Rob,

All politics and crap aside, I'm interested in your comment about lots of MS employees blogging.

Do they blog at and from work? Does MS provide time for that? Also, are they actively encouraging you to blog and comment? No lawyer trouble there?

The company I'm currently working for has strict media rules, but none specifically addressing blogs.
Care to share?

One thing the MSDN/Technet blog RSS feeds could do with is an English only option. I don't really need to see the french/swedish/spanish blogs, since they make no sense to me whatsoever...

I don't like Asya Schween's pictures - not one bit.

They make me feel uncomfortable.

Is that the idea?

I don't get why they think poor people need laptops. They need food and a job and medicine. They can't eat a laptop. What in the world are you going to do with a lapop in the 3rd world.

A little R&R is good for the mind, body, and soul.
Have fun:-)

No one, to my knowledge, has ever said that smart people can't do wild things. Are you suggesting otherwise, Mr. Scoble?

@7. But don't you see? In Ricky's world no one is supposed to make money. Apparently Ricky doesn't realize how much money the Gates' Foundation donates to education to contnue to keep people in poverty. Also, it appears Ricky doesn't realize that the "one laptop per child" program is actually a a brainchild of the MIT Media Laboratory. They've worked with a Taiwan company on a light-weight, hand cranked powered laptop. Granted Negropante prefers Linux to run on these laptop.Now, MS thinks that a cellphone PC might be a better alternative. given it's size and convenience over a laptop.

Still in all, Gates is in support of the idea, along with..eeek! Steve Jobs and Michael Dell!!! Those bastards!!! At the end of the day the program has resulted in the formation of a charity organization that enables the costs towards the project to be qualify as charitble deductions so the costs are not passed on the the "poor children". So, I'm at a loss to understand the point of Ricky's rant.

"I won’t ever buy another Microsoft product again, and I’m not a open source loser fanatic."

Wonder what Steve Jobs or Linus Torvalds and Larry Ellison are doing with there money?

Jobs especially so ya keep buying those non microsoft products and keeps these guys bank accounts nice and full so they can spend it on themselves

"SCREW YOU BILL GATES"

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the world's largest charitable foundation, endowed by Bill Gates, chairman and founder of Microsoft, and his wife, Melinda Gates. It was created in January 2000 through the merger of the Gates Learning Foundation and the William H. Gates Foundation. The foundation is based in Seattle, Washington and is led by William H. Gates, Sr. (Bill Gates' father) and Patty Stonesifer.

The foundation's grants have provided funds for underrepresented minority college scholarships, AIDS prevention, diseases that strike mainly in the Third World, and other causes. The Foundation currently provides 90% of the world budget for the attempted eradication of poliomyelitis (polio), the World Health Organization having "moved on" to other diseases. In June 1999, Gates and his wife donated US$5 billion to their foundation. They have donated more than US$100 million to help children suffering from AIDS. On January 26, 2005, it was announced that the Foundation had made a further contribution of US$750 million to the international Vaccine Fund to help fight diseases such as diphtheria, whooping cough, measles, poliomyelitis and yellow fever. As of 2005, the foundation has an endowment of approximately US$28 billion. To maintain its status as a charitable foundation, it must donate at least 5% of its assets each year. Thus the donations from the foundation each year would amount to over $1 billion at a minimum.

Bill and Melinda Gates, along with the singer Bono, were named by TIME as Persons of the Year 2005 for their charitable work. In the case of Bill and Melinda Gates, the work referenced was that of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Hello Robert,

I have changed the slogan for my project - A standard keyboard on the palm (http://www.freewebs.com/compact_keyboard). BTW, about computational biology - my company is named as GenTrans Tech. That means "Genetic Translation Technology". That's an AI -based expert system for an assembling using appropriate meanings and phrases as technology for English-Russian translation.

Best wishes,

Mihail

SCREW YOU BILL GATES. I read about what he said about One Laptop per Child.

I don't know how you can work at a company that uses FUD to promote its own profit centres over the chance to empower hundreds of millions of poor people. I would be ashamed that Bill throws hissy fits just because OLPC wants to keep costs low.

And yes, he does good work with vaccinations. But he and Microsoft want to keep people in poverty. I won't ever buy another Microsoft product again, and I'm not a open source loser fanatic.

One thing I've learned from the countless informal "blogging breaks" I've taken during the last six years: when I come back, the blogosphere is still there, even if I've missed out on a few weeks of activity. I mean that in a positive way.

Enjoy your holiday :-)

My idea, so I'm not ashamed to self promote...

http://blogs.msdn.com/jledgard/archive/2006/03/... :-)

Enjoy - I hope this helps to solve some of the MS blogger discoverability issues.

Problem with manual categorization is you never know where to put some blogs. Also tagging of posts.

One day when vast.com launch blog search you will have all blogs and posts categorized ;-)