Larkware
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The Daily Grind 258

By Mike Gunderloy
Saturday, December 27, 2003

There's still a holiday-season quietness out there on the Net, but here are a few links anyhow.

And a pair from the annals of Microsoft dumbness:

  • Microsoft Abandons Smart Display Project, Stranding Domestic Monitor Makers - If there was an idea even dumber than Tablet PC, Smart Display was it. A portable second screen for a Windows XP system that can't even display animations, at a price higher than a laptop? I said "no thanks", and apparently so did everyone else.
  • Microsoft aims to make spammers pay - So, the "Penny Black" MSR project is back in the news. Basic idea: if you send me e-mail and I don't recognize you, my mail client demands that your mail program perform a 10-second calculation. Basic problem: No e-mail from people who don't use a mail client with this feature built in. So, I don't get e-mail from some readers, you might not get the reminder from your dentist. Setting up a Microsoft-only e-mail ecosystem is just as dumb an ideas as the original "let's build our own network, who needs that silly Internet" plan behind MSN.

Mike Gunderloy is the lead developer for Larkware and author of numerous books and articles on programming topics.

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