Here. Whoa. I just got a royalty check from Pearson today. Right now, it lists my advance for the WinForms book (which may turn into positive money some day), but also includes money from ATL Internals (which I'm still proud of) and Windows Telephony Programming (which I can't believe is still selling!). I won't be able to put my kids through college with the money. In fact, I can barely put them through a car wash with that money, but it's still nice. : )

Here. Tim talks on the topic of the business value of XML and web services, the difficulting in programming XML, and the strides that tools like .NET are making in making XML less difficult to program.

Here. As well as women would do without us, it's clear to me that the two sexes have evolved as a pair, although whether that'll be enough to make saving us worth the trouble, I don't know. For example, my wife may well decide to replace me with a footstool to reach things on the high shelves and call it good. : ) [boingboing.net]

Here. When I read a Dilbert like this, it amuses me in ways I don't understand.

Here. The GFS is interesting not only for how fast it lets Google be, but also for it's dependence on standard, commodity hardware and it's expectation that failure is the nominal case. [boingboing.net]

Here. I thought the days when I'd have to use a download manager were gone when the cable internet guy showed up, but that's not the case. This morning I was dying to see the new Matrix: Revolutions theatrical trailer, but the thematrix.com site was slashdotted, so no amount of viewing in streaming mode or downloading would work because my connection to the server kept being reset. So, from my modem days, I remembered GetRight and was pleased to see that they were still there, but now on version 5. With a quick install, I went back to thematrix.com, clicked on the link to download and GetRight instantly took over. Of course, the connection was reset again, but GetRight was all over it, resuming it w/in 60 seconds ('til I set the resume pause to 5 seconds : ). And, as if that weren't enough, GetRight let me download the file in 4 separate segments, further speeding things up. I used to recommend GetRight all the time to my friends and now I'm doing it again. While this kind of stuff should be built into IE or the OS, if it's not, I'm glad that there is somebody out there filling the niche. BTW, the new Matrix trailer rocks...

Here. Thanks for keeping us focused on providing *real* value, Ben. : )

Here. Laura John is a PM at MSDN working to add some much-needed process to MSDN. I don't know if you know this, but MSDN is growing and changing. I'm a member of a species at MSDN: a Content Strategist. Others include people you're likely to know and read: Kent Sharkey, Duncan Mackenzie, Tim Ewald, etc. Together, we form a rag-tag team busy throwing off ideas and feature requirements and half-implemented code to be added to our Developer Centers. Anything but a menu structure on MSDN's library content is pretty new to MSDN and what the CSes are doing is disruptive, frankly. Laura is one of those calm, gentle folks adding process to the chaos. She and I are both fairly new to MSDN and we hit it off immediately. She's into "just enough process," which is what I came to know and love in my own s/w orgs. Anyway, that all serves as an intro to her new blog, which I've subscribed to and encourage you to do the same. I think she really gets what makes processes and orgs work (and not just 'cuz she agrees with me : ). Enjoy.