# Bush hid the facts



## knight_47 (Mar 15, 2006)

This isn't really a tech. trick, but it's an amusing one.

1.) Open an empty notepad file
2.) Type "*Bush hid the facts*" (without the quotes)
3.) Save it as whatever you want.
4.) Close it, and re-open it.

Anyone have a reasonable explanation on why it does this?


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## WhitPhil (Oct 4, 2000)

From other web posts, it appears to be a bug in Notepad.

It happens with any string of characters of the form
aaaa aaa aaa aaaaa


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## Stoner (Oct 26, 2002)

What is it you see?


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## Stoner (Oct 26, 2002)

WhitPhil said:


> From other web posts, it appears to be a bug in Notepad.
> 
> It happens with any string of characters of the form
> aaaa aaa aaa aaaaa


I'm on 98se and don't see anything but what I wrote in notepad.

Is this an XP issue?


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## etaf (Oct 2, 2003)

does it do it on 
aaaa aaa aaa aaaaa 

but does with 
Bush hid the facts

change that - does not do it if you cut and paste aaaa aaa aaa aaaaa
mmm - but does if typed in


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## Shamou (Oct 17, 2005)

*Stoner*... this is what I get back...


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## valis (Sep 24, 2004)

yeah, seen it. Try it with ANY words that have 4, 3, 3, and 5 letters, respectively, and you get that. 

Welcome to MS.

v


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## Shamou (Oct 17, 2005)

valis said:


> yeah, seen it. Try it with ANY words that have 4, 3, 3, and 5 letters, respectively, and you get that.
> 
> Welcome to MS.
> 
> v


Hey vallis... what does 'v' means? hope it's not 'vas chier' 

Sorry for hijacking your thread folks... just a poor Canuck trying to learn something...


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## valis (Sep 24, 2004)

short for 'valis'. 

sort of like zorro, only with a 'v'.


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## Shamou (Oct 17, 2005)

valis said:


> short for 'valis'.
> 
> sort of like zorro, only with a 'v'.


Thanks valis... I thought it was some kind of an emoticon..

S


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## Stoner (Oct 26, 2002)

Apparently it is not a 98se or Me issue. 
See attached img.

I booted up a laptop with xp and I got a string of squared off Os.


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## bassetman (Jun 7, 2001)

knight_47 said:


> This isn't really a tech. trick, but it's an amusing one.
> 
> 1.) Open an empty notepad file
> 2.) Type "*Bush hid the facts*" (without the quotes)
> ...


Weird!


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## bassetman (Jun 7, 2001)

Stoner said:


> Apparently it is not a 98se or Me issue.
> See attached img.
> 
> I booted up a laptop with xp and I got a string of squared off Os.


I did it with Notepad in XP Pro and it worked for me!


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## valis (Sep 24, 2004)

Shamou said:


> S


sorta feels GOOD, don't it?


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## Stoner (Oct 26, 2002)

Just booted into win2k and got the same rectangular Os as XP



Ha ha.......long live 98se


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## bassetman (Jun 7, 2001)

Stoner said:


> Just booted into win2k and got the same rectangular Os as XP
> 
> Ha ha.......long live 98se


I think the best Winders version so far!


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## Stoner (Oct 26, 2002)

I just copied the notepad executable out of a win Me OS and pasted it on a win2k desktop.
Clicked on that exe and copied the same message in and the same rectangular Os opened .

Maybe it's not notepad but the os doing this?????


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## Stoner (Oct 26, 2002)

Stoner said:


> I just copied the notepad executable out of a win Me OS and pasted it on a win2k desktop.
> Clicked on that exe and copied the same message in and the same rectangular Os opened .
> 
> Maybe it's not notepad but the os doing this?????


Correction.......if I drag and drop that text file I made onto the exe that I pasted on the desktop...it does open properly.
As a matter of fact, draging and dropping the file made by the win2k notepad exe....onto the winme exe opens the file correctly.


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## Fidelista (Jan 17, 2004)

My XP version SP_1 wont let me save it !.
Says text has been changed and won't accept unless renamed.
Maybe thats the joke-- changing of the message??? >f


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## BanditFlyer (Oct 25, 2005)

AaaaaaaaaaCHooooooooooo!!!

You guys must have some sort of virus! 



