The Old New Thing

No farting please, we're Americans

April 17, 2007 Apr 17, 2007 04/17/07
Raymond Chen
Apparently, when translating their Pokémon game from Japanese to English, Nintendo changed a question in an in-game personality test that asked you what you would do if you farted. In the English-language version, you merely broke a rotten egg. What, do they think kids in the U.S. don't fart? Or that they don't enjoy fart jokes. Allow ...

The Notepad file encoding problem, redux

April 17, 2007 Apr 17, 2007 04/17/07
Raymond Chen
About every ten months, somebody new discovers the Notepad file encoding problem. Let's see what else there is to say about it. First of all, can we change Notepad's detection algorithm? The problem is that there are a lot of different text files out there. Let's look just at the ones that Notepad supports. 8-bit ANSI (of which 7-bit ...

See the Seattle Symphony on television in high definition

April 16, 2007 Apr 16, 2007 04/16/07
Raymond Chen
If you missed it on Saturday and Sunday night, you have a few more chances left. Set your DVR to record Seattle Symphony from Benaroya Hall: Brahms, Kernis and Kodály on one of its handful of repeat airings this week (the next one is tonight at 6pm on KCTS-HD). According to the story in the Seattle Times, it includes close-ups of ...

Changes to power management in Windows Vista

April 16, 2007 Apr 16, 2007 04/16/07
Raymond Chen
As I noted some time ago, it's hard to get programmers excited about power management. What's worse, programs that do take the effort to care about power management often do it rudely, hijacking your computer and preventing you from going into standby or hibernation, instead preferring to drain your battery until the computer just dies from ...

Email tip: People didn't answer your first email for a reason

April 13, 2007 Apr 13, 2007 04/13/07
Raymond Chen
It is said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Consider: From: X To: Group Y Question blah blah blah. A day or two later: From: X To: Group Y Resending due to no response. ------- Original Message ------- From: X To: Group Y Question blah blah blah. You didn't get a response ...

What is the default version of the shell common controls?

April 12, 2007 Apr 12, 2007 04/12/07
Raymond Chen
It depends on what you mean by default. As we saw earlier, the convention for Windows header files is that if you don't specify a particular version, then you get the most recent version. The shell common controls header file follows this convention, so if you include the Windows XP version of , you get functions, messages, and ...

Oh no, I have an obstructed view of Joshua Roman!

April 11, 2007 Apr 11, 2007 04/11/07
Raymond Chen
This past weekend, a group of us attended a subscription concert performance of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis at Benaroya Hall. We collectively hold a block of seats, and it's a mix of regulars and rotating guests. Our seats are close to the stage, made even closer by the hall reconfiguration to accommodate the choir and soloists; we were ...