The Old New Thing

21: like 24 but three hours shorter

April 4, 2008 Apr 4, 2008 04/4/08
Raymond Chen
When I first heard that a new project titled 21 was coming out, I simply assumed it was the same as 24, except that Jack Bauer gets some sleep. Pre-emptive snarky comment: "Somebody was clearly sleeping when they designed Vista...

When a treehouse just isn't good enough

April 3, 2008 Apr 3, 2008 04/3/08
Raymond Chen
Not satisfied with a patio or treehouse, some people have built a monorail or a roller coaster in their backyard. And then there's this one guy who apparently has not yet run out of strange things to build in his backyard. Former projects include include a domed swimming pool, a garden accessible only from above, a carousel, and a forty-...

How do I force the ECHO command to echo?

April 3, 2008 Apr 3, 2008 04/3/08
Raymond Chen
The built-in command, how much simpler could it get? It takes whatever you put on the command line and prints it. And yet it's not that simple. For example, the must be careful not to compress whitespace, because people will write and when you execute this, the result had better be and not But what if you want to echo a blank ...

Maybe that's how you do it, but around here, we have a different convention for indicating which things are broken

April 2, 2008 Apr 2, 2008 04/2/08
Raymond Chen
One of the reactions to my story of investigating a dead computer struck me as rather strange. Commenter Steve wrote, "Usually video cards left on a table don't works well (the one inside a computer have a better probability)." While it's true that the ones inside a computer are more likely to work, it's not the case, at least around here, ...

Pranksters breathe a sigh of relief: There will never be a Building 7

April 1, 2008 Apr 1, 2008 04/1/08
Raymond Chen
It is a longstanding prank at Microsoft's main Redmond campus to send an unsuspecting new employee to building 7 under the pretense of having a meeting or needing to pick up something. There is no such building on the main Microsoft campus. This nonexistent building has also been used as a sort of inside joke. For example, if somebody ...

You can drag multiple virtual objects, you know

March 31, 2008 Mar 31, 2008 03/31/08
Raymond Chen
A customer wanted to know how they could find out the directory that the user dropped a file onto. As we already noted, users can drop files onto things other than directories, so the question itself comes with incorrect hidden assumptions. This is another one of those cases where you have to ask the customer, "What are you really trying to ...

The most academically elite team in college basketball, in quest for their first conference win in 21 years

March 28, 2008 Mar 28, 2008 03/28/08
Raymond Chen
Quantum Hoops is a new documentary which follows the college basketball program at the California Institute of Technology through its 2007–2008 season. The school is regularly honored as one of the finest academic colleges in the United States. Their basketball team, on the other hand, is not as well-honored. It has won two conference ...