Gates on Spam 608
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.
Cha ching, reloaded. (Score:5, Interesting)
Similar to Seti@Home, sure... Except you pay Microsoft to have the calculations considered.
Also, what is Gates holding in that picture? A joint? Is that was he's smoking thinking people will accept this idea as part of their daily email lives so that microsoft can make even more barrels of cash?
Re:Cha ching, reloaded. (Score:5, Funny)
Shhh... It's an iPod mini [apple.com]
Re:Cha ching, reloaded. (Score:4, Funny)
Wonder where he hid the baby?
And finally - Cha ching, Revolutions. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Cha ching, reloaded. (Score:5, Funny)
Beyond that... (Score:5, Insightful)
I predict his personal backing can only hurt this effort.
Re:Beyond that... (Score:5, Insightful)
98% of people will read this as: "So the richest man in the world wants me to pay for something I have always done for free?"
I agree, this thing is dead before it ever gets out the conceptual door. Narrow-minded people look at it and think its rational, after all they think "it won't cost me much" ... but the whole concept of paying anything for email just destroys legitimate things such as mailing lists (think about kernel mailing lists, hobbiest lists, etc). It will never work across international boundaries, and if ever implemented people will simply revert to using the older free techniques. People are always looking for free or less costly methods of communication (such as VOIP), attaching a charge onto something that is free now is just stupid.
And I shudder to think of what might happen if politicians get a hold of a concept like this - "whoa, people paying money, and we are not getting our fair share of tax?!?"
I wish people would simply drop the paying for email concept. Bulk mail (bulk advertising) is not free, yet I still get way more of it stuffed into my physical mailbox than legitimate letters. Making it cost WILL NOT make it go away.
Re:Cha ching, reloaded. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, for 94% of them, they'd 'want' whatever Bill Baby had pre-installed on their system when they bought it! If they will put up with and make excuses for a system that allows virus-of-the-week and crash-of-the-day, why not put up with paying for email (especially if free email involves a scary extra software installation). If this thing went live, five years from now most of that 94% would have happily convinced themselves that 'it was always like that.'
Re:Cha ching, reloaded. (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Cha ching, reloaded. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, I quickly read over the article, so I may have missed something... However I had to respond to this particular point that you make. If this is going to be 'expensive computation which significantly slows [spammers'] mass-mailing efforts', won't it do the same for legitimate mass-mailing efforts as well? Newsletters? Daily mailings? News updates? I can think of several legitimate mass-mailing systems that I myself subscribe to, and I like getting them, if this makes it expensive for mass-mailing, then I may just lose the stuff that I signed up for as well as the stuff that I didn't (spam). I don't think that's necessarily the best approach..
-matt
Re:Cha ching, reloaded. (Score:5, Informative)
Either way, a patent encumbered system is unacceptable, no matter how technologically sound it is.
Re:Cha ching, reloaded. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cha ching, reloaded. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just a guess, but maybe the mail server would know the answer in advance because it used the answer to calculate the question? Couldn't the calculation to generate the question from the answer be orders of magnitude easier than the reverse?
Re:Cha ching, reloaded. (Score:4, Informative)
Its public-key crypto in reverse! Generate several big primes and multiply them together. Send the product and ask for the factors.
Re:Cha ching, reloaded. (Score:3, Insightful)
A human-scaled version of this is:
How long does it take you to figure out "what two numbers when multiplied make 14803?"
Compare to how long it takes
Use an NP-hard problem (Score:4, Informative)
The mail server comes up with two random primes, large but not "cryptographically large", sends their product, and waits for the factorization. The mail server could even precompute what random primes it will be using for future questions, or offload that task to another server if it is too busy.
Re:Use an NP-hard problem (Score:5, Insightful)
So two computers which are 10 years apart in age will be impossible to challenge equally. And even more disturbingly, specialized computers (think Deep Blue, or even a re-purposed graphics card) could be fairly easily constructed to demolish any NP-Complete problem.
The interesting thing about Microsoft's implementation here is that I believe they're using a challenge which is gated on something processor speed doesn't help with much. I'd trust MSR to have done this well. (Say what you will about the corporation, but MSR is top-notch).
I heard it had something to do with bus speeds, but I'd ask someone whose job security doesn't rely on not being tainted by reading others' patent applications.
