http://news.independent.co.uk/digita...p?story=484520
Gates plans an end to spam in two years
By Paul Geitner in Davos
25 January 2004
A spam-free world by 2006? That's what Microsoft chairman Bill Gates is promising.
"Two years from now, spam will be solved," he told a select group of World Economic Forum participants in Davis, Switzerland. Gates said his company is working on a "magic solution" based on the concept of "proof" - identifying the sender of the e-mail.
One method involves requiring the sender to solve a puzzle that only a flesh-and-blood person can handle. Another is a "computational puzzle" that a computer sending only a few messages could easily handle, but that would be prohibitively expensive for a mass-mailer.
But the most promising, Gates said, was a method that would hit the sender of an e-mail in the pocket. People would set a level of monetary risk - low or high, depending on their own choice - for receiving e-mail from strangers.
If the e-mail turned out to be from a long-lost relative, for example, the recipient would charge nothing. But if it is unwanted spam, the sender would have to fork out the cash. "In the long run, the monetary [method] will be dominant," Gates predicted.
He conceded, however, that his prognostications have not always been on the mark. He misjudged the rising popularity of open-source software, epitomised by Linux, and the success of the Google search engine.
* Gates is to be awarded an honorary knighthood for "services to global enterprise". It is believed the recommendation was made by Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown.
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What do you think his chances of success are? Personally, as with practically all Microsoft products, there will be a huge exploit in it and it won't work but you never know he might get a bug-free version going for once. Even one with bugs might cut spam down significantly.