The Old New Thing

From inside the Redmond Reality Distortion Field: Why publish documents in PDF?

January 4, 2011 Jan 4, 2011 01/4/11

Raymond Chen

A few years ago, the Windows 7 team developed a document to introduce technology writers to the features of Windows 7. The document was released in PDF format, which created quite a stir among certain people trapped inside the Redmond Reality Distortion Field, who indignantly complained, Why are we releasing this document in PDF ...

Begin feeling

January 3, 2011 Jan 3, 2011 01/3/11

Raymond Chen

A few years ago, the gas station near Microsoft's main campus (the one which had been run by my colleague in a previous stage of his career) appeared to have suffered some problems with the LCD unit on one of its pumps. Instead of "Please insert card", it said "@leace incebd cabd". As a geek, I quickly determined that bit 4 got wiped out in ...