Gates 'World's Most-Spammed Man' 424
acehole writes "Bill Gates receives up to four million emails a day, and is probably the most spammed person in the world. But unlike ordinary users, he has an entire department to filter unsolicited " At least now I know why he never replies to my requests for an interview ;)
Why not release it? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why not release it? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why not release it? (Score:5, Funny)
Of over 30 billion e-mails being sent daily, some experts estimate that over 40% is Spam.
Google informs me that 40% of 30 billion = 12 000 000 000
and (4 000 000 / 12 000 000 000) * 100 = 0.0333333333
That gives Bill Gates a measly 0.03% Market share of Spam. I think we should help Microsoft grow by forwarding all our unwanted spam to Bill.
Re:Why not release it? (Score:2, Funny)
You had to use Google to work out 40% of 30 billion? I don't think you belong here.
Re:Why not release it? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why not release it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, in the same manner of speaking that Microsoft Word is open source. Let's face it, raw DNA is not the preferred way to modify the human genome. Neither is a binary executable the preferred way to modify a word-processor.
It's just that reading the source (i.e. the DNA) is something we haven't quite mastered yet.
Ok, that's a possibility too. But I can't really see any plausible reason for nature to make it easy for us to decode DNA. It's meant for execution by cells, not for easy comprehension (or modification) by genetic engineers.
And just like open-source software the human being is constantly being developed upon, albeit so very slowly that we cannot see it for ourselves. But each new baby that's born (the nightlies, hahaha) is a little different than the previous generation. Sometimes this backfires on the whole community *cough*georgewbush*cough* but in general there's improvement.
Actually, there's no good reason to believe human evolution is for the better. Ever since humans discovered farming, we no longer need to be intelligent enough to outwit our prey, or strong enough to kill it, or fast enough to catch it, or having a good enough immune system to eat rotten food, or being able to care for our children in this environment for umpteen years, etc...
In fact, in modern society it's even worse. Due to the fact that the state will take care of you and your children even if you can't do it yourself, the only skill you need to create surviving offspring is to have low enough demands to get laid by someone (no matter how stupid, annoying, ugly, etc), and to be stupid enough not to wear condoms.
Humans have probably "devolved" ever since the neanderthals, and as the society gets "better", the individuals detoriate at an ever increasing rate.
An interesting side-note (just to be politically correct), is that those who advocate racial purity (e.g. nazis), seems to prefer those who have lived in modern society for the longest period of time. They probably should prefer bushmen instead.
Re:Why not release it? (Score:5, Insightful)
In his case, I suspect the filters are human.
Re:Why not release it? (Score:2, Insightful)
"And so we have special technology which just filters (spam). Literally, there's a whole department, almost, that takes care of it."
I don't see Balmer calling people "special technology."
Re:Why not release it? (Score:5, Insightful)
By the way, note that the top three stories in the Australian news are "Wallaby escapes police action", "Bat swoops to bite woman" and "Passengers save bus from plunge". Gotta love Australia!
Re:Why not release it? (Score:2, Informative)
As a side note, the "Wallaby" was a Rugby player, not one of those cute little animals.
Re:Why not release it? (Score:3, Interesting)
"Bush rules world, passes more laws" or
"Bush is evil he must be stopped, VOTE" or
"Gang war escalates, 33 dead so far" or
"Kids are getting fatter" or
"You are all so stupid you will read this anyway" or
There are your american headlines. They will vary a little depending on what section of the shithole you live in.
I'll take the rugby player.
Re:Why not release it? (Score:3, Insightful)
It would be interesting to know what this automation is -- ah the irony if some OSS project was being utilized (SpamAssassin, DSPAM, etc.)
-ch
Re:Why not release it? (Score:2)
Re:Why not release it? (Score:2)
... but is way too slow too handle that amount of spam. Unless you use a Beowulf cluster... o wait, never mind. :)
Re:Why not release it? (Score:2)
Mom guess what I got the internship at MS...
This is you cube you will sit here and go through email that have a sender in the range of st*@hotmail.com and sv*@hotmail.com
{bad)Joking asisde it has to have a lot of automation just reading the subject line of 4 million messages at one subject a second every second would take apx 65 years.
Re:Why not release it? (Score:4, Informative)
4e6 / 60 = 66.6e3 mins
66e3 mins / 60 = 1111hrs
1111hrs / 24 = 46 days.
Re:Why not release it? (Score:5, Funny)
Or possibly Morlocks.
Re:Why not release it? (Score:4, Funny)
They have a whole office chanting, "It is by will alone that I set my mind in motion."
Re:Why not release it? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Why not release it? (Score:2)
every XP PC...hmm...can we just say every household that has a PC? (ignore companies..they have IT depts, ignore nonXP OSs, figure multiple PCs in a houshold balance out those numbers)
105,000,000 Households, 51% have computers in them. Say 54,000,000 computers to "fix"
$60,000,000,000 in cash on hand leaves $1,100 per pc for repairs. If Gates could hire base level techs directly, he'd probably end up paying $35/hr, burdened, to be generous. Now, lets say he deployed from one location, and sent t
Re:Why not release it? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not a question of spam (Score:5, Insightful)
It does sound like an excellent opportunity to leverage some of that computer brainpower they have and create some first class spam filtering technology. With a test base of 4 million spams a day they have all the sample data they will ever need.
