原文链接：https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060609-07/?p=30923

As we saw earlier, the “Add or Remove Programs” control panel used several heuristics to attempt to determine things like program size and frequency of user. Why did it bother doing this at all?

正如早先讨论过的，控制面板中的「添加/删除程序」使用了多种启发式的方式来判断应用程序的大小和使用频率。为什么它要做这种吃力不讨好的事情呢？

At the time the feature was added, disk space was not cheap like it is today. One of the problems users were having was running out of disk space and not knowing what they could safely delete. Thus was born the Disk Cleanup utility, which attempted to guide the user through various things that could be deleted in order to make disk space available.

这个功能最初上线的时候，磁盘空间不像如今这样廉价。用户需要面对的问题之一是磁盘空间不够用了，而又不知道可以放心地删掉什么东西。由此，「磁盘清理工具」诞生了，它会引导用户执行一系列操作来判断可以删掉哪些东西来释放磁盘空间。

In addition to cleaning up temporary files, you could also remove programs that weren’t being used. But how do you know which programs you weren’t using? (Maybe you were using a program without realizing it because it ran automatically.) And how do you know how much disk space would be recovered if you removed a program?

在删除临时空间之外，用户还可以删除不再使用的应用程序（来释放磁盘空间）。然而，用户如何判断有哪些应用是用不到的呢？（有些应用是自动运行的，所以用户可能根本没有意识到它的存在。）此外，用户又怎么能知道移除掉某个应用后能释放多少磁盘空间呢？

That’s where the program size and frequency of use heuristics came in. By providing this information (or at least trying to), the “Add or Remove Programs” control panel could help users decide which programs to remove.

这就是（「添加/删除程序」控制面板项中）应用程序大小和使用频率估算起作用的时候了。通过提供这些信息（至少是试着提供了），「添加/删除程序」得以帮助用户判断要删除哪个应用。

Of course, nowadays, with hard drives in the hundreds-of-gigabytes range, disk space has become so cheap as to be nearly free. The need to remove programs to make more disk space available is largely gone, but the feature remains as a vestigial organ.

当然，如今硬盘容量已按数百 GB 为单位计算，磁盘空间也（相对地）便宜到跟不要钱一样。通过删除应用程序来腾出更多磁盘空间的需求基本已经不存在了，但这个功能就像退化了的器官一样保留了下来。

原文地址：https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060525-04/?p=31073

In former times very cross-platform NTVDM was. If you view NTVDM.EXE in a hex editor, you’ll find the message “Using Yoda on an x86 may be hazardous to your systems’ health” buried inside it.

很久以前，NTVDM 的跨平台程度是非常高的。如果你在十六进制编辑器里查看 NTVDM.EXE 的内容，你会看到里面藏着这么一句话：“在 x86 系统上使用尤达大师可能对您系统的健康有害”。

Yoda was the name of the internal debugger that was used to debug the MS-DOS emulator, also known as the Virtual DOS Machine or VDM. (Buried inside the Yoda source code are such wonderful variables as “luke” and “chewy”.)

Yoda 是用来调试 MS-DOS 模拟器的内部调试器的名字，MS-DOS 模拟器又称作 DOS 虚拟机（VDM）。（在 Yoda 的源代码里还深藏着其它妙妙的变量名，比如 luke 和 chewy（译注：都是《星球大战》梗））。

The Intel 80386 has a mode known as “Virtual-8086 mode” or just “V86 mode” wherein the CPU ran as if it were an 8086, except that if the program did anything interesting like issue a privileged instruction, call a software interrupt, or fault, control would return to the protected-mode supervisor for handling. (Win386 used this same CPU mode to support multiple MS-DOS sessions.)

