June 2004 | Page 5 of 5 | The Old New Thing

An easy way to determine whether you have a particular file permission

Raymond ChenJune 4, 2004Jun 4, 200406/4/04

Sometimes you might want to determine whether you can do something without actually doing it. For example, you might want to know whether you have a particular permission in a directory, say permission to delete files from it. One way is to retrieve the ACL and then check whether the current user has the desired permission. The AccessCheck ...

My first death threat

Raymond ChenJune 3, 2004Jun 3, 200406/3/04

Actual feedback submitted to the microsoft.com web site many years ago. id: 13726 Date: 1996-07-29 17:27:41.997 Name: *********** Email: ************* Area: Windows 95 Comments: PLEASE read this entire email as it is quite serious. I just discovered today that in the Windows 95 operating system, there are no switches, command line...

Need to add 1.5kg and 350g?

Raymond ChenJune 3, 2004Jun 3, 200406/3/04

Need to add 1.5kg and 350g? Don't take any chances. Go to a Certified Metrication Specialist...

Letter carriers rebel

Raymond ChenJune 2, 2004Jun 2, 200406/2/04

Letter carriers in both Sweden and Scotland have taken to refusing to deliver political advertisements from parties they personally find offensive. This isn't quite the stunning synchronicity as it may appear at first glance: Europe is gearing up for a continent-wide election...

The dreaded "main" threading model

Raymond ChenJune 2, 2004Jun 2, 200406/2/04

In the absence of an explicit threading model for your COM object, you get the "main" threading model. The "main" threading model is little-known, and that's a good thing. It's a relic from the days before multi-threading. The first thread in a process to initialize COM becomes declared the "main" thread. (It might be the first thread...

What does SHGFI_USEFILEATTRIBUTES mean?

Raymond ChenJune 1, 2004Jun 1, 200406/1/04

One of the flags you can pass to the SHGetFileInfo function is SHGFI_USEFILEATTRIBUTES. What does this flag mean? It means, "Do not access the disk. Pretend that the file/directory exists, and that its file attributes are what I passed as the dwFileAttributes parameter. Do this regardless of whether it actually exists or not." You...

French schoolchildren invited to draw their impressions of the United States

Raymond ChenJune 1, 2004Jun 1, 200406/1/04

They choose fast food, fat people, and Bush in a tank. In January, a cartoon festival was held in the town of Carquefou, just outside of Nantes in the northwest corner of France. Students of all ages competed in a contest to illustrate their vision of the United States. They drew obese Americans devouring Coca-Cola and McDonald's ...

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