Re:Use an NP-hard problem (Score:4, Informative)
Jason
ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]
Re:Use an NP-hard problem (Score:3, Informative)
Your point about scalability is odd. It's correct, but meaningless. There ar
Re:Use an NP-hard problem (Score:3, Interesting)
This is very different from something like, say, calculating the eigenvalues of very large non-sparse graphs, which is gated primarily on a computer's bus speed. A computer which is 100 times faster than another will still be in the same ballpark assuming reasonably simila
Re:Use an NP-hard problem (Score:3, Informative)
That is not correct.
That is, all NP-complete problems are NP-hard, but not visa versa.
That is correct.
So it's misleading to say "NP-Complete or at least NP-hard".
Yes, I agree with that.
To be a litle more precise NP-complete is defined to be the intersection of NP and NP-hard. And P is a subset of NP which is very easilly shown from the definition. If there exist a problem which is in both P and NP-complete, then it will follow that P=NP (and
Re:Cha ching, reloaded. (Score:3, Informative)
You either have two choices -- either the mail server does the same computation, which will either bog the hell out of any high volume mail server
Of course not. It will be the sort of problem that's easy in one direction and hard in the other - like factorisation. The server would just have to pick two large primes (relatively easy, although probabilistic), send the product to the client, have the client factor the product, and verify that the primes the client sends back are the right ones.
Re:Cha ching, reloaded. (Score:5, Informative)
Example: Factor 56,029,043 into primes. You're welcome to use Matlab, octave, xcalc, or whatever.
Answer: 7 times 19 times 43 times 97 times 101.
How long did it take you to solve? A lot more time than it took me to come up with the problem, because all I had to do was pick five primes and multiply them together. Obviously, a computer could factor that number trivially, but the concept scales easily to much bigger primes.
TheFrood
Re:Cha ching, reloaded. (Score:5, Informative)
You need to pick bigger primes:
$ factor 56029043
56029043: 7 19 43 97 101
$
never underestimate the effectiveness of a little GNU tool like factor - sitting waiting right at your nearest bash prompt (which can be surprisingly close).
Your point is entirely valid of course, the example is just a little too easy.
Jedidiah.
Gates/Chong/Pope? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is he praising Mel Gibson for Passion of Christ? Is he smoking one incredibly fat doober that would make even Tommy Chong jealous? Is he trying to convince the Pope that Longhorn isn't named after a pornstar? Or is he really just THAT great?
You decide.
Seriously:
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.
And how the fuck would this make a difference? So what? The computer that is supposed to do the work is going to be like Johnny Badass in 2nd grade math class... They are not going to do their homework and just try to bluff it through class. If they do end up having to hand it in to be graded they are just going to get around it some other way. We will end up blocking just as many hosts as before.
Gates' proposed system will be Microsoft patent-encumbered, unsurprisingly.
No kidding. Gates came up w/it why would you be surprised he wouldn't want to protect his idea? No conspiracy here... Was the comment necessary?
Just my worthless
Arg. (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Spamhouse uses viruses to own assorted desktops (just like they do now).
2) Instead of just using those boxes as oen relays (like the do now) they first have them 'pay' this postage.
Re:Arg. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Arg. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Arg. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the funny part would be when a spammer gets an EE on the job and comes out with a custom proc to solve said math quickly. Install as a daughter card and your golden. This would be the same aproach they took to cracking DES via brute force years ago and I beleive in under 2 days.
Either way paying for things computationaly is a loosing battle.
Paying with real money is a centraly administrated nightmare.
Now granted spamassassin seems to work just fine. There are a few spams that slip though but not that bad, granted thats a constant battle.
I would vote for fight forged from addresses first if we can have near certinty that the sender is the sender then spam laws can work.
NP = New Postage? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that's kind of neat, actually.
So Johnny Badass can't bluff his way through; his work will be checked.
There are many other problems with this technique (a problem that takes 10 seconds on a 4 GHZ Pentium takes several minutes on a still-useful P133; non-upgraded computers get treated like criminals; patent terms could suddenly turn onerous) but the idea that a computer could bluff it out isn't one of them.
Re:NP = New Postage? (Score:3, Insightful)
non-upgraded computers get treated like criminals
Microsoft....Intel....I'm getting a sense of deja vu here.
