Frank McPherson says "I want to say, that there are a few more smart marketing guys at Microsoft, some who have been there before Scoble arrived on the scene."

I totally agree. I feel I'm a minor player here among giants.

Oh, and thanks to Eric Norlin for the head-exploding compliment! He says: "Forget ads of guys in butterfly costumes -- Scoble will spread more good messaging about msft than 8 unit's budgets combined."

Martin Spedding tells a cautionary tale of all of our jobs moving to India.

Personally, if the work I'm doing becomes easy to move overseas, I don't wanna do it anyway. I remember when Silicon Valley used to have large assembly lines. I worked on one at Hewlett Packard. I guess I should have been concerned when Taiwan took those jobs away, but it doesn't seem to have hurt Silicon Valley at all. HP converted the assembly line into cubes for even more expensive people (marketers, engineers, programmers, designers, etc) and that has helped Silicon Valley become a huge industry powerhouse.

A past boss told me "always be trying to get someone else to take over your current job responsibilities." What was his lesson? Taking that attitude on forces you to learn what the market will need next. That's how to add value to your economy. That's how Silicon Valley works. Get rid of the jobs that can be done by someone overseas working for $5 a day. Take on a job that requires real innovation. Real value. Real integration with the best brains in the business.

Now, when I start seeing execs moving overseas, then I'll start worrying. But, if you're smart, and you have the latest bleeding-edge skills, then I wouldn't worry about your job.

If you're someone who doesn't spend an hour a day thinking about the future (and preparing for it by learning a new skill), then watch out.

This is yet another reason I weblog. Weblogging forces me to think about my future. It forces me to consider other people's viewpoints. And, it forces me to learn something in preparation for the future.

But, yes, competing against people who are less expensive is always something scary. Silicon Valley types are scared about competiting with folks everywhere else. But, somehow, Silicon Valley continues to be a wealth-generating machine the world hasn't seen elsewhere.

Mike Sanders says that the future is in HTML.

Mike: here's a secret from your big old evil Microsoft employee (me): HTML is a first-class citizen in Longhorn. It ain't going away.

I use Google every single day in Longhorn. I use Mozilla every single day (along with testing our own browser). Web designers and Web users don't have to worry that we're gonna do something evil to the Web. If there was, I'd go over and kick some executive's behind (yes, you Jim Allchin! ).

That all said, there are places where HTML just simply sucks. HTML was meant to display content. It wasn't meant for applications. So, that leaves the industry with a hole, particularly if Mike is right that HTML is the future of all applications (which I don't believe for one second).

If HTML is the future, isn't that a dismal view of the future? I think so.

Not to mention that Adobe is already showing us a document-centric future and Macromedia is showing us an animation-centric future that goes beyond what HTML is capable of. If HTML is it, then I guess Adobe and Macromedia should pack up and go home too. Right?

Oh, and think we don't know a thing about this? Mike: you really owe it to yourself to get a good demo of the Outlook Web Application. It runs in the browser. It looks like Outlook. It's a freaking unbelieveable piece of work. Even if you're a died-in-the-wool-Tux-hugging-Microsoft-hating-standards-pusher you should get a demo of that. It's awesome. DHTML pushed to the extreme.

Even though it's the best Web app I've ever seen, it still sucks in comparison to the Windows Smart Client version of Outlook.

So, take that further. In 2005, what will Mozilla look like? And what will Outlook look like? What will your apps look like? That's why you'll want to be at the PDC this year.

Lots of people are commenting about John Robb's warning not to lose control of your weblog. Here's Chasing Daisy on that topic.

I've thought about that. To get control, I'd need to pay my own hosting fees. I don't see any reason to do that.

And, as John has proved, if someone takes down my blog for a stupid reason, I can have another one up and running almost instantly and will get tons of press from folks telling each other where to find me. Yeah, it's a pain in the behind, but I've moved once before, and will probably move again someday. If I ever need to move, I'll make sure you all know where to find me.

But, really, I talked with Dave Winer about why he pulled John's site, and he gave me the scoop why he pulled down John's weblog. I'm not sure who's side to be on in this instance, cause there are definitely two sides and neither one is talking, I notice. It's not my place to break wind on this (they both have their own weblogs they can give their point of view, if they want to). But, as with most business disputes, there are definitely two sides.

SQLBlogs are up and running. I'll have to watch this for news about Yukon (Yukon is the code name for the next version of SQL Server).

DonXML says that hiring programmers is really a pain in the a## because the quality of resumes isn't very high. Interesting rant, and some good tips for how to find jobs. Heh, who needs a resume anymore? Just write a weblog.

More RSS shows up at Microsoft. This time the Knowledge Base alerts are published as an RSS feed, says Kevin Dente.

When I was in Silicon Valley over the weekend I saw a huge Oracle billboard that says "Oracle: Make Linux Unbreakable" or something like that. Oracle has been running the "unbreakable" ad campaign in other venues too. I've seen a "make Exchange unbreakable" and other "unbreakable" ads from Oracle.

So, when I visited Mike Sax weblog and saw that Orbitz was blaming Oracle for its recent breakage, I chuckled. Yeah, I know, I'm not supposed to do that. I'm human.

I did check with a few of my Oracle friends. Turns out that's been a hot topic everywhere and that the Oracle problem did originate in Oracle's RAC somewhere, whatever that means.

A co-worker at Microsoft told me Expedia had almost the same problem back in 1998 and that we learned from that not to run our disks too full. Turns out a disk filled up and corrupted the database back then. Know how hard it is to get an enterprise-quality database back up fast? Not.

I feel for the Orbitz and the Oracle people, actually. It really sucks when your customers are down and there's not much you can do but wait for the IT guys to fix your problem.

As to "unbreakable" software? I don't believe a claim like that for one second. Software is a codification of human ideas. Underline human. Until they figure out how to make us perfect, our software won't be. No matter what company writes it.

I'm sure I'll hear from some who'll tell me "my OS is unbreakable." If you do that, remember, I have access to the bug reports for Linux and Macs too. :-)

Cool, a PVR blog (you know, those Tivo and Windows Media Center kinds of devices). Thanks to Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter Media for that link.

Dang, I didn't know Pizza was good for me! Thanks to Tim Jarrett for that info. Hey, Maryam, check it out! (She yells at me everytime I eat pizza for lunch).

Jason Alexander writes about converting Match.com to .NET. You Linux advocates can skip it. Jason likes .NET.

The Nikon forum is running another photo challenge. This time it's for images with "repetition" in mind.

Speaking of cameras, did anyone catch that the new "pro" Nikon has 802.11 wireless as an option. Yeah, it's $3500 today, but wait a year or two. Moore's law is on our side.

I tried to talk my general manager into buying our group one for the PDC. That didn't work.

Michael Hanscom says he'd buy a 1988-era version of Microsoft Word, but updated to run on OSX. On the Windows platform don't we call that WordPad? ;-)