Happy Spam-Solved Day!
Happy BillG-Scheduled Spam Solved Day!
“Two years from now, spam will be solved,” Microsoft’s Bill Gates said [at the 2004 World Economic Forum in Switzerland].
So is it? Weeeeell…..
To “solve” the problem for consumers in the short run doesn’t require eliminating spam entirely, said Ryan Hamlin, the general manager who oversees [Microsoft]’s anti-spam programs. Rather, he said, the idea is to contain it to the point that its impact on in-boxes is minor.
In that way, Hamlin said, Gates’ prediction has come true for people using the right tactics and advanced filtering technology.
Ha. I am reminded of ‘weapons of mass destruction-related program activities’.
As one slashdotter says, ‘when you fail, try try again; or conversely, change the requirements and make it look like a success, which is exactly what BG has done.’
It’s not washing, though, unsurprisingly. The poll on the same page, asks ‘do you agree with Microsoft’s contention that the spam problem has been “solved”?’ Right now, with 1169 votes, it has 7.2% (in other words, the MS employees) agreeing, and a whopping 92.8% not going for it.
Tags: anti-spam, billg, dark-is-the-new-standard, end-of-spam-day, funny, microsoft, spam
Aristotle Pagaltzis said,
January 24, 2006 @ 12:12 am
See also: Bill Gates’ predictions about speech recognition: a historical review
Justin said,
January 24, 2006 @ 12:42 am
Aristotle — ha, that link is hilarious! thanks!
Jason Roe said,
January 30, 2006 @ 5:58 pm
With all the open source development going on can Microsoft really keep up? Seems like as soon as you solve one spam method 10 new methods spring up out of nowhere.
Justin said,
November 7, 2006 @ 12:56 pm
(revisiting this page after a long time)
Jason: it’s not open-source development. Spammers are exceptionally secretive about the source code for their spam engines — not that it stops us reverse-engineering them anyway ;)
Jan said,
September 10, 2007 @ 1:02 pm
I never trusted Bill Gates, and I never trusted Microsoft. Moreover, I am not using Win OS.
The only spam I receive is email spam which can’t be stopped right now due to simple reason… Email address which I published long time ago can’t be deleted from spammers’ databases :( . On the other hand, using forms as gateways for new emails is more effective way how to “filter” unwanted messages.
For example, my own web forms (with simple filters based on words filtration, message’s length verification and few other simple rules) are totally spam-free.
No wonder that Bill Gates is wrong; He doesn’t do programming. He doesn’t understand the thing at all.