Bill Gates is on Crack

Has anyone seen the deets for Microsoft’s latest anti-spam strategy? Apparently, they’re using the argument that we have so much spam because e-mail is free, and that if we make folks pay for it, spammers won’t send as much. Mr. Gates & company suggest that users can “buy” postage by playing a 10-second math puzzle. (See the story from CNN here.) No doubt this “game” would be Microsoft-branded. Of course, that’s only one proposal–others are calling for users to pay a penny per e- mail. For sure, spamming is annoying, but is it annoying enough that we need to start charging people to send an e-mail? I hope this is one idea that never goes anywhere.