Kent Tegels (SQL guru) has chimed in with some thoughts on Linq. Good stuff to at least noodle on. Of course, I see point #6 as nothing but a positive, but Kent is entitled to his opinion. ;-)

The Atlas Project was unveiled today and ScottGu blogs about some other things that are good to know. Very cool stuff.

The LINQ Project is a codename for a set of extensions to the .NET Framework that encompass language-integrated query, set, and transform operations. It extends C# and Visual Basic with native language syntax for queries and provides class libraries to take advantage of these capabilities.

Linq was announced at PDC and sounds very interesting. I haven't had a chance to dig into it yet but the concept is tantalizing. The main site has a ton of stuff in C# but the Visual Basic support will be highlighted on MSDN at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/future and you can get the Visual Basic LINQ Tech Preview (download MSI) at: http://vbasic/lang/

Interesting Forbes article. Somethings I can't really comment on since I'm not in Redmond, some things that I think aren't quite accurate, and some that are scarily dead on. It's certainly not the company I started at 10 years ago. In some ways that is a good thing, in others, not so much.

John Udell has an interesting read on WinFS over on InfoWorld.

That's right, starting Sept 27th the DevCare program will return in Minneapolis at the Microsoft office. You can register here. I will be presenting "A Lap Around Visual Studio" which will focus on the new Team System functionality.

If you are or know of IT professionals (you know, one of THOSE types), the MNEUG will be having its first meeting on Thursday, September 29th.

What is MNEUG? MNEUG is a peer to peer user group that meets every other month on the last Thursday of the month. Members include IT administrators, managers, and consultants. No formal experience with Exchange Server is required. People come to learn, share tips and tricks, and network with other professionals.

Meeting Details
Thursday, September 29th
4:30pm – 7:00pm
Microsoft Office
8300 Norman Center Drive
Suite 950
Bloomington, MN

Agenda:
4:30-5:30pm Dinner and Social Hour
5:30-6:00pm User Group Information

• Leadership
• Sponsors
• Future Topics
• Future Meeting Dates and Times

6:00-7:00pm Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2 Overview

You can Register Here

Once again, Mary Jo Foley writes an article that seems to be more fluff than fact. The title is "OSDL Calls Microsoft's Bluff" and details a supposed counter offer by the OSDL to Microsoft's original request to team with OSDL on an independent TCO study of Linux vs. Windows.

The supposed counter bluff was OSDL offering to help explore Microsoft's porting of Office to Linux. This just smacks of sensational journalism. Sure, it's worth reporting that OSDL made such on offer, but to portray it as OSDL one-upping the supposed Microsoft "ploy" to win brownie points vs. Linux is a stretch. Microsoft's original offer was to conduct a TCO study that compared the two operating systems and to do it with an organization that would clearly have little interest in showing Linux in anything but a favorable light. The "counter offer" was about porting technology from a market dominant technology to one that is a niche desktop operating system. How is that calling Microsoft's original "bluff"?

Wouldn't a real counter offer be something like comparing TCO of OpenOffice to Microsoft Office. Even OSDL's reasoning behind the porting counter offer was confused since the supposed reason for the colloboration was "... customers with a large number of Linux servers." What the heck do Linux servers have to do with porting Office to Linux? Last I checked, not too many folks were running Office on servers. So why use that as a reason for the OSDL to work with Microsoft on porting Office?

Now if OSDL had said we will work with Microsoft on TCO of OpenOffice vs. Office, and Microsoft said No, well now you have a story. Mary Jo gets some stuff right some of the time, but each time I start to like her reporting she pulls something like this. Looks like Mary Jo mailed this one in in order to start her long weekend early.

Scott Colestock posts about a great resource for those of you heading to PDC.