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5

ellynu wrote

read this pdf for some fun examples of the problems they have had to deal with, here's one of my favorites:

"One card game tried to make changes to the system.ini file but ended up destroying it. The game read the system.ini file a line at a time into an 80-character buffer, made any necessary changes, and wrote the result to a temporary file. If any line contained more than 80 characters, the buffer overflowed and corrupted the next variable on the stack, which happened to be the name of the temporary file! Once the changes were made, the program deleted the system.ini file and renamed the temporary file to system.ini. But the rename operation failed because the name of the temporary file was corrupted by the extra-long line.The result: a system with no system configuration file.In other words, installing this program rendered your system unbootable.The fix from the operating system side was to go through all the components of the system that used the system.ini file and make sure none of them ever wrote lines longer than 80 characters."

4

cute_spider_ni_srsly wrote

The card game that overwrote the system.ini with garbage got development priority over the operating system?

Gosh I'll bet someone quit over that decision.

3

ellynu wrote

that's the policy. people don't care why it doesn't work, they just want their software to work and not break. and microsoft has their employees make sure that happens.

3

ellynu wrote

it's kinda interesting in the sense that when you look at the two big companies making closed source operating systems, they are completely opposite on that. can you imagine if microsoft were to cut 32-bit application support like apple did?

3

neku wrote

I wish my textbooks would tell tales :( I'm paying out the fucking ear, Pearson, at least give me some topical anecdotes to soothe me when I'm not understanding anything :(