Monday, February 02, 2004
Microsoft Want to Charge for Email?!?
Okay, so spam is a problem. Viruses are a problem as well. And email facilitates both. But does that mean that email should be charged for? Bill Gates seems to think so! The New York Times reports:
Pixar's Jobs
With the recent and much-publicised end to the Pixar/Disney distribtion arrangement, all eyes are on Steve Jobs, head exec of both Pixar and Apple Computers. The New York Times has an interesting article on Jobs' future, and the future of Pixar. With Finding Nemo rapidly approaching the best selling DVD lists, and the buzz surrounding the upcoming Incredibles absolutely electric, the big distributors are no doubt all lining up!
Okay, so spam is a problem. Viruses are a problem as well. And email facilitates both. But does that mean that email should be charged for? Bill Gates seems to think so! The New York Times reports:
Ten days ago, Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman, told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that spam would not be a problem in two years, in part because of systems that would require people to pay money to send e-mail. Yahoo, meanwhile, is quietly evaluating an e-mail postage plan being developed by Goodmail, a Silicon Valley start-up company. "The fundamental problem with spam is there is not enough friction in sending e-mail," said Brad Garlinghouse, Yahoo's manager for communications products.At the moment, talks centre on 'personal' email remaining "postage free", with only commerical services needing to pay to send email. But that opens the door for email charging and once it's standardised across a few big platforms, email charging will almost definitely find its way on to all exchanges. Personally, I'm more confortable with the idea of "caller ID" systems which embed signatures into all emails, so it can be traced back to the sender (moreso than the easily forgable system at present). Even then, I wonder how long it would take for "priority" IDs to develop as a commercial service. Hmmmm.
Pixar's Jobs
With the recent and much-publicised end to the Pixar/Disney distribtion arrangement, all eyes are on Steve Jobs, head exec of both Pixar and Apple Computers. The New York Times has an interesting article on Jobs' future, and the future of Pixar. With Finding Nemo rapidly approaching the best selling DVD lists, and the buzz surrounding the upcoming Incredibles absolutely electric, the big distributors are no doubt all lining up!
[Posted by Unknown] [6:42 pm]
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