No code is an island

Raymond Chen

February 19th, 20040 1

Norman Diamond noted in a comment that on Windows 2003 Server, the Display Adapter Troubleshooting slider still lists “full acceleration” as the recommended setting even though the default for Server is “full minus one”. This is one of those “Oh, that’s an easy change” bugs. The discussion probably went like this: Some guy whose idea this was: “For stability reasons, we want to lower the default video acceleration for Server a notch. Dear Video Setup team, can you do that for us?” Video Setup team: “Sure thing, that’s no problem. The default setting is all done by us; it should not have any impact on anybody else. We’ll just do it and be done with it.” Guy: “Sweet. Thanks.” And bingo, the default video acceleration dropped to one notch below full on Server, and everyone was happy. Except that there’s this text tucked away in the Display control panel that has the word “(recommended)” next to “full acceleration”. That didn’t get updated. Oops. (I wouldn’t be surprised if there is also some help text that didn’t get updated for this change.) No code is an island. So when you complain, “Aw come on, it’s a one-line change. What’s taking so long?” think about the little video acceleration slider.

Raymond Chen

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