The normally sensible Lauren Weinstein goes way over the top in characterizing sensible anti-spam precautions as a Proposal to Exterminate Mailing Lists:

AOL, Yahoo, Earthlink, MS, et al., are proposing a limit of 500 e-mail messages sent per day as an “anti-spam” measure. Of course, this won’t stop spammers, but it would utterly obliterate all but the smallest legitimate mailing lists — unless, one assumes, you pony up extra money for additional e-mail allocations. Spam could turn out to be the holy grail of excuses for ISPs looking for a way to move into the lucrative world of usage-sensitive pricing.

OK, this is just stupid. If you have a mailing list of more than about 50 people, much less 500, you should not be hosting it through a regular email account on AOL or Earthlink. Period.

There are a dozen or more reliable, inexpensive, sane options to send mass e-mails to your list. It is completely unreasonable to expect AOL, Earthlink, Yahoo, and other ISPs to foot the bill and provide the infrastructure for large mailing lists to people who sign up for a $15/month dial-up account.

Do we even need to debate this?

Techdirt weighs in on the plan by six leading ISPs to shut off Internet access to “zombie” computers:

While it’s good to see them (finally) taking this issue seriously, one of the proposed solutions is to limit how many emails a customer can send out per hour or per day. While this is unlikely to be a problem for most users, it could cause problems for people who legitimately need to send out a large number of messages.

Besides, as some have been suggesting, all this really means is that spammers will have incentive to get their software on even more machines in order to keep on spamming.

I was nodding in agreement until I got to that last part. Is he saying that spammers will do more damage if they’re impeded at major arteries of the Internet? That’s absurd. Spammers already have an incentive to take over as many computers as possible. I can’t imagine that Spam Inc. has decided that they have enough zombies already, thanks very much.

Making the life of a spammer more difficult is noble work. If the folks who run the most populated chunks of the Internet can starve some of these vermin, more power to them.

The Washington Post reports that e-mail providers are finally taking some serious measures in the fight against spam. The proposal was developed by AOL, Yahoo, EarthLink, Microsoft, Comcast, and British Telecom.

Consumers who allow their infected computers to send out millions of “spam” messages could be unplugged from the Internet under a proposal released Tuesday by six large e-mail providers.

Internet users also could be limited on the amount of e-mail they send out each day to ensure they haven’t become unwitting spammers, under voluntary guidelines proposed to curb unwanted junk e-mail.

Internet companies should make sure that their equipment has been properly secured so spammers can’t route their messages through them, the group said.

Security holes in Web-based e-mail forms and redirection services used to monitor online advertising should be plugged, the group said.

But the group also suggested consumers be held accountable if their machines are exploited by spammers.

A spate of viruses and worms over the past year have allowed spammers to route their traffic through personal computers, allowing come-ons for low mortgage rates and herbal Viagra to appear as if they’re coming from a trusted friend.

Internet providers should take those machines offline until they can be cleaned up, the group said.

Providers should also limit the number of messages an individual machine can send to 100 per hour or 500 per day to prevent spammers from routing millions of messages through customer machines, the group said.

I’ve been preaching this for years. ISPs can easily identify a computer on their network that has been hijacked by a virus or Trojan horse, if they’re willing to look for it. Notifying a customer that they are harming themselves and the rest of the Internet, and taking them offline until they clean up the mess is just good policy.

Let’s hope this actually gets done soon and done right.

A syndicated Wall Street Journal story reports that adware isn’t just for online casinos and pornographers:

Telecommunications giant Verizon Communications Inc. has been using adware for nearly two years to draw prospective customers to its high-speed Internet business. Claria Corp., the leading adware provider, names Sprint Corp., Motorola Inc. and online travel company Orbitz Inc. among its clients in a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Claria’s chief rival, WhenU Co., says British Airways PLC and Bank of America Corp. are among the big-name companies that have used its service.

