>I work at NUMMI, and we build cars and trucks. This is a joint venture of Toyota and General Motors. If this company turned out products with the normal quality found with software – we would be out of business.

I hear this all the time.

The average peice of consumer software would then cost $12,000 and require the user to pass a test and pay for insurance just to use.

And I'm no mechanic, so I hope I don't downplay the complexity of a motor vehicle, but its taken almost a hundred years for Ford Motor Company to create a machine that can move and they're still being recalled like mad because theres something wrong with them. Meanwhile, Windows has evolved in 10 years to millions and millions of lines of code to do more sophisticated things, IMO, than move a passenger.