My last post made me recall this programming language hierarchy I ran across some time ago. Read it for the humor, not the accuracy.

There's an old basketball saying--attributed to Frank Layden of the Utah Jazz-- that "You can't teach height." No matter how much skill you have, if you are short, you'll be at a disadvantage on the court. You can teach someone to be a better player,...

Robert X. Cringely speculates in his latest column that Apple may soon be adding H.264 hardware decoding and encoding to its Macintosh line. Cringely is wrong more often than he is right so the truth of this rumor is unknown. I'm sure someone at Apple...

I just finished reading Showstopper! by G. Pascal Zachary. It recounts the creation of Windows NT starting with the hiring of Dave Cutler in October 1988 and ending with the shipping of the first version of NT on July 26, 1993. The book puts a lot in...

Andres Taylor gives us his top ten things he's learned about software development. The list is insightful and definitely worth reading. Here are my two favorites and my interpretation of them: It all comes down to working software - People pay you...

Once known as Windows Media Photo, Microsoft just released a new photo format called HD-Photo. Bill Crow has a good writeup on the benefits of the new format. Basically it allows for high-fidelity photo editing and storage. While those of us in the normal...

I recently attended a talk advocating combining the management of test development and development. Some of the reasoning for this was to force the quality decisions to fall onto one person. This makes a lot of sense. It is important to understand why...

I thought this was too cool not to post. For those that don't have the ASCII table memorized, the sign says "Now Hiring". Hat tip to Kotaku .

My wife and I are talking about getting some landscaping done. One of the interesting options we have is to get a computerized sprinkler system. The system connects to your PC and uses the web to determine the weather. It can use this information to make...

Some good advice for managers courtesy of the guys at Business Intelligence Lowdown. They give 73 tips. Not all of them are eye-opening but I'm sure there are some items here you haven't considered. A few of my favorites: Do not rake employees over...

Microsoft has a large number of pure researchers working for it. They are collectively known as Microsoft Research (MSR). Once a year a large contingent of these researchers gather in Redmond for an event called TechFest . All full time employees are...

Windows Weekly has an interesting interview with Dave Caulton of the Zune team in this week's netcast. Dave discusses interesting issues like: The Universal deal Zune Christmas sales Is the Zune doing as well as expected? Zune's wireless...

EliteBastards has an interesting article speculating about the future of Creative Labs. Creative was one of the first PC sound add-in boards ( AdLib was the first that I recall). They are certainly the most successful of the PC audio card manufacturers...

Back in May of 2006 I was invited to a recording session at Microsoft Studios (yes, we have out own studios--very cool place) with Robert Fripp . He's the artist brought in to help develop the Windows sound for Vista. This was the 2nd of two sessions...