Gates, Sendmail and being again left behind
Microsoft’s Gates is trying to introduce micro-payments for emails, in order to cut down the spam avalanche. He had talks with Sendmail (the company), to introduce a Caller ID tag, and he is going to beta-test it on Hotmail this summer.
Everything is cool, except I don’t have a credit card. I earn under 300 euros a month, I have no properties whatsoever, except an old PC, an old mobile phone and some books. My internet connection is masquerading the IPs, so I can’t put my own SMTP/POP3 server in place, because I can’t get my domain. I have already a filter on Hotmail - AFAIK, one cannot send more than 20 mails per day.
Anyway, I have the money to pay for my emails, I send about 5 a day, and I suppose a mail would cost under a tenth of a cent. But how the heck will I do it without a credit card? Will Gates open a email boureau in Bucharest? How about highschool students all over the country? How about the people of Moldova, or Mongolia? This issue will start some controversial implementations, some FreeSMTP movement as Alternic was trying to do, and you know the latter’s ending.
As Gartner or other futurologists were searching for alternatives to classic email, I started to look for a free alternative of communication.