back to article Gates' last act: frees IE 8 and Silverlight second betas

Bill Gates has announced the next betas of Internet Explorer 8 and Silverlight 2 while outlining plans from Microsoft on development services. He also took the opportunity in his valedictory keynote at TechEd in Orlando, Florida today to unveil a Steve Ballmer 'bot. The second beta of Microsoft Silverlight cross-browser media …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Dead Vulture

    Think of it as SQL Sever, but it's really Fast?

    Microsoft's SharePoint Server would become the first Microsoft product to use enterprise search from its Fast Search and Transfer acquisition.

    LOL, the company now owned by Microsoft is now under investigation due to massive losses and account irregularities because nobody wanted their product.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Boring

    MSFT as always, promising mountains delivering piles of s**t. Mostly.

    All their presentations are the same.

  3. Steve
    Jobs Horns

    I wuz there

    The video of his final day was truly awful, and we finally learnt who wore the pants in the Blair/Gates relationship (Gates, on the outside). So we also know who to blame for HMG's shocking record on IT. (Actually probably harsh, they're more than capable of cocking it up without help...)

    The demo of the model driven stuff actually looked pretty good. Of course we can only wait and hope that they actually deliver. But given that it seemed to be actual working software it looks pretty reasonable so far.

    Horny Balmer because the thought of a robotic Balmer is terrifying! :)

  4. Pyros
    Joke

    LOL

    How apropos that Balmer showed up as a robot.

    I, for one, welcome our new Vista-powered robot overlords.

  5. John Thomas

    Gates today hosted .... after 38 years with Microsoft.

    I doubt it. Microsoft couldn't have started before the invention of the microprocessor, now could it?

  6. amanfromMars Silver badge
    Alien

    Lost Souls.... Wasted Years of Opportunity. Bye Bye, Bill, you fluffed it.

    Oh dear what a shame ...still no Killer Application from Microsoft, but then again, they were always into just into running things just as they are, for the benefit of those into maintaining the Status Quo position.... at whatever the Cost.

    However, with the Windows Kernel/Master Algorithm Cracked/Recognised/Reverse Engineered, will IT be entirely different. But that is A.N.Other Colossal AIdDevelopment, which renders Spin as BS First Class and Dumps IT unceremoniously on ITs Stupid Senders, and the Subject of SuperSubAtomic Programming for the NEUKlearer Transparent Enrichment of Sensitive HyperRadioProActive Information for a Beta CyberIntelAIgent Communications InfraStructure.

    And you can be sure that ITs first priority in order to exercise unparalleled leverage would be to ensure Financial Markets Leadership... with either a) existing Lead Role Players Help/Sponsorship or b) New Private Investment/Novel Speculation which would take over Lead Position and therefore Future Direction.

    Both Choices are there to be acted upon, and in Quantum Communications would both be acted upon to give Both equal Chance of Providing a Mutually Beneficial, Beta Markets Program for Future Projects ....... which will inevitably be Virtualised into Controls for Space/CyberSpace/the Cloud ....... which for now you may consider Alien, but in the Future, Perfectly Reasonable.

    And certainly you can be assured, although you may also be dismayed because it is studiously avoided by British Intelligence, at the levels required of British Intelligence, that the SuperEgo Cinderella Program and its collateral ID, SinderElle RockerFellow are well and truly into their Strides with Acres of Space for Ballrooms Galore.

    One expects so much more of a Deadhead in the JIC, doesn't one. And how telling that the simplest of electronic communications/IM/e-mail renders them deaf dumb and blind. It is almost as if they knew that nothing is private or unknown when shared via electronic channels and that then petrifies them into inaction and thoughts about the time whenever they didn't know of such overall monitoring facility and their interests and/or indiscretions which could be used against them to pervert/prevent any new action.

  7. Robin

    re: Gates today hosted .... after 38 years with Microsoft.

    Indeed. I'm reliably informed by a source well known for its reliability, that Microsoft was started in 1975, in Albuquerque.

    Wasn't that fittingly where Bugs Bunny always got lost? "I knew I shoulda toined left" etc.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    No safety net.

    "but without the safety net of Microsoft support" All my years in the business have been without microsoft support. Whenever I've needed it, I haven't got any resolutions from them. So what's new?

  9. Liam
    Coat

    hmmm

    "Indeed. I'm reliably informed by a source well known for its reliability, that Microsoft was started in 1975, in Albuquerque" - i was born in 1975 - does that now make me 38? eek!

  10. Billy Verreynne
    Coat

    Think of it as better than SQL-Server and faster...?

    It is called Oracle.

    The one with the lead pipe and Oracle logo on the back is mine...

  11. stizzleswick
    Flame

    @John Thomas

    Microsoft made its name in the mid-to late-1970s, being market leaders for interpreters and compilers (the one thing they still do halfway decently, if you ask me). But William Gates was in the business by 1971, helping a computer company fix its security holes in return for CPU time.

    Now there's an irony if I ever saw one -- anybody involved with Microsoft even _trying_ to resolve security problems. Normally these days, they only multiply them while proclaiming they never existed.

    By the way, you don't need an integrated circuit -- or a microprocessor -- to have a programmable computer (i.e., one that can run software). See the Zuse Z3, built in 1941, long before even the basis for integrated circuits (the transistor) had been developed. It was fully programmable and eventually found to be Turing complete. Yes, there was software written for it... which worked as advertised, so obviously Microsoft didn't have their hands on it back then.

    But sarcasm aside, commercial software development has been going on since the late 1950s at least, when banks and insurances got hooked on basement-sized pocket calculators. Microprocessors just plain never were necessary to run software.

    Back to work here... may Ballmer ball MS up against a wall so I can be rid of all the idiots running their Windows installations against the wall at full tilt with me being the one who has to fix their booboos.

    Oh, shucks, may Steve B. throw himself out of a window instead of chairs at employees for a change. I'm just sick and tired of having to clean up the messes Microsoft made and can't be arsed to fix.

    -- sorry, go ahead, I'm wearing my Asbestos tonight, so flame away. Just had a lot of Vista today... too much, in fact. Plus some XP SP3 and w2k and "server" 03.

  12. Neil
    Gates Halo

    @Steve

    Except of course, thats Jobs and not Balmer.

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