5 ms·

There's a popular myth that Windows 10 was named so because there's tons of proprietary code checking for '95' and '98' by looking for just the '9', and that wo

There's a popular myth that Windows 10 was named so because there's tons of proprietary code checking for '95' and '98' by looking for just the '9', and that would have caused applications to break. There was no evidence of this except the Reddit comment by a user pretending to work at MS - their post history very quickly showed that was a lie. But that was taken at face value and it become part of news cycles and eventually a commonly repeated statement.

howenterprisey 5y ago
Someone ask Raymond Chen.
Nition 5y ago
Another similar one was the "Nuclear Gandhi" thing[1]. Just believable enough for programmers to think it must be true. My theory on Windows 10 would be wanting version number parity with Mac OS. Don't make a news story out of this though. Evidence: - Microsoft did the same thing with the Xbox 360 instead of calling it Xbox 2. "360" cleverly aligned it with both competing consoles of the same generation, the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Revolution (later renamed the Wii). - Microsoft implied that they might stay on Windows 10 indefinitely[2]. Who wants to be forever one version behind the competition? - After Mac OS bumped their version version up to 11, Microsoft abandoned the above and went to 11 as well. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Gandhi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Gandhi [2] https://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/microsoft-confirms-there-will-be-no-windows-11-1293309 https://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/mi...
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- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > Microsoft implied that they might stay on Windows 10 indefinitely[2]. Sure, "implied" in the sense that the article quotes a spokesman saying "Windows 10 is the last version of Windows".
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- Nasrudith 5y ago
  The nuclear Gandhi think makes sense as naturally occuring from people trying to extrapolate hidden mechanics and false pattern detection. Pokemon had the "Press/hold B increases catch chance" illusion despite being pure RNG in the code.
  - AussieWog93 5y ago
    >The nuclear Gandhi think makes sense as naturally occuring from people trying to extrapolate hidden mechanics and false pattern detection. I find a lot of "Reddit knowledge" in areas where I need accurate information to do my job (vintage console repair especially) is complete bullshit, but it makes you look smart if you repeat it. Almost always it requires an understanding of some sort of niche knowledge/art, like metal fatigue, heat transfer or potentiometers. At the same time, it's usually irrelevant to the problem at hand. In this case, the statement is nothing more than a vehicle for showing off that you understand what integer overflow is, and therefore signalling to others how smart you are. And that said, I've probably repeated the "Nuclear Gandhi" myth to a dozen other people, complete with a short explanation of unsigned integer overflow.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    > The nuclear Gandhi think makes sense as naturally occuring from people trying to extrapolate hidden mechanics and false pattern detection. Well, no. It's not something you could believe if you ever played Civilization with Gandhi. (Which is itself relatively uncommon - he can only appear in half of games that are configured with 6 opponents. With fewer than 6 opponents, he can't appear at all.) I almost never played 7-player games, but I can tell you from long experience that it's not plausible for any civilization to be more aggressive than the Zulus. For Gandhi to be "25 times more aggressive" than the other civilizations in the game, he'd need to start breaking peace treaties several times per turn as soon as he developed Democracy. And even then, Democracy arrives long, long before nuclear weapons. Gandhi would never have been noted for an affinity for nukes[1] - he'd have been noted for an affinity for stabbing you in the back with horse-mounted knights. The nuclear Gandhi thing makes sense as an example of someone who is completely unfamiliar with a system making up behavior that he thinks sounds interesting. But not as an example of people detecting false patterns. The true patterns are too obvious. [1] Nukes aren't likely to come up in a game of Civilization in any event. They appear too late; you'll win or lose before they're relevant.
kjeetgill 5y ago
I must have been tricked by this and repeated this more than a few times, no idea where I first heard it. Or am I being tricked by _this_ authoritative sounding post? I don't know which one, but I know this for certain: I'm being duped one way or another!
sofixa 5y ago
In the absence of a more credible theory, many people roll with that explanation. It does kind of make sense.
whoisthemachine 5y ago
I worked on code where we had to be careful about this - but this was even before Windows 10. It was an issue with XP, Vista, 7, etc., because they didn't follow the "year" convention, so you couldn't check the version (which you might do with old enough software to be sure that it was running on an OS that your small team could support) by just using the marketing version and some clever `version >= 98` logic.
bryceacc 5y ago
I saw dozens of bugs in apps that didn't handle iOS 10 correctly. They looked at one digit to determine what the device's capabilities were and saw a "1" so they did whack stuff.

howenterprisey 5y ago

Someone ask Raymond Chen.

