The I, Cringely article on PBS.ORG has some interesting microsoft facts. The first thing is that the co-founder of Microsoft, Paul Allen, owns a large number of microsoft shares, but has a ‘collar’ on them so he is protected from the Microsoft Share Price going up or down. The important thing here is that this protects him in case he wishes to give evidence against Microsoft. And given that Iowa is not likely to settle with the anti-trust case against microsoft, things might get interesting. Cringely makes a few interesting statements about the business ethics of Bill Gates in the early days of the company…

About.COM has some information on the controls that are new in VB.NET 2005. What I did not realise was that Microsoft FINALLY released a new serial port control. I might be able to finally stop using the third party control that I needed to pay for… MSDN has some complaints about VS 2005, including that the new version is slow and slightly buggy. Given the issues I am having with Toolbars I agree!

Also, according to the News.COM.AU, Australia has sophisticated coffee tastes, and are more demanding than any other countries in the world.