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Microsoft Launches 'Channel 9' Blog

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.'"

17 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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
  6. 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

  7. 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?

  8. 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

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

    Fallejeha fallejehe fallejehe, Chris Waddle

    Boutros boutros ghali

    (Or do you mean a different Channel 9?)

  10. 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.

  11. 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.

  12. 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
  13. 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.

  14. 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.

  15. 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
  16. 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...