Zimran Ahmed's notes from a Microsoft presentation on .NET are perceptive.

Microsoft has announced that .NET will allow third party identity providers to compete with Passport. This is a surprising move -- I expected the company to wait until Passport was dominant before opening it to competition.

A radically creative use for distributed computation points the way to a wildly inventive future.

Once you install Uplister, you may not be able to get rid of it.

Another FastTrack licensee, Grokster, has emerged, showing that Morpheus/KaZaA growth at Gnutella's expense is continuing.

"Given this attack, we believe that 802.11 networks should be viewed as insecure. We recommend the following for people using such wireless networks:

Assume that the link layer offers no security."

Clip2 is going out of business.

Cracks in the RPC model for the Internet OS.

There's a scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" where this tough guy with a sword puts on a big scary show with the sword, twirling it around to show what a master he is, and Indiana Jones just pulls out his gun and shoots the guy. What makes the scene work is the contrast between a master with a old weapon and an average schmoe with a new weapon. AOL's recent moves against .NET are like the guy with the sword.

AOL's open AIM, like Messenger, uses SIP.