Intel 80386 处理器有个“虚拟 8086 模式”（或者简称为 V86 模式），在此模式下，CPU 将按照 8086（实模式）的方式运行，不过只要有程序试图执行如特权指令、软件中断或出错之类的行为，就会返回到保护模式的管理之下来处理这一切。（Win386 也使用这一 CPU 模式来支援多个 MS-DOS 会话。）

When running on an 80386-class processor, NTVDM used this mode to do its emulation, making the CPU do the heavy lifting of decoding instructions and emulating them, which took place at very close to full speed. On the other hand, NTVDM on the non-x86 processors (Alpha, PPC, MIPS, etc.) had to implement an entire 8086 emulator, with all the decoding and execution performed in software. Yoda was the debugger you used if you needed to debug the emulator.

当运行在 80386 级的处理器上时，NTVDM 使用虚拟 8086 模式来进行模拟工作，让 CPU 来承担解码指令、模拟行为之类的繁重工作，并且基本上可以全速运行。但另一方面，在非 x86 处理器上（如 Alpha、PPC、MIPS 等等）就要实现一整个 8086 模拟器，对指令的解码和执行工作完全依赖软件模拟。Yoda 就是那个用来调试这个模拟器的调试器。

And that’s why NTVDM has a message warning you not to use Yoda on an x86. Because on an x86, there is no instruction emulator. There is nothing to debug.

这就是为什么 NTVDM 里有一条警告不要在 x86 系统上使用 Yoda 的原因——在 x86 系统上并没有一个 x86 指令模拟器的存在，么得调试工作可做。

(My thanks to Andrew McLaren and Tony Gaston for providing historical background.)

（感谢 Andrew McLaren 和 Tony Gaston 提供历史背景信息。）

原文链接：https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060413-09/?p=31543

We’ve seen how the names for some Microsoft products had to be changed due to a name conflict. I’m told that the people who had to come up with the name for the database product avoided this pitfall in a clever way: Instead of trying to avoid a name that was already taken, they intentionally used a name that was already taken: By Microsoft itself.

我们已经见识过有一些微软产品的名字因为命名冲突而不得不改名的情况。据说要给一款数据库产品的员工巧妙地避开了这一大坑：没有选择不使用已经被占用的名字，而是恰恰相反选择了一款已经被占用的，（而占用它的不是别人，）正是微软自己。

They discovered that Microsoft had a long-forgotten terminal emulator product called Microsoft Access. “Access” sounded like an appropriate name for a database product, so they blew the dust off it and gave the name a new life.

这些人发现微软有一款被尘封许久的终端模拟器产品叫 Microsoft Access。「Access」一听就是个适合数据库产品的好名字，于是他们就为它掸去尘土，并为这个名字赋予了新生。

原文链接：https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060412-09/?p=31563

(This is the first in a series of short posts on where Microsoft products got their names.)

（本文是一系列有关微软产品如何起名的小故事的第一篇。）

The original name for the malware protection service was “mpsvc” the “Microsoft Protection Service”, but it was discovered later that that filename was already used by malware! As a result, the name of the service had to be changed by sticking an “ms” in front, making it “msmpsvc.exe”. Therefore, technically, its name is the “Microsoft Microsoft Protection Service”. (This is, of course, not to be confused with “mpssvc.exe”, which is, I guess, the “Microsoft Protection Service Service”.)

恶意软件防护服务原来的服务名叫 mpsvc，是 Microsoft Protection Service 的缩写，结果后来我们发现，那个文件名居然已经被一款恶意软件给占掉了！于是乎，服务名称就得作出修改，而修改的方式就是在前面加上一个「ms」，使其变成了「msmpsvc.exe」。故而，技术上而言，msmpsvc 代表的是「微软微软防护服务」。（当然还是不要与 mpssvc.exe 混淆了，后者我估计是「微软防护服务服务」的缩写。）

Fortunately, the Marketing folks can attempt to recover by deciding that “msmpsvc” stands for “Microsoft Malware Protection Service”. But you and I will know what it really stands for.

幸运的是，营销人员们通过让「msmpsvc」代表「微软恶意软件防护服务」尝试挽回了损失，不过你我现在都知道它的本来含义了。

原文链接：https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060410-17/?p=32703

Last time, we saw one example of a “decoy” used in the service of application compatibility with respect to the Printers Control Panel. Today we’ll look at another decoy, this time for the Display Control Panel.

