It hurts a lot.

Rory sez Microsoft shouldn't cater to hobbyist programmers. Scoble disagrees. I'm really ticked off because I just wrote a column on this, so I can't post that for four weeks, but here are some points...

Hobbyist programmers matter a lot. According to Microsoft, there are 7,000,000 hobbyist programmers …

This is a 2.4GHz cordless answering system with 2 handsets, available for about \$100. We tried it out for 2 days and are returning it. It has a terrible hiss. I don't know if it's the spread spectrum technology, interference with my WiFi, or just the phone, but its …

Tom Plum just came up with a great idea: In the next 8 months, swap a political book with a personal acquaintance whose philosophy is opposite yours. Then have a civil discussion.

Ordered.

Mars was once "drenched in water." Cool.

In a comment, Josh asks "[Why should] a C++ programmer choose to write industrial programs in C#? Of course you needn't restate the benefits of a 3rd/4th/5th generation language, as much as benefits to someone who is choosing whether or not to port existing C++ code to C …

Jon Udell's .NET Report Card is an excellent article, but I'm going to pick a couple nits:

He gives .NET a B in "Advancing the state of the art of Windows programming." I'd disagree: for both the state of the art and state of the practice, I'd give .NET an …

Why spoil a perfect record? Yes, it's March. No, Cross hasn't shipped their pen for the Tablet PC.

In a comment on my last post, Alex Peake points out the Dispose() method and the using keyword. This is what I referred to in the post as "implementing IDisposable", but I realize that I glossed over that too fast.

IDisposable is an interface that defines a single method, Dispose …