scott wrote:
>> In general, if you're trying to do something simple (e.g., how do I 
>> change the IE start page?), the documentation tells you. If you're 
>> trying to do anything moderately nontrivial, the documentation tends 
>> to not help at all... I guess this says something about their intended 
>> target audience?
> 
> Dunno, I've found lots of quite detailed articles before.
> 
> eg googling "windows recovery console" give me
> 
> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058
> 
> which tells me that you can use bootcfg without the /scan to avoid 
> spending hours scanning all your drives.

The command descriptions given here are a word-for-word reproduction of 
the interactive command help. It does not explain anywhere, for example, 
that bootcfg is merely a programatic way of editing BOOT.INI. (Also, it 
seems that /scan, /add and /rebuild *all* scan your disks for hours - 
I've tried it.)

*This* article explains it properly:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/291980

>> I don't know, but you'd think they could at least install an exception 
>> handler around the load routine so that if it fails, it doesn't crash 
>> all of Word, just the document load engine. Or *something*...
> 
> Maybe the load routine works fine, it just loads some corrupted data so 
> when another part of the program comes to use it that bit crashes?

Thinking about it, the load routine probably does just dump a bunch of 
pointers directly into Word, which probably then trips the rendering 
engine over or something. (I've seen Word go into in infinite loop 
instead of crashing also. That, at least, you'd think would be 
detectable quite easily.)

>> OTOH, OO is developed by a bunch of bored boffins in their spare time, 
>> whereas M$ can afford to hire the brightest people in the business and 
>> pay them to work on the problem 9-5 every single day. Given the hugely 
>> superior resources available to M$, you'd *think* they could produce a 
>> product that works properly under forceeable circumstances...
> 
> I think you overestimate how many people MS has working on such things.  

Uh... they're the largest software corporation on the face of the Earth? 
(And the richest too.)

> The main difference is MS can't just go and recruit 20 more people to 
> work on something, unless it is going to be *profitable* for them to do 
> so.  If the bored boffins at OO want to spend another 1000 man hours 
> perfecting things, they can, they don't have to worry about profit.

Well, if M$ doesn't consider "making our products work properly" to be a 
"profitable" thing to do, then there's your answer. :-}

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