Mike,

>>I don't know if you've heard of the book, "The Vision of the Annointed" by Thomas Sowell but I would highly recommend it.
>Essentially Dr. Sowell discusses the differences between those who think in terms of 'solutions' as opposed to those who think in terms of 'tradeoffs'.
>
>Sounds interesting, I'll check it out.
>
>>By 'solutions' he means those who think that their 'solution' is absolute - oall too often at the expense of the notion of unintended consequences. Those who think in terms of 'tradeoffs' understand that there will always be consequences - not always favorable.
>
>So the software analogy is that devs are the solutionists, and testers (possibly PMs, too) are the "tradeoff-ists".

No.. I was attempting to point out that there are a couple of fundamentally different approaches to the process. I happen to think that those who think in terms of tradeoffs are more realistic in the sense of having their expectations line up with what really happens.

By brining this to the table I hope to help folks understand that the issue isn't MSFT or the VFP dev team but the thinking process of those who are ultimately fighting a failing battle to get MSFT to react in a manner that doesn't reflect the reality of life.