Oh, you can see Clemens Vasters, the guy who wrote the Das Blog app that Jeff Sandquist uses, in action. He points to the EMEA Architect Tour 2004 videos from Finland.

I think this is a first: a weblog focused on SQL Server and OLAP from Duncan Lamb. Cool, hope we see more SQL Server focused blogs. This week Channel9 has videos with Euan Garden, a product unit manager on the SQL Server team, coming up, so it'll be interesting to see how the SQL Server community gets involved in that.

Mark Cuban: "I had no idea how crazy, how much fun and how intense it would be doing this show. I know I’m having fun when I get there about 8:30 in the morning, and when I realize I’m hungry and haven’t eaten, it’s past midnight!."

I know that feeling. It's how I feel when I work on Channel9 and how I feel when I blog. It's 11:32 p.m. and I'm just getting started!

That said, I know what it's like to be stuck in a job you don't like. I am looking for every opportunity to help other people find jobs they love. It really is special once you get there.

Ahh, another new thing I missed yesterday in my list of stuff coming from Microsoft: Bink.nu is reporting that a new Internet Security and Acceleration server will be released at TechED in May.

Heh, over on Channel9 I'm having a bit of fun with Greg Robinson. How? He said that he's going to unsubscribe from all his technical magazines because they are covering too much fluffy stuff that he can't use today. "I am surprised they are not doing articles and what its like to work at Microsoft."

So, in Greg's honor I posted two videos from Eric Gunnerson, of the C# team, and Brad Abrams, of the CLR team, about what their average days are like.

Sorry, Greg, I couldn't resist.

Arstechnica covers a new worm making its way around Microsoft Windows-based computers. Please visit www.microsoft.com/protect to protect yourself.

Wired: New study urges patent upgrade

Interesting given Chris' weblog post.

Chris Pratley talks about patents and open source. Interesting stuff. Chris is doing the best weblogging at Microsoft today. The comments people are leaving there are fun to read too!

When I worked at NEC we were sued several times by small companies (read one person and a lawyer) who were trying to take advantage of patents that they had acquired. I always felt that that was unfair. I wouldn't mind seeing the patent system changed to only defending inventors who implemented their ideas in a product. Is there a reason not to do that?

John Cavnar-Johnson, over on the comments on this post on Alex Lowe's blog, says "More employees on the lists, newsgroups, and forums means fewer employees fixing bugs, coding the next version of the framework, and developing the content you say we need."

Ahh, the zero sum belief.

This is a common assumption. I believe that view is wrong.

Software development is a creative activity. No matter how "factory like" Microsoft (and our competitors) makes it seem.

I ask a lot of software developers questions about how they work and what drives them. Sometimes huge breakthroughs happen within a few hours.

Steve Wozniak, for instance, told me that he and Steve Jobs wrote the game "Breakout" in one weekend. Ever play that? Now, think about that. They wrote a product that went on to make $60 million. In one weekend. He said they didn't sleep all weekend long. And they got mono that weekend. And they only got paid $5000 (in one of the better business deals that Atari ever made). Aside: how much did Wozniak get paid? (Hint, it wasn't half of the five grand).

But, if I had another hour with Steve or Steve now, I'd ask "what led up to that weekend?" I bet it was thousands of hours playing games, and thinking about games, and thinking about graphics, and talking with other people about the problem space.

I've seen it here too. Channel9 had quite a bit of brainstorming time. I saw Bryn and Charles playing around with some pretty weird things. That didn't directly map onto what he's done for Channel9. But when he got going, man do they kick out a lot of stuff very quickly.

What am I trying to say? Well, I've seen direct customer requests help get a group unstuck. And once unstuck they get hyper productive. Why? Developers want to please people. They want their code to be used. So, when someone says "I'll use your stuff, if you give me X" that's a powerful motivator.

Even my blogging gets unstuck by reading other people's blogs. Some days I don't have anything to say (well, truth be told, most days). But then I read someone's blog, and things just start to flow.

We must research this more. I certainly don't buy the whole zero sum theory. If that were true, then people would be machines, and last time I tried to treat someone like a machine they didn't like it at all.

Um, Dare, I was talking about MSDN, the magazine, not MSDN, the web presence (he takes my comments to task today). I agree with you about the web presence, but not when it comes to the magazine. The magazine has always covered Microsoft's latest stuff, most of the time before it ships. Anyone remember the issue on Hailstorm, for instance?

Very cool, the next version of OneNote will support importing OPML outlines.