If you’re the kind of person who gets excited about operating system news (well, maybe you should find some sort of hobby or do some volunteer work), the world became all aflutter yesterday. Speaking at an event in Japan, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that Windows 8 will be released in 2012. The company then said that their CEO had made a misstatement. It’s likely that the only mistake he made was announcing it before it was publicly ready to go. It’s also possible that Microsoft will hold off on a street date announcement until they’re certain that date won’t slip. Meanwhile, there’s speculation that the first preview of the new OS could come as soon as next week at the All Things D conference.