The question of the day is, with Visual Studio 2008 already happening and SQL Server 2008 maybe not happening for real for at least another six months, just how many "heroes" will be "happening here" at the Windows Server 2008 launch gala?

LOS ANGELES (BetaNews) - At the front gate of the Nokia Theater outside the Convention Center here this morning, one of the Nokia workers asked me, "So where are the heroes?"

I tried to explain to him that the "heroes" were a metaphor for Microsoft's server software, being launched -- or otherwise unveiled -- this morning. He said, no, he wasn't buying that. See, he works gigs for the entertainment industry mostly. When he thinks "Heroes," he said, he expects to see brave guys saving cheerleaders.

"This event is clearly missing cheerleaders," he told me. He may have been the most knowledgeable and insightful spokesperson I've talked to in weeks.

Only after an entire team of a few hundred press representatives were seated at the front rows of Nokia were they told that photography would not be allowed, except for accredited photographers. There was a noteworthy dearth of accredited photographers, most of whom had registered as general press. Some negotiations took place, after which one of the handlers relented and allowed the press to take photos of the theater prior to the show's official start.

9:13 am PT - The gathering crowd of a few thousand was kept entertained by a running Windows-themed comic strip projected on the twin side-screens.

9:21 am PT - Starting off the keynote, we were surprised to see not Bill Gates, but former NBC News Managing Editor Tom Brokaw, in person.

"I think we are at a very important time in our lives collectively," began the serious portion of Brokaw's theme. He went on to say he believes we're in the seminal stages of something called "the Second Big Bang." He sees this as a time when the planet became "much smaller, much more intimate, and a time in which the possibilities before us got much larger."

But "we don't want to become Easter Island or the Mayan Civilization," he warned. "Life is not just a virtual experience. If we develop capacity, however unlimited it may be, without compassion or common sense, what is the reward to us, either individually or collectively?

"Global poverty will not be resolved by hitting the delete button. We won't solve climate change by hitting Backspace...It will do us little good to wire the world if we short-circuit our consciousness, our souls, if we short-change our potential to use this technology to advance mankind."

9:44 am PT - Bringing out a reformed version of his IT optimization model, Ballmer discussed a four-stage agenda of moving IT shops from cost centers that mainly react to "forest fires," to standards-driven and automated centers, then from there to "rationalized" and creative centers, and finally to "dynamic IT centers." Assets, he said, as opposed to cost-generating operations.

9:48 am PT - In an interesting permutation of the openness message, Microsoft appears to be trying to capture the proverbial "football" and run away with it. Ballmer set forth a theme of tools that innovate openness in the development process to a degree that could be perceived as above and beyond whatever may come out of the ordinary open source process.

9:52 am PT - Listing the products Microsoft had unveiled over the previous 12 months, Ballmer touched briefly on Windows Vista SP1. In so doing, he gently acknowledged the fact that the company had addressed some customer concerns regarding SP1, particularly in the device driver compatibility department.

He then acknowledged that launch events aren't always about new things any more. "Now you come to a launch event to learn more about products which are old friends of yours," he said.

10:06 am PT - In setting forth the current virtualization strategy for Windows Server 2008, which centers around the Hyper-V hypervisor, Ballmer admitted that Microsoft is "not the market leader in server virtualization." Recognizing that, he said, the company focused on the idea of what he calls "democratizing virtualization," enabling it to run on 90%-100% of all servers in some degree to help harden the platform and ease its administration, rather than the 5 - 7% of servers on which virtualization is run today.

Earlier, Ballmer took a clean swipe at Oracle, SQL Server's principal competitor in the database arena. Bringing up Oracle's trademark marketing slogan, "Unbreakable," he showed common vulnerability statistics that appear to show SS 2008 at almost imperceptible vulnerability levels compared against Oracle.

He also revealed that SS 2008 should set a performance record on a key Transaction Performance Council benchmark, as well as the SAP-SD test battery which deals with simulated sales and marketing transactions.

10:24 am PT - Among the morning's demonstrations was one featuring "transparent database encryption."

In that demo, a new policy compliance tool revealed that a test database was not encrypted according to company policy. That problem was rectified with a few quick switches.

10:32 am PT - Referring to Web development, Ballmer mentioned his company had made strides in PHP support.

Windows, he said, has become the most popular platform for PHP to run, "which has a certain irony to it."

10:52 am PT - One of Steve Ballmer's amusing anecdotes featured the recent hiring of Kevin Turner, a former Wal-Mart executive, as Chief Operating Officer.

As the story goes, Microsoft's CIO actually complained to Turner, his direct report, that the functionality he was asking for wasn't possible with Microsoft's current toolset. Turner suggested that the team contact Teradata, a SQL Server competitor.

The CIO reacted in horror, Ballmer said, so the COO gave him an alternative: If they could work with the SQL Server 2008 development team to make the new RDBMS do what they need it to do, they could use that instead.

Assuming the story is accurate, Microsoft may consider bestowing Turner the title of "co-chief software architect."