Advertisers like adware because they believe it works, delivering more customers at a lower cost than many other forms of online advertising.

“We find that it’s much more efficient than other means of direct advertising,” says John Bonomo, a Verizon spokesman.

Claria, of course, used to be Gator. They live on the semi-civilized fringes of the swamp of spyware and adware. Their software can be removed relatively easily, and they actually offer at least a partial disclosure what they’re doing (although most people blow past that disclosure pretty quickly).

WhenU is not so nice. PC Pitstop reports that 87% of people who have this crud installed are unaware they’re using it.

But I’m not inclined to be charitable with either company. Ben Edelman of Harvard University testified before the FTC earlier this year that both WhenU and Gator deserve the label spyware. His analysis is rigorous and worth reading if you’re interested in this stuff. They transmit personal information contrary to their disclosures, and they use deceptive practices to install their software. For no good reason, either. As Edelman notes, there are almost always spyware-free alternatives to the programs that carry spyware:

The FTC’s call for comments asks what effects would result on the market for software if spyware were eliminated or reduced. … I believe consumers would continue to have essentially equal choices of software programs available at no out-of-pocket cost. Other programs would remain available that, for whatever reason, distribute their software without out-of-pocket cost and without spyware.

For example, Atomic Clock Sync 2.69 is an automatic computer clock synchronization program, but unlike WhenU’s ClockSync and Gator’s Precision Time, Atomic Clock Sync does not require that users accept popup advertisements. Similarly, Weather Watcher 5.010 provides local weather monitoring and reporting, and unlike WhenU’s WeatherCast and Gator’s Precision Time, Weather Watcher entails no popups.

Any company that uses this despicable advertising mechanism should be ashamed, and they don’t deserve to be rewarded. If these spyware/adware parasites can be driven into honest work, we’ll all be better off.

BetaNews reports that Apple has updated its Remote Desktop software:

Apple has issued the second iteration of its Remote Desktop tool, used to manipulate Mac OS X computers from afar. The new release includes software distribution features to simplify administration of Mac networks, as well as support for custom install packages. Remote Desktop 2 also adds VNC support, meaning it can now connect to Windows and UNIX systems. Pricing starts at $299 USD for 10-clients, while the unlimited-client edition is offered at $499 USD.

Imagine that. Windows XP Professional has this capability built in, and I know I’m not the only geek who uses this feature around the home and when traveling. The idea of positioning Remote Desktop strictly as a support tool for use in large organizations is short-sighted, IMO. Does anyone know whether Apple offers a limited version of this capability for ordinary users?

For true cross-platform support, VNC is really all you need anyway, and it’s free…

This is really, really cool: “My name is Dennis, and I’m the guy who draws the Google doodles.”

Evan Feldman, who works in the Mobile PC Client Business Unit at Microsoft, says the Tablet PC is not dead, nor (warning – gratuitous Monty Python reference ahead) is it pining in the fjords.

Buried in the post is a great observation that most people just don’t get, especially those that haven’t used a Tablet PC:

I think part of the confusion comes down to a fundamental issue that I had a very large hand in long ago…. “Who was the Tablet PC designed for?”

I have the inside track here as I’m one of the people who helped make the decisions relative to what the Tablet PC was going to be and what we needed to accomplish in order for the Tablet PC to be useful to users.

[…]

Tablet PC wasn’t designed for the majority of people who will ever read this post. It was made for the majority of people who are in large enterprises who are busily running from meeting to meeting and have to take notes to keep up with what’s going on and what they need to do.

Sure some of us fit into this category, but we’re also early adopters, we want more, expect more and want more cool gadgets, features, and bells and whistles. We’re also not satisfied with simple functionality or simple tasks; we have to make it into something which it really isn’t. Most reviewers (and IT professionals) are early adopters and they place the review in context of all the cool things they can expect the gadget to perform. There are some exceptions, like Walt Mossberg, but generally tech ideas and products today are evaluated in the popular press of the techno-elite.

