But enough about our May and June Flux columns. Let's talk about Star Wars! First off, we should let you know that some of what you'll read here contains spoilers. Since we're not in email now, we can't add 30 screens of whitespace to make sure you don't accidentally read a minor plot point before you get to see the movie. Oh, and by the way—the Venerable Jedi Knight played by Liam Neeson is eventually killed. And the newly elected head of the Senate is the chief bad guy. And the woman in The Crying Game is really a man.

    If you have seen The Phantom Menace, you'll probably agree that despite the weak plot, there was one exceptional element to the prequel. Of course, we're talking about Jar Jar Binks. We're veterans of the software development process, so we know how this stuff works. All the product dev managers are sitting around the table one day, thinking of what they can add to the product to give it "personality."

PM 1:	How about if we make this product completely bulletproof, so it never crashes and repairs its own damaged DLLs if necessary?"
PM 2:	"What if we design this product so that people can complete their everyday tasks in 1/3 of the time?"
PM 3:	"Our customers demand consistency. There should be no unexplained logical gaps in the product."
PM 4:	"What if we add a completely unnecessary character that never leaves the screen, provides unwanted comic relief, and makes everything feel like it's running 50 percent slower?"

      A decade and a half in the making, George Lucas has achieved what many industry observers thought was impossible. He's brought the spirit of the Microsoft Office Assistant to the big screen. Jar Jar is just Clippit with big ears.

    All of which brings us to our next point. As we write this, we're in Dallas for TechEd 99. Last year (as we might have complained about in this space), we were in New Orleans. It was great, except for the stifling, drenching heat and food poisoning. This year, we expected the worst from Dallas as well. We immediately noticed something odd about the city. It has more grassy knolls per square mile than anywhere else in the USA. For the first two days, we walked around thinking, "Is that the one? No, wait. I think that might be the one." We finally found the grassy knoll on Day Three. The only evidence that we found was the guy standing there in the sun, trying to sell us a souvenir newspaper chock full of photos from the Zapruder film. We scanned the pages with interest for a few minutes, then, sated, went off to find barbecue.

    In retrospect, this was our second mistake. We found a nice enough place, sure. We assumed that the sawdust on the floor was only there for the ambience. Mindless of how it got us in trouble last year, we ordered the "house special" plate of 14 meats, slow-cooked to perfection. Twenty hazy, brisket-filled minutes later, we figured out just why that sawdust was there. On the bright side, we then had enough room for dessert, a luscious brisket cobbler.

    Oh yeah, TechEd was a blast, too. Office 2000 Developer was a hot topic, along with Windows CE and Windows 2000. There was some brief excitement on the show floor when the attendees were each promised "a leather man" if we collected eight tokens from booths featuring Windows 2000-compatible products. When we went to cash in our chips, all we got was some useless 20-in-one pocket tool. What a gyp! Fortunately, we were able to use the pocket tool as barter later that night when we visited the Fort Worth leather man district.

    Just like TechEd, this month's MIND will give you an in-depth briefing on the new development features of Office 2000. We're also committed to bringing you even more coverage of Windows CE and Windows 2000 in the months to come. At last, one look at the future that won't leave you reaching for the Anakin.