Bill Gates and Microsoft were in the news a lot this week, most notably with CEO Steve Ballmer claiming that Gates is the most spammed person in the world. Bill Gates is said to receive 4 million e-mails a day, most of it spam.Spam is definitely a plague, as every last one of us can attest to. In fact, I just posted a story online about new technologies and services for fighting spam. It is a huge market, and vendors are coming out with new techniques to squash spam every day.But the question I had after reading some of the Gates spam stories is: Are 4 million spam messages daily enough for Gates and Microsoft to put aside political issues and agree with open-source foes on a Sender ID framework standard? The Sender ID standardization push in the IETF went belly up in September, when AOL withdrew its support. But then in October, AOL said it was back on board after Microsoft made some revisions to Sender ID. But one consistent rumor and opinion is that the open source community is still riled over Microsoft’s patents over Sender ID. By the way, we here at InfoWorld are busy prepping our hot new cover story: Most Spammed Man Alive, featuring a sizzling centerfold headshot of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. Jude Law may have just been crowned People Magazine’s sexiest man alive, but Jude’s got nothing on Bill. Technology Industry