You want something to automate something as crucial as that? PCs make mistakes and when automated are assumed to be correct. User made mistakes may be found easily plus save them the embarassment of releasing a bad patch. The entire world isn't a bunch of Linux fanboys sitting around open source, Microsoft is a corperation which needs to satisfy all of it's customers and it makes the best decisions availible buisness wise. I doubt they are going to sacrafice the way they test for a few days (yes a few) of an earlier release. It's not like the patch times between the guy and Microsoft was that incredibly omg off the wall hold the phone long.
I'd trust a computer to test every possibility much sooner than I'd trust a human. You're right, the world ISN'T a bunch of Linux fanboys sitting around, and humans WON'T find every bug, which is why every path should be exercised, and the only way that's going to happen is with a computer doing it. As you said, there are dozens of versions, and hundreds of paths involving that code, so do you really expect a human to be able to enumerate all of those better than a computer? I doubt it.
Like I said it was patched in a timely manner and in an efficient manner. I downloaded and installed the patch and so did the entire hundred zillionjillion that uses Windows. Life goes on.
Except for the people whose computers got screwed up in the 2 week gap because of Viruses. And the companies that lost money because their computers were down due to this. Except people who had information stolen or otherwise abused by malicious hackers with the exploit code. In the 2 weeks while there was no patch, everybody in the world was a sitting duck. While Microsoft was waiting for their patch cycle (Microsoft employees had a patch for it a week before they actually released it), people were being exploited and infected because Microsoft doesn't want to make it look like they release too many patches. God forbid they keep their customers SAFE.
