Steve Ballmer

It was a momentous week for Seattle's tech titans. Microsoft won accolades for its new operating system, Windows 7, and then a day later surprised Wall Street with better earnings than analysts expected. Meanwhile, Amazon.com blew the doors off its third quarter results, sending its stock into the stratosphere.

Those two news events alone drove plenty of discussion on TechFlash over the past week. Here are some of the comments that caught our eye.

Steve Ballmer's comments about the Internet not being designed for the iPhone generated plenty of chatter. Reader Grand_Poobah suggested that it was time for the Microsoft CEO to find another job. "Seriously, the iPhone is the first phone that made surfing the internet on a portable device EASY. I can pinch the screen, tilt, zoom in, zoom out, scroll with the touch screen... it's just so easy. This is denial and he needs replaced badly. Microsoft can do so much better."

Bezos

Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos made $2 billion off his stock holdings on Friday after the online retailer's stock soared 26 percent. The new bounty left one commenter a little jealous: "That lucky SOB. Honestly I want to hate the guy, but Amazon is just so awesome how can I?"

We were kind of disgusted by the Microsoft Windows 7 promotion held in conjunction with Burger King in which seven beef patties were slammed between a bun. Reader Greg Weld quipped that this might be a new American export. "Great - Now we're introducing heart attacks in Japan."

The debate over angel investment groups charging entrepreneurs to pitch business plans continued after the Keiretsu Forum reportedly altered its policy on the matter. Keiretsu's Randy Williams told PEHub that the changes had nothing to do with Jason Calcanis' blistering blog attack, to which one reader wrote: "And flooding has nothing to do with those rains we had. :)"

The death of Burgermaster founder Phil Jensen prompted some great memories of the old-fashioned burger joint where Bill Gates used to hang out in the early days of Microsoft. "True. Burgermaster was so admired and supported by the early Windows (2.x) team that the area of memory dedicated to the thunk table for Windows memory management was called "The Burgermaster" and identified as such in the Heapwalk memory debugging tool."

Windows 7 got an initial thumbs up from reader bslo. "New operating systems are almost always an improvement, and will almost always generate some sort of enthusiasm or buzz within the first couple months. But until the user sits down and gets a feel for what a new OS is all about (outside the VirtualBox), you're not going to understand the product's deficiencies ... or its notable improvements."

TechFlash managing editor Todd Bishop thanked all of the well wishers who passed on congratulations on the TechFlash one year anniversary, singling out one frequent rabble rouser. "Could we please get Hater into this discussion thread to tell us how much we suck, just to bring this thing back to reality? ;) Seriously, thanks for the kind words everyone, it feels great to be encouraged."