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Microsoft Launches 'Channel 9' Blog

Posted by michael on Tue Apr 06, 2004 06:12 PM
from the let's-all-fly-the-plane dept.
Microsoft
Decaffeinated Jedi writes "As reported by News.com, Microsoft quietly launched Channel 9, a blog/discussion forum aimed at improving communication with outside developers, on Tuesday. Named for the audio channel that many airlines use to let passengers listen in on crew conversations during flight, Channel 9's creators state the following in a welcoming message: 'Five of us in Redmond are crazy enough to think we just might learn something from getting to know each other...Join in, and have a look inside our cockpit and help us fly the plane.'"
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[+] Technology: Microsoft Port 25 interviews Miguel de Icaza 202 comments
Ben Galliart writes "Microsoft's Port 25 blog, the voice of MS Linux Labs and a spin-off from the MS Channel 9 blog, has an interview with Miguel de Icaza where they discuss the Gnome and Mono projects. It is a nice change of pace to see Microsoft go from attacking Novell and Linux to interviewing a Novell employee about a Linux desktop system. Port 25 has come under some fire since they can not always be trusted. Port 25 has on occasion put out FUD such as claiming Microsoft is doing more to improve security than any other vendor and a security guide attacking Red Hat for not providing security updates for Red Hat v9 despite that Red Hat ended support back in 2004. They have also released a password synchronization daemon for Red Hat, AIX, HPUX and Solaris that must run as root and makes several calls to strcpy() (which violates Microsoft's guidelines for doing secure coding)."
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  • Outer space strikes back (Score:5, Funny)

    by Space cowboy (13680) * on Tuesday April 06 2004, @06:13PM (#8786356) Journal

    Microsoft are going to ditch the NT mega-kernel and use Plan 9 instead. These are the first tentative steps in the migration from the huge monolithic NT ring-main to the elegance that is Plan 9. [deep voice] From the people who brought you Unix, PLAN 9 [/voice] Da da daaaaaaah bom-bom bom-bom bom-booom

    Simon :-)

  • Ladies and Gentlemen (Score:3, Funny)

    by Lasuuco Tulkas (598141) * on Tuesday April 06 2004, @06:13PM (#8786362)
    I give you 7 of 9 [msdn.com]
  • Not sure just how quiet it can be now that it's being seen by MILLIONS OF USERS EVERY MINUTE.
  • Does registration require removing my shoes?

  • Thank you (Score:5, Funny)

    by Maljin Jolt (746064) on Tuesday April 06 2004, @06:16PM (#8786400) Journal
    Join in, and have a look inside our cockpit and help us fly the plane.'

    I would not fly a constantly crashing plane anymore.

    • Huh? (Score:4, Funny)

      by M.C. Hampster (541262) <M.C.TheHampster@ ... ail.com minus pi> on Tuesday April 06 2004, @07:01PM (#8786891) Journal

      Huh? Is this a joke or something? Well, if it is a joke, I just don't get it. Oh.. wait, is this a joke about Microsoft? Perhaps about Windows? Wait, that might be it. Windows crashing right? Is that the joke? Are you saying Windows crashes a lot and making a joke about that? Oh, yeah, wow. That is funny. Wow. Good stuff. I'd mod you up if I could because I wouldn't have thought of something that funny. No, my humor is much more dull than jokes about Microsoft Windows crashing. Heh. I probably would have made some dumb joke about a blue screen. Not very original. But, wow, a joke about it crashing is much funnier.

      Thank you so much.

      • Re:Huh? (Score:4, Informative)

        by tunabomber (259585) on Tuesday April 06 2004, @11:42PM (#8789069) Homepage
        Principal Skinner: Do I detect a hint of sarcasm?
        Professor Frinke: Are you kidding? ! This sarcasm detector is off the charts!
        CBG: Oh, a sarcasm detector- that's a *real* useful invention.

        device explodes

  • First Headline (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bobdoer (727516) on Tuesday April 06 2004, @06:16PM (#8786403) Homepage Journal
    The most important operating system is not Windows.
    Finally Microsoft figured it out.

      • Re:First Headline (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Frizzle Fry (149026) on Tuesday April 06 2004, @07:53PM (#8787393) Homepage
        If they really wanted to... Microsoft would have fixed the glaring security holes that the open source community has been pointing out for years a very long time ago

        Which is funny because at the same time they are talking about listening, they are also working on the next service pack for their flagship product, and the whole service pack is focussed on nothing but security. But of course, you won't count that since it would get in the way of your complaining.

