Blimey - the team at Microsoft Research (MSR) in Cambridge are smart!

I'm working at Microsoft Research (MSR) in Cambridge today and am staggered by the incredibly complicated formulae and associated calulations on the wall behind me. I studied Mathematics as part of my degree many years ago but I can't make any sense of what's written on the white board behind me. It's rather humbling. Perhaps I'm not a rocket scientist after all!

The work of Microsoft Research is truely amazing as they are able to get to the bottom of diverse technical matters and innovating possible solutions leading to future technologies and potentially contributing to products. Their website is a really interesting resource as it includes papers and online replays of lectures covering all kinds of areas of ongoing research.

One particularly interesting area of research for those interested in Information Security is their Strider HoneyMonkey project which can be used to root out malicious content on the Internet.

Incidentally I was once in a meeting of about twenty people which started with everyone in the room stating who they were and what they did to the group as is often the case. As we worked around the room the job titled seemed to get ever grander and I suspect some people were exaggerating their importance - so when I came to me I stated that I was a "rocket scientist" thinking that it was a deferential (self mocking) term. I found out later that the gentleman sat to my left had actually been a professional rocket scientist for many years prior to taking his current role!!!!