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Microsoft Code at Fault for Half of all Windows Crashes
Flamester writes "In a ZDNet Australia story, Microsoft is claiming that half of all MS Windows crashes are the fault of third party code, not their own. That is, according to Dr. Watson.
The article also goes into the 'rigor in which MS tests their products before release'. "
So 50% of all system crashes are caused by 3rd party drivers and the other 50% are caused by Microsoft code.
Sounds bad, but compared to the number of application crashes, the number of actual OS crashes is infinitesimal.
What kind of third-party code are they talking about here?
Userland applications or device drivers?
As so many others undoubtedly already have remarked, an application, however shoddily written,
should not bring down the whole OS.
If they're talking device drivers.. well, that's a different issue entirely.
On the other hand, if this is the case, what the heck is that MS certification process for?
Also, it is likely that MORE than half of the applications run on a Windows box are non-microsoft applications, that would mean that statistically MS apps crash more often than third party apps.
Not that I really care to defend MS, but playing devil's advocate, MS apps would be more likely to crash than other apps because they're used more. Your average user of a Windows machine will use Outlook, IE, Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. What non-MS apps will the average user want to use? AOL/AIM, WinAmp, and Kazaa. There may be a few others, but none that will be used as often as the MS-created applications. If you never use the app, it can't crash the system.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
Not QNX! QNX drivers run in protected mode. Hell yeah, Microkernel biznatches!
<Amanda`> I just went out to the parking lot in my bathrobe to exchange warez CDs.
Here's another stupid quote from the article:
Consider this: Microsoft has been ordered not to use the term MSCE in both the United States and Canada because Microsoft does not have the legal right to "certify" people as engineers. This playing fast and loose with terms now extends to:- MCSE == an illegal appropriation of the term Engineer to fool the consumer and anyone stupid enough to pay for it
- Security == a fucking joke that isn't funny anymore
- Best practices == "we don't know how to fix it", as in "We're following best practices."
- Enhanced user experience == Fisher-Price interface
- Where do you want to go today == "Where the fuck did my data go!"
The problem wan't driver crases - their "Dr. Watson" wouldn't get a chance to report back to the mother ship in most of those instances.That's just ignorant. Any device driver running on the system has complete control of the system. To architect an OS otherwise would take such a huge performance hit to make the OS unusable. Any device driver can blue screen a Windows machine. It's the nature of the beast. And it is in no way Microsoft's fault if a third party device driver does something that is clearly illegal according to the DDK. Read the other posts about the same thing being true of Linux kernel modules and PDP systems.
Let's see... umm... A MS basher is someone who believes that half the bugs belong to MS. A MS apologist is someone who believes half the bugs belong to somebody else.
Of course if you want to avoid emotional implications when describing the glass, you say "it's 50% water and 50% air". Likewise for this, except...
If half the *code* in your system is written by somebody else, and they are responsable for half the bugs, then that tells you that you and the other guy are equally competent.
Of course, you can spin those statistics anyway you like to suit your needs. Some programs are historicly more difficult to write than others. You could evaluate binary bytes, LOC, or number of binary files to get the spin you want.
I'm willing to wager that MS and its partners are equally competent, since they draw on similar pools of talent. If there is any significant differential, things will tend to regress to the mean of proportional bugginess. For example, if a given vendor always writes buggy code they will eventually be replaced. If MS can't write something, they will eventually buy a company that can.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?