Though I'd like to know more details, like:
* Why does blizzard need to run in the sandbox on Mac OS X? The app sandbox is opt-in (though required for App Store apps)
* Can anyone set their team ID to blizzard's?
* Are blizzard games attack vectors?
> Windows 95? No problem. Nice new 32 bit API, but it still ran old 16 bit software perfectly. Microsoft obsessed about this, spending a big chunk of change testing every old program they could find with Windows 95. Jon Ross, who wrote the original version of SimCity for Windows 3.x, told me that he accidentally left a bug in SimCity where he read memory that he had just freed. Yep. It worked fine on Windows 3.x, because the memory never went anywhere. Here's the amazing part: On beta versions of Windows 95, SimCity wasn't working in testing. Microsoft tracked down the bug and added specific code to Windows 95 that looks for SimCity. If it finds SimCity running, it runs the memory allocator in a special mode that doesn't free memory right away. That's the kind of obsession with backward compatibility that made people willing to upgrade to Windows 95.
[1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000054.html
https://www.wired.com/2016/01/nsa-hacker-chief-explains-how-...
The sysadm caught him playing it and promptly unistalled the game.
However the important business application hosted on the server then stopped working and no one could figure out why.
Nothing would work... even after lots of debugging, error log analysis and redeploying.
The developer suggested installing Doom again and lo and behold, the application started working.
Software would ship with shared DLL's, uninstalling an application would usually have a knock on effect.
MS-DOS was used a lot for small office servers. Whilst Windows NT4 was growing in popularity, it was an expensive option for firms. Plus it was hard to play games on NT4 due to memory protection issues.
A fable of Doom being needed to run a server in today's environment is ridiculous, however back then things were a lot less mature. The issue wasn't limited to just games. Any application with shared files was a nightmare, normally you just renamed files, rebooted, then if things worked you could delete the files.
Heck, back in the day I caught someone (thankfully not at the place I worked) running a game (some FPS) server on their exchange server box. Running Steam is well within the realm of possibilities.
Oh, yes it did. Served us well. (evil grin)
Note: Also embedded web browser into our business application in development-mode only. The GUI forms and such. Policy had IE locked down but embedded browser still worked lol. So, fast coders got the job done quickly then were bullshitting around on Internet till someone approached. One key stroke and back to boring UI testing. ;)
1) welcome to the wonderful and horrible world of a journeyman in the middle
So, sysadmin was thanking me for helping him deal with machines that were inexplicably always crashing "because Acer machines are garbage." You feel more or less conflicted now? :P
[edit] I feel about the same, as a system admin, I get bit in the /\$$ way too often by good intentions. I hear they pave a road with them (I think I worked there).
Perhaps you meant it's a later version of Windows, or the game's spiritual predecessor, Theme Park, which ran in DOS.
Edit: Maybe not this since it's unrelated to virtual memory but it's along the same lines, going to some lengths to keep software compatible
No, at least not for apps that are distributed on the official channels and signed with an official developer cert.
> * Are blizzard games attack vectors?
All games are, savegame manipulation is often the first step towards jailbreaking a game console.
Checkmate.