Oh, Dave Winer had a great post that seems to have gone into the bit-bucket: Is Microsoft subordinate to O'Reilly? It was super. It's still in the BlogLines cache (always a good place to go should there be an interesting blog or post that has gone all 404).

A snippet:

It's unfortunate when this monoculture spreads to others, probably innocently,
without them understanding that's what's happening. Last night I had a phone
talk with Frank X. Shaw, at Waggener-Edstrom, Microsoft's public relations firm.
I explained that the program at their Mix 06 conference reads like the program
at an O'Reilly conference. This is too bad, because Microsoft has its own
independent view of this stuff and are not captive to O'Reilly's limited
thinking, but probably unknowingly, they have limited their conference to the
O'Reilly view.

As I've said before, I dislike the negative energy O'Reilly has towards most Microsoft technology. It's O'Reilly's right, of course. Tim is helping to craft the Alpha Geek culture and doing his best to ensure it's Microsoft free, except for those cases where it's profitable to O'Reilly.

What kind of leader does it take to crowd the Alpha Geeks around Microsoft technology?