both news and read the newspaper.. it seems that yahoo and microsoft ( i dont know what email they own) is planning to have thier email pay per send basis. i dont know how are they going to do it since so many people use it since they are free.

some say they are planning to do it to reduce spam

another plan is that they are going to make it free for friends and family but non-other recognized email will be charged.

plans for an electronic postage stamp which has its own digital signature. so somehow people can also identify the spammers.


what do you think?

[ 02-05-2004, 03:11 AM: Message edited by: Harkoliar ]

I'm not sure how this would work? and is bill Gates trying to be helpfull or is he trying to make money out of spam?

Will it work like buying stamps? say I buy right to send 100 emails for $5.

should be similar like that. but they are still discussing it.

im sure its double bogus for them though.. increase revenue and less traffic because of spam.

statistic show that spammers send out 1million (or two) to get at best 10 people to respond to thier ad's. gee

<span style="color: lightblue">On reducing spam,
Electronic poststamp sounds like a good idea, except that there will be very easy ways around it... set up a Geocities account, for example, at an internet cafe... upload the mass mailer to it, and when it's invoked the poststamp is from a Yahoo server.
Pay-per-email also sounds like a good idea to start with, except that there will again be ways around it - there will always be some service somewhere which is doesn't charge, or has an obscure loophole. Granted, these places may get harder and harder to find but they will always exist. They will be popular enough to get by on donations, or they will have porn adds - just look at crack/warez sites... they are getting harder to find because they are being shut down by law enforcement, and because search engines and forums are getting stricter about not allowing links to them - but they are still out there, surving on porn banners.

BTW,
Microsoft owns Hotmail.

what about poor me and some students (young ones too) :( .. i mean we can afford to buy the stamps but dont have credit cards to pay it off.

i guess im right with MSN :D . thanks for the confirmation (no matter how stupid i was on asking in the first place [img]tongue.gif[/img] )

Huh! There was an email hoax circulating a long time ago that the US G'ment planned to levy postage on email. Who woild've thought that it would actually come true! :rolleyes:

Emails meant to be free through MSN and Yahoo. I dont see how they can start charging everyone. Theres like 1 billion email users!!! O_O!!

I dont like the Idea of paying to send my e-mail, since I am a student and have lots of friends that I sent e-mail to constantly, I would be paying an arm and a leg. Its a bad idea

I hate it when people try to make money out of everything....

[ 02-05-2004, 01:03 PM: Message edited by: The Fallen One ]

At least with this you wouldnt get all those crappy chain letters and stuff! although I am very much against the idea.

i thoght the idea was that if the reciver thought the mail was unsoliceted the reciver could somehow cause a charge to the sender of like 1p. then spammers get charged lots and lots of 1p's and the rest of us pay diddley squat. :D

They basis of the idea is not so much to make money, but to put the spammers out of business. One of the proposals I heard has that the first 1000 emails a month would be free, then after that would cost anywhere from one tenth of a cent to a penny an email after that. This would of course have to adopted worldwide for it to have the desired effect. The logic is that since spammers send out millions of emails at a time several times a day this would make spamming uneconomically, while still allowing email to be used by the general public with virtually free.

Rokenn, if that is the case then I am all for it. Otherwise, let it go Billy Boy! You're telling me that there isn't other ways out there to take care of this issue?

Yeh I like the idea of the 1st 1000 being free (20 would probably be enough for me) that is a really good idea to stop spam!

I think that the government should now declare a "WAR ON SPAM!" (Three cheers for yet <u>another</u> war on a noun) We can make anti-spam task forces, who hunt down dangerous spammers with battering rams and brute force, eliminating extraneous emails in the name of justice! We must liberate the electronic mailboxes of the world! The department of homeland inbox cleanliness could have color coded alerts for heavy spamming, like fuschia, mauve, and desert indigo pumkin. Yes! WE WILL STRIKE BACK AT THE FORCES OF DARKNESS!! LET THE PARANOIA BEGIN!!!!

... is that extreme or is it just me?

... is that extreme or is it just me? </font>[/QUOTE]*sigh* It's just a bit of irony. All I wanted to do was make people laugh *sob* I'M A FAILURE!!!! [img]graemlins/crying.gif[/img]

Hey, I was just starting with computers right around when the Secret Service declared war on hackers. Busting into peoples' houses, holding families at gunpoint, taking the 16 year old's computer and never returning it (or returning it damaged and/or destroyed). I remember the reports. They even stormed Steve Jackson Games over one of the GURPS settings (believe the Cyberpunk one), stating that it was a handbook for hackers. I was a criminal justice major at the time, and I did a lot of computer crime research at the time. Nothing all that funny about what you are suggesting, ryaldin. At the time, the U.S. government had no idea how to handle computer crime, so they treated it like any other crime (storm in with the automatic weapons). They may be more sophisticated about computer crime now, but if it becomes a big political issue, there's nothing that brings more attention than busting out the automatic weapons again and hitting a "spammer hideout" (like it's some kind of major drug warehouse or something).

In short, I take what you had to say for the humor it was intended, but the U.S. Government has a nasty tendency for "overreacting" to issues they do not fully understand. Usually ends up like the War on Drugs did (nothing really done about the issue).

Uhh...I know. That was pretty much the whole point. Notice the reference in my original post about the infamous war on nouns (drugs, spam, terror). It was intended to show how the powers-that-be tend to declare war on problems, instead of trying to understand what causes the problems.

How would they like losing a lot of members if you need to pay for emails. I'm playing an online game called utopia and the makers had a free email address which gave you ingame bonuses. In the end they decided to make people pay for it (not sure if the bonuses stayed but they were minimal anyway) but I think it lost nearly all its members due to that.

Ryaldin,I liked the pun! Why not a war on stupidity,that would lead to a real regime change!!

That sounds like a fantastic idea, John, but stupid people don't know they're stupid.

"::whisper:: I see dumb people...
They're everywhere...
They walk around, and they don't know they're dumb."

Paying will end spam....not!!!! Look at the crap that comes via snail mail. The spammers will just buy bulk rates.

no, the whole point is that there will be no bulk rate. Also snail mail spam is limited by the cost. Just as email spam would be. Currently a spammer can send out 100 million emails for the same price as one. If they have to lay out $1 million dollars to do the same thing I think that will lower the amount of \/igra spam we get [img]smile.gif[/img]

i hope earthlink doesn't do something like that since i already pay for it. if yahoo and hotmail do anything that will cost me money i'm leaving them behind, i don't care if most of my friends only know one or the other addy, i can mass mail before the money takes effect and get them to email my earthlink.

i don't care about spam....that's what spam blockers are for, and junk mailboxes. i care about what will and will not cost me money.

no, the whole point is that there will be no bulk rate. Also snail mail spam is limited by the cost. Just as email spam would be. Currently a spammer can send out 100 million emails for the same price as one. If they have to lay out $1 million dollars to do the same thing I think that will lower the amount of \/igra spam we get [img]smile.gif[/img] </font>[/QUOTE]I dunno. Those Viagra people get pretty worked up about things [img]graemlins/hehe.gif[/img]

O.k. that was borderline inappropriate, even for me [img]graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

EDIT: Johnny boy: A war on stupidity?!?! Brilliant! And we could color code that too! Like, all government officials would be required to wear baby blue on days when when threats of stupidity are minimal, and lime green when stupidity is at all time highs! woot.

[ 02-10-2004, 10:34 AM: Message edited by: ryaldin ]