The Old New Thing

The classic start menu is even more classic than it looks

January 25, 2008 Jan 25, 2008 01/25/08
Raymond Chen
In Windows 95, the Find option took its place on the Start menu between Settings and Help. In Windows 2000, the option was still there, but its name changed to Search, a name which persist today if you use the classic Start menu. When the menu option changed its name, the keyboard accelerator changed accordingly. Whereas Find used ...

The Windows 95 volume control almost went to eleven

January 22, 2008 Jan 22, 2008 01/22/08
Raymond Chen
The movie This Is Spinal Tap introduced the world to the phrase going to eleven. The people over at Windows Media Player were not immune to its charms, alluding to the catchphrase in their advertising campaign. Back in Windows 95, I know that there was at least one person who lobbied the multimedia team to give the Volume Control ...

If they had felt a little more mischievous when they titled the article Excerpts from Fischer-Spassky games

January 21, 2008 Jan 21, 2008 01/21/08
Raymond Chen
In response to the recent passing of chess celebrity Bobby Fischer, the Associated Press published an article titled Excerpts from Fischer-Spassky Games. The article consists of excerpts from the organization's coverage of the so-called Match of the Century in 1972. But given the title, I wondered whether the article had merely gone like ...

When computer programmers dabble in economics: Paying parking tickets

January 21, 2008 Jan 21, 2008 01/21/08
Raymond Chen
One of my colleagues has a degree in economics, and sometimes it manifests itself in strange ways. My colleague moved to a new apartment building and rented a parking space in the building's garage. After a month of noticing that there was usually an empty parking space or two on the street, my colleague made the economic calculation that the...

Why do registry keys have a default value?

January 18, 2008 Jan 18, 2008 01/18/08
Raymond Chen
In addition to all the named values you can create underneath a registry key with the function, there is also the so-called default value which you obtain by passing or a pointer to a null string as the . This default value is also the value set and retrieved when you call and . What's the deal with this default value? The original 16-bit ...

How did registry keys work in 16-bit Windows?

January 17, 2008 Jan 17, 2008 01/17/08
Raymond Chen
Back in 16-bit Windows, the registry was a very different beast. Originally, the only registry hive was , and the only things it was used for were COM object registration and file type registration. (Prior to the registry, file type registration was done in , and the only verb you could register for was "open".) The registry was stored in a ...

Jerry Springer: The Opera crosses the pond to visit Carnegie Hall

January 16, 2008 Jan 16, 2008 01/16/08
Raymond Chen
Back in 2002, I noted with some fascination the opening of Jerry Springer: The Opera in London. (Here's coverage in the New York Times. If you're going to skim the article, at least skim all the way to the end, wherein the real Jerry Springer is asked for his opinion.) Opening with the onstage studio audience chanting "Jer-ry! Jer-ry!", a ...