The Old New Thing

September 2009 - Page 4 of 4 - The Old New Thing

Woe unto PROGMAN.INI

September 3, 2009 Sep 3, 2009 09/3/09
Raymond Chen
Sad but true: Once you document a file format, it becomes a de facto API. The Windows 95 team learned this the hard way when they set out to replace Program Manager with Explorer. Not only were the settings in the file documented, so too was the binary file format of files. The binary file format was included for diagnostic purposes: ...

Welcome to the 11th annual Mid-Atlantic Road-E-O

September 2, 2009 Sep 2, 2009 09/2/09
Raymond Chen
The top sanitation truck drivers in the mid-Atlantic area converged on Pen Arygl, Pennsylvania for the regional finals of the SWANA Trash Collectors Road-E-O. And the results have been posted [pdf]. Only A Game's Ron Schachter reports [mp3]. (Despite the wackiness, the competition does highlight skills that all truck drivers need to master...

The wheels of government bureaucracy turn slowly: Green cards

September 2, 2009 Sep 2, 2009 09/2/09
Raymond Chen
When foreign nationals come to work at Microsoft, the legal department gets to work with the paperwork of applying for permanent residency (colloquially known as a green card even though the cards haven't been green for a long time). Obtaining permanent resident status in the United States takes a ridiculous amount of time, and I remember the...

Walt Mosspuppet: The return of the fake blog

September 1, 2009 Sep 1, 2009 09/1/09
Raymond Chen
Fake Steve Jobs put on the map the wonderful insanity of the fake celebrity blog. (I'm sure there were others before Fake Steve Jobs, but that's the one that made it cool and hip.) Copycats sprung up, from Fake Steve Ballmer to Mock Mark Cuban, but none of them really had the staying power of good old Fake Steve Jobs. (movie trailer voice...

One way to make sure nobody sends you feedback

September 1, 2009 Sep 1, 2009 09/1/09
Raymond Chen
Last year, somebody sent out a message to very large group of people describing a change to, well, what it described isn't important to the story. What's important is that the message ended with the following sentence: If you have questions, please send them to abcdef. If you don't see why this was a brilliant move, go back and check what ...