Oddities page 3
Not everything that is funny is a bug. Sometimes, intention is funnier than error.
Betbest1 sent me the following image, noting the curious description of the numeric keypad:
Two-tone cream and grey keyboards are a little outdated now, and plenty of people will look at this and frown and wonder whether the “grey” keys are anything to do with that mythical Any key.
Windows 2000 Explorer has a built-in floppy copier:
I don’t even recall now where I found it – it’s hidden well. Besides, I think it caused my disc drive to make horrible noises.
Something Windows has always lacked is a definitive resource editor, something like Apple’s ResEdit. After all, if you’re going to thieve Apple’s resouces idea (badly and completely missing the point) you need an editor. Resource editors do exist, and here’s a memory usage graph of my system after briefly launching one of my applications after having allocated it a VERSIONINFO resource:
Again, this time showing the initial memory allocation (the step) for the process itself:
Unlike the fantastic Mac resource system, Windows binaries tend to be more haphazard, and those created by REALbasic have a made-up format that cannot be run through a resource editor or executable packer (compressed with UPX, the same problem recurs).
On IBM-compatible hardware, text mode is text mode. On an Acorn Archimedes, the system starts up in a graphics mode, and has a strange treat for you:
You can turn on the mouse cursor outside of the desktop!
Finally, an almost-serious system error stored inside the Macintosh kernel and revealed by Alessandro Levi Montalcini’s free Errditor tool:
One interesting curiosity about any system is what it’s doing with all your memory. Take for example the Mac kernel, which in this instance has mysteriously vacated half of its allocated memory:
When in 256-colour mode on a 640×480 screen, Acorn !Draw’s colour palette is a touch on the large size:
Acorn RISC OS has a module task called “Free”, which can be closed:
Is this free as in speech, or free as in beer?
Finally, the RedSquirrel Acorn emulator developer seems confused as to what the “Description” field of VERSIONINFO means:
This field is supposed to be the full application title, not a function summary of the product. A few people get confused over this one.