So What's This .NET Thing?
MSDN | at | by Mike
When people found I work for Microsoft, there used to be two questions that invariably came up. First was, "Do you know Bill?" (Not really, though I've met and presented to him.) The second was, "How do I do such-and-such on Word/Windows/whatever?" (Sometimes I even know the answer. I turned the tables last week, though; my nephew, a doctor, came to dinner, and before we could stop ourselves, my wife and I asked him a question about our down-with-a-cold toddler.)
These days, there are two more common so-you-work-for-Microsoft questions. The first involves lawyers. (No comment. Really.) The second is, "So what the heck is .NET?"