Exploring Windows Failures

So Voxar just described to me a scenario he just experienced in Windows. He ctrl-C’d folder A, pasted it into destination, and while Windows was thrashing on that operation, he ctrl-C’d folder B. By now, Windows was done thrashing and initiated the transfer proper, only, it’s now copying folder B, not A! We can from this infer that during a clipboard file transfer in Windows XP, the clipboard’s content is read *multiple times* during a single operation, during different stages of said operation, even though the stages may be very far apart in time.

This, my friends, is what we programmers refer to as “ugly, ugly hack” and not something you put into shipping code with any sense of pride, much less into an integral part of your operating system.

This event evokes the memory of when my brother accidentally moved his “666” folder (containing pretty much every semi-important file he has – personal documents, all his music, pictures, movies, you name it, in one very big soup of nested “New Folder (3)”’s) into an ajacent folder by dragging slightly during a double click. The move is instantaneous. After all, it’s just a single rewrite of the file table on the disk. He quickly realizes his mistake, goes into the ajacent folder, ctrl-X'es the mighty 666 folder, and ctrl-V’s it into the root of the disk where it belongs. Now, suddenly this isn’t an instantaneous transaction. Windows pops up its Moving Files dialog box, progress bar and all, and starts, very slowly, to move the files back, one by one. Half-way through, my brother hears the dreaded “BONGG” sound followed by an error dialog: “Could not move file: Permission denied” (or similar). His “seriously now.txt” (containing all passwords, phone numbers, and any information that could ever be of importance) and most of the mp3 collection have been moved. Everything else? Gone. It’s not in the root’s “666” folder, and the 666 folder is completely gone from the ajacent folder from the beginning of the story. All the rest of the files are completely gone, and confirmed so by a search.

Now this, my friends, is not what we call an “ugly hack”. This is what we call “a real fuck-up”.