Digression 3: Getting rid of spam

Prof. David Freeman suggests this to get rid of Spam:

There is a simple solution to this problem[~]so simple that I am surprised nobody has yet implemented it. The solution is to put a price on your mailbox. Give your email program a list of the people you wish to receive mail from. Any mail from someone not on the list is returned, with a note explaining that you charge five cents to read mail from strangers. Five cents is a trivial cost to anyone with something to say that you are likely to want to read[~]but five cents times ten million recipients is quite a substantial cost to someone sending out bulk email on the chance that one recipient in ten thousand may respond.

What do you think of this proposal to get rid of SPAM? When I first read it I was dubious, but the more I think about it the more I like it! I guess we would just need something to request permission from sources not on your list that want to send e-mail that is not spam. What I like most about it is that you set your price and if you do nothing, you get all the spam, the full idea needs work, but sounds interesting.

[The Devil's Excrement]

That would work, but it requires a lot of infrastructure, for payment and bounces. I mean, what do you do with mail that couldn't be delivered? Most Spam comes from non existing addresses. Another danger is that we may end up paying for email, which will be a disaster.

Spam could continue unaffected for people that wants it. Heck, there are people for which Spam is all the email they ever get. What is wrong with the current crop of technology solutions? I have reduced my Spam in 97%, with less than 1% of false negatives (real emails classified as Spam). That for me is a complete solution to my Spam problem.

And I am still waiting for Apple new system that seems to be much better than the other programs...

9:28:29 AM  What do you think? ( Thoughts) Who linked? []   

Failing to Shed Air of Aloofness, Church Frustrates Even Its Faithful. Nine months after the abuse scandal exploded, many Catholics in Boston are still frustrated by the response of the church hierarchy. By Pam Belluck. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

What a weird entity is the Catholic Church! Get a divorce or use a condom and you may be thrown out. Molest a child and you are a sinner that has to be reformed...weird indeed.

9:20:42 AM  What do you think? ( Thoughts) Who linked? []   

The Odds of that [Via Slashdot]

Good article, but incomplete. Yes, as Persi Diaconis says with 280 million people in the US you may have 280 one-in-a-million shots. But they never asks statistician the right question. The probability of getting two heads in a row with a fair coin is 1 in 4. Five heads in a row has a 1 in 32 chance. Bet you most statistician will not believe the coin is fair if you get 6 heads in a row (a 1 in 64 chance). But there are, literally, millions of fair coins if we all toss them a few of tem may get 6 heads in a row, right? Yes, but that is a different reasoning. The one coin has to be suspected and investigated. The few in a million do not merit such investigation.

8:59:21 AM  What do you think? ( Thoughts) Who linked? []