The Wall Street Journal has a good article on what they call a cultural change at Microsoft, which they essentially credit to Jim Allchin and Amitabh Srivastava. Hmmm... Srivastava is certainly respected technically, but Allchin's impending retirement seems to have triggered more glee than tears in the blogosphere. The criticism …

::: {.Section1} [All week I’ve been trying to synch up Visual Studio versions with SQL Server versions. I finally got the right combo: first intall SQL Server 2005 September CTP (en SQL2005 STD Servers Sept2005.iso and en SQL2005 STD Tools Sept2005.iso) and then VS 2005 Team Suite Release …

::: {.Section1} [Philip Greenspun suggests the use of the mobile phone as identity and storage and an “appliance” into which the phone plugs as the general purpose computer used to perform “home” computing tasks (email, browsing, playing games, etc.) Having used Sun’s SunRay thin clients back in the dot-com days …

::: {.Section1} [Owen Braun discusses one of the new organizational features of OneNote 12 (multiple folders) and has a couple of screenshots. ]{style="font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Arial"} :::

::: {.Section1} [Kevin Schofield tells of Microsoft’s “central archive of reports from usability tests and user studies on ts products. The reports date all the way back to 1989.” Oh, wouldn’t I love to be able to read what that has to say about Tablet PC user interfaces!]{style …

::: {.Section1} [I grabbed the domain languageintegratedquery.com and languageintegratedquery.info (don’t surf – the DNS isn’t set up yet!) and would like to build a community-oriented site that: ]{style="font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Arial"}

1. [Serves as a language-inclusive repository for LINQ examples,]{style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial"}
2. [Provides …

::: {.Section1} [Partially cloudy and 80 degrees here in Hawaii . Hurricane Jova seems to be safely slicing towards the  North. Another day in paradise!]{style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"}

[ ]{style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"} :::

::: {.Section1} [In comments, Mark Mehelis asked some good questions re. LINQ: ]{style="font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Arial"}

• [As far as I can tell [the syntax between VB and C# is not the same]{style="font-weight:bold"}. Do you know why this is? Would it not be better to have this …

::: {.Section1} [Microsoft's reorganization\< ?xml:namespace prefix = o /> will apparently lump the existing seven divisions:]{style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: #003300; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"}

• *[Information Worker,]{style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"}*[ including Microsoft Office, Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Visio]{style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"} :::

My new clients have responded to our shockingly complex architecture by specifying, get this, the names of the source code files we are to deliver. So, apparently if we can't negotiate this away, our class structure will be memorialized in the specification contract! Oh, Lordy. Why does the phrase "sunk …