I must admit, the naked picture thing wasn't original. I stole the idea from Chris Sells. He posed naked with his computer for one of Fawcette's magazines and they ran a quote along side of his picture "nothing gets between me and my code." I steal from the best. What can I say?

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO (as if you didn't know that already), talks about the Xbox in Japan.

Ed Garay, of University of Chicago, chimes in on Tablet PC. I met Ed a couple times at the CNET Builder conferences that Dan Shafer planned. Ed tries EVERYTHING out. Among all the attendees I met, he seemed the one that really figured out what would or wouldn't work.

Lenn Pryor tells me he's having a blast with his photoblog. Looks awesome Lenn!

I've been in his house, and he could be a professional photographer. Nice stuff! I wanna get a Nokia 3650 like him and Chris.

Michael Bernstein just set me straight, via email, as to GPL and Red Hat: "RedHat isn't violating the GPL. The language you see isn't tied to the product, it's tied to the service contract. The basic idea is to prevent a customer from buying a service contract (for example) for 50 machines, and running 100. Then, when any of the 100 need some attention, it's 'conveniently' one of the 50 licensed machines.

Lora, of whatisnew.com, sets David Coursey straight regarding his article on Tablet PCs.

Eric Gunnerson, Visual C# product manager at Microsoft, has a new weblog.

The New York Times today asks "how can a blog get more readers?"

We all know the real answer: post a naked picture of yourself. My traffic tripled when I did that.

Rob Enderle, Forester Research: "Linux is Not Ready for the Enterprise (Opinion)"

Andrew Sullivan: "Shocking Silence." All about blogs in Iran. Hey, Maryam, this one is for you.

Hmmm. I see a Microsoft Vice President, Peter Moore, who slammed handheld video games. Um, Peter, do you realize that some of us who own Pocket PCs use them for nothing but video games?

Oh, maybe you better not come on our family trips, either. My son, Patrick, played a cell-phone video game through half of our trip today through Whidbey Island. I won't tell you which ones of my co-workers were showing me their SmartPhone-based video games. Yeah, they are a "a very solitary, time-killing activity."

Maybe Peter won't be welcome where Patrick and I are visiting tomorrow: Microsoft's game-testing labs, where they come up with great new solitary, time-killing activities.

Speaking of ego lists, Joi Ito just moved to the top of my "friends" list.

The Age: "Red Hat violating GPL, says tech evangelist" (not me).

Andy Hopper: "I'm sure my poor attitude is going to hurt my chances at realizing my dream of working for Microsoft..." (He's scrapping Microsoft's "Enterprise Instrumentation Framework").

My feedback? I want people like Andy to work here. Constructive criticism is always good. Now the ball is in our court to fix the issue. Hey, remember, I told Bill Gates to split up the company. If I can get hired, Andy has an even better chance.

OK, Tony Perkins played to my ego. He added me to "Always-On's Blog Roll." Is Always on a weblog? Who cares? But, it earned a link. What will take to get link #3?

Dan Shafer: "What I really want is a rep as someone who calls attention to the humongous number of things wrong with the company and its products while acknowledging the good that it sometimes does as well."

Dan, better watch out. I did just that and eventually an exec called me up and said "you ever consider working at Microsoft?"

Chris Pirillo, on the other hand, says "my initial impressions are positive, they've got a long way to go before I'd consider [msn messenger 6] a complete product."

Loren: "Scoble is right: MSN Messenger [6] is freaking freaking freaking awesome."

Loren: you don't know the half of it. Yesterday I talked with tons of people -- all of whom wanted me to show them MSN 6's new features. I've never had so many IM's going at once.

Today I'm taking the day off to spend with my family. Have a great Thursday!