Re:Gates/Chong/Pope? (Score:4, Interesting)
Hold on a second. In the beginning, MS MAIL and later Exchange didn't use SMTP. Microsoft mail systems were islands in the business world. In order for them to communicate with other mail systems a connector had to be set up between those systems. At the same time everyone else was using Sendmail and anyone could communicate with anyone else. It has only been in the past few years that Exchange became SMTP enabled and is now able to communicate with everyone else like the Unix people had been doing all along.
So, what's my point? The point is that while Exchange is immensely popular right now it is due to the ease of use and the feature set, not because it is a better system. In fact it wasn't until Microsoft improved Exchange by adding SMTP that so many companies started using it. Today Exchange uses SMTP exclusively, for server to server communication. There are too many, too good, FOSS mail systems out there for MS to implement an expensive scheme, with little hope of success, and have everyone adopt it. Think about it. Most big Exchange users front-end it with Sendmail or Postfix anyway just to keep down the viruses/spam/vulnerabilities/cost.
It is scary to think of email coming under Microsoft's control but, it just ain't gonna happen. Most people agree that the solution to spam is a rewrite of SMTP. But, those same people acknowledge that it is unlikely to happen because it would require that EVERYONE switch at once and that is just not feasible. Therefore it is equally unfeasible for Microsoft to get EVERYONE to switch at once and at considerable expense to everyone.
While Bill might wet his bed at night dreaming of everyone using his proprietary email system, it will never be more than a wet dream.
I say (Score:3, Funny)
~S
That proposed "stamp" (Score:2, Troll)
Re:That proposed "stamp" (Score:4, Insightful)
GPL? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems like a perfect application for the GPL to me.
Re:GPL? (Score:2)
Dear Bill: (Score:5, Funny)
Love, Tom.
Dear Tom: (Score:2, Funny)
Dear Tom: (Score:4, Funny)
Love, Bill.
Re:Dear Tom: (Score:5, Funny)
The factors of 0x00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
Love,
Alex
Solves the wrong problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not surprising that Microsoft doesn't see the problem with this. They can afford to buy a few more mail servers to handle all of microsoft.com's outgoing mail, and they'd love it if people had to buy more servers (each running a copy of Windows, of course) just to handle all of the added computational costs of sending mail.
In the article, "Goodmail chief executive Richard Gingras said individuals might get to send a limited number for free, while mailing lists and nonprofit organizations might get price breaks." But how do you know who's a nonprofit? Someone with a
I believe that SPF [pobox.com] currently has the potential to put the biggest dent in spam, since it directly addresses forged email addresses without needing to replace SMTP. It's not a complete solution, but it's a lot more realistic than Microsoft's idea.
not a problem (Score:3, Insightful)
I do agree that this could be potentially troublesome for companies like amazon that send out large quantities of confirmation emails. But I imagine those would still be received and stored somewhere -- the user would just have to go poke around for emails they were expecting but hadn't specifically authorized.
Email Postage also creates new problems (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder how many people would not bother contacting us to inquire about services if they had to pay for the priviledge?
Also, I exchange A LOT of emails with existing clients...working off-site makes email the prefered mechanism of communication. I already pay for Internet Access (which currently includes access to routes between mail servers); I'd sure hate to have to pay for using a particular service on the Internet that is now free.
IMO, Spam is best fought at the source. Filters like SA are great for the user end, but the demand on the wires is still there (the recipient server has to GET the spam for it to be dropped). Go after the spammers themselves. Hard. With both barrels.
(1) Make it financially unattractive to spam. This can be either by fines or by MORE user education to NOT RESPOND to the dang things.
(2) Go after them criminally. They put an arguably unethical demand on everyone's Internet; who knows how many hardware failures are accelerated by the traffic due to spam (disks, NIC's etc). I liken spammers to someone who blows up, or at least physically blocks, a bridge on a public highway.
Barter (Score:3, Interesting)
It might cut down on those damn chain letters and stupid Internet jokes that get passed around 5000 times.
Re:Barter (Score:3, Insightful)
Paid by whom, to whom, managed by whom?
Another suggestion from Bill (Score:4, Funny)
The rest will burn in the Final Conflagration between the Dark Prince's OS and the upstart Penguin!
Muwahahahahahahahaha!!!!!
Eat this! (Score:2, Insightful)
One thing's for sure, as a receiver of 500-1000 spam and virus em
where to begin? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fine for the rich but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
Spam as a tool works as per the previous articles. It is a pain just like anything else, but instead of making me pay money to use email, why not spend you high budgets with an educational compaign to stop people from buying spammed products? No money made means no motivation. Problem solved. We voted with our dollars on banner ads and look how that market fell out. Rinse and apply to spam.