  • As if I don't have enough to read up on (Score:5, Funny)

    by The_Rippa (181699) * on Tuesday April 06 2004, @06:17PM (#8786412)
    I spend enough of the day on slashdot and fark.

    I don't have time to listen to Codekeeper Willie talk about typesetting and anthropology.
  • Proceed to put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye...

  • Not surprising... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thesolo (131008) * <slap@fighttheriaa.org> on Tuesday April 06 2004, @06:19PM (#8786428) Homepage
    Let me preface this by saying that I'm not trying to sound snide or rude. That said, there are several things on the page that don't display properly in browsers other than WinIE, like Opera & Firefox, such as the top bar of the poll on the right. Fix that, and maybe I'll consider going back. Until then, not worth my time.
    • I love when you try to start a movie (using FireWhatever of course), it asks if you want to install and run the controls. If has the most deliciously ironic sentence:
      Caution: Microsoft Corporation asserts that this content is safe. You should only install/view this content if you trust Microsoft Corporation to make that assertion

      OK- who among you really answered Yes to that? I mean, if Microsoft said it's safe then it must be, right?

      • Re:Not surprising... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by thesolo (131008) * <slap@fighttheriaa.org> on Tuesday April 06 2004, @06:34PM (#8786599) Homepage
        Since it is running on IIS they have to use .asp and probably some custom software.

        The back-end language & web server shouldn't matter. You should still be able to generate a standards-compliant page that looks great in modern browsers. Instead, their front page has 366 errors [w3.org] on it.

        Now, I'm not one of those people who insists every page has to validate, but this is just sloppy. MSDN, not just Channel 9, reeks of it, too. I suppose one could argue that you can't blame them, as they are Microsoft, so of course they're going to code to their browser, but I don't buy that argument.

  • Hey Peter! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mr Z (6791) on Tuesday April 06 2004, @06:20PM (#8786440) Homepage Journal

    Ok, someome please tell me I'm not the only one who heard Lawrence's voice from Office Space, [imdb.com] yelling "Hey Peter! Check out Channel 9! Breast exam!"

    --Joe
  • What's with the BeOS person icon in the upper left hand corner?

  • the irony of this (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dr (93364) * on Tuesday April 06 2004, @06:22PM (#8786472) Homepage
    When listening to Channel 9 on United, you aren't actually listening to the internal cockpit communications you are listening to the cockpit's communications with the terminal and centre controllers. And that's where the irony is; the controllers are telling the pilot(s) where to go and what altitude to fly at, etc, that is, ATC has the real control of how things pan out. So while you might be helping to fly the plane [into the ground] you really have no say in how the plane gets to it's destination. And, furthermore, the real irony is that all this communication and procedures that the passenger is listening to is something that basically hasn't changed in the past several decades.

    Maybe you have to be a pilot to fully understand what I mean.
    -dr
    • Maybe you have to be a pilot to fully understand what I mean.

      No, I'm willing to bet that being a pilot in this case merely serves to overanalyze throwaway lines to the point of them not meaning anything any more.

  • They're all "technical evangelists" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mr. Darl McBride (704524) on Tuesday April 06 2004, @06:22PM (#8786477)
    More than half the guys list their positions as "technical evangelist."

    If you want to reach more folks: Can we instead talk to a developer who wants to talk about the best way of doing things, rather than someone whose job is to come up with problems where MS is the solution?

  • I hate this ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 06 2004, @06:23PM (#8786482)
    'Five of us in Redmond are crazy enough to think we just might learn something from getting to know each other...Join in, and have a look inside our cockpit and help us fly the plane.'

    This sort of "gee whiz we're just regular guys, we're going to let you peek under the tent" sort or pr-marketing speak rings so false and just raises my BS detectors to max.

    I spent years dealing with Apple's evangelists and while they'd do this sort of thing occasionally usually they were smart enough enough to treat their developers as being vaguely intelligent

    • 'Five of us in Redmond are crazy enough to think we just might learn something from getting to know each other...Join in, and have a look inside our cockpit and help us fly the plane.'

      PULL THE NOSE UP! PULL THE NOSE UP! WE'RE GONNA CRASH!!!! NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

      Segment fault at <a very personal memory address>

    • Re:I hate this ... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Queuetue (156269) <`moc.kitsatnap' `ta' `ttocs'> on Tuesday April 06 2004, @07:05PM (#8786936) Homepage
      Did you notice #s 6 and 7 on thier "channel 9 doctrine"?

