Microsoft's .NET Impact - Exploiting Microsoft's enterprise application strategy, .NET, should prove a dream for IT managers. The pre-beta version is inherently scalable and easy to build and deploy, saving valuable time and resources. By Tom Yager, InfoWorld Test Center. Microsoft Goes Bonkers - Microsoft's latest announcement, called Microsoft .NET, while touted by the likes of Fortune Magazine as a huge "revolution", is really nothing but vaporware. By Joel Spolsky. Simplifying Deployment and Solving DLL Hell with the .NET Framework - Introduces the concept of an assembly and describes how the .NET Framework uses assemblies to solve versioning and deployment problems. By Steven Pratschner, Microsoft. Avoiding DLL Hell: Introducing Application Metadata in the Microsoft .NET Framework - Describes the use of metadata for easy linking and loading of assemblies, the relationship between metadata and concepts such as IDL and type libraries, and the metadata hierarchy. By Matt Pietrek, MSDN Magazine. .NET: Type Fundamentals - Discusses type fundamentals. Starts off by introducing primitive types and then quickly moves on to reference types and value types. By Jeffrey Richter, MSDN Magazine. Securing Managed Assemblies with Native Exe Interoperability - This article describes a simple yet elegant way of securing managed assemblies from easy disassembly by using the powerful interoperability features of .Net.