ShadowRAM: September 19, 2005

Kicking off PDC last Tuesday morning, Bill Gates reminisced about how the raging fires prevented many .Net geeks from getting into LAX for the last PDC in 2003. The Microsoft chairman also quipped he&d have to restate his goal of making Windows as reliable as electricity.

Speaking of disasters, developers from the New Orleans area shared stories at the conference about their losses—and power outages were a minor inconvenience compared with the grief of partners in the “Big Uneasy.”

The conference was busy, busy, busy. Mostly with busywork as Microsoft recast and rearranged products and technologies it talked about two years ago. It finally showed off the fancy schmancy Office 12 interface and workflow services—now going under the Windows Worklow Foundation moniker rather than the older, apparently less-exciting Windows Workflow Services or Orchestration Engine labels.

One of the worst jobs at the company has got to be coming up with these names, whether code names or the real ones. When it comes to naming conventions, everyone&s a critic, one Windows exec moaned. But there&s a lot of recycling going on. Katmai is the code name for SQL Server 2005 Plus One. You may recall that Intel used that same name for its Pentium III.

The usual “Beavis and Butt-head” moments occurred at the show, the biggest being the groan elicited when Microsoft exec Don Box talked about “HTTP-ness.” Say it out loud. What&s it sound like? Oh, brother.

You have to admire the ads for Sun&s new x64 servers. The copy: “Given how hot and slow our competitor&s servers are, it&s no surprise their name rhymes with Hell.” Apparently, Sun&s trying to turn up the heat on the boyz in Round Rock. Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.

More celebs coming to trade shows near you. At the Fall VON 2005 in Boston, you can test out the “it&s-hip-to-be-square” theory as Huey Lewis and the News are set to perform. Do we think the VoIP market is enough to provide a natural high?

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has mostly been serenaded by very positive press. But now Richard Klausner has resigned as head of its Global Health Program under a cloud. Klausner is being investigated in a congressional probe of a $40 million contract the National Cancer Institute awarded to Harvard.