Does anyone have any theories as to what has happened?
Have came out of long term contract, looking for next gig, and crickets...

<SARCASM>Can't wait for HTML to take over Enterprise Desktop space...JavaScript, CSS, String postback fields, sessions, and a lot of Scotch duct tape.</SARCASM>

Deviation from good code design leads to the dark side (aka kludgy code). Mike M MCAD.NET WinInsider.com - News for Microsoftonians

In .NET 2.0 great strives have been made to make binary serialization more version tolerant, with new or removed fields no longer throwing exceptions. Although one scenario that keeps throwing an exception... when the type of a field has changed. Using OptionalFieldAttribute one can indicate to omit during deserialization a new field, if the data for that field is not present in the old stream. Is there any declarative (such as TypeConverterAttribute) or imperative mechanism to handle situations when the type of the field has changed, to prevent exception from throwing when data type of one or more fields has changed? Essentially to ignore reading data for fields that have different type between definition in old serialized stream and new definition in assembly. Thanks in advance

Deviation from good code design leads to the dark side (aka kludgy code). Mike M MCAD.NET WinInsider.com - News for Microsoftonians

I have been looking to treat myself to nice Windows CE/Mobile phone/PDA, not as much for the voice/phone capabilities, but rather for the internet/data that I could carry with me, and run my applications on it... only if the device would have visual resemblance to the likes of iPhone, except the price tag. One is the style factor, but as a Windows CE device, to be able to write custom/handy application for it. This one looks just like iPhone; it sells for about $250 on eBay. What is bit more interesting (if true) is that tPhone runs on Windows CE. What is bit perplexing, for Windows CE device, it does not support WMA/WMV media playback format (or it at least is not listed). Looking at the specification it also does not support 850 GSM. There is another cool phone, not yet available, and when released will be bit more expensive than tPhone, called Meizu M8. Runs on Windows CE 6.0 (not Windows Mobile), and comes with two digital cameras (one on back and front).

Deviation from good code design leads to the dark side (aka kludgy code). Mike M MCAD.NET WinInsider.com - News for Microsoftonians

Since last year, or so, Intel offers quad-core processors, but they are two dual-core on one chip. Intel will be releasing next gen. of the quad-core process code name Yorkfield (sometime in/after November) – some reports suggest that it will be true/native quad-core (4 cores on one chip) while others suggest that it will be same as it is now. AMD few days ago has also launched quad-core processor, Barcelona which is "true" quad-core. Anyone has some info to clarify as to “true” nature of Intel's Yorkfield?

Deviation from good code design leads to the dark side (aka kludgy code). Mike M MCAD.NET WinInsider.com - News for Microsoftonians

"Is it really necessary to use AJAX everywhere just because you can? What do you guys think?" I do not understand obsession with AJAX, if someone wants Rich Client type application, why not just go with Rich Client (Windows Client) type application. Seems to me like forcing the HTTP/HTML paradigm to something that was not meant to be. But I am interested what will come out of Atlas, hopefully there will be a "good story". To make Atlas work, MS wrote ~20K lines of JavaScript code that gets downloaded to the client. Deviation from design patterns leads to the dark side (aka klugy code). Mike M MCAD.NET WinInsider.com - News for Microsoftonians

I installed XP Home on 200MHz Intel with 96MB – (no laughing joke) – and it runs slower them my 2GHz machine, but that is expected. Mostly noticeable during boot time, but once loaded for email and internet type apps works good. If you turn off XP Theme and any other unnecessary Windows Services, it will improve performance (less memory and CPU usage). But I would not recommend any serious development. It is good for word processing, email and Internet. I can run all my apps without worrying whether they will work; like I would if I had linux. I am personally interested about performance when it comes to installing XP Service Pack 2 on such ancient computer? Mike M WinInsider.com - News for Microsoftonians

Most likely during the release candidate phase. Mike M WinInsider.com - News for Microsoftonians

This is not what you are looking for, but I just could not resist :-D CPU fan[^] Mike M WinInsider.com - News for Microsoftonians

Thanks for sharing about SP2 - it makes me grab the 270+ MB Network downloadable from Microsoft Download Center and install SP2. Could you comment on performance/memory usage of SP2? Did it speed-up/slowed-down or stayed the same? Mike M WinInsider.com - News for Microsoftonians

For some reason I am unable to look up my order status after I placed my VS 2005 Beta 1 order. Is anyone else too unable to lookup their order status? Or is it just me? Order Status page [^] Mike M WinInsider.com - News for Microsoftonians

Yes you are correct. The express version was available for download (no S&H cost) for some time now. I wanted to stress that the FULL (Whidbey) version is available to general public as of now for order. I updated the original post to be more precise. Mike M WinInsider.com - News for Microsoftonians

Hopefully this is not a repost. But I just notice that Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 (full Whidbey) is available for order to general public from Microsoft website. http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/vs2005/get/order/default.aspx [^] Mike M WinInsider.com - News for Microsoftonians

will this[^] do? OR this[^] Mike M WinInsider.com - News for Microsoftonians

<my rant> Their may be those (*some*) in open source and java community that think of Ximian (Mono) as traitors. Ximian is affiliating with the enemy. As Ximian is extending .NET reach into java territory. </my rant> Mike M WinInsider.com - News for Microsoftonians

<my rant> No self respecting open source "programmer" or organization would ever use Microsoft's "evil" software. Even if the software is far superior to whatever alternative may be. </my rant> I my point is: .NET will do little to further Linux cause. Mike M WinInsider.com - News for Microsoftonians

XP (Home edt.) runs "quite well" on 200 MHz. Imagine that. With fancy services turn off, it runs better then Win2K on same box. Mike M WinInsider.com - News for Microsoftonians

It is good to know, thank you. One of these days I have to get myself one of these PDA's/Smartphones. Seems like really handy, especially with internet connection. Mike M WinInsider.com - News for Microsoftonians

New hang out playground: http://channel9.msdn.com[^] There are some cool videos of Microsoft employees, especially one by Bill H; Best OS: Homo Sapien 1.0. Mike M WinInsider.com - News for Microsoftonians

You can try out on my page. Tell me if anything is out of order. http://mobile.wininsider.com[^] If I programmed it right, going to: http://www.wininsider.com, should detect mobile device and redirect to the mobile version of the site. Mike M WinInsider.com - News for Microsoftonians