MS Suggests Using Shims For XP-To-Win7 Transition

eldavojohn writes "Windows XP (and a lot of MS OS code before that) had a fundamental security flaw whereby the default setting made the ordinary user run as the superuser. Vista & Windows 7 have fixed that and implemented The Correct Paradigm. But what about the pre-Vista applications written to utilize superuser privileges? How do you migrate them forward? Well, running a virtualized instance of XP in Windows 7 is an option we've talked about. But Microsoft is pushing the idea of using 'shims,' which are a way to bypass or trick the code into thinking it's still running as user/superuser mode in Windows XP. This is an old trick that Microsoft has often employed, and it has brought the Windows kernel a long ways, in a duct-tape sort of fashion. At the TechEd conference in LA, Microsoft associate software architect Chris Jackson joked, 'If you walk too loudly down the hall near the [Windows] kernel developers, you'll break 20 to 30 apps.' So for you enterprise developers fretting about transitioning to Windows 7, shims are your suggested solution."

Comments

Re:Well

[LordKaT]

Everyone always cites lazy developers ... but I have to ask, is it really the programmers fault?

Assume that some database program will only run as an administrator. Is this because the developer couldn't be assed to write proper code, or is it the result of a very tight schedule imposed by management, who needs to ship their product before Q4 so they can meet their debt obligations, thus forcing the programmer is take the quick and dirty route for this bug so he can focus on show-stopping bugs?

Really, I think that this practice is a symptom of a much larger problem.

Re:I know you slashdotters hate to hear it

[x2A]

"The argument is that it's ridiculous to suggest that backwards compatibility is "THE REASON" for MS's success"

I don't think the word 'the' was meant to be taken as a literal definite article, sometimes people exagerate to demonstrate their point as a shorthand way of explaining that the actual extent of their point is large enough to warrent exageration. It's something I personally prefer to not do, but I don't think it's too much of a problem when people do.

I don't think anyone's going to suggest that MS OS's are perfectly backward compatible; sometimes things do need to change, and sometimes things rely on bugs that shouldn't be left open, but in all my own personal experience, they do win hands down next to Linux and Apple (I can't comment outside the scope of those three). Say what you want about "having the source code", but when things need certain versions of libraries for certain APIs, or relied on the way a particular version of GCC compiled their code that's now no longer the case, things don't stay so black and white. Yes I've been able to update a lot of old code myself to reflect changes and get it to compile, but there's still an awful lot I can't.