Showing results for March 2004 - The Old New Thing

Mar 31, 2004
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The look of Luna

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Luna was the code name for the Windows XP "look". The designers did a lot of research (and got off to a lot of false starts, as you might expect) before they came to the design they ultimately settled upon. During the Luna studies, that people's reaction to Luna was often, "Wow this would be a great UI for X," where X was "my dad" or "my ...

History
Mar 31, 2004
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When temperance backfires

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

[South Carolina is] the only state in the nation requiring bars to serve all hard liquor in minibottles. The minibottle's place behind the bar is even enshrined in the state's constitution. Mini-bottles are those cute little single-serving bottles you see on airplanes and in hotel refrigerators. The law was originally passed under ...

Other
Mar 30, 2004
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"Special skills" draft on the drawing board

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

The [U.S.] government is taking the first steps toward a targeted military draft of Americans with special skills in computers and foreign languages. Apparently, there is already a special system to draft "health care personnel", whatever that means. Can you imagine the havoc that could be wrought by disgruntled programmers forced ...

Other
Mar 30, 2004
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Where did my Task Manager tabs and buttons go?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Ah, welcome to "Tiny Footprint Mode". This mode exists for the ultrageeks who want to put a tiny little CPU meter in the corner of the screen. To go back to normal mode, just double-click a blank space in the border. This is one of those geek features that has created more problems than it solved. Sure, the geeks get their cute little ...

Tips/Support
Mar 29, 2004
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It's embarrassing how little Swedish you need to know

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Because everybody here speaks English. Perfectly. Sometimes they'll speak English to me even before I say anything. (My comparative silence probably gives me away as a non-native.) Other times they'll notice that I'm speaking with a bad accent and switch to English. Some humor me by speaking Swedish until I finally break down and ask (in English...

Other
Mar 29, 2004
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The army is cool, except for the part where you have to fight

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

There's some to-do over a soldier who volunteered to serve in the army who has since changed his mind and is applying for conscientous objector status. I noticed this trend over two years ago, when people who had enlisted in the armed forces underwent a change of heart after the World Trade Center attacks: Many of the enlisted personnel ...

Other
Mar 28, 2004
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You know you've been in Sweden too long when…

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Some Aussie ex-pats developed a list of “You know you've been in Sweden too long when...”. My friend who is acting as my host (and who is himself a U.S. ex-pat) says that the list is astonishingly accurate, and that your reaction to it goes through several phases. For example, my friend explained points 73 and 74 to me. In ...

Other
Mar 27, 2004
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What U.S. college students miss from home

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

I didn't believe it until I saw it myself: My friend asked me to bring red and blue plastic cups to Sweden because the U.S. students really miss them. It's true. Here's why. (This needed to be explained to me because this was a part of U.S. college life I missed out on.) These cups are valuable because they are opaque. This allows you to walk down ...

Other
Mar 26, 2004
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Yahoo's privacy policy regarding web bugs

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Here's Yahoo's privacy policy regarding so-called web bugs (or as they call them "web beacons") - these are the little 1x1 images that web sites use to keep track of where you're going. Halfway down the page (at least as of the time I wrote this, which is not the same as the time this gets posted since I write stuff in advance...) in the ...

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