One problem I see with Microsoft's approach is that spammers could build
server farms to combat it. In fact, the fact that it uses RAM access
speeds as a speed determining factor rather than CPU speeds has in fact
just as serious a problem as the CPU speed issue.
Spammers could build server farms with cheap inexpensive computers and 10
computers would allow them to send out 10 times the amount of spam.
By basing the algorithm on disk access times rather than CPU times, it
would mean that spammers could then use cheap inexpensive computers to
solve the puzzle. For example, how expensive would it be to buy Pentium
100's, 486's or even 386's (if you can find them) and build a server
farm? These used systems could be had for less than $100 and perhaps far less.
It might help slow down the "home" spammer but surely those that send out
the bulk of the spam can afford additional computers to divide up the CPU
processing load (and the power to power them.)
-Art
--
Art Pollard
http://www.lextek.com/
Suppliers of High Performance Text Retrieval Engines.
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