Notepad bug in details

I have told you guys a brief explanation about how Bush Hid the facts notepad bug occurs.

It is because of IsTextUnicode function. This function is used to guess opening files are using which types of encoding (the traditional ANSI encoding or the Unicode encoding).

For a long sentences, it’s fine. But for a short word, it become pretty tricky. Let’s go into details.

To store “Hello” in notepad, it will convert to encoding. There are many types of encoding notepad support. Most encoding starts with their specific prefix to tell the program what types of encoding they are using. But the tricky things happen because Notepad also support encoding with NO prefixes, such as the traditional ANSI encoding (i.e., “plain ASCII”) and the Unicode (little-endian) encoding with no BOM.

Confused? See below Hello in different types of encoding.

48 65 6C 6C 6F This is the traditional ANSI encoding. (No prefix)

48 00 65 00 6C 00 6C 00 6F 00 This is the Unicode (little-endian) encoding with no BOM. (No prefix)

FF FE 48 00 65 00 6C 00 6C 00 6F 00 This is the Unicode (little-endian) encoding with BOM. (FF FE is prefix)

FE FF 00 48 00 65 00 6C 00 6C 00 6F This is the Unicode (big-endian) encoding with BOM. Notice that this BOM is in the opposite order from the little-endian BOM. (FE FF is prefix)

EF BB BF 48 65 6C 6C 6F This is UTF-8 encoding. The first three bytes are the UTF-8 encoding of the BOM. (EF BB BF is prefix)

So there is still a chance that short word with traditional ASCII or Unicode (little-endian) encoding with no BOM might start with EF BB BF, which is UTF-8 encoding prefix. Or maybe FF FE which is prefix for Unicode (little-endian) encoding with BOM.

When that happens, Notepad function IsTextUnicode might guess the wrong encoding as that prefix of other encoding. Remember no matter what encoding you saved with notepad, Notepad will try to guess again when you open the file.

But I don’t see this bug in Windows Vista anymore. So I think Microsoft guys have already developed improved IsTextUnicode function or make Notepad to open in saved file encoding.

Reference : MSDN blog

Windows Vista SP1 Beta

Microsoft has just released Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Beta yesterday. According to Nick White announcements, currently the beta sp1 is available only to a private group of Beta testers.

Here is the my highlights about SP1.

• Have a size range from 51MB – 679.6MB depending on how often you update your Windows
• Improve responsiveness – The delay between pressing CTRL-ALT-DELETE and getting the password prompt, resuming from Hibernation or Sleep are pretty much gone
• Search option has been removed from the Start menu, instead “Search Everywhere” with users can choose their favourite desktop search program such as Google Desktop.
• Select Volumes – a new option in Windows Vista’s Disk Defragmenter
• BitLocker Control Panel – users of Windows Vista Enterprise and Ultimate are now able to choose which drives to encrypt

After I have read about all new exciting features, I wish I am one of the private beta testers. Anyway, I’ll be eagerly waiting for the new SP1 to come out and surely I’ll install it as soon as it hits public.

Source : Vista Blog

Microsoft Windows 95 commercial

After I’ve enjoyed Pirates of the Silicon Valley, I was looking for Windows 95 commercial. I thought that commercial would be quite interesting as what I’ve seen Apple commercial for Mac is too self-arrogant and frankly, I feel funny.

Besides the facts that all those data in that movie is accurate or not, I’ve enjoyed the movie and I liked this commercial too.

Sometimes, we should know the history. History made us who we are today.

Microsoft BlueScreen Screen Saver

Microsoft has been famous and criticized for their BlueScreen of Death(BSOD). Most people of Windows 95, 98 era scariest nightmare is they saw BSOD.

But since Windows XP, Microsoft has greatly improved their OS and at Vista, I have been using for six months, I have never seen BSOD again.

As BSOD become a thing in the past, now Microsoft even made fun of it by releasing BlueScreen Screensaver. First time I know Microsoft has a sense of humor.

