Scapegoating 101 (Score 3, Interesting)

I don't think this is self-jest. Microsoft and IE team love this... the current message is "yes IE6 is broken, you should upgrade to IE8/9 because it's much better". Except that it isn't. So the funeral flowers serve them well, because they can pretend the real problem is with IE6, where in fact the problem is with them.

Microsoft has been using this "network admins don't upgrade from IE6, it's not our fault" type of argument for too long as an excuse for the mess they keep putting web standards into.
If everybody suddenly upgraded to the latest and greatest IE8/9 we would still be in the same place regarding IE not following web standards. We would be free of "IE6 doesn't have a clue about the box model". But we would be at "IE8 doesn't support canvas (or proper event bubble)". Just so 9 years from now they will be sending flowers to the IE8 funeral and saying sorry for not supporting canvas...
A proper solution for Microsoft now would be to completely ditch IE backend, use one of the current available libraries like Webkit, and put in place an IE frontend that can have IE6/7/8 tabs and a proper standard backend (defaulting to the proper backend). Any other move on this area coming from Microsoft seems to be either evilness or PR (which I think it's the case).