Gates suggests using stamps to send email
 

NEW YORK (AP) -- If the U.S. Postal Service delivered mail for free, our mailboxes would surely runneth over with more credit-card offers, sweepstakes entries, and supermarket fliers. That's why we get so much junk e-mail: It's essentially free to send. So Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates, among others, is now suggesting that we start buying "stamps" for e-mail.



http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/interne....ap/index.html

thats not a bad idea

That would suck in away...no one would send email. How many personal letters do you get a year besides holidays?

I heard of this before and the proposed plan didn't sound like it would bust your wallet, I can't remember the specifics, I'll look it up..

Stupid idea.

You know it would be up to 35 cents in 5 years.

yeah, and who do you think will be selling these stamps?

BILL GATES and Microsoft !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LOL

:1orglaugh

you try selling email stamps and the FBI will put your ass in jail.

fuck that, thats retarded

lol - I get over 5k e-mail/day

maybe 10 are good

stamps sound good to me

no more starving asswipe kiddie programmers with their fucking worms/virus mails

Not a bad idea at all.

Even if it's only a few cents, that would kill many spammers amd certainly get rid of the one who send viruses just for fun.

A hacker is a Hacker.....

I am sure someone could code a spammer/virus that jacks your email stamps. or finds away around the system if it was ever established..

Still don't you get MAIL from Bulk stamps?

ya thats gonna stop a spammer who does 1000 joins a week :1orglaugh

the US is getting out of hand with trying to control the internet. they can't force other countries to use this stupid system. I'll just setup a mail server in a foreign country if that's the case.

what about the people without credit cards, or ways to pay online. i don't want anyone telling me how many emails i can send per day. besides there is already a limit on outgoing emails set by your ISP. I can't send over 5k emails per day on my Bellsouth DSL account.

who's supposely going to get the money the US gov't another way fuck over the people.

unless email was Bill's first invention. can kids afford to pay emails? i don't think it will work out... i doubt about this idea since it involves money. wtf do i still reply to this thead, it won't convince me to use Outlook again.

Spammers will just move to IM or any other mass reach online channel like chat, text messaging on phones, irc, etc etc.

The reason why people send so many emails like in a company is because its free . If people had to pay all email would drop dramatically.

Spammers suck and they should be deep fried in canola oil :feels-hot

spammers messed up the whole internet. The cost of maintaining networks/e-mails has gone up and 80% of e-mail is spam. It will suck to pay.

...
 

:uhoh

It seems like a reasonable starting point for the discussion.

Maybe a person would get X number of free emails per month with an ISP account, and then after that amount they would have to pay X cents per email.
You could set the number high, twice what the average person would reasonably send in a month.

Spammers send out millions per day, so even setting the number at 10K emails per month per person would still hurt the spammers but not affect the average joe.

Uhm.. You know those annoying door-to-door people that knock or leave pamphlets? Yeah, that's the same thing and annoyance as spam.

Do you really want potential clients to have to pay to email you? If you are already in contact with someone then you can add them to your ACCEPT list. A lot of things need to be thought through..

Cheers,
Matt

Agreed, however not all spammers are hackers and if security is good enough at least the amount of spam and viruses sent over email would drop dramatically.

I concur.. bring on the stamps I will pay with pleasure

Uhm

we are talking about the net here people... It is _IMPOSSIBLE_ to make anything 100% pay-only... Forget it.

Good ideas :thumbsup

Great idea.

Please send that to [email protected]

sounds like there's some good ideas guys, i think the whole thing is just stupid tho

hey bill, great idea lets go backwards and totally disregard all that the new found freedoms the internet has to offer...retarded

W

Is there suppose to be some kind of right that allows you to email 10 million people a month?

How about my freedom of not reading your stupid junk daily :321GFY

Bad idea, most of us already pay a shit load of money for our web servers now they want us to pay to send email? Two words...

FUCK THAT!

fuck that .. it's ridiculous

Say it cost $1 for 1000 emails...