Salon has an interesting interview with Joel Spolsky. (If you're not a subscriber, you'll have to sit through a Day Pass ad before you can read it, and I recommend you do.) Some real gems in it:
The key problem with the methodologies is that, implemented by smart people -- the kind of people who invent methodologies -- they work. Implemented by shlubs who will not do anything more than follow instructions they are given, they don't work.
[on intelligently sometimes-online apps for use on airplanes] ... airplanes are actually getting Internet connections. And Wi-Fi is spreading like crazy. What's kind of surprising is that it has turned out to be easier to rewire the entire world for high-bandwidth Internet than it is to make a good replication architecture so you can work disconnected!
There's also a nice link to the Joel test, sort of a lightning version of the CMM -- takes about 15 seconds to answer and then you know where you stand. (We're at ten-and-two-halves out of 12, which is pretty good, especially since with only 6 people finding someone in the hallways who isn't on your project is a bit of a challenge.)
But then he says:
Microsoft ... could ship a brown paper bag called Microsoft Brown Paper Bag 1.0 and hundreds of thousands of people would buy it. Or at least try it.
Please. What does he think I am, naive? I am a seasoned computer professional, paid to make code for over a quarter of a century, rich in Microsoft contacts and non disclosure agreements and summit invitations. I don't buy 1.0 of anything! 
I'll be waiting for 2.0 or at least 1.1, or at the very least a service pack!
Kate
ps: here's the first service pack for MS BPB 1.0:
(it's all about the patch management...)