Prediction: Spam Will Be Gone In Two Years

from the wanna-bet? dept

A professor from Singapore is now predicting that spam will be gone within two years because we, as a society, won't permit it to continue. He believes that since so many people hate spam, some sort of solution against this tyranny of the minority will magically present itself. "It [the elimination of spam] will happen within one or two years, simply because it is so intolerable." While it would be nice if he were right, it's difficult to be so optimistic.
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  1. identicon
    dorpus, 16 Jun 2004 @ 10:44am

    Some older forms of spam have disappeared

    We no longer see cars with blaring megaphones advertising store sales, or airplanes dropping discount coupons. Door-to-door sales are rare.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 16 Jun 2004 @ 10:56am

    Re: Some older forms of spam have disappeared

    so are intelligent comments from you dorpus but your spam keeps right on truckin' !

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    alternatives, 16 Jun 2004 @ 12:06pm

    Re: Some older forms of spam have disappeared

    We no longer see cars with blaring megaphones advertising store sales,

    Anti Noise laws.

    or airplanes dropping discount coupons.

    Anti Littering laws.

    Door-to-door sales are rare.

    Laws banning door to door salesman.


    Gee, looks like the basis is enforcable laws, not "because people will find it intolerable"

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 16 Jun 2004 @ 12:20pm

    faulty logic

    The same argument could be applied to War or prostituion.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Tony Lawrence, 16 Jun 2004 @ 3:44pm

    Re: faulty logic

    Well, for various reasons, there are a lot of people who like wars and/or prostitution.

    Other than the senders, not too many people like spam, and I bet even those that do send spam hate the spam they get from other people.

    But how fast can we stop it? I dunno.. we haven't done it very well so far. I get 4-5 megabytes worth every single day in spite of multiple levels of filtering and blocking.


    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    Bindu Wavell, 17 Jun 2004 @ 7:54am

    What about snail-mail spam?

    I'm still being inundated by ads for pizza, warehouse stores, painting companies, investment opportunities, etc in my regular mailbox. Apparently there is enough return on investment that it pays to use all that paper and ink, to "piss off" millions of people and only have a tiny fraction of your campaign respond. I seriously doubt e-spam will just go away because it's wrong!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    eerilypreescient, 17 Jun 2004 @ 11:35am

    I have a different prediction ...

    ... spam will be gone in 2 years, because it has made email worthless. In other words, the only reason SPAM will be gone in 2 years, is because EMAIL WILL BE GONE in 2 years.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 27 Sep 2006 @ 8:06am

    It's two years later. We still have spam and email.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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