Here. Holy cow! I was *swamped* with abstracts for the Applied XML Developer's Conference. I got 62 and so many of them are so wonderful that I'm seriously considering expanding the Developer's Conference to 3 days (although I don't know if folks can stand that kind of density for that long : ).

Here. From Chris Tavares: Sun fires it's return shots in the feature war between Java and the CLR. And for us developers, it looks like a good thing.

Here. From Ramon: Microsoft commissioned VeriTest, a division of Lionbridge Technologies, Inc., to conduct a series of tests comparing the File serving performance of the following server operating system configurations running on a variety of server hardware and processor configurations: Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition Release Candidate 2 Red Hat Linux Advanced Server 2.1 Red Hat Linux 8.0 Professional enjoy..

Here. The last time I saw a movie, it occurred to me that as much as I love them, I hate theaters. They overcharge for the tickets and then require your first born child for popcorn and sodas. Movie theaters make airports seem like dollar stores. Anyway, I've got a great setup at home, complete with big screen TV, 5.1 digital surround sound and a PC already connected to the whole mess. I'm a big NetFlix.com fan, but they and sites like CinemaNow.com only show stuff that's available for rental. I want first run movies! Shouldn't a platform with such a strong media and digital rights management story allow me to watch first run movies at my house? And wouldn't that be a killer app for a new OS from that company? DISCLAIMER: I'm not pre-announcing anything. I don't know of any plans along these lines; I just think it'd be cool.

Here. I'm constantly amazed at how few people know about the Microsoft-specific Google site. The results almost always link back to somewhere on microsoft.com but the results seem to be somewhat more [cough] comprehensive than [sneeze] [rub eyes] MS's own search engine. [nudge] [nudge] Enjoy.

Here. I had occasion to re-read my very first article today. I couldn't help myself, so I dropped in some annotations based on my experience since I wrote it. Bottom line: the ideas are still solid, but the writing needs work... While I thought that this 6/95 article was lost in the mists of time, Betsy Hardinger, the copy editor on the WinForms book, faxed me a paper copy (she's been around a while, obviously : ). When the fax came in, I thought I'd have to transcribe the piece (I only type ~65wpm). Luckily, Office 11 comes with MS Office Document Imaging, which has built-in OCR. After processing the document, I was able to select columns of text and past them into Word. I had to do considerable clean-up, but it was about 10x faster than typing it all by hand. I do so love MS software.

Here. I want one. [activewin.com]

Here. "Security and privacy are two of the most important -- and difficult -- issues facing the computer industry. Improving the ability of software and hardware to protect the integrity of digital information and the privacy of computer users has become a critical focus for both software developers and hardware manufacturers. Last June, Microsoft introduced a new security technology, code-named "Palladium" at the time, that is designed to provide the foundation for a new approach to security and privacy in Windows. Now known as the Next-Generation Secure Computing Base (NGSCB) for Windows, this technology utilizes an innovative hardware and software design to protect against malicious software in order to enhance privacy, security, and system integrity and help insure that software acts in a way that customers can rely on."