

The Power of Bugs (2007) - luu
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2007.04.windowsconfidential.aspx

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gilgoomesh
I understand that Microsoft might have felt they were backed into a corner on
this issue but...

This is a horrifically bad thing to do.

When a user can change an option as simply as selecting a checkbox and that
option doesn't simply cause some actions to return a clear error but instead
causes those actions to dramatically change runtime behavior without any
change in API behavior, that's bad, bad news.

Deploying and supporting software for hundreds of thousands of customers is
really annoying and this type of obscure, broad reaching option is the biggest
reason why. Every week I receive a bug report from a customer that turns out
to be a minor setting I've never heard of, preventing installation, or
blocking some system resource, or changing file system behaviors, or network
behaviors etc.

If there's a clear error code that reports what option is blocked and why,
then it's annoying but manageable. When there's a massive change in behavior
but nothing captured in any log, crash report, etc... then AAAARRRGG!!

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sudioStudio64
Most of these settings can be controlled by group policy or registry settings.
This really just illustrates how serious they are about not breaking
compatibility with the widest variety of software.

If you are having issues with users being able to change things like this on
modern windows systems you need to look into removing their permissions on the
host. Since XP most of the kinds of settings like the one described in this
old article require admin permissions to change. Maybe that's not an option
for you...I get that.

You are right, though, about supporting lots of users...there are always going
to be local config that makes that hard when they can change so much of the
system. The upcoming universal platform makes that less likely, but it's
definitely a hard problem.

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sukilot
OK how do I detect that the bug is caused by someone changing one of a
thousand apparently unrelated settings that doesnt report its interference? I
don't want to turn off all customizations that users may need.

------
kbd
Raymond Chen - 2007

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muppetman
First time I read this article - May, 2015

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mod
It's common practice on HN to flag articles with the date of creation--he's
just pointing it out.

The title will be edited shortly, I'm sure.

~~~
muppetman
Ahh. My apologies then.

