Cringely reached his peak during the making of "Triumph of the Nerds" and the follow up series "Nerds 2.0.1". They were both some of the best historical documentaries ever done on the PC and Internet revolutions. Since then he has failed to deliver on subsequent projects.

Here's hoping there is one more great documentary series left in the old Cringe!

I am sure that there are many capable software engineers rejected by places like Google and Microsoft. In some ways these places build a type of mono culture by trying to fit the same evaluation technique to everyone. Everybody's different. In the end an interviewer has to go on his/her gut feel.

Actually I think the company is been smart. They are giving a skilled Unix guy a chance to adapt his skills to Windows since it is so widely used in the company. Knowing unix scripting is cool but knowing Windows and Unix automation techniques means you can cover pretty much any situation that will ever occur.

I would imagine Windows XP and later.

Lots of useful info at those links. Thanks!

The role is rather adhoc. I could be scripting some testing processes that move files around and import into databases or I could be adding features to Outlook...for example a simple timesheet and leave application interface that would send leave requests to the appropriate manager. Being able to quickly prototype something is essential here.

Good response. Thanks!

I still remember the look on a PC clone owning friend when I showed him my Amiga 3000 running 3 operating systems at the same time. Namely, MSDOS via PC-Task running Turbo C, Mac OS via shapeshifter running MATLAB and browsing the Internet on the Amiga side with the iBrowse browser. Oh and those huge virtual screens and screen dragging so I could see all OSes at once. That was 1992. Imagine what it would be like today if had continued development?

What original ideas do Microsoft Research come up with? My Nokia E71 has a 2D barcode reader so this is merely an incremental improvement on a well known idea. What next, graphic user interfaces?

Takes me back to days gone by when I used my Amiga to run 3 operating systems in parallel. Makes you wonder how if only Amiga had survived what sort of computer they would have grown into. Then compare with Microsoft Vista of today?