Exhibit A, of course, is the , with Microsoft subsidiary Danger in the key role as the clueless initiator of disaster. ("Gee, I wonder what pushing this button will do...") They screwed the pooch in a half-dozen ways, starting with a weeklong outage that went completely unacknowledged until Sidekick users started kicking up a fuss in forums and the media picked up on it.

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Then it took them another few days to warn users to not reboot their Sidekicks (which is the first thing you're told to do when something isn't working right) because that would wipe out their data. Then the announcement last weekend , followed by another announcement that maybe .

T-Mobile -- which appears to be mostly blameless in this scenario, -- reacted by offering free data service for October, a $100 credit, and a halt to new Sidekick sales, and reportedly is letting people out of their contracts without penalty. No matter; .

Microsoft/Danger have yet to explain what happened, but speculation is rampant. There can only be two reasons for : One is a Keystone Kops level of ineptitude by a lot of different people at Danger; . And given the rancor following Microsoft's , the sabotage theory is starting to gain some traction. All you need is one disgruntled employee with some technical savvy to leave a software time bomb behind.