Microsoft Astoria, in so many words

On Monday at Mix '07, Microsoft revealed yet another piece of its puzzling cloud-programming puzzle: "Astoria."
Astoria is a set of patterns and infrastructure for Web data services, explained Pablo Castro, technical lead with Microsoft's database group.
Castro showed off Microsoft's Astoria work during his session on "Accessing Data Services in the Cloud"
on April 30 at the Las Vegas conference.
Astoria as one of a number Microsoft technologies that are designed to allow users to make their data
available over the Web via a REST interface and using open formats such as XML, JSON or RDF.
Astoria is built on top of Microsoft's ADO.Net Entity Framework.
Developer Division General Manager Scott Guthrie's "layperson's explanation" of the framework
(provided at my request):
The entity framework allows you to model data in a database.
The entity framework is designed to make it easier for developers to model, publish and program against
their data over the Web.

COMMENTS:
What the $^*%$%#?
Isn't EVERYTHING a set of patterns and infrastructure for something?
I still don't know what Astoria does different (besides creating new buzz words)
I guess what they are really saying is Astoria makes it easier for web programmers to access data
I think one of the most annoying things about working with computer techs these days is
they just don't know how to talk to people.
This is how I sum up the above article (in my mind)
1-First I boil down all of the synonyms
   ASP=The old BASIC language with commands for the internet
   ADO=The old BASIC language with commands for accessing data
   XML=The old FILE structure with a different way of storing its DATA.
   JSON=The old FILE structure with a different way of storing its DATA.
   RDF=The old FILE structure with a different way of storing its DATA.
   REST=Another way to let the old basic talk to microsofts new commands.
   Microsoft's ADO.Net Entity Framework=ADO=The old Basic language.
   The old BASIC language = a computer language.
2-I take out all of the ridiculous statements
   Accessing Data Services in the Cloud
3-I reread everything that was said and I sum it up.
   Microsoft introduces Astoria.
   Astoria gives Basic easier ways to access data on the web.
4-And I understand.

What really gets me is these people get paid highly for talking crap, inventing new words, and embelleshing old stuff.
I don't care how you slice and dice it.
Computers still do three things and its simple:
-Find out what you want
-Get data if necessary
-Show the result.

When I dropped out of the mainstream of computer technologies I realized a few things
Computer languages were popping up everywhere.
New words were being invented.
If a new version of something was created, developers gave it a new name instead of a new version number.
Now we have a million new words, most of which have died (like the old versions numbers did).
Now, instead of having BASIC 2007x, we have ASP, ASP.NET, VB, VBScript and a slew of other names.
The addins in the old days, (like XML,SQL,ADO) we'd just call libraries. To upgrade, you changed 1 line of code.
Its become more complicated, not because it is more complicated, but because developers got confused.
It all should have gotten simpler.
When Windows 3.0 came out, it was truly different.
When Windows 95 came out, it acted like an improved Windows 3.0 with items moved around or renamed.
When Windows 98 came out, it acteded like Windows 95 with things moved around.
The same holds true for 98SE, NT, Windows 2000, Millenium, XP, Longhorn and Vista.
They're all just different just improved versions of Windows, aren't they? Why don't the names reflect that?
The names should reflect the product's origin. At least say Windows Vista.
When Basic came out in the 60's it was incredibly easy to learn
It stayed that way for 2 decades.
Then Microsoft came up with Visual Basic and you had to rewrite everything.
Then it came up with VB 3.0 and you had to rewrite everything.
Then it came up with VB 4.0 and you had to rewrite everything.
Then it came up with ASP and you had to rewrite everything.
Then it came up with ASP.NET and you had to rewrite everything.
For 20 years, you didn't have to rewrite anything.
COBOL is/was the same way.
You didn't have to rewrite anything.
It was sweet.