Also, what happens when we are forced to move away from email because we invite Microsoft to take over and control it?
No thanks! (Score:2)
Great picture of Bill?!? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Great picture of Bill?!? (Score:5, Funny)
-Peter
What about large spam networks? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What about large spam networks? (Score:5, Funny)
whew. I can't wait for that.
Pay with cycles? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why wouldn't the spammer be willing to sell cycles on the zombie PCs?
Perfect... (Score:2)
Of course you know... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is, the main reason why the Internet has worked and CIS, GEnie, ISDN, Teletex, etc. have all fallen by the wayside is because you pay for bandwidth, not services.
No, the problem is, there's no good way to kick somebody off of the Internet.
I already pay (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should I have to pay more just because the government refuses to enforce laws that already exist.. Remember the no fax spam laws that pre-date this 'internet thing'? They prohibited sending faxes due to the fact the receiver had to foot the bill for the 'privilege' of getting the spam, due to expenses of paper and ink.
This doesn't even touch the fact that a large percentage of spam is pornographic, and being sent to minors.. also a crime in this country....
So fact Bill is in it to profit ( go figure ) has nothing to do with my statement...I f-ing pay enough now.. And im sick of it.
Rising costs (Score:3, Insightful)
New slashdot poll: (Score:2)
how about less inflammatory story text? (Score:2)
Dear lord.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have enough security problems with downloading email and web content onto Windows machines. God only knows what would happen if people could upload shit onto my machine without my approval.
It's a novel idea. But I wouldn't trust MS to implement it.
the Maginot Line of Spam (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe in a few decades people will catch on to the fact that the internet is global and decentralized, and that schemes like this are doomed to failure. You can't devise a pay-f
The slide changers during speeches (Score:3, Insightful)
It's such a pet peeve now that I can't even watch keynote speeches anymore.
Microsoft using GPL-alike? (Score:3, Interesting)
That sounds an awful lot like a GPL-ism to me.
My system for spam. (Score:5, Interesting)
My system is beautiful and simple.
Everyone use an OpenPGP program (maybe gnuPG) to sign all their email. then recipients can easily check a public keyserver (probably would have to set up more, but ideally each large domain would have one so you can check 'keyserver.microsoft.com' for the key for an adress from microsoft.com) of course you wouldn't need to check a server for someone in your keyring, but I bet through this method anti-spam webs of trust would become very easy to protect.
This is currently standards complient, so it breaks nothing. And it allows people to decide their level of protection.... you want unsigned mail to get through more power to you. You want to see only verified email fro people YOU know, go for it. you want to accept from any one who has signed that you can get the identity of from a keyserver, sounds great.
Why don't people do this? it requires nothing more than minimal changes to mail readers, and mild diligence. once it became popular enough its very easy to eliminate all non-trusted mail (although st first you would have to slowoly build it up of course)
is this that bad of an idea?
Re:My system for spam. (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Still requires me to get the entire E-Mail before deciding to keep it or not, but until E-Mail is taking up a non-fractional percentage of my bandwidth, that's not a problem for me (It is for the Internet as a whole, though.)
2) Requires you to do some processing to insure that the entire message is signed. Otherwise a spammer could seek out a legitmate message from your mom and copy it into the bottom if his spam. If you just look for the PGP signature headers and don't notice that 90% of the message isn't signed, you'll still accept the E-Mail.
3) Spammer could generate a throw-away key and register it with a keyserver. Though if you require all incoming E-mail to be encrypted to your key, that'd solve that problem.
4) Mailers would have to support that, and most of them hardly even support PGP, largely thanks to those pesky export regulations of a while back. Apparently even implementing a "Crypto enabling API" was illegal. I don't know the current status of those things.
5) Still doesn't solve the problem of hacked machines out there, not that there's a good way around that one no matter what solution you use.
Re:My system for spam. (Score:4, Interesting)
You'd probably want to change your key every couple of months to avoid having your keys sold on CD and such, but I expect it would be pretty effective, especially in the short term, since the spammers will go for the low hanging fruit first.
