Everyone does it

> Sorry, but "everyone does it" just doesn't hack it.

also, "everyone does it" is an excuse that no one over the age 7
should use. imitating blindly -- a.k.a monkey-see-monkey-do
(apologies to monkeys) -- seems to happen when we are unaware,
undisciplined, lazy or panicked. it is how stampedes happen. it's ok
if you're in a herd, can't see much and trying to avoid a predator;
not so for designing software.

a good example can be found in an episode of a UW TV program called
"behind the code", produced by MS and UW, where one of the original
developers of NT (hardware and drivers) recalls a kernel crash that
was caused by bad MS sample code that ended up in several driver by
different vendors.

(c) Skip Tavakkolian