July 2007 | Page 4 of 5 | The Old New Thing

That leaves more hot German babes for me!

Raymond ChenJuly 10, 2007Jul 10, 200707/10/07

Controversial new German law requires non-EU members to be able to speak German before they can move to the country to join their spouse...

The forgotten common controls: The ShowHideMenuCtl function

Raymond ChenJuly 10, 2007Jul 10, 200707/10/07

The ShowHideMenuCtl function is one of those functions everybody tries to pretend doesn't exist. You thought MenuHelp was bad; ShowHideMenuCtl is even worse. The idea behind ShowHideMenuCtl was that you had a window with a menu as well as controls, and some of the menu items were checkable, indicating whether the corresponding control ...

A modest proposal: Solving the problem of traffic in Seattle caused by sporting events

Raymond ChenJuly 9, 2007Jul 9, 200707/9/07

Whenever there is a sporting event in Seattle, traffic is reduced to gridlock for hours both before and after the event. This affects not only the people attending the sporting event in question, but also people who get caught up in the traffic as a side-effect. To resolve this issue, I present this modest proposal. In Berlin, a large ...

It's not enough to say that something is bad; you have to say what would be better

Raymond ChenJuly 9, 2007Jul 9, 200707/9/07

I see a lot of feedback that says (roughly), "X is bad," and leaves it at that. That's not useful feedback. It's not enough to say that something is bad. you have to say what would be better. (Another example. Another...

Redmond Derby Days 2007 this weekend

Raymond ChenJuly 6, 2007Jul 6, 200707/6/07

Every summer, the city of Redmond stages Derby Days, an annual celebration of... I'm not sure what. But what it does mean is that roads will be closed in the downtown Redmond area, so if you need to get around, you'll have to plan ahead. Several years ago, one of my colleagues asked a City of Redmond employee, "What is Derby Days?" He ...

It rather involved being on the other side of this airtight hatchway: If they can run code, then they can run code

Raymond ChenJuly 6, 2007Jul 6, 200707/6/07

Some people can't get over the initial burst of adrenaline when they think they've found a security vulnerability and rush to file a report with Microsoft so they can get credit for it and add it to their "security vulnerability portfolio" to show that they are so wicked cool. Learning that what they found isn't a security vulnerability isn't...

Raymond's tips on selecting a memorable greeting card

Raymond ChenJuly 5, 2007Jul 5, 200707/5/07

My favorite greeting card is one I got from :: Wendy ::. It was a Christmas card with a picture of kids running around while snow fell all around them. Wendy added the message, "Watch out for that 'rogue' snowball from midfield..." I still have that card on my windowsill years later. My recommendation for choosing a memorable ...

QueryPerformanceCounter is not a source for unique identifiers

Raymond ChenJuly 5, 2007Jul 5, 200707/5/07

This article happened to catch my eye: I needed to generate some unique number in my application. I could use GUID, but it was too large for me (I need to keep lots of unique identifiers). I found something like this: This code generates Int64 (long) unique number (at least I hope it is unique). The uniqueness is in the scope of ...

Holidays for fireworks (and generally blowing up stuff) from around the world

Raymond ChenJuly 4, 2007Jul 4, 200707/4/07

Today is Independence Day in the United States, known informally as "The Fourth of July", thereby making it the only holiday◊ to be named after its own date. (The next closest candidate is New Year's Day, but nobody calls it "January 1st".) The original purpose of this Independence Day holiday have been lost to the mists of time.° ...

The audacity of selling things that don't belong to you

Raymond ChenJuly 3, 2007Jul 3, 200707/3/07

NPR some time ago reported on a most audacious scam: Selling someone else's property out from under them. But this guy was small potatoes, selling properties owned by churches and other non-profit organizations. The king in this category of fraud is Victor Lustig, the man who sold the Eiffel Tower... twice...

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