Never tell the dentist how tough you are. I think they see it as some sort of challenge.

Battling Google, Microsoft
Changes How It Builds Software

This is one of the most interesting, candid & informative articles about the internal situation at Microsoft that I have read in a long time. It includes insight on why WinFS was dropped from the original Longhorn timeframe, how Microsoft is trying to meet the challenge Google is bringing and how Microsoft plans to develop and release software in the future.

(follow the /. discussion of the article here)

With the PDC come and gone, a lot of MS codenames have been replaced by their official versions, so to avoid confusion (mostly my own) here is a quick reference post so that when I forget something again, I can come back here and remind myself...

Sources:

[Update: Added LINQ - let me know if i missed any more!]

Is Google being a little less than honest with some of their search results? Or do they explicitly mention somewhere that they manipulate the results to suit themselves? It has been a long day, so bear with me; I might just be missing something. It happens. Often, if you ask my Esteemed Squash Partner...

If I search for the following on Google:

+msn +messenger google talk

Surely, that should find me all the pages where the words "msn" and "messenger" definitely appear, and "google" and "talk" might appear, right? Well then, how come the Google Talk site comes up as the first hit? I checked, and (surprise surprise) the words "msn" and "messenger" do not appear anywhere on that page!

I tested the theory by searching for:

+msn +arbwordthatdoesntexist google talk

Now suddenly, there are no hits (as one would expect)?

Do I not understand the Google query syntax properly, or is Google intentionally fiddling with the search results to benefit themselves? If they are fiddling this, then what else are they playing with - and how can I trust any result that they give me as being a genuine search result, and not just what they decide I should see?

Last night was a great first step in a new drive to get serious developers back to SA Dev. And by serious, I don't mean grumpy, I mean guys who really know their stuff. Ernst Kuschke - a serious developer of note - gave a really polished presentation around  Continuous Integration, which included a full demo of how CruiseControl.NET makes implementing CI a walk in the park.

The other highlight of the evening was Craig Paterson's impromptu demo of his prize winning entry to the recent .NET 2.0 Competition, sponsored by Microsoft South Africa. The entry is both massively impressive in content and enormously exciting in potential - you will be seeing and hearing a lot more of both him and his entry in the near future - of that I have no doubt.

So those of you that live and work in the Gauteng region and have never been to a meeting - you guys need to seriously make a plan to come through and check it out. If you make sure that the email address you are registered with at SA Dev is valid, you will get the monthly newsletter that will give you all the details of our next meeting. Those who have come to meetings before and left disappointed - we are learning from our mistakes and improving with every meeting, give it another shot!

Seriously...

The submissions have been judged, and the winners announced!

See here for more details.

Congratulations to the winners, and thank you to all those who submitted entries to the competition.

My contract with my current employer is just about up. The projects I was hired to complete have been deployed very successfully and are stable so I am starting to look around for a new contract. I am really excited about the possibility of getting onto an XP/Agile team since I have been reading a lot in this area and would love to gain some practical experience.

Does anyone know of any companies that have XP/Agile teams that might be worth contacting? If so, then I would really appreciate a heads-up, via my blog or kevint at gmail dot com. I am looking preferably in the Johannesburg/South Africa area, but I am open to other possibilities...!