Microsoft's Azure cloud meltdown apparently stabilized now

After an embarrassing meltdown earlier this week of Microsoft's Azure cloud service that snagged the wind in their Windows 8 sails with a dose of negative public relations, Azure seems to have finally stabilized. According to Bill Laing, Microsoft’s Corporate VP of Server and Cloud, “...Windows Azure operations became aware of an issue impacting the compute service in a number of regions. The issue was quickly triaged and it was determined to be caused by a software bug. While final root cause analysis is in progress, this issue appears to be due to a time calculation that was incorrect for the leap year.” How the developers could have missed the leap year error, given Microsoft's pocketbooks and vast talent pool, is hard to imagine.