DevSource chats with Paul Vick, the brains behind VB and VB.NET at Microsoft…

DevSource: How'd you wind up with .NET in the first place, much less as a rock star? What shaped your attitudes on software development?

You can't call me a rock star until I can get a bowl of green M&Ms in my suite. Or until I can get groupies, whichever comes first. (If it's the groupies, please don't tell my wife, OK?)

As to how I got into .NET, dumb luck and being in the right place at the right time definitely played a part….

It looks like Microsoft is on a roll these days.  After resolving a long time dispute with SUN, Microsoft has just settled a class action dispute in Minnesota.  While the terms of the settlement are not yet know, what is becoming clear is that the Redmond giant seems to be wanting to put their somewhat murky past behind them and put a new foot forward.

As a result of the settlement, the trial, which began March 15, has been concluded and the jury has been discharged, according to a statement on the Hennepin County District Court Web site. The terms of the settlement will remain confidential until finalized sometime in early July, according to the statement. The Minnesota case is one of several class-action lawsuits brought against Microsoft on behalf of consumers in the wake of the U.S. government's antitrust case that the vendor had been unable to settle or get dismissed.

Still, a number of states are purusing action against Microsoft. 

Cases in Arizona, New Mexico and Iowa could still be headed for trial, and the Nebraska Supreme Court last month reversed earlier rulings that blocked a consumer class action case in that state. In New York, Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan courts have initially declined to certify classes of consumers, but plaintiffs are appealing those decisions, Microsoft spokesman Jim Desler said.

Cases in Vermont and Massachusetts are also still active, but not as close to going to trial as the Arizona, New Mexico and Iowa cases because classes of consumers have not yet been certified, according to Desler.

In settlements reached with lawyers representing consumers in states including California, Tennessee, North Dakota, South Dakota and Kansas, Microsoft agreed to make vouchers available to customers who bought Microsoft software during a specific time period. The vouchers can be used to buy computer software or hardware.

Melanie Hollands on her concerns over the long term prospects for Microsoft.

Despite its overwhelming market share, I still have long-term concerns about Microsoft and its growth outlook. Aside from slowing growth at the company and the competitive threat of Linux, my concerns include the delay of Longhorn and the transition leading up to its introduction.

...

Long-term (not a thesis for the up-coming earnings call) the basic problem with Microsoft is that IT budgets are not going to grow very fast over the next several years, and they already own large chunks of the market. So there is limited ability to increase revenues from the MS Office business because the company risks ticking people off and driving more people off license.

The one point that I think is left out (probably because this rumor has just recently surfaced) regards the potential impact of enterprise license changes that Microsoft is pondering.  While it is still likely 12 months away before we will see these changes surface en masse, they will have a significant impact on Microsoft realizes revenue, if not the actuals as well.

After a recent announcement of two new products LPhotos and LTunes (which carry a strong resembalance to ITunes and IPhoto based on screenshots), people are wondering what the hell is wrong with this company.  While Apple hasn't responded (at least publicly) Lindows Inc has really jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. 

Obviously they must think the have something here, otherwise I can't imagine them doing the same stupid thing that they just tried and failed to do to Microsoft, but geez…these guys really like tempting fate.

Microsoft has added the a Visio 2003 XML schema to the list of Office schemas that it has published.  The reference can be downloaded directly from the Microsoft Download Center.

This download contains the Microsoft Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas and related documentation and now includes:

* Overview articles on WordprocessingML (the XML file format for Microsoft Office Word 2003), SpreadsheetML (Microsoft Office Excel 2003), FormTemplate XML schemas (Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003) and DataDiagramingML (Microsoft Office Visio 2003).

* Reference documentation on the Microsoft Office 2003 schemas, detailing every element and types.

Anil talks about how the agreements between Microsoft / SUN and the merger between HP/Compaq all came to fruition because women were the catalysts.

Going back to how it got started, let me tell you about the Easter invitation. Before Scott [McNealy] called for golf, Scott's wife invited my wife over for Easter. My wife doesn't know Scott's wife. There are two families that are good friends of the Ballmers and good friends of the McNealys—they happened to be with the McNealys in Palm Springs [Calif.], and they thought I was going to be there with my wife and kids. It turned out we were going someplace else for Easter. But Scott's wife checked with Scott. At the time, I guess he was sort of thinking about this in a preliminary way.