Email postage will get abused by spammers (Score:5, Insightful)
Spam solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Spam solution (Score:3, Funny)
Paying for email would do one thing (Score:3, Informative)
Then I'm sure the lawyers would muck it up even more by trying to enforce ISPs to regulate the new email/message sending system and we would get into the very thorny issue of what constitutes an email?
What about IRC chat, or Instant Messaging, or message board messaging systems? Would those fall under the email stamp tax?
Spam is annoying but I personally will not pay again for my service. I pay for my bandwidth and I know how to filter my email properly. Forcing me to pay again for email will only insure that I will be one of those who switches to another standard.
Root certificates? (Score:5, Interesting)
I bet if we did this it wouldn't be long before almost everybody signed up with a registered email service (or purchased their own certificates) only leaving illegitimate senders in the cold. Forged headers *should* be a thing of the past, we have the technology.
Anyhow, I fear at this point its going to be decided by the first large system that comes to market. Which looks like MS is really pushing to be.
Re:Root certificates? Unfortunately not quite. (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's why not: Because hackers and worm authors will still have control of a vast network of computers, that will not only generate spam signed by the poor victim, but will also lead to that victim's e-mail access being revoked.
Relying on a review process would be too difficult - each new virus/worm could result in, say, a million affected machines, which means potentially a million reviews suddenly needing to be made.
How do they plan on enforcing this? (Score:3, Interesting)
What is to stop me from having a mail server off US shores to provide my clients with cost-free email access? What is to stop spammers from setting up their own mail servers and forging the stamps? They certainly don't play by the rules right now!
Do they plan on forcing everyone to upgrade their mail clients and server software?
My biggest question, Who are "they". Are "They" the ones who will collect the money for these stamps? Is it M$? The ISP? The Government? Since a transaction is taking place, will there be a tax on the email? (you know the IRS will want their cut).
I run a mail server on a colo for myself and give space/access to my friends for free. Do I now have to charge them? Do I have to pay taxes on that?
Yes, this is a lot of questions, but they a) don't see have been asked yet, and b) don't have answers that I know of.
I am not for spam but I'll be damned if I will start paying for my email as a theory to stop spam when we all know damn well that it won't stop them.
Mailing lists (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, Gate's method has a lot of flaws, security being only one of them. For example, how will you deal with all the various different operating systems and embedded hardware that send email? For example, my Netgear firewall box periodically sends me emails of logs or alerts.
Also, you can't easily change the way email is done because its use is so widespread.
Making it computationally based has a number of major flaws.
1. How do you deal with the wide range of computer performance? For example, my mail server is a Pentium II, which is more than adequate for my needs, or my firewall, which is a 50MHz StrongARM processor?
2. How would you allow others to use your computer to make computations? This opens up some serious security considerations, not to mention the fact that there's a wide range of processors and operating systems that would need to be supported. I won't run Seti@Home because the last time I ran it it crashed my mail server after over 200 days of uptime. I don't know what it was about Seti, but it would always immediately crash my server.
3. You would need to make everyone agree to do this. The Internet is international.
A better way would be to strongly encourage ISPs to block spammers and give them the tools to go after them. An ISP should be able to charge the hell out of a spammer on their network and encouraged to do so.
Why not give the backbones the power to cut off major spam sources and provide financial incentives to do so?
There's lots of other methods that could be used. If you make life completely miserable for spammers, they'll stop. If there's no profit, they'll stop.
If our stupid congress critters would do something right for a change, like California's anti-spam law that was blocked by the Washington idiots, then we'd have a lot more power to go after the spammers.
The net needs to, and will be, free. (Score:3, Insightful)
I suppose you could say it'd be "voting with your dollar" to shut down any efforts to control the Internet in such a manner.
System (Score:3, Funny)
leave it be (Score:4, Insightful)
When the Internet exploded and the joe masses came flooding in there were many rapid changes witnessed. Many of these changes were tremendously wonderful, and many weren't.
Over the years we saw the tug of war between those who think that the net is evil and must be controlled, and those who are intelligent enough to govern themselves and contribute to the common good.
There were many different attacks on our freedom, and usually we prevailed because it was obvious that proposed restrictions would damage our precious medium. But lately the anti-spam efforts begin to scare me.
I'm scared because most people hate spam. So even people who are normally freedom-fighters give a moment of pause to think, "Well, I really do hate spam, maybe I should consider this."
The answer to problems that arise within the net are never ones that limit and merely mimic our failing systems elsewhere.
