I am enjoying immensely the reruns of "Welcome Back, Kotter", running in syndication and on an odd, seemingly religious/family values channel, called the Good Life Network.  My Windows Media Center PC is recording these reruns in the wee hours for me.

On a recent episode, in a scene in the schoolyard, I noticed that even though the 1970s set was wildly fake-looking, one of its attempts at NYC public schoolyard graffiti was rather realistic: "B.M.T. Sheiks."  For those who don't know, BMT is one of three disused names for divisions of the NYC Subway system.  The BMT lines were once run by the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation, a private concern whose holdings were eventually taken over by the agency that is now the NY State government authority called the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.  I don't know if the Sheiks actually existed, but the BMT Lines did (and do) serve the neighborhood where the show's Buchanan High School is seemingly located.

The B.M.T. Sheiks "tag" reminds me of a strange Manhattan public access cable show in the 80s called the "Crank Call Show."  The show basically consisted of private school teenagers calling in, saying something stupid, giggling, and then hanging up.  There was one guy who kept calling in saying his name was Muhammad, and that he sold incense on the D Train and the (Times Square - Grand Central) Shuttle.  That was funny, because there really was such a person who really did that.

Why did I put this posting into the Tech Industry category?  Because it turns out that Steve Lasker, a member of the VB Team and a former RD, grew up here in NYC and worked on the crew of the Crank Call Show.  I was in stitches when he told me this a few weeks ago, and he was impressed that I even knew what the Crank Call Show was.

I never in a million years would imagine that my VB world would collide with my NYC 80s public access TV show/subway riding world.  I guess Times Square really is the crossroads of the world.

Did anyone catch Darryl Taft's piece in eWeek this week: "Real Software Slams Microsoft's Patent Effort"?  Apparently, Real Software (not the RealPlayer folks) has a (very) VB-like cross-platform product called REALbasic, and thus objects to a Microsoft patent application for the IsNot keyword that originates from VB.

Paul Vick, whose name is on the patent application, and who is tech lead of the VB team, blogged about the patent application back in November.  From reading the post, Paul seems pretty ambivalent about the efficacy of patenting IsNot, to say the least.  In fact he feels the entire premise of software patents is harmful.  He further argues that Microsoft, like other software companies (IBM key among them) routinely file for numerous patents, as a defensive measure.  Typically the companies don't enforce the patents in a way harmful to other parties but, so the logic goes, need to protect themselves from someone else filing a patent that could be used harmfully against them.  Effectively, this argument likens the reality of the software patent landscape to the nuclear "mutually assured destruction" regimen that practically defined the cold war.  Hardly a comforting analogy.

I haven't made up my mind on this one.  But I'll offer a few observations:

• It's very difficult, intellectually, to argue that IsNot is patentable when the != syntax is effectively in the public domain, and the <> notation is standard mathematical usage.  I know IsNot is for objects rather than scalars, but come on...get real (sorry).
• Darryl Taft is one of the fairer reporters out there, with regards to Microsoft products, its strategy, and its role in the marketplace.  So I'm concerned when even someone of his wisdom writes an article that comes off so inflammatory (and presents the dubious notion, albeit through attributed quotes, that Microsoft's patent is meant to stave off erosion of Visual Studio's market share in the face of competition from Linux IDEs).  If Taft is saying stuff like this, Microsoft has a PR problem here and they need to address it.
• Microsoft takes a lot of heat for doing things that other vendors view as standard practice.  Microsoft is very much in the spotlight, so they need to accept this and not gripe about it.  Meanwhile, I hope people, when considering this issue, keep in mind that Microsoft cannot disenfranchise itself from diligent competition by abstaining from what all of their major competitors do.  The question is, does trying to get a patent on a keyword like IsNot go beyond that kind of reasonable parity?

Something tells me we haven't heard the last of this topic.

(Yes, the word "its" has no apostrophe when used in the possessive form, even though most people use one.)

Did you know that Oracle is working on a VS .NET add-in (now in Beta 2) for creating Oracle databases, tables, stored procedures, and ADO.NET objects?  Did you know they claim they will support CLR stored procedures in the database?  Did you know they have a .NET developer mail distribution list?  Did you know they keynoted at VSLive?  Did you know they they have an online Developer Center for .NET devs?

Don't you love it when software companies have to acknowledge the fact that competitors' products are out there, and the need for interoperability is a fact, not an issue?  Doesn't happen enough (and all major software companies are guilty).  Seeing this stuff from Oracle is really encouraging.  Wonder what others of you think...

NBC put on a terrific two-hour special last night with clips from, and interviews with stars and writers of, the original Saturday Night Live.  The special really went a long way toward showing what genius (and eccentricity) went into that show all the way back in the latter half of the 1970's.

If you were a kid growing up in New York at that time, as I was, there's no way you could watch this show and not feel huge nostalgia, and sadness.  The show was really an embodiment of a bygone era in New York: grit, grime, danger and an abundance of brilliant, creative people who could afford to live here even if they were under-employed.  The show hasn't been funny since the original cast left a quarter century ago.  And New York, while still the greatest city in the world, has seen a gradual and dangerously complete erosion of the sort of creative vitality it had back then.

More from my dad on Bone Lick Park BBQ, and other new West Village eateries....