Software Hall of Shame

[unixronin]

Disney and Scholastic share a Software Hall of Shame raspberry today.

For what?  Disney Magic Artist Deluxe and Scholastic I Spy Fantasy.

Why?

Because they're both children's games — young children, as in Wendy's is giving I Spy Fantasy away in Kids' Meals — that require Administrator privileges to run.

FAIL.

Don't these people ever think before they write code?

Comments

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

My guess is that they used a program environment or library set to cut program time significantly. It is the environment that requires administrator privileges. The sad part is, replacing just a few functions in the library (or Windoze API) could eliminate the admin requirement entirely. The code shells used to run these games have been around since Windows 3.1, some without being updated, other than to be able to run on the NT kernel.

No matter what we may want to believe, Windoze is still a single user OS, that just happens to be better at task switching than DOS. Trying to make it something else is just so much wishful thinking. If Micro$oft attempts to rearchitect the system to be more secure or a better client, they will break so many legacy applications that the transition to linux will be automatic. Micro$oft is screwed, they can't fix it, and can't change it. If they weren't so amoral about keeping the transition from happening, I would almost feel sorry for them.