August 2006 | The Old New Thing

The wisdom of seventh graders: Contributions to class discussion

Raymond ChenAugust 31, 2006Aug 31, 200608/31/06

(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...

The dialog class goes under the sneaky name WC_DIALOG

Raymond ChenAugust 31, 2006Aug 31, 200608/31/06

An anonymous commenter wanted to know how to create a dialog box with CreateWindow. The window class for dialog boxes is WC_DIALOG. I'm not quite sure why anybody would want to create a dialog box this way, but there you have it...

How do you wash soap?

Raymond ChenAugust 30, 2006Aug 30, 200608/30/06

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

Raymond ChenAugust 30, 2006Aug 30, 200608/30/06

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

Raymond ChenAugust 29, 2006Aug 29, 200608/29/06

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. ...

How did "Start Me Up" become the theme for the Windows 95 launch?

Raymond ChenAugust 28, 2006Aug 28, 200608/28/06

Add this to your trivia pile. Keith Combs links to a pair of articles that that go into the history behind how Start Me Up become the theme for the Windows 95 launch. Part 1, Part 2...

Try to avoid having BOOL function parameters

Raymond ChenAugust 28, 2006Aug 28, 200608/28/06

Generally speaking, I believe that you should try to avoid giving functions a boolean parameter (BOOL, bool, etc.) unless the meaning of that boolean parameter is blatantly obvious. Examples of obvious meaning would be the second parameter to the EnableWindow function (TRUE obviously means the window is being enabled and FALSE means that it's ...

We know it's insecure, but we want to do it anyway

Raymond ChenAugust 25, 2006Aug 25, 200608/25/06

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...

Moving a file does not recalculate inherited permissions

Raymond ChenAugust 24, 2006Aug 24, 200608/24/06

Inherited permissions on an object are established when it is created. Once the object has been created, you can change the permissions of the parent and it won't have any effect unless you explicitly ask for the inheritable properties to be re-propagated to the child objects. (You may recall that the CREATOR_OWNER SID works in a similar way...

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