The Old New Thing

June 2004 - Page 2 of 5 - The Old New Thing

At least it's easier than learning Finnish

June 24, 2004 Jun 24, 2004 06/24/04
Raymond Chen
Finnish Radio station YLE offers weekly news summaries in classical Latin. Because practically nobody outside Finland would understand the news in Finnish... In my random travels around the Internet, I stumbled across this article on the subject of teaching Finnish to foreigners: Finnish's status as an official EU language has ...

The evolution of dialog templates – Summary

June 24, 2004 Jun 24, 2004 06/24/04
Raymond Chen
As promised, here's the tabular version of the evolution of dialog templates. It doesn't contain any new information, but it may give you a little glimpse into how things evolved to see the small changes highlighted against each other...

The evolution of dialog templates – 32-bit Extended Templates

June 23, 2004 Jun 23, 2004 06/23/04
Raymond Chen
At last we reach our goal, the 32-bit extended dialog template, known in resource files as DIALOGEX. I will celebrate this with a gratuitous commutative diagram: Isn't that special. Okay, so let's get going. The 32-bit extended dialog template is the 32-bit version of the 16-bit extended dialog template, so you won't see any real ...

The only way you're going to wake up next to Claudia Schiffer

June 23, 2004 Jun 23, 2004 06/23/04
Raymond Chen
Dominic O'Brien, world speed-memorization champion, on his technique for memorizing over 18 decks of shuffled cards in an hour: "I remember things by personalising them," explains O'Brien, 43. "With playing cards, for instance, I memorise each one as a face. The queen of hearts I think of as Claudia Schiffer, the ace of clubs as Nick ...

When cafeteria pricing meets mathematics

June 22, 2004 Jun 22, 2004 06/22/04
Raymond Chen
Prices in the Microsoft cafeteria are often illogical. For example, a "special sandwich" costs $4.25. A piece of whole fruit costs $0.50. But a "special sandwich with a piece of whole fruit" costs $4.95. If you're not careful, the cashier will ring it up as a "special sandwich with a piece of whole fruit" instead of as a "special ...

The evolution of dialog templates – 16-bit Extended Templates

June 22, 2004 Jun 22, 2004 06/22/04
Raymond Chen
The next step in the evolution of dialog templates is the Extended Dialog or DIALOGEX. First, let's look at the 16-bit version. The 16-bit extended dialog template is purely historical. The only operating systems to support it were the Windows 95/98/Me series. It is interesting only as a missing link in the evolution towards the 32-bit ...

The evolution of dialog templates – 32-bit Classic Templates

June 21, 2004 Jun 21, 2004 06/21/04
Raymond Chen
Okay, last time we talked about the 16-bit classic DIALOG template. This time, we're going to talk about the 32-bit classic DIALOG template. There really isn't much going on. Some 8-bit fields got expanded to 16-bit fields, some 16-bit fields got expanded to 32-bit fields, extended styles were added, and all strings got changed from ANSI ...

Drug dealers have to pay taxes too.

June 21, 2004 Jun 21, 2004 06/21/04
Raymond Chen
In the state of Kansas, "The fact that dealing marijuana and controlled substances is illegal does not exempt it from taxation. Therefore drug dealers are required by law to purchase drug tax stamps...

Too late, Mr. Jenkins. You were an F7 back at question 2

June 18, 2004 Jun 18, 2004 06/18/04
Raymond Chen
The story of somebody who worked for a job screening service. Companies hired the service to do preliminary filtering of job applicants. The best part: When applicants mistake the screener for the receptionist. When I launched into the actual interview, it really pissed them off. They'd get furious that the freaking receptionist had...

The evolution of dialog templates – 16-bit Classic Templates

June 18, 2004 Jun 18, 2004 06/18/04
Raymond Chen
In the history of Windows, there have been four versions of dialog templates. And despite the changes, you'll see that they're basically all the same. First, there was the classic Windows 1.0 dialog template. It starts like this: Notice that this is where the 255-controls-per-dialog limit comes from on 16-bit Windows, since the field ...