great picture of Bill?!?

[El]

The only great picture of Bill Gates that I know of are ones of this incident

Re:Great picture of Bill?!?

[pete-classic]

False, there is also this one.

-Peter

Re:Great picture of Bill?!?

[preric]

I believe the "great picture" comment is referring to what Gates is holding, which resembles a joint, or what I like to call, a recreational programming enhancement tool.

Dear Tom:

[System.out.println()]

We're not quite sure who you are, but we're with you. Love, Steve and Linus

Re:Dear Tom:

[Stile 65]

Dear Bill,

The factors of 0x000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000002 are 1 and 2. I promise this number is completely random.

Love,

Alex

Re:Confirmed.

[nooch]

Have you ever used MS Windows? Have you ever used MS Windows... on Weed?

It's great man... there a little paper clip hiding in the corner. What's he doing there? I don't know, man!!! Red team go! Red team go!!!

Re:Cha ching, reloaded.

[PedanticSpellingTrol]

Looks like a candy bar to me.

Wonder where he hid the baby?

And finally - Cha ching, Revolutions.

[bad enema]

Microsoft makes peace with Spam, tells everyone to learn to live with it and love it.

Re:What about large spam networks?

[mrpuffypants]

You forget, though, that Longhorn will make security breaches in Windows a thing of the past. Once that comes out everybody will upgrade (even grandma with her P133 playing Yahoo! Bridge) and then all security problems will just go away.

whew. I can't wait for that.

Dear Tom:

[Anonymous Coward]

Please remit one fully factorized 2048 bit random number.

Love, Bill.

Re:Cha ching, reloaded.

[Lawbeefaroni]

He's smoking a wad of cash. If this is implemented, exploits in Windows and outlook that allow viruses to email copies of themselves will be making him money. "Let's um, hold off on that patch for a bit longer, shall we? Muwahahahahaha!!!"

in other news - spam on gates:

[i chose quality]

"where does all the sudden hostility come from?"

spam

Re:Spam solution

[psbrogna]

Should we remove all services likely to be abused from the operating systems? Or should we just not allow people to setup their own operating systems? Maybe we shouldn't allow people access to compilers. Alot of bad things are done with compilers.

Re:That proposed "stamp"

[gnu-generation-one]

"The proceeds of a stamp would likely find its way into his pocket, I'm sure."

Okay, I propose an alternative, and I'm not going to patent it.

Sender wants to send you an email, they have to spend 10 seconds trying to crack X-Box keys.

System

[jeffkjo1]

I'd like to propose a system by which users will have to pay for their slashdot submissions, to cut down on duplicates.

Caption for the photo of Bill

[Anonymous Coward]

"Honestly - the e-mail said they could make it THIS BIG"

Microsoft already did this about 5 years ago

[agusus]

"Instead of paying a penny, the sender would "buy" postage by devoting maybe 10 seconds of computing time to solving a math puzzle."

wait, this was already done! Last time I used Outlook to send an email, my computer churned for 10 seconds and then said "Illegal exception."

I guess this "math puzzle" [oh, so *that's* what they're calling it now] was too hard for Outlook.

Why not just patent Spam?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course the spammers might argue prior art - but when did that ever stop a patent being rewarded? However, if that fails, put the words, 'la la la la' in every mail. Now it's music and the RIAA can sue.
Hot damn, I should be a consultant!

Re:Cha ching, reloaded.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it is really sad that we live in a world where the above comment is considered insightful. I wish we lived in a world where I would read that and laugh cause it is so silly. Unfortunately I think he might be right. I am no longer willing to predict that ANY evil plan is beyond microsoft.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if tomorrow's story was:

Bill Gates rapes kittens and sues them for not paying for a Micro$oft penis lisence.

the world is really starting to make me sick.

Attention Bill Gates

[npsimons]

You advocate a

(X) technical ( ) legislative (X) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
(X) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
(X) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
(X) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
(X) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(X) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
(X) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
(X) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
(X) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(X) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
(X) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(X) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
(X) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
(X) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
(X) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
(X) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
(X) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(X) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
(X) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(X) Extreme profitability of spam
(X) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
(X) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
(X) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

(X) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
(X) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
(X) Sending email should be free
(X) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
(X) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(X) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

(X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
(X) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
(X) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!