By George Ziemann

Since it's a waste of time to comment on the Rich Ingrates Against America (RIAA) before the courts weigh in on the "multiple-choice" subpoena process, we turn to the BBC, which offers us several stories we will not see in the American press today.

First of all, Colin Powell has now joined the queue of government officials who admits that the entire "weapons of mass destruction" scenario in Iraq was not exactly accurate.

This is, of course, not half as entertaining as the story of drunken elephants chasing people out of villages to have rice beer parties.

And a little further on down the front page, we discover that Bill "Big Brother" Gates, having evidently solved the insignificant problem of security holes the size of Mack trucks in its Windows software, has announced that Micro$oft will end spam in two years.

From the BBC's story...

Mr Gates, by now a fixture at the annual WEF's meeting of business leaders and top politicians, said a lot of progress had been made during the past year to stop spam e-mail.

"Lots of mail you get is from people on your contact list. So what's the problem? Strangers!"

Filters could do a lot to sort spam from real mail, Mr Gates said: "Does the e-mail say it's about 'enlargement' - that might be spam."

But by adding random words in subject lines and replacing text with pictures, spammers were trickier to catch and in the long run, filters would "not be the magic solution".

More promising were "human challenges" - forcing the sender to solve a puzzle, or the computer sending the e-mail to do a simple computation.

"That's easy for a machine sending a few e-mails, but gets very difficult and expensive for a computer sending lots of spam," Mr Gates said.

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.

--------- SNIP ------------

Before you buy into this propaganda, Gates also suggested that Microsoft will replace Google as the world's top search engine, after admitting that Google is currently far superior than anything out there for focused searches.

But back to the point.

Considering that about 75% of all the spam I get has an msn.com (forged or not) address, maybe Microsoft DOES have the ability to stop a lot of spam. However, I doubt that any answer to this comes in the form of Gates' "payment at risk" plan.

This idea assumes far too much and the very premise of eliminating communication from strangers is ludicrous.

If you've got a web site at all, who do you want to hear from -- Aunt Maude or someone from the other side of the world? I mean, you can always call Aunt Maude and ask her what she thinks about something. But it's not every day that I hear from Australia or India.

If someone from the Far East or Middle Earth wants to send me a message about my website, I don't want them to have second thoughts about whether or not I'll reject their inquiry as spam.

In the long run, this sort of approach will only serve one purpose -- to eliminate any e-commerce pitches that don't come from established, well-known corporations.

Like Micro$oft.

I also see this as a two fold issue. everyone wants to stop spam but this (I think) is just an excuse to usher in two internet contols, DRM and internet taxes. Once they get controls in to charge spamers for email what's to stop them from begining to charge anyone for email. Once they (Corporations and the government) get their foot in the door there'll be no stopping it.

Micro$oft will allow "legitimate" ads (for a price) and will say those sort of e-mails are not spam.

What U and I call spam will never go away completely. Micro$oft might have the power to demand all spammers pay them a toll, but would they REALLY try to actually eliminate it?

Don't think so. Not if $$$ can be made!

Shmoo

The spam legislation issue is just another example of something that sounds good at first, but there are real corporate devils lurking in the details ready to capitolize on it all.

Look what happens continually to our copyright laws.

what he's actually saying is that they will eliminate all email that doesn't benefit macroshaft. greedy bastards. (yeah I'm still pissed about that damn laptop business)

Trust Gates to figure out a way to make money off of spam. He's quite the little businessman isn't he?

They never do anything for our actual benefit. It only has to look good. ~pepe~

The problem with this entire concept is that it comes down to a censorship issue.

If I want to send a letter expressing my opinion to 100 people that I don't know, that should be my right. They have the right not to read it.

Any argument to the contrary is significantly diffused if you classify these 100 strangers as United States senators.

Exactly George!

Depends on who is doing the "spamming" doesn't it.

Spam is good.

gdZiemann

I believe you would be able to send out your 100 letters to whomever, but, if the recipients put a block on you..then Gates gets the doh. His whole plan would actually depend on you sending out stuff. ~pepe~

I'de rather have spam than microsoft governing what i can and cant get for spam. And how are they going to recognize it? Filters a very effective when used right.

If the people who reject the mail as spam were the ones that got the payment, that might be different.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more this actually makes sense.

If the toll is collected at my inbox, then this changes everything, although I'd bet that this isn't part of the M$ scenario.

If I had a nickel for every piece of email that I've deleted unread in the past year, I wouldn't be rich but it would certainly have paid my ISP bill.

And I'd bet those who repeatedly send the same ridiculous crap would eventually stop sending it.

gdZiemann I like your idea better than Gates's Send in the idea eh? After all, we're the victims, right? ~pepe~

And let us not forget the larger questions posed in the article, namely -- Is Rice Beer a Weapon of Mass Destruction if it attracts herds of alcoholic elephants? And if so, can we use this against the RIAA? How much rice beer do we need to put on the RIAA's doorstep to attract a herd of wild pachyderms?

Would this be considered terrorism or merely "letting the market decide"?

pepe -- Send it in to who?

I don't trust the government to stop spam, hell if I'd trust Micro$oft. As always, Micro$oft has their own best interests in mind.

Hm... we'd probably need a lot of rice beer, it is going to be along trek.

It is actually an old idea that has been suggested before and sorta could make cents. (oooooh, punNY!) Gates is just proposing an "improved" way to monopolize on it.



I just bought stock in rice beer.

gdZiemann

I suppose I was thinking of your sending the idea to microsoft, but thats probably nutso...whose in charge of email anyway? The ISP's?

Anyway, Gate's idea of getting paid for spam is as bad as the Post office trying to get paid for e-mail in general, speaking of drunken elephants... ooohhh bad me
~pepe~

"Before you buy into this propaganda, Gates also suggested that Microsoft will replace Google as the world's top search engine, after admitting that Google is currently far superior than anything out there for focused searches."

I will not use a MS search engine. Never have and never will.

Same.

On this topic, if your smart with your e-mail address(I maintain 2, and neither of them get more then 5 spam's per day) then I don't see what the big deal is. The people who get major spam and complain are the people who get virus' from internet web sites. newbies.

No, I do not ever want to see spam laws, its annoying, but is it worth destroying just a little bit more free speach?

I have three emails. one for people i know in life, one for people i know from the internet and one for web sites. i use the address book for the first two emails addys as filters. the other..i hardly check at all. i would rather control spam, then have people control it for me. lets not forget...income taxes where imposed during one of the world wars to be done away with after...once they taste money...they NEVER let go.

That's fantastic. So how will Bill Gates stop spam when everybody is running Linux?

Leave to this stupid country to elect morons so incompetant that business men are now vownig to uphold the laws. Unfortunately, they are corrupt businessmen.

Bill - nobody wants your help, you self-absorbed idiot.

Moral of the story. Buy microsoft stock, i know i did.

Ok but whose in charge of Cleaning up behind all those drunken elephants??????