Martin Spedding clarifies that he's criticizing PNC on a strictly economic basis. This is perfectly valid: consider that the benefits of a conference accrue primarily to the individual while the cost is borne primarily by companies. And the value of a conference is delivered primarily by speakers and attendees, but …

A Silicon Valley computer programmer has been arrested for threatening to torture, kill and send a 'package full of Anthrax spores' to employees of the company he blames for bombarding his computer with spam promising to enlarge his penis. via [Wired News]

Oughtn't his defense be "But they opted-in to …

Martin Spedding wonders "Was going to the PDC really worth it?" and Scoble sez "I'd say there's a huge amount of value in actually being there" via [The Scobleizer Weblog]

Spedding essentially says that he goes to the PDC to "get an edge" and, now that conferences put up presentations …

Today the C++/CLI candidate base document was posted, and it's freely available for download.  via [Herb Sutter's Blog]

This describes the C++/CLI extensions discussed at PDC but not available in the PDC bits. Let the studying begin...!

According to a CNET paraphrase of an IDC report, IT outsourcing fears misplaced. But the article contains this seemingly absurd statement: "Services tasks that may be affected by offshore outsourcing include maintenance and support, implementation and operations--activities that IDC views as requiring low skills and that involve repeatability. Hardcore business …

Jon Udell's investigating a Bayesian RSS categorizer. Bayesian spamfilters correlate the probability of words (such as "v1agra" or "ontology") appearing in an email message; if the aggregate probability from all the words in an email exceeds a certain threshold, the email is put in a specific folder. The blog correlary …

I have no idea of the capabilities of Microsoft's ink blogging tools, but IMO the real ink blogging solution will be one that stores ink on the server and returns ink if the client sends up an appropriate MIME type. Only if the client is incapable of rendering ink will …

http://www.inklog.com/ is apparently the site where Microsoft Tablet PCers are using their tablet blogging tool. "Not 3 years, 3 days" teases Chris Coulter, referring to this post of mine. Hey, if that's all they got, I beat 'em to market! I haven't looked at the headers coming …

Estimating the Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow

Ignobel Prize Committee, where art thou?

Peter Rysavy's Lonestar screenshots and discussion: Microsoft handed out Lonestar alphas at the Tablet PC get-together at Comdex. Oh man, I should have listened to that little voice in my head that told me to go to Vegas. Most interestingly, Peter says that Lonestar is a small (\~10MB), user-installable and …