This is how Bill Gates is going to eliminate spam?
In case you didn't catch the buzz back in January, Bill Gates claimed he would eliminate spam by 2006. He said that Microsoft was working on a way to proof or fingerprint e-mails, which would enable people to confirm the identity of the sender.
Apparently Bill realized his claims were a bit brazen. Perhaps development wasn't going as smoothly as he thought and he figured he'd better cover his tracks. Now he's proposing that we pay postage on e-mail as a way to reduce the amount of spam we receive.
I don't know about you, but my snail mail is chock full of junk. On average, I throw away 75-80% of what comes in my mailbox. Obviously, the cost of postage isn't deterring people from sending me unsolicited crap, as Bill suggests it would. In fact, the junk mail senders get a discounted rate--its called Bulk Mail.
This is just another way for someone (Microsoft? The Federal Government?) to squeeze more of my hard earned dollars from me. I already pay $45 a month for my broadband internet connection. I pay another company for hosting this site. So why on earth should I pay postage on e-mails that I send out?
Aside from costing me more money, I see other problems with this solution. First, who would mandate the cost of the postage? If its the USPS, I imagine we could expect regular increases. Second, how would we be billed for such a service? It would cost an ISP more money to prepare an itemized, detailed invoice than it does to send a standard once-a-month bill. Since there is now a profit to be made by use of their software, naturally Microsoft would want a piece of the pie and would charge some sort of licensing fee for Outlook Express.
There are a lot of voluntary newsletters that I enjoy reading. And I have taken advantage of some great deals from legitimate stores who have sent me special offers via e-mail (I got a great set of knives from cooking.com for $14.99). No doubt these companies would stop sending me things I have willingly signed up for if they were to incur a cost for it.
As far as the unsolicited garbage goes, I use a great little program called MailWasher. It does an excellent job filtering out my e-mail and gives me a simple interface to delete random spam before downloading my mail to my Inbox.
Come on, Bill. I know that a few cents to send an e-mail means nothing to someone like you who has more money than you know what to do with, but it all adds up for the average worker like me.
Just like the increased gas prices (here I go again...).
Posted by geekchik at March 5, 2004 09:59 AM