I think, an additional factor is that nuclear reactors require a huge infrastructures and are operated by huge hierarchies. I would think a small team of experts might be trusted with the inherit risks, because the channels of communication are short. But as is, nuclear power is unsafe -- not because it is technically risky, but organizationally risky. The same applies to all the other examples mentioned.

Which in turn is only quoting "Hey Hey, My My" by Neil Young (as did Kurt Cobain's suicide note)... Kids these days ...

http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/cu104ps2.html
http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/cus101usenon.html
nice new "original" IBM Model-Ms by Unicomp ...

You are mostly right about Sharepoint. However, I see it as a defensive product (to protect the Office revenue). And while its quality is just terrible, it is still a major threat to Open Source in SMB.
However, Alfresco is a company by people who really know how to do content-management (ex-documentum guys), not just one guy (Ozzie) who needs to change momentum and mindset in a 95000 (wait, 80000 by now) employee gorilla. And Alfresco is open source and very visible from the start.
Sharepoint adoption is very slow for a Microsoft product, esp. one that is so critical for Microsoft. In addition, its integration with Microsoft Office is a much, much weaker leverage than the ones Microsoft used before (Windows-Office, Windows-IE, Windows-DirectX).
The few useful cases of integration between a CMS like Sharepoint and a Fat Client Office are easily replicated for OOo.
So, yes, if Sharepoint works out the way Microsoft hopes too, that would block any meaningful competition for another ten years and slow down progress. However, it didnt look like that would be the case in early 2008 and the recession/depression we are heading into will make decision makers much more leery and rigorous about infrastructure decisions.

And without those two, MSFT is dead. On the other markets they are either way too small (database servers), or their operations are just burning money.

I was confused when I first saw a

do { do stuff } while(false); more stuff

until if found out this was an obfuscated goto, because there where break; or continue; statements in the "loop".

Your ifs might be a workaround around compiler bugs (for example a compiler supporting variable scopes only in "real blocks" or something like that).

So its not different from any other early implementation of Software that MS created a monopoly off (Windows, IE, Office).