Internet, Now 97% Email Free

Yes, it seems Bill Gates' prediction for the internet came true. He just picked the wrong horse. He boasted in 2004 that :

Spam will be a thing of the past in two years' time, Microsoft boss Bill Gates has promised. However, a three-pronged strategy would soon stamp out the problem, he said in remarks at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos. Mr Gates, by now a fixture at the annual WEF's meeting of business leaders and top politicians, said a lot of progress had been made during the past year to stop spam e-mail. Filters could do a lot to sort spam from real mail, Mr Gates said: "Does the e-mail say it's about 'enlargement' - that might be spam."[duh]

But ultimately, Mr Gates predicted, spam would be killed through the electronic equivalent of a stamp, also known as "payment at risk". This would force the sender of an e-mail to pay up when an e-mail was rejected as spam, but would not deter senders of real e-mail because they could be confident that their mail would be accepted. "Microsoft is pursuing all three approaches, and spam will soon be a thing of the past," Mr Gates asserted.

Fast forward to today, A new security report from Microsoft claims that 97% of all e-mails sent are spam, and often have malicious attachments.

Thanks Bill. Seems your I'm going to rule the world with one OS venture really paid off. Now the eighth wonder of the world has been reduced to an automated 3rd class junk mail delivery system.