So, just as the technology industry's largest and most successful company merger ever was led by a woman, the cessation of a decades-long rivalry that resulted in some of the least productive and most useless bickering in the technology business was instigated by two women, neither of whom (as far as I know) are even on the payroll of their husband's companies.

A lot of people wonder why I harp on the importance of solving the underrepresentation of women in the technology industry, or why I am glad to work in an environment that's evenly balanced between genders, and I think the fact that two women who aren't even the CEOs of Microsoft and Sun could generate so much value for the industry illustrates the point rather well.

This is ludicrous.  I don't see how this illustrates the point at all…Second…what is the point Anil?

I am a long time reader of Anils blog and respect his contributions to the community, but to draw a line to the HP / Compaq deal and suggest that this Easter coincidence with McNealys and Balmers wives is anything more then anecdotal to the story is a joke.  Whether this is intentional or not, placing it in the piece as he does, does this in my opinion.  Further, it disrespects the teams that were involved in the year long resolution of the disputes and portrays Balmers / McNealys wives to be mere "housewives" who have nothing better to do then to arrange social engagements for their families when in fact they are heavily engaged in philanthropic activities.  It just has to much of that 60's Better Homes and Gardens feel to it.  Then, to further infer that having a balanced workforce is a good thing because women are more capable at solving complex and long standing (a la HP/Compaq) adversarial relationships because they are female, is a absurd.

Maybe his entry was written in a light hearted way, but it confuses me and I have to say that this position frustrates the hell out me because it sounds a bit to much like the beginning of an arguement for affirmative action would.  Don't even get me started on that.

I think that most of us can agree that we must put the past in the past, recognize where our society has failed us and move forward by building a FULLY INCLUSIVE workforce based on merit and MERIT alone.  To accept anything less would should be appalling to all of us, not to mention illegal.

In a suprise move, BayStar, the Utah based VC who invested some 20mil USD in SCO to fund the fight against Linux, is looking for a way out. 

In an interview with eWEEK.com late Friday, Blake Stowell, director of corporate communications for the Lindon, Utah-based SCO, said BayStar's "move came as a complete surprise." ADVERTISEMENT "We received a letter from BayStar [on Thursday]," he said. "In that letter, they indicated to us that we had breached four different sections of the exchange agreement that had been finalized in early February this year. They gave us no hints on how SCO had breached the agreement."

Think that this has anything to do with Microsofts recent agreement with SUN and a signal that MS may have found a better way to kill *nix?

Check out Scobles response to the CEO of Adobe, on why he shouldn't lose sleep over Microsoft.  In it he talks about how Adobe has always embraced new technology and how Adobe has been bold in the past in taking on industry leaders such as Apple and Microsoft. 

Let's go back to 1984: Did Warnock and Geschke worry about what Apple would do to them? After all, back then Apple was far bigger than Adobe (and, if you talk to pioneers like Dave Winer, they were scary back then too). I watched Adobe back then. Adobe came out with Postscript, a ton of fonts, and later Illustrator. Served a new market that hadn't been served. Took advantage of new trends and new platforms from Apple.

Jump forward to 1995. Did Adobe worry about Apple (which was still bigger and still controlled its major platform) or Microsoft (which was bigger yet)? I don't know, but the 1990s saw Adobe come out with Photoshop, Acrobat, Indesign, and tons of other stuff that served markets that Apple and Microsoft simply didn't see.

Talk about a feel good letter.

Bruce, how can Microsoft work with you to help you find new unserved markets? How can we work with you to rebuild your existing apps to take advantage of the new platform technologies in Longhorn? How can we help you come up with a "killer app" for Longhorn? That's what I'm losing sleep about.

In what amounts to a significant, albeit necessary shift in licensing policy, Microsoft appears to be investigating ways to restructure their enterprise licensing agreements.  A move like this would remove one more obstacle for ASP's and full infra service outsourcers to create appealing and financially viable offerings. 

This would likely have significant impact on revenue projections for Microsoft, but more importantly, it could signal that MS recognizes that Utility Computing is going to be a dominant model for consuming computer resources in the future.  Further, Microsoft likely wants to show their enterprise customers that they are flexible and willing to work with them.  Also, Microsoft likely sees this as another way to stem the flow of customers away from Windows to Linux.

Microsoft Corp. officials are mulling potential changes to the company's enterprise volume licensing program that could let large systems integrators and service providers license software on behalf of their largest customers.