      6. Don't shock the system. Lasting change only happens in baby steps.
      7. Know when to turn the mic off. There are some topics which will only result in problems when you discuss them. This has nothing to do with censorship, but with working within the reality of the system that exists in our world today. You will not change anything by taking on legal or financial issues, you will only shock the system, spook the passengers, and create a negative situation.
    • That's what I thought at first, too -- an orchestrated PR effort -- but honestly, that site is too badly done. There's no way this is an official MS project.

  • Scorchio! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 06 2004, @06:25PM (#8786503)
    Fallejeha fallejehe fallejehe, Chris Waddle

    Boutros boutros ghali

    (Or do you mean a different Channel 9?)

  • Don't bother visiting with Firefox (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lazuli42 (219080) on Tuesday April 06 2004, @06:25PM (#8786514) Homepage Journal
    Here's a few things I noticed after spending about three minutes on the site.

    1. The site doesn't present well in Firebird 0.8. The fonts are tiny and distorted.
    2. Many of the quotes on the page are, at best, sycophantic. "Great job Bill!" gushes one 'impartial developer'.
    3. Voting for the third option in the poll (this site sucks, but I'll be back later to see how it develops) causes Firebird 0.8. to immediately exit.

      Bleagh...

    • Re:Don't bother visiting with Firefox (Score:5, Informative)

      by Zegnar (704768) on Tuesday April 06 2004, @06:27PM (#8786526)
      1.Works fine here in Firefox.
      2.That quote refers to Bill Hill, not Gates.
      3.And no, it doesn't. Update to a decent build.

      If there's one thing people hate, it's when you solve their problems, eh.
    • I have Firebird 0.7. The fonts work fine for me. You know you can adjust them with mouse gestures.

      In any case, I didn't go any further in the site. I didn't have the right plugins. For some reason I was expecting a blog, what I got instead was a colorful MTV-wannabe multimedia web site. I guess it's technically a blog, but it's certainly not my idea of a blog.

  • Video Blog (Score:5, Interesting)

    by niai (310235) on Tuesday April 06 2004, @06:28PM (#8786535)
    The videos are much more interested to watch than the text is to read. I get a much better feel about what the person is saying through expression, tone, etc. It's obviously more natural to get information from someone in this way than through text.

  • That site is crap! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AstroDrabb (534369) * on Tuesday April 06 2004, @06:29PM (#8786546)
    What a crappy site. It doesn't render properly with Mozilla/Firefox and as soon I went to the page, I was hit with a bunch of ActiveX controls trying to run. No thanks. Maybe if they want to try to interest other developers in MS, they should NOT REQUIRE MS stuff. The main page has more then 300 HTML errors according to W3C [w3.org]. Come on now. It is not hard to make a little HTML, honest! There is no coding involved. Oh, and this site is .Net. You can see what great standards compliant HTML MS's Web Forms spit out.

  • Help them fly the plane? (Score:5, Funny)

    by nysus (162232) on Tuesday April 06 2004, @06:30PM (#8786554)
    Who does Microsoft thing they are appealing to? A bunch of 10 year olds? I'd be a little concerned about the conversation going on inside the cockpit. "Ever seen a grown man naked?"

  • EULA requires neural implant DRM dongle (Score:5, Funny)

    by StefanJ (88986) on Tuesday April 06 2004, @06:31PM (#8786569) Homepage Journal
    I would try to come up with a name for it that is an acronym for "Borg," but I'm feeling really tired this afternoon.

  • Watch out! (Score:5, Funny)

    by lawpoop (604919) on Tuesday April 06 2004, @06:32PM (#8786571) Homepage Journal
    "...have a look inside our cockpit and help us fly the plane."

    AAAAHHHHHHH! Watch out for that giant freaking penguin that's about to eat the plane!!!!

    Aw, hell. It's too late anyway.

  • The Other Channel 9 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mercuryresearch (680293) on Tuesday April 06 2004, @06:41PM (#8786658) Journal
    I realize the the CB craze pre-dates most slashdot subscribers (and perhaps technical evangelists)...

    On CB radios, channel 9 is the channel used for emergencies. Pretty interesting double entendre.

  • Free Long Distance to India? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by twitter (104583) on Tuesday April 06 2004, @06:49PM (#8786731) Homepage Journal
    We get to listen to the developers? Hopefully, we will get to listen to the guys who are really writing the software these days. That means my classmates will be able to talk to their classmates in Hyderabad, India [bizjournals.com], who are busy replacing workers in Redmond. Five years and growning [microsoft.com]. Use Microsoft and help Bill make money for these guys, but mostly himself. It's the American thing to do!

    Or you could do the evil commie thing and keep your money to yourself and help people all around the world by using free software. Hire that uneployed IT guy on your block and help a programmer make a living. You won't be sorry you did.

