p2pnet - rss feed: Gates promises to Can SPAM
Microsft’s Bill Gates promised the World Economic Forum in Davos he’ll rid the world of spam within two years.
But, "His optimism contrasts with others in the industry who fret that the explosion in unsolicited e-mail could gum up the internet completely," reports Britain’s The Independent here. "And it will need to be matched with sophisticated software as spammers get ever more sophisticated."
"Tens of thousands of Britons have broadband PCs that have been infected with viruses that turn them into machines able to pump out thousands of junk e-mails every day without the owner ever knowing, industry experts are warning," says the newspaper.
"Virus-writers appear to have teamed up with spammers to create a ‘zombie network’ of broadband PCs around the world which are used to push out spam - including fraudulent and pornographic messages - round the clock. As much as 10 per cent could be British machines because there is a comparatively high number of home broadband users in the UK."
His plans for anti-spam software include "human challenges" which force e-mail senders to solve puzzles, or the computer sending the message to do a simple computation, says the report: "This would be easy for a machine sending a few e-mails, but expensive and difficult when dealing with lots of spam.
In the meanwhile, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that one way or another, SPAM is here to stay and as the Boston Globe reports here, Gates conceded that his prognostications have not always been on the mark.
Notable misjudgments include the rising popularity of open-source software, epitomized by Linux, and the success of the Google search engine and, "They kicked our butts," he said, while promising a better next-generation Internet search engine from Microsoft, due as early as next year.
January 26th, 2004 at 11:10 pm
It is cute but wrong to show a picture of Hormel’s canned meat product to represent unsolicited e-mail. I don’t represent Hormel in any way, but they have been very clear that unsolicited e-mail should be called “spam,” in lower case, and in no way associated with their food.
January 27th, 2004 at 1:35 am
Take these two together:
“Virus-writers appear to have teamed up with spammers to create a ‘zombie network’ of broadband PCs around the world which are used to push out spam”
and
“the computer sending the message to do a simple computation […] easy for a machine sending a few e-mails, but expensive and difficult when dealing with lots of spam.”
This isn’t going to work, is it… The zombie network can do the calculations easily enough.
jiri@baum.com.au