Good news! The IE team have decided to revert their decision on compatibility which would have meant IE8 would render sites with the IE7 engine if a ua-x-compatible meta tag isn't defined. Sites will now render with the browser's current rendering engine by default, so sites will be rendered as IE8 by default when IE8 is released.
This is good news as it shows that Microsoft are no longer looking to support the past. It's a big deal for them to take this decision and I feel that this is a clear sign that they are supporting web-standards moving forward.
This is also a great result for the few people that stood-up and constructively criticised the initial announcement. Their voice was heard.