The Old New Thing

October 2005 - Page 2 of 5 - The Old New Thing

One person’s discoverable feature is another person’s annoyance

October 25, 2005 Oct 25, 2005 10/25/05
Raymond Chen
When I discussed the behavior of Windows XP SP2's autoplay dialog, one person suggested making the CD autoplay configuration dialog more discoverable to solve the problem of people not knowing how to get back to the dialog to change the settings later. But what is the boundary between discoverability and annoying behavior? ...

New device detected: Boeing 747

October 24, 2005 Oct 24, 2005 10/24/05
Raymond Chen
Once again, airplane manufacturers have been giving serious consideration to offering Internet access in the skies. Back in 1994, Boeing considered equipping each seat with a serial modem. Laptop users could hook up to the modem and dial out. (Dial-up was the primary means of connecting to the Internet back in those days.) We chuckled at ...

Fair Isle: Knitters Wanted

October 24, 2005 Oct 24, 2005 10/24/05
Raymond Chen
The National Trust of Scotland has two houses to let on the island of Fair Isle, population: 65. The two properties are available at a very reasonable rate of only £300. Per year. Although the National Trust does not promise a job, it points out that there are skill shortages in construction and knitting. The knitting cooperative ...

Why is it even possible to disable the desktop anyway?

October 21, 2005 Oct 21, 2005 10/21/05
Raymond Chen
Some time ago, I mentioned the dangers of disabling the desktop window. But why is it even possible to disable the desktop anyway? This is simply an artifact of the history of philosophy of Windows operating system design. Back in the old days, memory was tight, hard drives were luxuries, the most popular CPU for the IBM PC didn't have ...

The things in the PDC 2005 introductory video

October 20, 2005 Oct 20, 2005 10/20/05
Raymond Chen
I remarked earlier that the creative director for the PDC rummaged through our offices looking for stuff which was to be used in the opening PDC video to decorate a developer's cubicle. It all flashed by really quickly, but if you were paying attention, you might have been able to make out the following: One thing you won't find in the ...

Quick and dirty buzzword bingo cards in Excel

October 20, 2005 Oct 20, 2005 10/20/05
Raymond Chen
Jensen Harris's brief example of using Excel's random number generator reminded me that I had need for the random number generator recently myself: Generating buzzword bingo cards. At the Battlestar Galactica party, our hosts needed to create some Battlestar Galactica-themed buzzword bingo cards and asked me to help out. Here's how I did ...

There’s something about Rat Poker

October 19, 2005 Oct 19, 2005 10/19/05
Raymond Chen
When performing usability tests, one of the standard tasks we give people is to install a game, and the game we usually use is The Puzzle Collection. (Yes, it's an old game, but continually updating the game makes it less valid to compare results from one year to the next.) One of the things that the game's Setup does that always confuses ...

Be careful what you name your product group

October 18, 2005 Oct 18, 2005 10/18/05
Raymond Chen
They thought they were so clever when they named the Desktop Applications Division. "And the abbreviation is 'DAD', isn't that cute? Complements the Microsoft Office Manager toolbar (MOM)." And then the troubles started. Shortly after the new product group was formed, everybody in the product group started getting email talking about ...

Answering the phone, a classic rookie mistake

October 18, 2005 Oct 18, 2005 10/18/05
Raymond Chen
I had taken yesterday off from work just to take a breather, but I stopped by the office in the morning to pick up my bicycle helmet. (How I managed to leave my bicycle helmet at the office is not important.) My office telephone rang and I answered it. As my colleague Ken described it later, "Ah, classic rookie mistake." The call was from...