Interesting article on /. linking to a story about a big5 consulting firm in Japan replacing a bunch of Windows servers with OpenBSD. The article (including the usual feral baying in the /. comment threads) neglects to mention that any IT department worth...

My friend Pascal sent me this link detailing some new initiatives at Microsoft to close the customer feedback loop... I really like the innovative use of direct physical retribution to help drive the development of more reliable, bug-free software ;-...

The practices guys have been quite deeply focused on the security aspects of building service oriented systems lately, and have released a CTP document detailing direct authentication patterns (I give my credentials to a service which directly authenticates...

Some news came in while I was on holiday about the demise of the Informed Architect program, and I'm just getting around to action it now. The IA program, run and administered out of Redmond, provided selected architects in our global architecture community...

Hard to describe that sinking feeling you get when you hear those dulcet kerplunking noises emanating from your laptop's hard-drive... You know what's coming... more kerplunking, more whiiring, followed by the inevitable drive-death. No point going into...

By the way, Princess and I just came back from a holiday in Taiwan and Vietnam. We had a great time, and ate lots of truly excellent things, as my expanding waistline can attest. Taiwan in particular was a foody treat - I'm seriously considering writing...

While we are on the topic of podcasts, don’t miss the GrokTalk series. These talks, put together by Microsoft Regional Directors at TechEd 2005, provide a condensed talk on a variety of topics. If you are interested in having someone explain to you in...

Microsoft's Architecture Strategy Team have recently announced a new podcast - the ARCast. Take a panel of architects, throw a contentious or open-ended question at them, then sit back and listen to the resulting diatribes :) I've just listened to the...