Comments on My ESmile: 3 things which Microsoft can never explain

2 is due to note pad trying to ascertain the encod...

2010-06-24T22:07:16.460-07:00

2 is due to note pad trying to ascertain the encoding of the file. It's not particularly elegant at this and mucks it up in quite a few ways

The first two is simple and any person with little...

2009-11-05T11:04:35.441-08:00

The first two is simple and any person with little computer knowledge knows it. I liked the third one.

You know, all of you saying that those who "r...

2009-08-26T05:57:15.383-07:00

You know, all of you saying that those who "ruined" it are spoilsports...there are people who found that more interesting than the article itself. I had seen this article somewhere else before, however the comments gave it a breath of life.

M$ is a marketing company. Not a software company...

2009-08-15T22:37:49.462-07:00

M$ is a marketing company. Not a software company. They simply happen to market software.

Thus it makes perfect sense that people at Microsoft wouldn't know how what they sell works.

Have you ever called Microsoft support? If you ask...

2009-08-08T20:14:19.118-07:00

Have you ever called Microsoft support? If you ask any of them where the start button is they'll straight up hang up on you. I am sure no one there can anwser any of these questions, that doesn't make it magic though o.x

I totally agree that you guys are spoilsports....w...

2009-08-08T18:48:20.183-07:00

I totally agree that you guys are spoilsports....we don't care how it works just that it does....and if you really sat there and figured out how it works..you have no life

You're all spoilsports, I prefer the magic tag...

2009-07-19T12:09:29.993-07:00

You're all spoilsports, I prefer the magic tag, what's wrong with you guys , you'll be explaining Harry Potter next.............

Magic #1: In good old days of MS-DOS: con, aux and...

2009-07-16T06:44:30.568-07:00

Magic #1: In good old days of MS-DOS: con, aux and prn stand for 'console', 'auxiliary' and 'printer' and stand for output devices. When Windows was designed, to ensure backward compatibility with MS-DOS, it was decided that con, aux and prn won't be allowed as directory names.

Magic #2: Actually Notepad tries to be intelligent. Based on the content of a text file (reads them byte by byte), it tries to guess whether its written in English or Japanese or whatever (there are so many character sets in the world). It so happens that 'Bush hid the facts' kind of confuses Notepad and it thinks that its not English but Japanese text, and so all the characters are shown in Kanji. Microsoft didn't do this on purpose.

Magic #3: =rand(X,Y) is a word function, undocumented in word help but documented in Microsoft knowledge base. It generates X number of paragraphs, Y number of sentences per paragraph. Each sentence is The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. which essentially contains all letters of English alphabet.Try=rand(1,1)=rand(2,1)=rand(1,3)See more about it in http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=212251 (How to insert sample text into a document in Word)Actually there is nothing magical in software.

If you want to create a folder with these name then follow the following instructions

Go to start
Run
Type CMD
in promt
type MKDIR \\.\c:\con

#3 comes close to an Easter Egg, but seems to have...

2009-07-15T18:23:55.754-07:00

#3 comes close to an Easter Egg, but seems to have been placed deliberately as a useful if undocumented function.

#1 was very well explained. I, too, go back to the command-prompt days and realized that output redirection would be ambiguous if pseudo device names like CON were permitted as file and folder names.

#2 doesn't work for me under Windows 7 RC; I'll try it when I reboot back to good ol' XP.

#3 is simply a function to generate random text (w...

2009-07-15T07:36:11.262-07:00

#3 is simply a function to generate random text (well, not so random, I realize). It's well known in the apps teaching community. Not magic at all. Sorry.

#2 worked for me I don't care whether these a...

2009-07-11T14:24:11.856-07:00

#2 worked for me

I don't care whether these are truly inexplicable or not, it still amused me for a few minutes :)

The one about Bush (number 2) doesn't work for...

2009-07-08T20:29:11.291-07:00

The one about Bush (number 2) doesn't work for me. The other two do, it's kind of amusing. I'm using Windoes 7, so the middle one may have been fixed.

hey ben, why dont you get off your high horse now....

2009-07-08T20:26:18.334-07:00

hey ben, why dont you get off your high horse now.

thats enough showing off for one day

For magic #3 that can be explained quite easily. ...

2009-07-08T20:22:11.551-07:00

For magic #3 that can be explained quite easily.

The company that packages Microsoft Word for various word processing schools and classes put that in to make it easier for students to have a list of sentences to manipulate.

You sound like you don't know what you are talking about.

@Ben: But what makes you think M$ knows anything ...

2009-07-08T20:19:22.867-07:00

@Ben:

But what makes you think M$ knows anything about their products?

=rand (200, 99) works for =rand (1, 1) magic not,...

2009-07-08T19:44:28.338-07:00

=rand (200, 99)

works for =rand (1, 1)
magic not, but good yeah... good way to test ALL the characters for any given font... we all could use this tip with font trails....

#3 works on the Mac version of MS office too!

2009-07-08T19:11:22.455-07:00

#3 works on the Mac version of MS office too!

#3 Works on the Mac version of MS office too!

2009-07-08T19:10:29.964-07:00

#3 Works on the Mac version of MS office too!

You might want to actually you know ask someone wi...

2009-07-08T11:39:19.831-07:00

You might want to actually you know ask someone with knowledge of Windows about this "magic" before you claim nobody at MS can answer why these things happen.

Ben is right about #1, I was going to give about t...

2009-07-08T11:10:55.016-07:00

Ben is right about #1, I was going to give about the same reply, but his list of reserved words is better than I remembered.
#2 does not work on my PC. maybe they killed it with vista.
#3 is just a programmer that had a bit of fun.

1. well, ben explained it. 2. didn't work, ...

2009-07-08T10:04:36.686-07:00

1. well, ben explained it. 2. didn't work, maybe i'm just computer illiterate. and 3. is obviously a shortcut to a part of the tutorial. I'm sure there's a way to do that with all the other tutorial reports.

or maybe its just me

The second example is caused by an ambiguity in th...

2009-07-08T09:47:53.352-07:00

The second example is caused by an ambiguity in the way that notepad interprets the encoding of the saved file.

Any message of that length will do the same thing.

The first bit of magic is quite simple really. Th...

2009-07-08T09:30:19.899-07:00

The first bit of magic is quite simple really. The statement "At Microsoft the whole Team, couldn't answer why this happened!" is probably false.

"con" is a reserved word (and has been since DOS I believe). 'Con' in MS land stands for Console.

Here's a list of folders you can't create (i.e. reserved words)

CON, PRN, AUX, CLOCK$, NUL, COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, COM5, COM6, COM7, COM8, COM9, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, LPT4, LPT5, LPT6, LPT7, LPT8, LPT9

I don't know what "team" you are referencing but anyone with a little knowledge about Microsoft's products should know this.