在上次的文章中，我们介绍了与打印机控制面板的有关的、一个为应用程序兼容性而设的“诱饵”控制面板的案例。今天我们来讲另一个案例，这次是为了显示（属性）控制面板的。

When support for multiple monitors was being developed, a major obstacle was that a large number of display drivers hacked the Display Control Panel directly instead of using the documented extension mechanism. For example, instead of adding a separate page to the Display Control Panel’s property sheet for, say, virtual desktops, they would just hack into the “Settings” page and add their button there. Some drivers were so adventuresome as to do what seemed like a total rewrite of the “Settings” page. They would take all the controls, move them around, resize them, hide some, show others, add new buttons of their own, and generally speaking treat the page as a lump of clay waiting to be molded into their own image. (Here’s a handy rule of thumb: If your technique works only if the user speaks English, you probably should consider the possibility that what you’re doing is relying on an implementation detail rather than something that will be officially supported going forward.)

早先开发多显示器支持的时候，我们遇到的一大问题是有为数众多的显示驱动程序是直接“黑”进显示控制面板（做修改）的，而没有使用文档中给出的扩展机制。

例如，某款驱动可能没有选择在显示控制面板的属性页里多加一页的方式，来增加对诸如虚拟桌面之类功能的支持，而是选择直接“黑”进显示控制面板的“设置”页面，然后在里面加上一个按钮。有些选手则更是重量级，选择干脆把整个“设置”页面重写一遍，把所有的控件挪来挪去、放大缩小、藏起这个、显示那个，再把自家的按钮大大方方地摆上台面。

基本上，这些驱动拿着“设置”页面当成了一块粘土，爱怎么揉全看它们自己的喜好。（这里有一条经验法则：如果你的做法只在用户的语言是英语的前提下才会起效，那你多半应该考虑你的所作所为是依赖实现细节、而不是会得到官方支持的做法。）

In order to support multiple monitors, the Settings page on the Display Control Panel underwent a major overhaul. But when you tried to open the Display Control Panel on a system that had one of these aggressive drivers installed, it would crash because the driver ran around rearranging things like it always did, even though the things it was manipulating weren’t what the developers of the driver intended!

为了开发多显示器支持，“设置”页面经历了大量的重构。但（在这之后，）如果你尝试在安装了上文所述的那种激进派驱动的系统上尝试打开显示控制面板的时候，页面会崩溃，因为那些驱动还在照例跑进控制面板里去大闹天宫，却发现他们要改造的那个世界已经不是那样了！

The solution was to create a “decoy” Settings page that looked exactly like the classic Windows 95 Settings page. The decoy page’s purpose in life was to act as bait for these aggressive display drivers and allow itself to be abused mercilessly, letting the driver have its way. Meanwhile, the real Settings page (which is the one that was shown to the user), by virtue of having been overlooked, remained safe and unharmed.

（对此的）解决方案是造一个跟 Windows 95 传统的（显示控制面板）设置页面一样的“诱饵”页面，它的存在意义则是当成香饽饽，让那些激进派驱动们进去按自己的想法大闹一番，同时又确保躲过一劫的、真正向用户展示的设置页面安然无恙。

There was no attempt to make this decoy Settings page do anything interesting at all. Its sole job was to soak up mistreatment without complaining. As a result, those drivers lost whatever nifty features their shenanigans were trying to accomplish, but at least the Display Control Panel stayed alive and allowed the user to do what they were trying to do in the first place: Adjust their display settings.

作诱饵的那个设置页面，除了默默承受驱动的胡搅蛮缠之外什么用处也没有。最后的结果是，驱动们想要通过诡计实现的那些花哨功能一个也没有展现出来，但至少（真正的）显示控制面板好好地活了下来，使用户得以实现它们本来的愿望：修改显示设置。