Analysts question mass move to .Net Server. Are the software giant’s customers hungry for the next version of its server operating system? The company is banking on it, but industry watchers aren’t so sure. [CNET News.com]

Valenti backs away from P2P hack bill. Not good enough for Hollywood [The Register]

Paul Andrews: “I’d feel more optimistic about R&D at Microsoft if the company could point to a single successful original product to emerge from R&D expenditure.” [Scripting News]

Microsoft Tries to Explain What Its .Net Plans Are About. Two years into its quest to create a new kind of Internet-enabled computing it describes as .Net, Microsoft found it necessary to pause Wednesday and try to explain what it meant. By John Markoff. [New York Times: Technology]

Xbox breaks US sales records. Blockbuster launch titles [The Register]

Thestar.com/Ex-Sierra Leone dictator broke, living with mom [lnk.to]

Gates: Slow going for .Net. Microsoft acknowledges that its key software plan has been slow to catch on and lays out an agenda to move it ahead. [CNET News.com]

Roma posted to channel a neat soviet map of where I went to college.

Congress to turn hacks into hackers. Thanks guys! [The Register]

New perk of being a content author. Thanks from me to Dave Winer.

I noticed that neowin has a story with a screenshot of sideshow. (This is not the longhorn one). I do suggest that people check it out, but check out this research paper instead of thier silly screenshot. The research paper has a number of screenshots. Sideshow has been one of my distractions at microsoft over the last year. I’ve written a ticket that tells me what’s being served at my cafiterria; one that hooks into my test machine automation informing me of when automated tasks are completed and the overall status of my machines; and even one that (with some hacking around in radio userland) tells me how many news items are waiting in the aggergator with a popup of the top ten. Double click the ticket and I get the web page or application to do more in. And there is still more that I have an itching to create.