The Old New Thing

August 2006 - The Old New Thing

The wisdom of seventh graders: Contributions to class discussion

August 31, 2006 Aug 31, 2006 08/31/06
Raymond Chen
(In the continuing sporadic series on the wisdom of seventh grade students.) My friend the seventh grade teacher once had to deal with a class that had gotten out of hand by assigning the students a short essay in which they had to address three questions: One of the more disruptive students answered the questions thus...

How do you wash soap?

August 30, 2006 Aug 30, 2006 08/30/06
Raymond Chen
Steve Makofsky wondered, "How do you throw out a garbage can?". Along similar lines, I always wondered how you washed soap...

If you work at a company, it's not your computer any more

August 30, 2006 Aug 30, 2006 08/30/06
Raymond Chen
My posting a while back on solving one problem by creating a bigger problem was written from the standpoint of an IT department doing something like tweaking a logon script. I even mentioned that context partway through but clearly didn't highlight it clearly enough. So say you're an IT department and somebody says, "Oh, just install this ...

As I recall, Germany did not ratify the United States Constitution

August 29, 2006 Aug 29, 2006 08/29/06
Raymond Chen
I remember reading a news report on a court case wherein the defendant claimed protection under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. An interesting angle, especially since the case was being tried in Germany under German law. I may be wrong, but it is my impression that Germany did not ratify the United States Constitution. ...

Try to avoid having BOOL function parameters

August 28, 2006 Aug 28, 2006 08/28/06
Raymond Chen
Generally speaking, I believe that you should try to avoid giving functions a boolean parameter (, , etc.) unless the meaning of that boolean parameter is blatantly obvious. Examples of obvious meaning would be the second parameter to the function ( obviously means the window is being enabled and means that it's being disabled) and the final...
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We know it's insecure, but we want to do it anyway

August 25, 2006 Aug 25, 2006 08/25/06
Raymond Chen
I remember a question from somebody who asked, paraphrasing: We're writing a secure screen saver that the user can interact with. We're going to present the user with various types of information, and if they click on a hot link, we want to launch a web page on their desktop once the user unlocks the workstation. We know it's insecure, but we...

Those folks from Birmingham talk funny, and I mean that in a scientific way

August 24, 2006 Aug 24, 2006 08/24/06
Raymond Chen
In celebration of their tenth birthday, the Paramount Comedy Channel in the UK commissioned a study on how regional accents affect perceived funniness, and the conclusion was that people from Birmingham have the funniest accents. The Received Pronunciation, which is the only British accent most people in the United States are familiar with...