Re:It's not a question of spam (Score:4, Insightful)
He'll have any number of different e-mail addresses for different purposes, inluding ones that only friends and family know - I'm sure he's not shut off from a part of the internet just because every idiot puts billg@microsoft.com in forms when they don't want to give their own address.
Re:It's not a question of spam (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, since the inception of the internet, there has been this wonderful concept called a 'handle' or 'alias' that works pretty well.. I would not be surprised at all if he surfs the web and uses regular email on a daily basis. Who knows, he probably surfs chat rooms under the assumed identity of a 13 year old girl with braces for all
Re:Your sig (OT) (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Why not release it? (Score:5, Funny)
I think I see the problem (Score:5, Funny)
Here's a tip:
When asking for an interview, do not also offer to enlarge his penis. Mox
Re:I think I see the problem (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I think I see the problem (Score:5, Funny)
What did the leper say to the prostitute?
You can keep the tip..
Re:I think I see the problem (Score:5, Funny)
This is obviously some strange new meaning of the word 'good' that I wasn't previously aware of...
Re:I think I see the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Umm.. Yes?
Too many sites whack those w3c valid stamps on their homepages without checking they are valid from time to time.
Knowing there is one less of those means I can sleep tonight and might even be allowed another airhole in my box
Oh damn. Today is Thursday. Maybe not then.
Re:I think I see the problem (Score:3, Funny)
No no no, that's the mediocre leper joke. The funny leper joke is:
What's green and melts in the mouth?
A leper's penis.
Re:I think I see the problem (Score:2)
Enlarge your penis with Gillette Venus (Score:3, Informative)
Ignore all the expensive BS penis enlargement products that UCEs try to sell you. All you need is a Gillette Venus for Women razor, which is similar to the Mach 3 you may already use on your face but tweaked for shaving larger areas. Just take the razor and shave the part of the pubic hair from the base of the penis straight up to the navel. More exposed skin in a straight line with the penis creates an illusion of more penis.
Re:Enlarge your penis with Gillette Venus (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I think I see the problem (Score:3, Funny)
Why not? That normally works all the time for female journalists interviewing males. Been that way for years...
Email Required (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Email Required (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Email Required (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Email Required (Score:2)
Re:Email Required (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Email Required (Score:5, Funny)
developersdevelopersdevelopersdevelopers@microsoft .com
Use of real accounts for spam (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Email Required (Score:3, Funny)
That fucker still hasn't coughed up the $2 per mail I forwarded for Microsoft's tracking experiment a few years ago.
Only 4 million per day? (Score:5, Funny)
XP OEM CH33p!\@ (Score:5, Funny)
Re:XP OEM CH33p!\@ (Score:3, Funny)
Or ... This is NOT a joke! (Score:4, Funny)
I wonder if he gets any of those "Bill Gates will send you money" chain letters.
Well.. (Score:3, Funny)
An actual email was published once... (Score:2)
This was BS (before spam).
Re:Well.. (Score:5, Funny)
My earlier (rejected) story submission... (Score:3, Interesting)
CNN [cnn.com] and Rediff [rediff.com] are reporting that Bill Gates [mailto] gets 4 million e-mails a day, making him world's most spammed person. However, unlike lesser mortals, he has an entire department dedicated to filter unsolicited e-mails and only a few of them actually get through to his inbox, said Steve Ballmer [mailto] at a Microsoft Research event in Singapore. Other sources are also reporting [google.com] the breaking news story.
Re:My earlier (rejected) story submission... (Score:4, Insightful)
In other words, "We pay two kids $5/hr to sit in the basement and sift through this crap."
Or more likely, "We've got a couple network admins that implemented SpamAssassin for us."
Re:My earlier (rejected) story submission... (Score:3, Insightful)
How the hell is the fact that Bill Gates gets a lot of email a "breaking" news story. Is this even news? Who gives a shit. Tell bill to keep a white list and dump the rest to
Bill's Response. (Score:3, Funny)
Signed,
Bill Gates
Thank you spammers (Score:5, Funny)
Now any chance on taking on SCO?
Re:Thank you spammers (Score:2)
Exchange (Score:5, Funny)
I didn't even know exchange could handle that amount of traffic. And thats just for him..
Re:Exchange (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Exchange (Score:3, Insightful)
This is Microsoft we're talking about (Score:3, Informative)
No [myway.com]
Hotmail (Score:3, Funny)
Huh... (Score:3, Funny)
Ballmer (Score:2, Funny)
most spammed man (Score:5, Funny)
Test suite... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Test suite... (Score:2)
Re:Test suite... (Score:5, Interesting)
Right, and he could also forward his daily mail to the DOJ [usdoj.gov], so there aren't any more losses of that pesky incriminating evidence [pcworld.com]...
over used joke warning.... (Score:2, Funny)
Story a weak troll. (Score:5, Informative)
And to all of this, I say "big deal". I would say "nice M$ troll" but it's actually kind of weak.
