
The 7 Worst Tech Predictions of All Time - tsally
http://tech.msn.com/news/articlepcw.aspx?cp-documentid=16829041&GT1=40000
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motoko
Bill Gates, 2004 "Two years from now, spam will be solved."

This came true. The problem was that email inboxes were inundated with spam,
but now free spam filters are good enough to filter almost all spam with
extremely few false negatives. (e.g. gmail) Who cares what volume of email
traffic is spam?

~~~
jhancock
gmail is great, but I get many false negatives. Anytime I sign up for a new
website the email confirmation email goes to my spam box.

~~~
someperson
Isn't email confirmation classed as spam a false positive, not a false
negative? Or do I misunderstand?

~~~
jhancock
you are correct. I posted this far too many hours after I should have gone to
bed.

My point is the same. For a spam filter to be effective it should not penalize
you for email you get from a new source that you truly do want.

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jleyank
Ken Olsen can be a two-fer with "Unix is snake oil". Supposedly, he claims he
was misquoted...