Edit: Forgot my zorro sign


B


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## valis (Sep 24, 2004)

heh....wisenheimer......it's like some weird computer haiku glitch

4,3,3,5, save, reopen, doodly. But not always. My wife's name is Erin, and 'Erin hid the facts'
shows up fine. But 'slbt abt frl plabo' doesn't. 

hmmm.


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## WhitPhil (Oct 4, 2000)

Did you type the "Erin hid the facts" into a new Txt file, or just clear the text from a previous one?

It "appears" that any letter combinations 4,3,3,5 into a new txt file, always shows the weird characters. But, if you then select and replace them with another 4,3,3,5 set, they show correctly.


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## valis (Sep 24, 2004)

WhitPhil said:


> Did you type the "Erin hid the facts" into a new Txt file, or just clear the text from a previous one?


dunno. She did. Didn't hold my attention that long. 

rather curious as to how, and for that matter, why, someone figured this out.


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## BanditFlyer (Oct 25, 2005)

I'm on Win 98 so ...

I didn't get to see that particular stupid pet trick.

I'm guessing it was the fault of a programmer at Sun Microsystems (or Xerox Parc, or Apple, or ...) who knew that M$ was going to steal their code, so they decided to have a little fun


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## Couriant (Mar 26, 2002)

Mine was in chinese.


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## Couriant (Mar 26, 2002)

didn't attach pic...


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## knight_47 (Mar 15, 2006)

Tidus4Yuna said:


> Mine was in chinese.


LOL! That's pretty funny  It shouldn't be like that...


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## amitmohod (Jun 20, 2006)

The reason is that Notepad has to edit files in a variety of encodings, and when its back against the wall, sometimes it's forced to guess. 
Here's the file "Hello" in various encodings: 
48 65 6C 6C 6F 
This is the traditional ANSI encoding.
48 00 65 00 6C 00 6C 00 6F 00 
This is the Unicode (little-endian) encoding with no BOM.
FF FE 48 00 65 00 6C 00 6C 00 6F 00 
This is the Unicode (little-endian) encoding with BOM. The BOM (FF FE) serves two purposes: First, it tags the file as a Unicode document, and second, the order in which the two bytes appear indicate that the file is little-endian.
00 48 00 65 00 6C 00 6C 00 6F 
This is the Unicode (big-endian) encoding with no BOM. Notepad does not support this encoding.
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.
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.
2B 2F 76 38 2D 48 65 6C 6C 6F 
This is UTF-7 encoding. The first five bytes are the UTF-7 encoding of the BOM. Notepad doesn't support this encoding.
Notice that the UTF7 BOM encoding is just the ASCII string "+/v8-", which is difficult to distinguish from just a regular file that happens to begin with those five characters (as odd as they may be). 
The encodings that do not have special prefixes and which are still supported by Notepad are the traditional ANSI encoding (i.e., "plain ASCII") and the Unicode (little-endian) encoding with no BOM. When faced with a file that lacks a special prefix, Notepad is forced to guess which of those two encodings the file actually uses. The function that does this work is IsTextUnicode, which studies a chunk of bytes and does some statistical analysis to come up with a guess. 
And as the documentation notes, "Absolute certainty is not guaranteed." Short strings are most likely to be misdetected. 
[Raymond is currently on vacation; this message was pre-recorded.]


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## amitmohod (Jun 20, 2006)

The reason is that Notepad has to edit files in a variety of encodings, and when its back against the wall, sometimes it's forced to guess. 
Here's the file "Hello" in various encodings: 
48 65 6C 6C 6F 
This is the traditional ANSI encoding.
48 00 65 00 6C 00 6C 00 6F 00 
This is the Unicode (little-endian) encoding with no BOM.
FF FE 48 00 65 00 6C 00 6C 00 6F 00 
This is the Unicode (little-endian) encoding with BOM. The BOM (FF FE) serves two purposes: First, it tags the file as a Unicode document, and second, the order in which the two bytes appear indicate that the file is little-endian.
00 48 00 65 00 6C 00 6C 00 6F 
This is the Unicode (big-endian) encoding with no BOM. Notepad does not support this encoding.
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.
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.
2B 2F 76 38 2D 48 65 6C 6C 6F 
This is UTF-7 encoding. The first five bytes are the UTF-7 encoding of the BOM. Notepad doesn't support this encoding.
Notice that the UTF7 BOM encoding is just the ASCII string "+/v8-", which is difficult to distinguish from just a regular file that happens to begin with those five characters (as odd as they may be). 
The encodings that do not have special prefixes and which are still supported by Notepad are the traditional ANSI encoding (i.e., "plain ASCII") and the Unicode (little-endian) encoding with no BOM. When faced with a file that lacks a special prefix, Notepad is forced to guess which of those two encodings the file actually uses. The function that does this work is IsTextUnicode, which studies a chunk of bytes and does some statistical analysis to come up with a guess. 
And as the documentation notes, "Absolute certainty is not guaranteed." Short strings are most likely to be misdetected.

