[Richard Kimball]

After all, it took a loss to Carter to foment the conservative success that became the Reagan Revolution.

The problem is, can anybody at MS write code anymore? Office 2007 is a PITA. Vista has already been discussed. I think MS is collapsing under the weight of it's own bureaucracy.

[dan1123]

The problem is, can anybody at MS write code anymore?

I'm beginning to wonder, and I personally know a few programmers at Microsoft. I think the real problem is business decisions rather than programming decisions though. Legacy code, backward compatibility, Microsoft's own lax nature about standing by its own API's. I remember when Office used to patch the kernel upon install. There was an article a while back about Microsoft having hundreds of different implementations of the same string class internally.

When I worked at Apple I remember one thing that impressed me more than anything else was how clean the API was in comparison to Windows, and how respected it was internally. I really think that Microsoft needs to go back to the drawing board and create an elegant API and kernel. If they don't have someone up to the task there now, they surely can afford to hire one.

[Bernard]

I think MS is collapsing under the weight of it's own bureaucracy.

MS is also planning to borrow money to finance its purchase of Google. Times are changing at MS, and not for the better.