The geek's approach to dating: Dating Design Patterns. Funny.

Hmm, Debian servers attacked due to flaw in Linux kernel, says News.com. Can we just admit that security is an industry-wide problem and work on ways to increase security for all systems? (And build tools that will help programmers write better code and find bugs before they get exploited?)

Michael Howard's team here at Microsoft is working feverishly on just that.

Erin Joyce at InternetNews.com: That Cloud of Uncertainty over Linux.

Chris Pirillo has released a new RSS news aggregator done with Macromedia's Flash. I've tried it and it looks different and works nice, that's for sure, but for now I'm sticking with my NewsGator.

Loren wants a Longhorn alarm clock. Me too. Keep in mind that the clock is far from being finished. I'd imagine that we'll see lots of enhancements to it.

The clock, by the way, is a piece of art. It's all done with vector graphics. So, it looks good small as well as large on high resolution screens.

I'm going to switch my comment server over the weekend (probably on Sunday night because I'll be down in Silicon Valley this weekend and away from blogging). Unfortunately this will mean losing all my old comments.

Looking for a job? My friend Nick Paredes says that Verizon is having a job fair in Seattle area next week.

Dan Fernandez is asking about what kind of samples you'd like Microsoft to include in the next version of Visual Studio, particularly with C#.

Microsoft's bloggers are on the move. Tons of Microsoft employee bloggers have been reopening their blogs over on the .NET Weblogs. The problem is that that homepage now is flying by very fast. Whew. Tons of interesting info. Do you like Microsoft bloggers over there mixed in with community? They used to be over on GotDotNet.

I don't know if I like this new approach, but I'm watching and learning.

Feel free to give frank feedback about this new approach. I'll pass it along.

I wish we could have tons of decentralized communities and not try to do everyone in one centralized place. Why should an employee who wants to blog about the XBOX, for instance, be stuck into .NET Weblogs?

Microsoft still doesn't have a formal policy or a centralized recommendation. It's just that a bunch of employees got someone to open blogs up on GotDotNet and they outgrew that home. I imagine that the .NET Weblogs will be quickly outgrown too.

Right now we're early on in the process of having employees weblog. Imagine what'll happen if the numbers grow from a few hundred to a few thousand? We need to build better systems now to prepare for the growth.

Any ideas?

Bill Gates is interviewed over on Always-On: Goodbye Microsoft Millionaires.

I was just reading ActiveWin.com and saw they pointed to a new video email addon for Outlook 2003. Hmm, maybe I'll find a use for my webcam yet.

By the way, ActiveWin is a great site for keeping up to date on Microsoft stuff. I've been reading that site for years.

A lot of you are looking to get Digital Cameras for Christmas this year. Digital Photo Review is the best information site out there. And the forums rock too. For instance, here's news on a new Nikon (the D70) that will be announced next year.

Dan Shafer asks "where's Marc Canter?" Yeah, I wondered that myself. I grew used to seeing his posts. I can understand the pressure to give up blogging for a while, though. Life can often intrude on blogging.

Scott Woodgate, who works on the BizTalk team here at Microsoft, is looking for some "elite" BizTalk Server MVPs. Details here.

Ed Kaim links us to a video of some guy finishing Super Mario Brothers in about 11 minutes.

Wow, someone in a government agency gets the power of conversational marketing. Here, read Morgan Johnston's discovery of the power of blogging.

Update: that was actually Gerrard Lindsay's blog. Sorry about that.

Jon Kale gives one of the best bug reports on Longhorn I've seen so far. Yes, I totally agree. The start button could really be improved. I hope Jon's post gets forwarded around to the entire Aero team.

Got some favorite TabletPC software? Nominate them for a Tablet PC Award. Thanks to Mark Richman, CEO of Empire Software, for sending me this. (His software has already been nominated).

Joe Beda goes in depth about Avalon's visuals. Are weblogs changing the kinds of information available from within Microsoft? Here's the answer. Joe's on the Avalon team. He's practicing conversational marketing for his team's technology. Pointed at someone else. Shared the link love. Then added more info. For those who don't know what Avalon is, it's the new graphics system in Longhorn.

Rob Fahrni shows how weblogs came to his rescue.

Dylan Greene is looking for XSL tools.

New York Times: Markets shaped by consumers. Interesting stuff. Thanks to Rajesh Jain for that link.

Benjamin Mitchell tries to clarify what Indigo is. I stopped in on Don Box yesterday and he gave me a demo. Indigo is going to radically change how we think of Internet technologies. Imagine something that looks like a website, but that doesn't require a centralized server. Now you're getting your mind around what Indigo could do.

Indigo is designed to take advantage of our always on, always connected computers.

Along these lines, the guy who wrote BitTorrent, Bram Cohen keeps showing up in my life. When I flew down to Oakland a week and a half ago, he and his family were on the plane.

Don't know what BitTorrent is? Tim Bray and others have called it a "game changer." I think it is too (here's Tim's report on Bit Torrent). It lets you download popular files very quickly (and it uses your system to spread out the bandwidth costs of distributing files).

How do I get so lucky to meet the world's leading geeks? I don't know. But, one thing I do is walk around the airport and look at everyone and wonder who they are. If I see someone who looks like a geek (sitting on the floor typing away usually gives them away) then I start a conversation up. You meet the most fascinating people that way.

Another thing I try to do is identify who the other Microsoft employees are. Generally it's not hard. I shared drinks with a guy who's a product manager on Office Live Meeting recently. He had on a Microsoft hat. That sorta gave him away. I've also met Accenture, IBM, and HP employees the same way.