I too was pulling out my hair over the explosion of advertising. I realized that it was collecting in my memories, permanently, like toxic waste being spewed at my senses.
For the most part however I have returned to serenity. I use Mozilla Firefox with the Adblock plugin, this takes care of all banners/popups. I also finally just installed spamassasin on my mail server and the hundreds of junk mailings that normally made my veins bulge are now routed behind closed doors to a junk folder.
To top it off I threw away my television. I can still enjoy the simpsons, but now it is commercial free. Caller I.D. protects me from unwanted calls. Simply lift the phone for a split second and slam it back down. And I do most of my business through the net so I can safely ignore snail mail.
The solution is already here. It is education, technology, and intellect.
[Paul Anka]
To stop those monsters 1-2-3
Here's a fresh new way that's trouble free
It's got Paul Anka's guarantee...
[Lisa]
Guarantee void in Tennessee!
[All]
Just don't look!
Just don't look!
Just don't look!
Just don't look!
I don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)
So it is a simple matter of finding the spoofed email addresses.
This is how an email server would check inbound email:
1. receive email
2. lookup domain of sender. If does not resolve, discard.
3. lookup "domain email authority" of domain, say "authorize.yahoo.com" for senders originating at yahoo.com. No authority, discard.
4. ask authority it if the user is known and what IP address it would be sending email from.
5. Is user known and does "authorized" IP address match IP address of sender? If not, discard.
This mechanism would also make it easy to circumvent non-spoofed email addresses since the spammers would need to support the extra authorization queries. It would also force them to centralize their efforts making them an easy target for elimination.
The result: No spam, no Microsoft tax. Nothing. Only a little bit of overhead on DNS and email servers which could be eased with a little bit of caching.
Why wouldn't this work? Is there a problem with this?
backward compatibility [Re:I don't get it] (Score:4, Insightful)
For example, let's say you receive an email from babar@domain.ii (imaginary tld). With your scheme, your server asks authorize.domain.il but domain.il hasn't upgraded and still use old simple email server. Email is discarded. That means no user from domain.ii can send you email.
bzzzt the internet is broken.
Re:backward compatibility [Re:I don't get it] (Score:3, Insightful)
You are not going to come up with an immediate solution because there is none but if you start with something like this or a hash cash solution, within several years spam will become harder and har
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Interesting)
Mailing lists, forwarding services, email-this-link-to-a-friend, all that stuff and more would become illegitimate email under this scheme, and also under SPF. You've offered no insights or solutions that hundreds of others haven't already brought up.
Here's a clue for everyone: if someone tells you, or you yourself think, that they have the solution to the spam problem, and it's so simple that there's no reason why it can't be implemented now, they
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Informative)
There is already a patch for this (at least for qmail). The others wouldn't be too tricky.
Microsoft already did this about 5 years ago (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Does anyone even read the snippet? (Score:3, Informative)
Email is valuable because (Score:3, Insightful)
But you cannot save email by destroying the things that makes it valuable and popular.
Not acceptable. (Score:5, Insightful)
It is one thing to donate idle CPU time to something charitable and worthwhile, like SETI, if you wish to do so. But to allow a private corporation to freely enjoy things that cost me considerable money for, like a full time DSL connection, and the electricity to operate a PC with a 450 watt power supply 24/7, makes no sense. To require me to submit to this just so I can send e-mail is nonsense.
Other questions come to mind. If this proposed system is burdened with Microsoft patents, then exactly how will open-source or third-pary e-mail clients and servers be licensed with the Microsoft IP. Exactly what is that going to cost?
