Some CEO knows how to make headlines (but not by doing his job)

According to this CEO, .NET sucks!
What a news! Microsoft has become the new IBM, and open source is the new kid on the block!
I can see this cycle repeating several times now, from IBM to Digital, then to Apple, then to Microsoft, then to Open Source. This is just a natural evolution of the software industry, and it behaves more and more like fashion industry. Open Source is the new Black!
Despite headline grabbing capabilities, there may be some truth to his speech. The fact that few startups use Microsoft do pose a valid question, but the answer sure is not that .NET sucks. .NET is very much up-to-date and still runs at the front of innovation, introducing new things, especially LINQ (Rx and Parrallel LINQ are two of my favorites).
The main reason that .NET is not used widely by startups is: Microsoft costs. Given a choice, many would love to skip the license cost of several thousands and run for a free product, say Linux and MySQL. Language is not the problem here, cost is. However, many argue that the hidden cost of Open Source is not understood fully when these decisions are made. Also, it is kind of funny that you are willing to shell out at least $100k for someone (supposedly) good, but frown upon $5k of industrial strength software.
The main problem is talent. Any good talent, no matter what language is he/she working on, costs. And there are always bad Open Source programmers, as long as they got paid. A good measuring stick of a talent is that if the person does any (for free) sidejobs besides the main one.
During my whole profressional life, I have seen preciously few talents. But what languages do they use are definitely not one of the deciding factors!
Oh, and on top of that, a .NET programmer is better than a Ruby on Rails guy, according to him.

Oldie but goodie: WSE for .NET framework 2.0

If you are still stuck in the .NET 2.0 world and want to use WS-Security, here is the rescue:
WSE 2.0

Something new again (Two-way SSL Certificate for Web Services)

1. The Intermediate Certificate should be in the Intermediate Store for IIS, otherwise it will not be able to verify the chain of certificates.
2. The certificate store should be for Local Computer, not Current User. And
3. If it doesn't work, delete all certs, restart IIS and do it all over again!

Something new (for me) everyday: Easy upsert in SQL Server Integration Services

See here. It also mentions the "Instead of" triggers that are (apparently) there since SQL Server 2000. I can see some magical use of these.