Happy birthday Marty.

Given the law of averages, sometimes even the wrong people will end up doing the right thing. This time it's Microsoft. What did they do right? They plan to eliminate stock options as employee compensation. Just give the poor geeks the stock. Don't make them learn all the vagueries and implications of ISO's and NSO's and the dreaded AMT. As long as they stay out of bankruptcy court, the shares are always worth something. With options, you never know if they'll be worth anything and you need two years of university-level accounting and tax law education just to figure it out.