.NET is a part of Palladium (which sucks) as well as being a group of programming languages invented by Microsoft which only work on Windows servers. things like C#, ASP and some other things like that are .NET languages. C# is MS's way to try to destroy Java from existance and ASP it to destroy PHP (which will never happen).
.NET is that stupid thing that tries to convince me not to install my scanner. my scanner came with 5 different drivers or so (different languages) so i had to manualy select which language. MS pops up saying "this file is not digital signed!!! continue using it?" and no is highlighted but of course i have to click yes in order to use the friggin scanner. i wonder how many people MS has screwed out of being able to use their Cannon scanner on WindowsXP