New to the list

On 8/3/2006 at 12:11 PM Roy J. Tellason wrote: 'Cause the OS says you have to. There was a huge grumble of displeasure in the NT community after MS assured developers that NT 4.0 kernel-mode drivers would work just fine with 2K. And they did--until RC1, when, just a month or two before official launch, you discovered that you had to implement the complete litany of power management services or you'd get a BSOD. I haven't even looked at Vista requirements yet--and probably won't until Vista's released because MS is making the same claim "You can use XP drivers on Vista". Sometimes, it seems to me that OS software at Microsoft is created as a sort of involuntary spasm. But as to why software is buggy and complex, consider ACPI. One of the densest, most incomprehensible, violated-in-practice "standards" that exists on the face of the planet. Or, consider the way the already-complex USB standard has "bloomed" since 1.0. Cheers, Chuck