Showing results for March 2007 - Page 4 of 4 - The Old New Thing

Mar 7, 2007
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Microspeak: Sit in it!

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

The title of this entry is a bad pun on a catchphrase from 1970s television. I apologize to those for whom the 1970s are a bad memory. A snippet of Microspeak that bothers me is the verb phrase "to sit in". Example: "I'm in the Nosebleed group which sits in Bob Smith's organization." I think it means "to be a part of" but I'm not quite sure. Ma...

OtherMicrospeak
Mar 6, 2007
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What was the first parameter to CoInitialize used for?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Larry Osterman explains in a two-part series, The sad story of CoGetMalloc and Why was the ability to specify an allocator during CoInitialize removed from the system?

History
Mar 6, 2007
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Things I've written that have amused other people, Episode 3

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

In an internal discussion of the women blogger conference known as BlogHer, somebody asked, "Why isn't there a BlogHim?" I replied, Isn't that the plural of the word "blog" in Hebrew? This got quite an amused response from the Hebrew-speaking (or at least vaguely Hebrew-aware) members of the mailing list. Not bad for having studied Hebrew for a...

Non-ComputerThings I've written that have amused other people
Mar 5, 2007
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It's official, it's the Hannukah Eve Storm of 2006

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

(Following up on an earlier entry.) The National Weather Service chose a name for the wind storm of December 2006: It's going to be called the "Hanukkah Eve Wind Storm of 2006". But what is Hannukah Eve? Eh, it doesn't look like anybody's getting too worked up over that. You can download the entire list of entries (over 5000 of them) from the ...

Non-Computer
Mar 5, 2007
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Hiding files is not the same as protecting them

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

An anonymous commenter suggested that we should give up on "hiding protected operating system files". After all, if we "protect operating system files", that should be enough, shouldn't it? Well, except that some files are still hidden even though they are not protected. For example, your encryption keys are fully accessible to you (after all, th...

Other
Mar 2, 2007
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Public service announcement for Seattle area taxpayers: Some transit taxes can be itemized and deducted

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

If you itemize your taxes, there are some taxes you can claim on Schedule A line 7 that you may not be aware of. These taxes are special because they are based on the value of the vehicle and therefore qualify as a "personal property tax" from the IRS's point of view. While you're on Schedule A, don't forget to claim your deduc...

Non-Computer
Mar 2, 2007
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The .Default user is not the default user

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

If you ever gone spelunking in the registry key, you've no doubt found the user named . Who is this guy? Despite its name, the profile for the .Default user is not the default user profile. It's actually the profile for the Local System account and is an alias for . ( is the security identifier for the Local System account.) Consequently, setting...

Other
Mar 1, 2007
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West Bank Story, the movie that sells itself in five seconds

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

This weekend, I attended an Oscar-watching party, and when the clips from the nominees for Live Action Short Film were run, I was completely won over by West Bank Story. Five seconds of dancing, finger-snapping Jews and Arabs is all I needed. When filling out your Oscar party ballot, "Live Action Short Film" is one of those categories you just cl...

Non-Computer
Mar 1, 2007
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If you have to ask, you're probably doing something wrong

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

If you have to ask about various operating system limits, you're probably doing something wrong. If you're nesting windows more than 50 levels deep or nesting menus more than 25 levels deep or creating a dialog box with more than 65535 controls, or nesting tree-view items more than 255 levels deep, then your user interface design is in serious ...

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