The Old New Thing

Microspeak: Well, actually management-speak

July 17, 2008 Jul 17, 2008 07/17/08
Raymond Chen
I hate management-speak. Here's an example from an internal Web site. The purpose of this Web site is two-fold. Wow, let's look at the first stated purpose. It goes on for so long and uses blatant management-speak such as "facilitate" and "leverage" that by the time it's over, I forget how the sentence started. Going back and ...

News flash: Online drug sales are shady!

July 16, 2008 Jul 16, 2008 07/16/08
Raymond Chen
In what I'm sure is a fantastic surprise to everybody who has visited the Internet, according to a report in the New York Times, researchers at Columbia University have discovered that there are prescription drug pushers on the Internet who will sell you prescription drugs without a prescription. From what I can gather, they didn't ...

The evolution of menu templates: 32-bit extended menus

July 16, 2008 Jul 16, 2008 07/16/08
Raymond Chen
At last we reach the 32-bit extended menu template. Introduced in Windows 95, this remains the most advanced menu template format through Windows Vista. As you might expect, the 32-bit extended menu template is just a 32-bit version of the 16-bit extended menu template, so if you've been following along, you should find no real ...

The evolution of menu templates: 16-bit extended menus

July 15, 2008 Jul 15, 2008 07/15/08
Raymond Chen
Windows 95 introduced a new menu format, known as "extended menus". You declare these in a resource file with the MENUEX keyword. The 16-bit extended menu is really just a temporary stopping point on the way to the 32-bit extended menu, since the 16-bit form is supported only by the Windows 95 family of operating systems. It's sort ...

When companies make it hard for you to pay money they are owed

July 14, 2008 Jul 14, 2008 07/14/08
Raymond Chen
Elissa Ely runs into a bureaucratic wall trying to pay her invalid mother's credit card bill. They won't tell her the outstanding balance on her mother's account because "it seemed to run the risk that a stranger might pay someone else's bill." My own mother ran into a similar problem. She wanted to find out the balance in an old elementary...

Why does the “Install Font” dialog look so old-school?

July 14, 2008 Jul 14, 2008 07/14/08
Raymond Chen
8 wonders why the "Install Font" dialog looks so old-school. (And Kevin Provance demonstrates poor reading skills by not only ignoring the paragraph that explains why the suggestion box is closed, but also asking a question that's a dup of one already in the suggestion box!) Because it's a really old dialog. That dialog has been around...

Crazy ideas at the lunch table: The ice cream bicycle

July 11, 2008 Jul 11, 2008 07/11/08
Raymond Chen
At the lunch table some time ago, we considered the possibility of riding the STP atop a classic ice cream bicycle. You could play the music and cruise down the road, selling ice cream sandwiches out of your trunk. Naturally, you'd start really early in the day, because you can't go very fast on that bicycle, and besides, nobody is going ...