I swear i've seen this before..... (Score:3, Interesting)
intend to stay online and continue using e-mail: The last few months
have revealed an alarming trend in the Government of the United States
attempting to quietly push through legislation that will affect your use
of the Internet. Under proposed legislation (Bill 602P) the U.S. Postal
service will be attempting to bilk email users out of "alternative
postage fees". Bill 602P will permit the Federal Govt. to charge 5 cents
surcharge on every email delivered, by billing Internet Service
Providers at source. The consumer would then be billed inturn by the
ISP. Washington D.C. lawyer Richard Stepp is working without pay to
prevent this legislation from becoming law. The U.S. Postal Service is
claiming that lost revenue due to the proliferation of email is costing
nearly $230,000,000 in revenue per year. You may have noticed the recent
ad campaign "There is nothing like a letter". Since the average citizen
received about 10 pieces of email per day in 1998, the cost to the
typical individual would be an additional 50 cents per day, or over $180
per year, above and beyond their regular Internet costs. Note that this
would be money paid directly to the U.S. Postal Service for a service
they do not even provide. The whole point of the Internet is democracy
and non-inerference. If the Federal Govt. is permitted to tamper with
our liberties by adding a surcharge to e-mail, who knows where it will
end. You are already paying an exorbitant price for snail mail because
of bureaucratic inefficiency. It currently takes up to 6 days for a
letter to be delivered from New York to Buffalo. If the U.S. Postal
Service is allowed to tinker with email, it will mark the end of the
'free' Internet in the United States. One congressman, Tony Schnell (R)
has even suggested a "twenty to forty dollar per month surcharge on all
Internet service" above and beyond the government's proposed email
charges. Note that most of the major newspapers have ignored the story,
the only exception being the Washingtonian which called the idea of
email surcharge "a useful concept whose time has come" (March 6th 1999
Editorial) Don't sit by and watch your freedoms erode away! Send this
email to all Americans on your list and tell your friends and relatives
to write their congressman and say "No!" to Bill 602P Kate Turner
assistant to Richard Stepp Berger, Stepp and Gorman Attorneys at Law 216
Concorde Street, Vienna, VA.
********
Spam/Chain Mail predicting the future? Whaaa.
Microsoft gets all your work for free (Score:3, Informative)
Compute cycles are relative (Score:3, Insightful)
How many years is that on my cellphone (which sends email) or my apple
Spammers can get around this in any number of ways. Let's say I run a boobie site and want to spam you... I have visitors browsing it running a client which does all the calculations I need to send millions of spam a day. After all, I have a captive army of geeks (boobies!) that'd be happy to run calculations in my stead in exchange for free boobies.
Compute cycles just aren't the answer since they're easy to obtain, and easy to fake, and who the hell gets to decide what problem gets worked on with MY cycles?
Cold, hard cash is the way to discourage millions of spams sent daily. And the payment should be "opt-in" by the recipient, so that you don't need to worry about your grandma charging you a nickle to send her an email.
Gotta love Microsoft (Score:3, Insightful)
I especially love:
"Since they're dedicating it to the public free of charge, (Microsoft) doesn't want to be the patsy who builds a foundation just so other people can come along and erect a building on it, then sell the building," he said.
Can you say "BSD Stack?"
I smell money (Score:3, Insightful)
Well there are all sorts of existing technology that could limit spam rates, stop client boxes from using unauthorized services, or unapproved domains, send auth... I'm not suggesting any of those things are or are not appropriate. Just that they do indeed exist and what's lacking is the will and cooperation. And without that his approach will not make things better. There are much easier ways to extend existing standards where that is needed.
It may slow the rate of growth but it won't stop the flood.
What it will generate though is more impetus to force older technology users to upgrade. And most likely servers will need to be upgraded as well. The cost will be insignificant to the spam kings who profit. Not even a bump really.
Of course we could ensure some sort of reliable client identification process is built it... Ooops that's a good benefit to DRM as well! What luck! And stopping spam is a good sales pitch.
Nah I haven't argued all the points. There are some good ideas out there as to how to stop spam in general.
But Gate's approach is let's all spend more money on more technology even though the gesture in the long run will be futile. Just because we can't cooperate on these things today doesn't mean we won't if we all spend more money on it (true but not plausible).
And with proper design we can eliminate this pesky free email too. Does he really think I'd ever pay for hotmail?
Attention Bill Gates (Score:5, Funny)
(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!
Using computation won't work (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, what happens to all these web-based email accounts like Yahoo or Microsoft's Hotmail? I guess they'll need to spend a lot of money adding processing power for their users to send email.
What's to stop someone from making hardware to do the processing? It shouldn't be too difficult to implement an FPGA or an ASIC that could do the processing much faster. I imagine it wouldn't take too long for PCI boards to come out to offload the processing for large mail servers, then spammers with money could just buy the board to offload the processing.
-Aaron
Re:Confirmed. (Score:3, Funny)
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:Postage due.... Postage declined (Score:5, Interesting)
You send back a response and attach your 1 penny stamp token.
Said person sending you an email is really a scamster. They keep the penny. Repeat a bunch of times, you've just made some money.