The Old New Thing

April 2004 - The Old New Thing

Extreme croquet

April 30, 2004 Apr 30, 2004 04/30/04
Raymond Chen
This week, Only a Game covered the sport of Extreme Croquet. Still doesn't hold a candle to Extreme Ironing, though...

Where does the taskbar get grouped button icons from?

April 30, 2004 Apr 30, 2004 04/30/04
Raymond Chen
Follow-up question to Where does the taskbar get grouped button titles from?: Where does the taskbar get grouped button icons from? The icon for grouped taskbar buttons comes from the icon for the underlying EXE, the same icon that appears when you open the folder that the EXE resides in and scroll down to the EXE. For example, if ...

$501 for 510g of peanut butter

April 29, 2004 Apr 29, 2004 04/29/04
Raymond Chen
You can buy 510 grams of peanut butter for only $501. Of course, this is special peanut butter. It must be kept at -20°C. And it is not intended for human consumption. This is peanut butter from the National Institute of Standards and Technology intended for use by food analysis laboratories to calibrate their equipment. For ...

Using the echo command to remember what you were doing.

April 29, 2004 Apr 29, 2004 04/29/04
Raymond Chen
Sometimes you'll start typing a complex command line and then realize that you can't execute it now. Perhaps you're in the wrong directory or you forgot to map the drive. It would be a shame to hit ESC and lose that command line. What I do is edit the line to insert the word "echo" in front, then hit Enter. (Note: This doesn't work if ...

What is __purecall?

April 28, 2004 Apr 28, 2004 04/28/04
Raymond Chen
Both C++ and C# have the concept of virtual functions. These are functions which always invoke the most heavily derived implementation, even if called from a pointer to the base class. However, the two languages differ on the semantics of virtual functions during object construction and destruction. C# objects exist as their final type ...
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What, going to Sweden *again*?

April 28, 2004 Apr 28, 2004 04/28/04
Raymond Chen
It appears that I will have an opportunity to visit Sweden during the first week of June. I'll have three days in Uppsala and three days in Lund, with a travel day in between. Now, I've already spent a week and a half in Uppsala, so perhaps I could spend the Uppsala days taking a ferry to Helsinki and back. (And I could visit Denmark ...

Nobody said it was a democracy

April 27, 2004 Apr 27, 2004 04/27/04
Raymond Chen
It's proxy season, which means I've been reading through proxy statement after proxy statement. The proxy voting rules for Allstate aren't very democratic. Scroll down to "How votes are counted and discretionary voting authority": The thirteen nominees who receive the most votes will be elected to the open directorships even if they...

Why doesn't C# have "const"?

April 27, 2004 Apr 27, 2004 04/27/04
Raymond Chen
I was going to write about why C# doesn't have "const", but Stan Lippman already discussed this in A Question of Const, so now I don't have to. (And another example of synchronicity: After I wrote up this item and tossed it into the queue, Eric Gunnerson took up the topic as well...

Musings on formal and informal address

April 26, 2004 Apr 26, 2004 04/26/04
Raymond Chen
My entry about Good-Bye, Lenin! appears to have turned into a discussion of formal and informal terms of address in various languages and cultures. Sweden effectively abolished the "du"/"ni" distinction in the 1970's during the so-called "du-reform", getting rid of the formal "ni" and having everybody address each other as "du" - even...

In order to demonstrate our superior intellect, we will now ask you a question you cannot answer.

April 26, 2004 Apr 26, 2004 04/26/04
Raymond Chen
During the development of Windows 95, a placeholder dialog was added with the title, "In order to demonstrate our superior intellect, we will now ask you a question you cannot answer." The dialog itself asked a technical question that you need a brain the size of a planet in order to answer. (Okay, your brain didn't need to be ...