(Part 3, Part 2, Part 1)

Concerning Microsoft .NET:

• PAG’s Application Updater Block how-to (original) update was discussed–although I cannot access the actual update referenced here. Another good article on the Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) can be found here.
• The Global Assembly Cache (GAC) was demystified.
• Garbage collection and finalization were discussed by Eric Gunnerson and Larry O’Brien (and others) a fair amount ([1], [2], [3], [4]*, [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11]). Chris Brumme weighed in (!) on finalization, too.
• Longhorn’s XAML received a fair bit of coverage ([1], [2]*, [3], [4] – With Longhorn we are doubling down on OLE compound files to have a good way to have complex documents with rich metadata., [5], [6]).