Thanks to our friends over at PocketPCThoughts.com for pointing out this new release.

Microsoft has released a connector to install on your PC that will allow you to connect Outlook 2002 or 2003 to a Lotus Domino 5.x or 6.x server. It will sync email, tasks, appointments and contacts. It requires Windows 2000 or Windows XP on the client side. The reason I am posting this is if this allows Outlook to connect directly to Notes, will this allow you to install ActiveSync and sync with your Notes server without third party software?

...people unleash unqualified fear and paranoia on the net, particularly when its in the name of hawking their own products.  It's really a pet peeve I suppose.  I just can't stand it when people think that they understand what they have heard or read and in turn, misrepresent a potentially threatening situation.  It's dangerous and irresponsible.

Case in point.

...infected, don't make plans for using your computer. It will be otherwise engaged during the attack, April 22 through 28. Experts say two things make Netsky-V especially dangerous:

- Just a single click of an email message unleashes the worm, and;
- It downloads itself from other victims, instead of hard coded sites.

So. How do you avoid this disaster? Insist that users apply the current patches for Microsoft Outlook. Update your antivirus. And….

Ok…first of all, this is not necessarily true.  Based on this assessment, the assumed default behavior of Outlook is to automatically execute an attachment when an E-Mail is opened.  I've been using computers for quite a long time and have never seen this happen.  This isn't the case with Outlook 2000, XP or Outlook 2003.

When you open an E-Mail in one of those clients, the e-mail simply opens and displays the text in the body of the message.  That's it.  Now, if you double click (or in some instances single click) on the attachment, then you are at the mercy of Darwinism and I wish you well.  But the truth is that e-mail clients don't attack people…e-mail readers who aren't familiar with their technology who click on things that they don't know about, do.  For the record, the same goes for web based e-mail with attachments.  Attachments will NEVER open themselves automatically.  NEVER.  Embedded objects can, but that's not what we're talking about here.

After all that, if you find that you do have the virus, here is some additional information on it, and how to remove it.

In the end, when we make statements like this, can we please qualify things before sounding the general alarm.  Jeeeeezz.

Ever have a Sharepoint site that you wish had a webpart for displaying RSS feeds to your users?  Do you have a Sharepoint site that would benefit from the ability to generate RSS feeds of it's webpart like News or other lists?  Well, thanks to Jan Tielens, now you can.

Today I have a day off, so I decided to work a little bit on my "pet project": RSS generation for SharePoint sites. Scoble asked for it when I released my RSS Reader Webpart. I know there are some good solutions for this problem available (for example from Siegfried Weber and DevHawk), but I was intrigued by this problem so I decided to craft one myself. Et voila: the What's New Rss Feed for SharePoint was born (see the end of the post for downloads). I've re-used to logic of the What's New Web Part to retrieve the latest changes on a SharePoint site so I won't go into detail about that part of the code. The general idea behind this is that the code will go through all the lists.

As if we needed another publication for Microsoft developers…

JOURNAL - Microsoft's Architects Journal - has gone live on the MSDN Architecture Center. JOURNAL is a platform where authoritative software architects from all corners of Microsoft's architect community will discuss the connection between opportunities once out of reach and the solutions that now make them possible.

SUN is bleeding cash and no matter what Microsoft gives them, they aren't going to be able to stay afloat while reporting net losses like this forever.  Something has got to change and it's gonna need to be more then a restructuring of their already sinking hardware division.  The only thing thats gonna keep them alive IMO is Solaris on x86.  Anyone care to register their opinion?

Sun Microsystems on Thursday reported a net loss of $760 million, or $0.23 per share, in the third quarter of its fiscal 2004 year, which ended March 28. The company also announced a reorganization of its hardware divisions, as well as the departure of two senior executives: Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer Mark Tolliver and Executive Vice President of Volume Systems Products Neil Knox.

In a bit of irony…

The crush of millions of Windows users trying to patch their computers overwhelmed Microsoft's update service for several hours after new security fixes were made available, the software giant acknowledged on Wednesday.

Immediately after Tuesday's release of four patches that fixed a score of flaws in the company's operating system, traffic to Microsoft's Windows Update site spiked higher than seen during any previous update, reaching a sustained download rate of more then 50GB per second. Past patches have resulted in 2 million people visiting Microsoft's Windows Update site every hour to download fixes. This time, between 3 million and 4 million users came to the site.

God I love irony. ;)