Now here's one to make you think. Especially in light of the Mono project.

Halcyon Software, Inc. Announces InstantNET - iNET - .NET for Java : iNET includes an IL2JAVA converter, which generates Java class files or Java source code from the Microsoft .NET Intermediate Language (IL). iNET also provides a full Java implementation of the .NET class libraries that runs on all Java-enabled platforms

Heinz plans chocolate fries. [thanks, Sam Ruby] This should go down a storm in Glasgow. That'll be two deep fried Mars bars and chocolate fries to go. 

Simon Fell : Sam raises some good points on what its going to take to talk to .NET My Services, it uses SOAP, SOAP Headers, WS-Routing [aka SOAP-RP], doc/literal style requests, kerberos authentication, encryption and signing. It'll probably use DIME and DIME over TCP binding as well. This is so far ahead of getCurrrentTemperature and the average use of SOAP today, and the obvious response is going to be look at all the unneeded complexity, but its seems to me that you can't get away with much less, given the requirements.

MSDN Online - Messenger APIs. Hmm? Blogging instead of bookmarking?

Welcome to the Microsoft Corporate Web Site : Microsoft acquired Redhat
After months of secret negotiations, Microsoft finally acquired Redhat. In the coming months, Microsoft will be integrating the RedHat Linux distribution in its .NET environment. Core subsystems of Windows XP will be integrated in the new Linux.NET distribution. XFree will probably disappear as well, Microsoft has been secretly porting its own desktop environment to fit the upcoming Linux.NET. Sales will start in mid March. Current owners of RedHat Linux 7.2 and RedHat Linux Professional will receive a discount when upgrading. heh-heh! If only... Doncha just love these hacked websites?

http://www.trustworthycomputing.com/. Inspired use of Google to find only 800 entries.

PBS-Cringely: Hi-speed wireless for tree-dwellers? [thanks, Robot Wisdom] Cringeley's at it again. Last time it was getting DSL from a neighbour down the valley via a couple of converted satellite dishes and 802.11b. This time he's up a tree on a mountainside zip tieing a back to back pair of yagi aeriels to the top of an oak tree. One points at an 802.11b service in downtown Santa Rosa, the other points at his house. 2Mb access bounced off a mountain!   

And here's Slashdot's take on all this. Rolling DSL and Wireless Access Out In One Swoop

Put these three blog entries together from Hack the Planet: |  MeshLAN ad-hoc routing software MeshNetworks is demonstrating its MeshLAN ad-hoc routing software for standard PCs with 802.11 cards | An ISP named Vista Broadband is offering Internet access using Nokia's Rooftop ad-hoc wireless system. | NetGear and D-Link are shipping relatively low-cost 802.11a equipment. This is a mind bombingly huge, disruptive technology.

Just got this in the mail. Love your blog... in fact I just added a link to it in my two blogs at http://ZarateTarrani.blogspot.com/ and http://Postcrds.blogspot.com/ ... I'll highlight it in an entry later today. Why, thank you!

Chris Pirillo says John Dvorak wants a blog debate for his show, presumably to follow up on his (John's) Blog Phenomenon piece.

Dave points to Dave's Handsome Radio Blog! : Where I find: but if I did that Julian Bond would post a nasty comment about me on his weblog. I'm confused. Is http://radio.weblogs.com/0001015 Dave's alter ego? Is there a connection here at all? Have I been branded as one of the Wieners? What does it all mean? And "Nasty"! Shurely Shome Mishtake here. I can be rude, abrupt, cynical, tactless and foolish, but never nasty!

But then we had XPC and now XRPC, not to mention RPC-MIME and even my meager effort with CGI-RPC. What's a few capital letters between friends? After all it's all irrelevant compared with the number of toolkit implementations of XML-RPC and SOAP. As I've been prone to pontificate to anyone who'll listen, "Standards are irrelevant without implementation" and "There are only de facto standards". Anything else is just academic wanking.

At last, a use for web services,  Query a Quake 3 Arena Server and return rules and connected players.

Most excellent music and video on the perils of Consumption and the Branding of America.

Giants forging Web services consortium - Tech News - CNET.com : Web Services Interoperability Organization due to be launched on Wed by MS, IBM, BEA and Intel.

Integrity  A community I'm on have a couple of rules.

Own your words. Meaning that when you publish and hit the send key, your words go out to other people and you can't retract them. Even if you delete the post on a blog or send a kill message to Usenet, people may have already read them.  Your words are out there so you better accept responsibility. Sometimes anonymity is necessary and useful, but generally you are traceble so assume there is no anonymity.

Assume good will. The written word is easily misunderstood and imperfect for conveying meaning and thoughts. If you think you've been flamed, assume that you haven't been and the apparent slight is in your own interpretation and not in the sender's intent. Even when people apparently go on the attack, they're trying to tell you something. Only rarely is it malicious so don't jump to the conclusion that it is.  

These are a pretty good code to live by and useful to remember when communicating on the internet.

As another example, as moderator of email mailing lists I only have one rule. No personal attacks. If a conversation looks like it might be degenerating into this, both parties get one warning that if they persist they'll be chucked off the list. I've never had to do this. The end result is some quite highly emotional discussions, but all taken in the spirit of "Assuming good will".

Here endeth the lesson.

Why settle for the lesser of two axes of evil, when you can have the greater evil of Chthulhu.

I blog, therefore I am [BBC] Jeesh! Who comes up with these headlines? I used to work in the B2B industry and I got sick to death of articles entitled "To B2B or not 2B". Can't anyone write a decent lede any more? 

Blogging your way to knowledge : Why hasn't Yahoo! brought out a blogging service? and It annoys me that my news headline feeds are limited to Yahoo approved publications. Why can't I include Slashdot headlines, or headlines from my favourite blogs? NewsIsFree is presently leading the way in this type of news customisation. Good questions.

New BT boss to halve cost of broadband access. Wholesale cost to drop from 30 pounds per month to 15 pounds. That's more like it. I wonder what the tipping point is? 10 pounds?