Nition 5y ago

Another similar one was the "Nuclear Gandhi" thing[1]. Just believable enough for programmers to think it must be true. My theory on Windows 10 would be wanting version number parity with Mac OS. Don't make a news story out of this though. Evidence: - Microsoft did the same thing with the Xbox 360 instead of calling it Xbox 2. "360" cleverly aligned it with both competing consoles of the same generation, the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Revolution (later renamed the Wii). - Microsoft implied that they might stay on Windows 10 indefinitely[2]. Who wants to be forever one version behind the competition? - After Mac OS bumped their version version up to 11, Microsoft abandoned the above and went to 11 as well. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Gandhi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Gandhi [2] https://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/microsoft-confirms-there-will-be-no-windows-11-1293309 https://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/mi...

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
thaumasiotes 5y ago
> Microsoft implied that they might stay on Windows 10 indefinitely[2]. Sure, "implied" in the sense that the article quotes a spokesman saying "Windows 10 is the last version of Windows".
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Nasrudith 5y ago
The nuclear Gandhi think makes sense as naturally occuring from people trying to extrapolate hidden mechanics and false pattern detection. Pokemon had the "Press/hold B increases catch chance" illusion despite being pure RNG in the code.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  >The nuclear Gandhi think makes sense as naturally occuring from people trying to extrapolate hidden mechanics and false pattern detection. I find a lot of "Reddit knowledge" in areas where I need accurate information to do my job (vintage console repair especially) is complete bullshit, but it makes you look smart if you repeat it. Almost always it requires an understanding of some sort of niche knowledge/art, like metal fatigue, heat transfer or potentiometers. At the same time, it's usually irrelevant to the problem at hand. In this case, the statement is nothing more than a vehicle for showing off that you understand what integer overflow is, and therefore signalling to others how smart you are. And that said, I've probably repeated the "Nuclear Gandhi" myth to a dozen other people, complete with a short explanation of unsigned integer overflow.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > The nuclear Gandhi think makes sense as naturally occuring from people trying to extrapolate hidden mechanics and false pattern detection. Well, no. It's not something you could believe if you ever played Civilization with Gandhi. (Which is itself relatively uncommon - he can only appear in half of games that are configured with 6 opponents. With fewer than 6 opponents, he can't appear at all.) I almost never played 7-player games, but I can tell you from long experience that it's not plausible for any civilization to be more aggressive than the Zulus. For Gandhi to be "25 times more aggressive" than the other civilizations in the game, he'd need to start breaking peace treaties several times per turn as soon as he developed Democracy. And even then, Democracy arrives long, long before nuclear weapons. Gandhi would never have been noted for an affinity for nukes[1] - he'd have been noted for an affinity for stabbing you in the back with horse-mounted knights. The nuclear Gandhi thing makes sense as an example of someone who is completely unfamiliar with a system making up behavior that he thinks sounds interesting. But not as an example of people detecting false patterns. The true patterns are too obvious. [1] Nukes aren't likely to come up in a game of Civilization in any event. They appear too late; you'll win or lose before they're relevant.

kjeetgill 5y ago

I must have been tricked by this and repeated this more than a few times, no idea where I first heard it. Or am I being tricked by _this_ authoritative sounding post? I don't know which one, but I know this for certain: I'm being duped one way or another!

sofixa 5y ago

In the absence of a more credible theory, many people roll with that explanation. It does kind of make sense.

whoisthemachine 5y ago

I worked on code where we had to be careful about this - but this was even before Windows 10. It was an issue with XP, Vista, 7, etc., because they didn't follow the "year" convention, so you couldn't check the version (which you might do with old enough software to be sure that it was running on an OS that your small team could support) by just using the marketing version and some clever `version >= 98` logic.

bryceacc 5y ago

I saw dozens of bugs in apps that didn't handle iOS 10 correctly. They looked at one digit to determine what the device's capabilities were and saw a "1" so they did whack stuff.