In a post of which only a marketing-spin connoisseur could love, the WinFS team has begrudgingly admitted the truth about the future of Microsoft's next-generation file system. What's most surprising about this revelation is that it almost completely contradicts all the WinFS information that Microsoft shared just two weeks ago at its TechEd conference in Boston. At TechEd, Microsoft promised Beta 2 of WinFS was just around the corner. While the Softies have been saying for a couple of months that WinFS would debut in Katmai, the next version of SQL Server, they never hinted until June 25 that WinFS would not debut as an integrated part of some future version of Windows. Guess all those WinFS sessions and meetings we attended were for naught.