knockout.js: using a containerless foreach on a <select> fails in Internet Explorer 8

In RP Niemeyer's article Knockout.js Performance Gotcha #3 - All Bindings Fire Together, an approach to building a dropdown list is provided:

<select data-bind="value: selectedOption">
    <!-- ko foreach: options -->
    <option data-bind="attr: { value: id }, text: name"></option>
    <!-- /ko -->
</select>

This code is also in a jsfiddle from the article.

http://jsfiddle.net/rniemeyer/QjVNX/

However, when I employed this method of building a select in a project, it was working just fine, until I tested in Internet Explorer 8. IE8 failed and was "unable to parse bindings".

Indeed, running the fiddle from the article in IE8 also results in an error. Is there a way to build the select in IE8 (I assume IE8 or less) using knockout's foreach?