    Yep, that business about closed source helping programmers make money WAS A LIE. If 70 billion dollars in the bank, pema-temps and H1B slaves were not evidence enough of where this "Intelectual Property" BS was going, Hyperbad should be.

  • I'm reading these people's posts, and ... I know that slashdotters can be pretty dumb, and many of us are the type to get wedgies in high school, but we don't project a face that's that lame, do we? Geeks without the rebel in them are just ... dorks.

    Even our windows supporters are way more hardcore than those dweebs.

  • Channneel Naaaain! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Turmio (29215) on Tuesday April 06 2004, @07:03PM (#8786913) Homepage
    -Bono Estente
    -Bono Estente
    -Hetthethethetettethehehtehtehtehte Microsoft owns you.
    -Sminkkipinkkibangbang Bill Gates.
    (Hey, it's British humour!)

  • Reel cool guys. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sharph (171971) <sharp@ccil.org> on Tuesday April 06 2004, @07:05PM (#8786946) Homepage
    Wow, they are reel cool.

    http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID= 13

    I recognize half those things (perticularly the CPU fan and the soda can "graveyard") as part of my life at some point in time, and I'm sure other /.ers can as well. Like I said, these guys are reel cool.

  • Five of us in Redmond... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by multi io (640409) on Tuesday April 06 2004, @07:11PM (#8787007)
    ...don't know NNTP :)

    Seriously, couldn't this have been handled by an additional group in the microsoft.* usenet hierarchy? Including automatic replication to servers all over the world -- for free...

  • Please tell me the airline... (Score:3, Funny)

    by bergeron76 (176351) * on Tuesday April 06 2004, @10:49PM (#8788728)
    So I can pick another. For some strange reason I just don't want my flight from Atlanta to Phoenix "blue-screening".

    Uhm, ok so my reasoning isn't so strange.

  • Wow, Microsoft discovered blogs (Score:3, Insightful)

    by R3 (15929) on Wednesday April 07 2004, @12:14AM (#8789278) Homepage
    Questions that arose after a brief visit to Ch.9:

    1. Why would I "help them fly the plane?"
    2. Why would I contribute *anything* to Microsoft(positive/negative comment, let alone code) - so they could turn around and eihter sell it or maybe even use it against me?
    3. How much are Bill Hill and the rest of Microsoft alumni paid for their blog appearances and patronizing comments like "The most important operating system is not Windows"? (coming from a guy on Microsoft's payroll, this comes across as almost hypocritical)
    4. What's up with dorky one-size-too small gray golf shirts?

    Seriously, what is the point of Channel 9?

    Oh yeah, and BeOS called and it wants its color scheme back.

  • "Named for the audio channel...." I'm sorry? (Score:3, Informative)

    by quakeroatz (242632) on Wednesday April 07 2004, @08:28AM (#8791336) Journal
    David Becker is another clueless reporter. Channel 9 is a signalling and emergency channel used by all users of VHF/UHF/CB. It has nothing specific to do with planes or airlines. -SIGH- It's a channel anyone can use, so it assumes open use, possibly collaboration.

    Do reporters actually check on facts there days? Or just write the first thing that comes to their head after leaving the airport.

  • Scary (Score:3, Funny)

    by sbrown123 (229895) on Wednesday April 07 2004, @08:37AM (#8791411) Homepage

    'Five of us in Redmond are crazy enough to think ...Join in, and have a look inside our cockpit and help us fly the plane.'"

    The Fav Five want me to join them in their cock pit? No, I wont do it!!!

    • Re:Technical evangelist ? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Jonathan (5011) on Tuesday April 06 2004, @08:01PM (#8787460) Homepage
      Are they really paid to sing all the day : "Microsoft is good and they are friendly" ?

      Yes, that's basically what they do. Plus they try to convince people that their platform is cool and cutting-edge. Basically what every Linux user does for free (although often not very well). But to be fair, Apple's the one that started it as a paid position, and others besides (such as Be) did the same thing, so it isn't like Microsoft is doing something singularly evil in this regard.

    • Re:Uh-oh.. (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Cue 'If Microsoft ran an airline' jokes in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...

      Glad to oblige...

      UNIX Airways
      Everyone brings one piece of the plane along when the come to the
      airport. They all go out on the runway and put the plane together piece
      by piece, arguing non-stop about what kind of plane they are supposed to
      be building.

      Air DOS
      Everybody pushes the airplane until it glides, then they jump on
      and let the plane coast untill it hits the ground again. They the push
      again, jump on again, and so on...

      Ma

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