Here. Dr. James McCaffrey provides a nice introduction to "permutations" along with some .NET to generate them. He further goes on to use permutations for security purposes, but that's not all they're good for.

Here. In a recent debate over writing the n very similar algorithms by hand (one for each number of inputs) vs. writing a data-driven algorithm to handle any number of inputs, Peter takes the middle route using the .NET CodeDOM to generate the simple algorithm for the required number of inputs at run-time. What makes this interesting isn't the result, which didn't turn out to be the most efficient, but the approach itself, which is unique to metadata-enabled systems and something I completely forgot even existed. Thanks for the reminder, Peter!

Here. Apparently cbrumme was backed up after two weeks fighting the blaster virus internally, because he lets loose with a tour de force of details about managed and unmanaged startup and shutdown as well as a trailer on writing secure code in general. Fun to read if you like this level of detail (and the part about secure code at the end should be read by everyone).

Here. I've seen this kind of argument before, blaming presentation software (or PowerPoint specifically) for making people stupid. If PPT didn't allow you to make intelligent presentations, then I'd be all for panning it, but that's not true. PowerPoint can be used for good or for evil, but it's only a tool; it's the presenter that decides the use to which the tool is put.

Here. ShawnMor documents his hangover from a hd crash w/o a recent backup, collecting backup schemes from contributors to avoid this problem in the future. I wonder how users that don't program computers for a living deal with this problem if we have trouble?

Here. There's just so much good advise in this post and it covers so much ground that I can't even think of a clever summary. Just go read it.

Here. The one where I can't believe that .NET Console output isn't buffered by default, then come to appreciate why they did it that way and finally figure out how to turn buffering back on at will, keeping the best of all worlds.

Here. This isn't new, but the wacky C/C++ Duff's Device came up again in my circles. I really don't miss using a language that allows such things. Thank you for C#, Anders.