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Microsoft Launches 'Channel 9' Blog

Posted by michael on from the let's-all-fly-the-plane dept.

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.'"

24 of 311 comments (clear)

  1. Outer space strikes back by Space+cowboy · · Score: 5, Funny


    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 :-)

    --
    Physicists get Hadrons!
  2. Thank you by Maljin+Jolt · · Score: 5, Funny
    Join in, and have a look inside our cockpit and help us fly the plane.'

    I would not fly a constantly crashing plane anymore.

    --
    There you are, staring at me again.
  3. First Headline by Bobdoer · · Score: 5, Funny

    The most important operating system is not Windows.
    Finally Microsoft figured it out.

    --
    EVERYDAY IS CATURDAY
    1. Re:First Headline by Frizzle+Fry · · Score: 4, Insightful
      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.
      --
      I'd rather be lucky than good.
  4. As if I don't have enough to read up on by The_Rippa · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

  5. Not surprising... by thesolo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Not surprising... by thesolo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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 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.

  6. Hey Peter! by Mr+Z · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    --Joe
    --
    Program Intellivision!
  7. the irony of this by dr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

  8. They're all "technical evangelists" by Mr.+Darl+McBride · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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?

  9. I hate this ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    '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

  10. Scorchio! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Fallejeha fallejehe fallejehe, Chris Waddle

    Boutros boutros ghali

    (Or do you mean a different Channel 9?)

  11. Don't bother visiting with Firefox by lazuli42 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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...
    --

    "There's companies that are just so cool that you just can't even deal with it," - Bill Gates, about Google

    1. Re:Don't bother visiting with Firefox by Zegnar · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  12. Video Blog by niai · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  13. That site is crap! by AstroDrabb · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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. 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.

    --
    If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
    it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
  14. Help them fly the plane? by nysus · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?"

    --

    ---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.

  15. EULA requires neural implant DRM dongle by StefanJ · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  16. Watch out! by lawpoop · · Score: 5, Funny
    "...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.

    --
    Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
    -- Pablo Picasso
  17. The Other Channel 9 by mercuryresearch · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  18. Free Long Distance to India? by twitter · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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, who are busy replacing workers in Redmond. Five years and growning. 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.

    --

    Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.

  19. Wow. Windows developers have got no soul... by Queuetue · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

  20. Huh? by M.C.+Hampster · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

    --
    Forget the whales - save the babies.
  21. Five of us in Redmond... by multi+io · · Score: 5, Insightful
    ...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...