Hate Mail (Score:4, Funny)
News for Nerds indeed. (Score:5, Funny)
I had no answer.
Until now.
Thank you slashdot.
SpamAssassin? (Score:2)
Gee...I wonder what software they run?
Your Job Sucks When (Score:5, Funny)
I can see it now, job description:
Must be able to sort legitimate email from mass unsolicited email. Ability to tolerate apes a plus, as you will be working a team of them. In fact, your department manager is a chimp. Requires opposable thumbs and general image recognition abilities.
Re:Your Job Sucks When (Score:2, Funny)
Fascinating! (Score:3, Insightful)
And what do you call this special technology? What a brilliant new development. Please, Mr. Balmer, you must share this invention with the rest of us. Or, perhaps, is it "sendmail" on "linux" running "spamassassin"? Ah, yes, perhaps so.
Maybe the admins at my work are just braindead, but apparently everyone's so nervous about Exchange 2000 that they won't run any other mail related software on the Exchange server. So if we want to filter email with other software, it goes on a separate box, and they all get chained together. Which means that if they ever want to find out where an email came from, they have to go through three different sets of logs. This is all black magic to me. I code VBA for a living.
Is there a right way on Exchange 2000? We'd do all kinds of better spam filtration if implementation was completely better.
Re:Fascinating! (Score:2)
Re:Fascinating! (Score:3, Interesting)
Barracuda still doesn't strike me as the right way. I'm not even sure if it'd be better than our ancient (but serviceable) TrendMicro solution. What is "flawlessly"? Do your users not receive spam? Do innocent bystanders get spammed with bounce messages? Right now, our users don't get viruses via email, but they get a billion virus messages that have been stripped of their payload. That's lame, and there's no good w
640 emails.... (Score:5, Funny)
Another incomplete article (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, how much spam does the Whitehouse get?
Do they cite the number of spams the average person gets? There is nothing other than the obvious in that article.
The article might have well said it is probably cold in Antartica too.
Gates: use Mozilla Thunderbird's Junk Mail feature (Score:5, Funny)
So THAT'S how Bill made his billions.. (Score:2)
Bill helps them out..
Profit!
Repeat millions of times over.. and ca-ching!
Spam filter (Score:2, Insightful)
Unfiltered (Score:5, Interesting)
That said, after going to an intern dinner at his house I wrote him afterwards asking a question I was sure no one else care about if I acked it at the dinner, I got a relatively quick if not short response.
Another intern friend of mine emailed him asking if he wanted to go to lunch sometime and never got a response.
I've also had some other funny run ins with Bill Gates while interning at MS that I wrote up a while ago in my journal [slashdot.org]
Re:Unfiltered (Score:5, Funny)
Oracle internal email system used to be so crap that it got confused if people had the same first name and sent them each others email. I shared the same first name with the VP of Consulting for EMEA (I was working in Hamburg at the time). I once received an email from Big Man's secretary to him asking if he wanted to confirm his meeting with some IBM execs. I replied to her saying that she should tell IBM to Bugger Off and to get on the phone to the head of consulting in Hamburg and to give that Phil guy a large pay rise.
A couple of days later my boss called me into his office and told me "Please don't do that again"
Unfiltered (Score:2)
That said after an intern dinner at his place I wrote him an email asking about his house, a question I was sure no one else at the dinner would really care about. Not too long later I got a short though informative response from Bill. It was in the first person and since it concerned his house I was pret
Good. (Score:3, Funny)
Condolences Card (Score:4, Funny)
This is so sad.
I thought I'd send Mr William Gates a brief cheer-up note:
I mean I know he's rich and everything, but even rich guys must get the blues sometimes over things like spam. I'm sure he'd appreciate it if a few of us sent him our condolences.
Does anybody know his address?
Back in 1994... (Score:4, Informative)
There was less spam in the world. (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a mental image (Score:2)
Spam Javelin (Score:2)
It's not billg@microsoft.com (Score:5, Interesting)
The rest of the story ... (Score:2)
Sure, make me feel bad for him... (Score:3, Funny)
Probably not his real email address, but still, he apparently doesn't need any more help.
Bill Gs outlook rule (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Umm.. (Score:3, Funny)
Anyone else having a problem imagining Little Bush actually using a computer?
Re:Umm.. (Score:2)
- Thomas;
Re:Umm.. (Score:2)
But cussing out or threatening the life of Bill Gates, though, is wiser than cussing out/threatening the life of a guy who endorsed the Patriot Act and doesn't believe in privacy or that POWs have a right to an attorney, instead inventing some made-up term "enemy combatant" to get around the Geneva Convention.
Re:Umm.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Bush just signed off on that. You think he came up with that himself? No, the architect of 'enemy combatant' is Alberto Gonzales, who has been nominated as our next Attorney General.