“Microsoft Would Put Poor Online by Cellphone”

This hilarious NYT headline goes over an equally hilarious report about Microsoft and the $100 laptop project.

Mr. Negroponte has made significant progress, but he has also catalyzed the debate over the role of computing in poor nations — and ruffled a few feathers. He failed to reach an agreement with Microsoft on including its Windows software in the laptop, leading Microsoft executives to start discussing what they say is a less expensive alternative: turning a specially configured cellular phone into a computer by connecting it to a TV and a keyboard.

Translation: Negroponte doesn’t want to clobber his laptop by getting it to run proprietary bloatware and had the temerity to say so to Gates & Co. So they’re going to teach him a lesson by, er, launching a mobile phone which runs Windows CE. Ho, ho. Wonder how you get Ctrl-Alt-Del on a mobile keyboard? Ah, I see. Like this: