Eye on Microsoft: His Highness Had a Busy Week

Thanks to Mister Snitch for alerting us that Bill Gates is legally changing his name to 'The Gates', after buying all rights to the name from the artist Christo for $30 million.

The Gates was knighted last night in a private ceremony (hot!) with the Queen of England. The Redmond PR department has requested that Seattlest refer to the Microsoft founder as "The Gates, Knight Commander of the British Empire" from here forward.

In other, slightly more serious, Microsoft news, Michael Sievert has been hired to lead the Windows team in Redmond. Sievert brings experience from his time as an exec at AT&T Wireless and E*Trade to the goat position of taking the newest version of Windows ("Longhorn") to market sometime next year. Good luck, sir.

Not necessarily affecting Microsoft, but definately raising the profile of The Gates, Knight Commander of the British Empire, yet higher in the city, is news that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is purchasing 12 acres of land near the Seattle Center from the city. The deal will go down for a reported $50.4 million, but there are some lingering questions regarding whether the city is getting a fair market price for the land.

The haters are apparently upset that Microsoft will not be releasing Internet Explorer 7 for use on the Windows 2000 platform. Seattlest was pissed off, but not surprised, by that announcement. More fodder for Le Resistance is coming soon as Microsoft is preventing users of the Wine emulator from downloading Windows upgrades and patches.

And finally, in news of interest to no one but a tiny handful of maladjusted geeks, tech guys, and DBAs, Microsoft has announced that the next version of its database software will ship in the summer. SQL Server 2005 will come in four flavors (Enterprise, Standard, Workgroup, and Express) and cost 25% more than the 2000 edition.

Image courtesy of the AP