in reply to OT: Spammers Vs Mail::SpamAssassin and the Winner Is...

As for 800 MHz machines being "good enough", you obviously haven't been keeping up with the latest 3D games :) OK, for non-gamers, even 800 MHz is more than enough, but I don't think you'll be able to play Half Life 2 on one, even with all the fancy graphics turned down. Although I think we are hitting the point where a game's artists are the limit instead of raw power.

As for spam filters, they are really only a band-aid on the problem. Spammers will go away when the cost of sending spam outweighs the profit received in return.

----
I wanted to explore how Perl's closures can be manipulated, and ended up creating an object system by accident.
-- Schemer

:(){ :|:&};:

Note: All code is untested, unless otherwise stated

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Re: Re: OT: Spammers Vs Mail::SpamAssassin and the Winner Is...
by ptkdb (Monk) on Oct 28, 2003 at 20:35 UTC
    The quick solution to raising their costs is to have a $0.01 tax/charge per message, which puts that cost of even a 'tiny' mass mailing for 500,000 messages at $5000.00. But then you open up the whole Pandoras box of who collects the taxes, who gets the taxes etc etc etc.

    The charge would have to apply to ANY email message, same for corporations and individuals, otherwise these scummers will find a way around it. Actually I think they'd find a way around it anyway.

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      That's not as far fetched as you might think. The idea of paying for internet access with a "$cost/megabyte-transferred" is the fair and obvious way to setup things. We've been spoiled in the US with phones that have "unlimited dialing", and "unlimited internet accounts". But as more and more people get high speed access, the idea of putting an "information meter" at the entrance to everyone's house/business is going to come. These are "the good-old-days" which we will remember when the "meters" finally come. They will have no choice when the "glorious day" comes when we all have fiber-optic cables for connections. The "information-meter" will have to log 2 costs, the "number of megabytes transferred" and the "speed of transfer". I suppose there will be a way to convert that into one variable, but the idea will be lower rates for slower transfers, and non-realtime transfers.

      Getting back to spammers, maybe the "meters" will be able to do "reverse-billing", where the spammers will have to pay into your account, in order for you to get whatever they want to send. I would accept spam at $0.10 a piece. That's what I charge for hitting the "delete key". :-)

[reply]
        Some brief comments:
        • Metering of phone charges is going away. I no longer pay per minute for my long distance (US).
        • Friends in Europe had unlimited high speed Internet long before I did.
        • The UN has proposed taxing all data transfer worldwide.
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        That wount work. The amount of data that gets transfered from the spammer's machine to the net (and thus can easily be attributed to him/her) is usually fairly minimal. It's usualy some badly secured mail server long way off that multiplies the emails and starts the real waste of bandwidth. Keep in mind that you may send an email to a hundred or more people at once if the mail server isn't setup to prevent it.

        Jenda
        Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.
           -- Rick Osborne

        Edit by castaway: Closed small tag in signature

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