Remember this the next time you read a review of a product in a computer magazine or a Web site. That reviewer may not work the way you do. Sometimes the “Editor’s Choice” is chosen for all the wrong reasons – at least as far as your needs are concerned. A reviewer who doesn’t give you enough details to decide for yourself has fallen down on the job.

One corollary from my own experience in both reading and writing reviews: Many times reviewers insist on evaluating a product by comparing it to what they think it should do or be, rather than trying first to understand what it is. I’ve seen lots of reviews that fall into this category, where a reviewer complains that a feature from the old version doesn’t work the way it used to, ignoring the fact that the problem he’s complaining about has a different and better solution, if only he would adapt to a new way of thinking.

In terms of the Tablet PC, I’ve read lots of reviews (and answered lots of similar questions) that focus on the strengths and weaknesses of handwriting recognition. After you’ve used a Tablet PC for a while, you realize that that is not so important after all. A lot of the stuff you do should stay in your handwriting and not be recognized. In OneNote 2003, for instance, the digital ink used to capture my notes is recognized and indexed in the background. If I search for a word, it will turn up in my handwritten notes without my having to explicitly recognize it.

Coincidentally, after I had this thought, I ran across Marc Orchant’s interview with Michael Linenberger, author of Seize the Work Day. He says almost exactly the same thing:

Many first time users of the tablet wrongly bring their PDA habits with them, where nearly everything written needs to be converted to text to be useful. If you try to do that you will be disappointed with the Tablet. First time users often have trouble realizing that using digital ink as the target format is usually better. Not to avoid incomplete conversion, but to preserve the subtleties that handwriting contains. I think many new users see digital ink as a giant step backwards; after all, we use computers to create cleanly formatted text on the screen, and clean laser printing, right?

But the best uses of the tablet are well beyond that. Note taking, brainstorming, pen-based manipulation of programs during meetings. Again, I feel the tablet is a killer meeting productivity tool, and one rarely needs to create long segments of converted text from work created in a meeting. I convert maybe 20 % of my “inputs” to text. Most of my inputs on the tablet (usually in meetings) consist either of note-taking or brainstorming in ink, and short converted segments of text (say adding to-dos to my list or writing e-mails). The rest of the time is spent using the pen as a point and click device in read mode: surfing through the XP file system, finding and scrolling through reference material, researching the web. Extensive handwriting recognition just isn’t needed for these uses.

Working past our preconceptions is an essential first step to really learning about the cool technologies around us…

Last week I read a bunch of news stories that led with a provocative headline: Microsoft has been awarded a patent for the double-click. Horrors! Those bastards!

The only problem is the story wasn’t true.

I’m reminded of the myth that Al Gore once claimed to have invented the Internet, which was spread by his political opponents with ruthless efficiency (he never claimed any such thing). This is, likewise, a distortion of a fairly innocuous story, spread along by the large anti-Microsoft community.

Today’s Seattle P-I explains where the story went wrong:

Microsoft Corp. caused a stir in the technology world last week with news that it was awarded a patent for, among other things, starting a program “if the application button is pressed multiple times within a short period of time, e.g., double click.”

Could it be? Could the Redmond company now make other companies pay for the ubiquitous practice of tapping a computer mouse twice to open a program on a computer screen? …

[A] closer read of the patent text indicated it wasn’t as broad — or as sinister — as the initial headlines suggested. The patent relates to different ways of tapping or holding down a hardware button to launch programs and other functions on “a limited resource computing device.”

That refers to a button on a hand-held device such as a Pocket PC, not to the double-clicking of a mouse on a PC, a Microsoft spokesman said.

In fact, if you read the patent, it clearly is referring to “Small, mobile computing devices, such as personal desktop assistants including hand-held and palm-type computers…” (Or, I might add, intelligent all-in-one remote controls for complex home media networks, and portable music players.) If you’ve ever tried to use any sort of smart handheld device, you know how difficult it can be to learn, especially when many functions have to be squeezed into a tiny interface with a limited number of buttons.

