According tp Jay Baz ( here ) the devs at Microsoft are currently enjoying a bit of slack time between product cycles.
The news coming out of Microsoft this week has all been a bit slow as we all wait with baited breath for VS2005 to ship on MSDN, it's like the calm before the storm.
I'm off to DDD2 on Saturday so it had better have shipped by then because I know a few developers that are going to explode if they don't get it soon (Ian).