Today's target for a boot up the ass

[unixronin]

Software companies (or developers) who write Windows educational software for kindergarten-age kids that works only if run with Administrator privileges.

Comments

[ttocs.livejournal.com]

If you are buying it, than either:

1. You don't know any better
2. The kindergarten age child has their own 'puter anyhow

Not that it is excusable, but...

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Or,
3. The kindergarten-age kid's elder sister has a computer, and the kindergarten-age kid has an account on it that she can use when her sister's at school.

[ttocs.livejournal.com]

Apologies, my facetiousness didn't quite show through enough. They should be strung up, just noting why it survives a week of release. IMHO of course.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I think the reason why is exactly as you speculated: 99% of the people who buy it have the default Windows configuration of "always assume user XYZ is logged on, and with administrator privileges" because they don't know any better. I'm told by MS insiders that Vista will be better in this regard.

(Damn, I'm functioning poorly... it took me three tries to type XYZ. it kept coming out ZYS. may be sleep-dep. I've been sleeping TERRIBLY badly.)

Bad Windows! Bad Windows!

[adriang.livejournal.com]

Don't kick them too hard. It must require great strength of will and character for Windows programmers to resist letting the truly horrible example set by Windows lead them to make truly horrible design decisions of their own. Most Windows programmers simply don't have that strength.

Adrian

Re: Bad Windows! Bad Windows!

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

A point.

A favorite quote from a friend:

"Working with Unix is like wrestling a worthy opponent. Working with Windows is like attacking a small whining child who is carrying a .38 snubbie."

Re: Bad Windows! Bad Windows!

[adriang.livejournal.com]

8-)

Seen it on Unix, too

[lonewolf545.livejournal.com]

Very first IT company I worked for was using software developed inhouse using a commercial database package, the 'software' was mostly ksh scripts called from a menu program. The developers were also their only system administrators, and did all of their coding and testing as root. I spent a few months trying to track down all of the dependencies to set minimal permission levels so I could have the users run as something other than UID 0, but never did manage to finish it (of course, management was idiots too, which was why I bailed after a year).

Re: Seen it on Unix, too

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Uh, yeah. Bad mistake, anyone can make it. :p
(One likes to think most Unix people know better, but.....)

I have a very few scripts that will work properly only as root, or which suid themselves to root during certain critical sections of execution. But they have very good reasons for doing it. (One does so in order to explicitly insmod and rmmod a kernel module, for instance.)

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's pretty dumb. I say you give them a hard enough kick up the arse that they'll be tasting boot polish for weeks.