Scoble points to a note by Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter Research, who points out, there’s no “double-click” patent for Microsoft:

This is just plain wrong. Read the patent. It covers alternate uses of buttons on mobile devices based on how long a button is pressed and how many times it’s pushed (similar to a double click, which is where the confusion comes from). Usually there’s a modifier key that needs to be held down to activate the alternate function. The power of the web is such is that amplifies such bad reporting quite quickly.

There are plenty of problems with the patent system and especially with the concept of awarding patents for software. If you have specific objections to this patent, by all means argue against it. A lot of people don’t like the way big corporations (including Microsoft) control intellectual property. Great subject for a debate. But the story that Microsoft has somehow claimed a patent on double-clicking your mouse is just wrong, and it doesn’t deserve to spread.

For years, I’ve used the excellent collection of online tools at SamSpade.org to diagnose DNS problems, look up domain information, and track down spammers. Unfortunately, for the last year or so the site has often been unreachable and many of its tools are no longer available.

Today, I found what appears to be an excellent replacement. The form-based utilities at DNS Stuff cover a lot of ground — DNS reporting and timing tools, WHOIS, tracert, ping, spam database lookups, and even tools for deobfuscating URLs and decimal IP addresses used by spammers.

If you’re a Net geek, you’ll love this stuff.

Mary Jo Foley gets a little defensive in today’s column, in which she claims her earlier remarks were misinterpreted:

For the record, I didn’t declare that Microsoft has decided to ax the Tablet PC.

No, she didn’t, but she did string together a bunch of provocative quotes and add a bunch of innuendo. People who read the article and concluded that the Tablet PC is in trouble read it correctly. (The headline, “Trouble in Tablet Land?” was also a clue.)

Then, in today’s column, Mary Jo does something just plain wrong: she turns her column over to reprint a bunch of letters she received on this subject from readers. Now, don’t get me wrong; I think the letter to the editor is a valuable format. But you can’t simply allow people to spout off with stuff that is just flat wrong and allow it to go uncorrected. Save that nonsense for newsgroups, where at least other people can respond.

I lost count of the number of errors and distortions among the letters published today. Examples:

There just isn’t a demand. Microsoft keeps the supply low and limited (an old marketing ploy used by Harley Davidson and others) in order to keep the appearance of high demand.

Interesting. Except that all the Tablet PCs are designed, manufactured, and sold by third parties. How can Microsoft keep their supply limited?

The Tablet pc was an abortive project that had such lame functionality and system bloat, not to mention file bloat (digital ink anyone?) that virtually no one cared. I have seen zero Tablet pc’s in the hands of ANYONE I know. At work or personally.

It’s always dangerous to generalize from personal experience. I’ve seen dozens of Tablet PCs in use, but I won’t claim they’re commonplace. The problem with this quote is that the author hasn’t got a clue about what digital ink is or how it works on a Tablet PC. It’s an extremely efficient data type. I’ve never heard any developer who writes apps for the Tablet PC claim it’s “bloated,” nor have I heard that from anyone who has actually used one.

[T]he OS for the Tablet was cobbled together and it shows. Missing apps, broken apps, broken promises are not inspiring those who decided to “wait it out” to see how things shake out before investing in one.

Get Windows XP Service Pack 2, which incorporates the Lonestar updates for Tablet PC. The beta is available now, and the full release will be ready this summer. I had the same reaction to the original Tablet PC software, but the new release has made a believer out of me.

When I read through these comments, one fact struck me: Those who have used a Tablet PC tend to like it, and most really like it. Those who use it and don’t like it usually complain about the weaknesses in the original release of Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. Those who complain the loudest usually haven’t even picked up a Tablet PC and are working off a handful of misconceptions.

Funny how that works out, isn’t it?

(Thanks to Marc Orchant for the link.)