The Microsoft Bob code lived also on in Office 97, 2002, 2002(XP) in the <i>annoying</i> Office Agent and Windows XP (in Windows desktop search, and WinXP setup second stage welcome screen).<p>Bill Gates wife Melinda was responsible for the Microsoft Bob (marketing, management level): <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob</a><p>Related products (predecessors) were Microsoft Creative Writer and Microsoft Fine Artist (both for kids):<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine_Artist" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine_Artist</a><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Writer" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Writer</a><p>Search on Google/Youtube for better picture/videos - both sister programs are very similar to Microsoft Bob, the have navigation screens and cartoon characters that help you.
<i>Windows XP CD, there was still about 30 megabytes of storage capacity remaining.</i><p><i>Somebody decided to fill that extra capacity on the CD with dummy data and to have the Windows Setup program verify that the dummy data was still there.</i><p>Really? This feels like a Microsoft urban legend. I'm not convinced because I have an original ISO image of the first release of Windows XP Pro and it is (~500MB) much smaller than the size of even the smallest regular CD. It works, I've used it for many installs.<p>Edit: in fact only the i386 folder on the CD, which is < 500MB, is needed to install XP so if there was a hidden copy of Bob in there, it certainly doesn't fit the "30MB remaining" nor are there any files in there which are of that size with the exception of the ~75MB driver.cab; the latter contains only device drivers and the biggest one, te_protu.qm, appears to be ISDN modem firmware.
I love Raymond--he's got an erudite knowledge of Windows lore. The fellow delivers such good Microsoft standup that you can almost imagine the deadpans as he does them. Despite the constant head shaking directed at Microsoft, you can't help but laugh at how things are. Nonetheless, Raymond has rescued me many times when looking for the Windows equivalent of doing something.<p>Here's one of Raymond's Win32 API write ups/hacks for enumerating threads in a process:<p>"The tool helper library is sort of the black sheep of Win32. It grew out of the 16-bit TOOLHELP library, which provided services for system debugging tools to do things like take stack traces and enumerate all the memory in the system. The original incarnation of Win32 didn't incorporate it; it wasn't until Windows 95 that a 32-bit version of the tool helper library sort of got bolted onto the side of Win32."<p>"That's what happens when you're the black sheep of the Win32 API."<p><a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2006/02/23/537856.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2006/02/23/53785...</a>
So what is closer to Bob: that encrypted file or an empty file? On the one hand, the encrypted file is only a couple of keystrokes away from creating Bob. But there is no known process to find the right keystrokes. The empty file needs a lot more keystrokes to create Bob (rewriting it from scratch), but there is a known process for doing it.<p>Edit: Kids, I'll just assume whoever downvotes me doesn't like Computer Science very much. That's OK, but what is with the intolerance?
Isn't Dockercraft the same idea under MS Bob?
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10584956" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10584956</a>