At 02:32 PM 12/11/2000 -0500, Emerson, Tom # El Monte wrote:

>I'm not sure if it was Stan that mentioned it, but the real problem with
>this "kludge" is when dealing with third-party products (installation jobs
>in particular).  If you create a same-named variable with a similar value as
>what HP puts in a later version of the OS, an installation or support
>script/jobstream used by a third party product may attempt to use a feature
>not implemented, or worse, a changed implementation where the "new" method
>used on an "old" system would cause an abort or other nasty surprise...

This was a point I tried to make earlier.  Exactly this happened to me.  It
took some time to diagnose what happened.