Just takes a simple Outlook plugin that searches through past e-mails and filters out those jokes that just never seem to die..
Does require the user to flag suspect jokes as they come in, however that is a small price to pay to not receive the same stupid joke 5 times in a day.
No more little johnny jokes. No more fake mastercard ads. No more low quality MPEG videos of kids hitting daddy in the balls with a football. No more "I found this system file on my computer and some person I barely know told me to delete it, so I did, and you should too" messages... Peace at last!.


-- Mr Burns, Jun 26 2002

Glurge http://www.glurge.com/
Where email forwards go to die. Or achieve immortality. Or something. [pottedstu, Jun 27 2002]

Seems sensible and possible to do reasonably reliably, even if it would require you to keep an archive of all those horrible forwards to check against. But you can usually tell just by the subject line anyhow.
-- pottedstu, Jun 27 2002


Please stop requesting fishbones. If you are deliberately posting bad ideas with the intent of gathering negative votes, I shall request a user-mark for deletion.
-- waugsqueke, Jun 27 2002


Yes, and when I get enough negative votes, the final phase of my plan will be complete, and then I shall TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!! MWAHAHAHA!!!
-- Mr Burns, Jun 27 2002


It has been theorised that it is possible to do this with anti-virus scanner technology that searches for the "signature" of the joke in each message. You just need a system to receive updates and <cockney>Bob's your Uncle</cockney> you are blocked from these kind of nuisances. I think I have seen this idea here before, though, albeit on the subject of spam.
-- Aristotle, Jun 27 2002



random, halfbakery