negroponte - microsoft circus on cheap computers for the poor

jan 30th

this is even more entertaining now. i feel negroponte's initiative is mostly grandstanding, but i also see that he has now persuaded india to chip in $100 million. when last heard, india had been smart enough to keep away from this boondoggle.

now comes microsoft with its FUD and promises of something better just down the road.

here's my analysis.

1. microsoft is pissed off that negroponte wants to use linux
2. so they come up with this great new pie in the sky idea of cellphone-computing
3. they will put one underemployed product manager on it to keep producing some PR material but wont waste any actual technical effort on it
4. negroponte's initiative will die because everyone gets hooked onto the microsoft idea
5. microsoft will quietly drop the cellphone-computing idea

this is exactly what microsoft did to kill of handwriting recognition pioneer Go computing years ago. someone had a parody about 'microsoft kitchen' somewhere

i love this battle of the marketeers :-) both of them high on hype and low on content.

i believe negroponte's idea -- which was dubious to begin with -- is now truly dead.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/30/technology/30gates.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

ps. to darkstorm, you were complaining about no tech stories. here's one. and no, you were not the person i was referring to as a lurker, it was someone who did a shoot-and-scoot, one-time post abusing someone and then disappearing