(The Link: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/03/24/95235.aspx)

Amit Mohod
Application Support & Development Engg.
Clover Infotech Pvt Ltd.
Mumbai, India.


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## heavybob (Jul 29, 2005)

amitmohod said:


> The reason is that Notepad has to edit files in a variety of encodings, and when its back against the wall, sometimes it's forced to guess.
> Here's the file "Hello" in various encodings:
> 48 65 6C 6C 6F
> This is the traditional ANSI encoding.
> ...


yes, exactly what I thought as well


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## covert215 (Apr 22, 2006)

Wow. You understand assembly language?


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## bassetman (Jun 7, 2001)

covert215 said:


> Wow. You understand assembly language?


I was impressed too!


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## Couriant (Mar 26, 2002)

So I was the only one with the asian text?


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## brendandonhu (Jul 8, 2002)

That isn't assembly language...


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## covert215 (Apr 22, 2006)

what do you mean? it was the encoding for each character

and i didn't see asian text. i saw the boxes that replace missing characters


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## valis (Sep 24, 2004)

assembly language is human readable. What pc's use to talk to each other isn't.


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## brendandonhu (Jul 8, 2002)

Right, character encodings are not assembly language.


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## ekim68 (Jul 8, 2003)

Thanks for the info. I've thought about that..The encodings, that is..


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## Couriant (Mar 26, 2002)

covert said:


> what do you mean? it was the encoding for each character
> 
> and i didn't see asian text. i saw the boxes that replace missing characters





Tidus4Yuna on post #26 said:


> didn't attach pic...


my picture clearly shows it was asian type.

I understand about the encoding... I was intrigued that I'm the only one that seems to have gotten the asian type.


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## brendandonhu (Jul 8, 2002)

Have you checked "Install files for East Asian languages" in the Control Panel?


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## Couriant (Mar 26, 2002)

brendandonhu said:


> Have you checked "Install files for East Asian languages" in the Control Panel?


Well whatta you know... I do have that checked... though I didn't check it


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## gyrgrls (Nov 22, 2004)

The error occurs no matter what application created the file.

I just saved a new file in Ultra Edit, then opened it in Notepad,
and got the error. It looks like a font substitution bug.

Encoding bug? No, I doubt it.

Here's the hex dump - it's all in ASCII.
427568206869642061637473


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## brendandonhu (Jul 8, 2002)

Its not the font, its the character encoding. Save the file in Unicdode and you won't see this bug. Open it and save it again in ANSI encoding and you will see the bug.


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## gyrgrls (Nov 22, 2004)

brendandonhu said:


> Its not the font, its the character encoding. Save the file in Unicdode and you won't see this bug. Open it and save it again in ANSI encoding and you will see the bug.


That's wrong, because I have Notepad set to unicode, not ANSI.
Bug still there.

And Notepad doesn't care what program saved the file;
the error occurs when _reading_ the file (opening and displaying it).

Padding the string with a few spaces makes things more interesting:
The first two bytes usually become FF FE, when the file loads.
THEN if you save it, the changes become permanent.
It almost seems like Notepad is incorrectly parsing CHR$(32) as a control character,
with this certain pattern, and screwing up the font display, among other things.

And, yet another cute error:










Isn't Notepad lovely?


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## gyrgrls (Nov 22, 2004)

*Now* this "bug" has me interested.

Don't ask me why. Ask Bill Gates.
I think MS intentionally ignores it, just to be humerous.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it was an Easter Egg,
put there intentionally!

Nah... couldn't be.


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## brendandonhu (Jul 8, 2002)

gyrgrls said:


> It almost seems like Notepad is incorrectly parsing CHR$(32) as a control character,
> with this certain pattern, and screwing up the font display, among other things.


Post #28 explained it pretty well, seems like Notepad has trouble guessing what character encoding certain files are written in.


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## Couriant (Mar 26, 2002)

I take it it's only in Notepad... I tried it in Mac's text editor and it didn't work.


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