What’s this screensaver?

Bluescreen cycles between different Blue Screens and simulated boots every 15 seconds or so. Virtually all the information shown on Bluescreen’s BSOD and system start screen is obtained from your system configuration – its accuracy will fool even advanced NT developers. For example, the NT build number, processor revision, loaded drivers and addresses, disk drive characteristics, and memory size are all taken from the system Bluescreen is running on.

Use Bluescreen to amaze your friends and scare your enemies!

The truth of Bush hid the facts

If you don’t know what is “Bush hid the facts”, let me give you a brief explanation. This instructions work on all windows except Vista.

• 1. Open your Notepad
• 2. Type “bush hid the facts” without quote
• 3. Save the file with any name
• 4. Open the file again

What you see isn’t what you typed. This is an easter egg. Or maybe even Microsoft’s programmers hate Bush. That’s what we knew.

But the truth is that all 4-3-3-5 strings work. So if you type “this app can break”. The same results. It appears to be bug from Microsoft which has been fixed in Vista. Here is someone from JCXP.net forum explanation:

Whenever we open a text file in notepad, it determines whether the text is ASCII or Unicode.. But actually there is no way in the world to exactly determine whether the text is ASCII or Unicode.. There is a function called IsTextUnicode in windows API.. The function does some tests on the text based on statistical data.. This is what MSDN says about the function..
“The function uses various statistical and deterministic methods to make its determination.. These tests are not foolproof. The statistical tests assume certain amounts of variation between low and high bytes in a string, and some ASCII strings can slip through. For example, if lpBuffer points to the ASCII string 0×41, 0x0A, 0x0D, 0x1D (Anr^Z), the string passes the IS_TEXT_UNICODE_STATISTICS test, though failure would be preferable.”

Okay enough is enough. I hope now you get the idea of what’s really going on.

Reference : Digg

Microsoft hackers blog

Surprisingly, Microsoft has just started hacker blog. As of now, they still don’t have any post yet except welcome post.

According to welcome post from the blog,

Microsoft does have hackers, and its time to introduce you to some of them and show you what it is, exactly that they do.

Generally most of the content you’ll read and people you’ll meet on this blog will be somehow related to security but not all by any stretch.

Okay, let’s wait and see what Microsoft hackers are doing.

Old Microsoft Word Easter Egg

Well, it’s time to revisit that old Microsoft word easter egg. I don’t know what is the purpose of this, but this easter egg works on all version of Microsoft Word.

Try Open a New Word Document and then type below:

=rand (200, 99)

See what happened? Have fun!

Windows Live Mail with Outlook

If you like windows live mail, but if you don’t want to install their Live Mail Desktop Beta version, you can install Outlook Connector. Outlook Connector will let you use your Live Mail account within Outlook.

After you install, you will see extra menu “Outlook Connector” in your Outlook menu.

Reference : Windows Blog

Solitaire game Easter egg

Microsoft never want you to lose their famous Windows built-in Solitaire game, do you know that?

It is a easter egg from Microsoft.

Whenever you are playing Solitaire game, you can press Alt+Shift+2 to win the game instantly.

Never lose a Solitaire games again!

How to install Vista bubble screen saver in Win XP

From Softpedia and Joejoe , you can download four new Microsoft official Vista screen saver ported to Windows XP. All these new screen saver look very modernized. But my favourite is bubble, because it doesn’t change the desktop background when it’s running.

BtN’s tips : I’m really wonder why Softpedia and original author didn’t pack installation instruction. Those of you who don’t know what to do with downloaded file, extract it to C:WindowsSystem32. And you can choose that extract screen saver in Desktop–>> (Right Click) Properties —>>> Screen Saver Menu. But Settings will not be working, you need to edit registry as in the readme included with download. For most of us, no need to bother about changing the setting unless we really want to mess with registry.