Welcome to Orcmid's Lair, the playground for family connections, pastimes, and scholarly vocation -- the collected professional and recreational work of Dennis E. Hamilton

 
Yup ... we gots bugs ... we gots things to do better. [updated 2004-05-11-18:38]  Channel 9 is an interesting and sometimes overwhelming experiment.  And I would say it is working.  When I saw this original post, I asked how to turn in bug reports (not seeing that a deep message provided the answer already).  I recorded some initial findings about my experience as part of my question, and then I used the designated place for further feedback.  That was a month ago, and I had since gone on to other things.  I wasn't expecting a response, I just wanted to toss some concerns into the Microsoft MSDN Channel 9 space.

Thanks to the wonders of site feeds, I learned that there was a response to one of my kvetchings over on Channel 9.  I thought that they were telling me what already didn't work, but I tried again and Charlie's advice was bang on.  What a relief.

There is this semi-permeable membrane now available, and osmosis is happening.  It is a grand experiment, and it provides different levels of contact and attention at a minion-to-minion level.

It is also good that many of the folks here are experienced evangelists, because people spit on them.  And it doesn't seem to deter their commitment to keeping the kimono open and to continue establishing bridges to developer and user communities by remaining level-headed and focused on what they see as important.  Whether or not the products are for you, and whether or not you are uncomfortable (or outright hostile) over Microsoft business models and practices, it is nice to see people who are committed to producing great software and who demonstrate great respect for the work that is done in the industry at large.  I had been concerned for some time that the fortress mentality that Microsoft seemed driven to would have them be increasingly isolated, hardened and defensive. I see that the willingness of 'softies to stand up in public has not been diminished.

With my struggles over Blogger since yesterday, and my efforts in the past to let Blogger know they had an authentication bug and security breach, there is an amazing contrast against the move toward transparency that Channel9 represents.  (And I still don't like the butterscotch scheme and some of the incoherence of Channel9, but I don't have to like it.)
posted by Dennis at 5/11/2004 11:03:33 AM