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

Re:Cha ching, reloaded.

[helmutjd]

If you read the article, it's actually nothing to do with anything like Seti@Home, or any distributed computing application. The computation is simply there to consume time, so that it takes longer to send a message. The mail server knows the answer in advance, and if the client provides the correct answer, the message is relayed... if not, it's denied. That way, spammers HAVE to perform the expensive computation, which significantly slows their mass-mailing efforts. Typical users wouldn't even notice the delay (it could be done in the background or whatever, after the user clicks send). The results of the computation itself are meaningless... so nobody benefits from them, including Microsoft.

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