Tech schmech

This article on premium email caught my eye. I've always thought it would be a Good Thing (tm) to charge people to send email, something nominal like one-hundredth of a cent or something like that. It wouldn't affect normal emailers greatly -- a couple of cents month, maybe, to send out emails (unless you're the type who sends out more than 200 emails a month). But it would get the spammers who send out thousands of emails a day, costing them $310/month if they sent out a thousand emails a day. If you use Yahoo and AOL's pricing of 1/4 cent, then it's suddenly costing spammers $1,000/month to do something they used to do for free and the more they send, the more it costs them* and maybe they'd have to cut down on the number of emails they send (or at least target them better; I, for instance, do not need Viagra).

Also, the ads for pizza supplies and pizza stones in the comments over here amuse me greatly.

*Acutally, this reminds me of those sales: "The more you spend, the more you save!" WTH? It's all proportional. If it's 10 percent off $50, then you save $5, but you've spent $45. If you spend $100, then you save $10, but you've spent $90. Sure you've doubled your savings, but you had to double your spending in order to do so. [soapbox]That's why it never makes sense to me when people say, "Oh, if I just buy this other pair of shoes I don't really need, I'll save $10 instead of $5."[/soapbox]