Interestingly enough, a friend of mine told me a while back that Microsoft hired a well-established musician (I forget who) to design that annoying startup noise, and it took a long time to engineer it to create exactly the sound they were looking for.

I found your site through the link on Mark Christian's and I have to tell you that I've been visiting it regularly for a while and I enjoy reading about your take on issues. Feel free to stop by my site sometime – the content is kind of fluffy sometimes and the design is pretty amateur given my animosity towards technology in general, but I do take pride in it.