Microsoft gave researchers $50K to "study the evolvability and robustness of computer languages".

My favourite quote from that story (from the researcher):

"You can see why Microsoft is interested in robust languages because theirs is not"

ROTFL!!!

My second favourite quote (from a Microsoft employee):

"Why can you randomly change instructions and these things tend to survive? If you went in and did that with Excel, the results wouldn't be good."

They've proved that time and time again... ;-)