The Old New Thing

September 2007 - Page 4 of 4 - The Old New Thing

I mean, come on, these are laptops

September 5, 2007 Sep 5, 2007 09/5/07
Raymond Chen
Last year, Weekend America (co-hosted by former Seattleite Bill Radke—we miss you, Bill!) did a story on the Princeton Laptop Orchestra, which calls itself PLOrk. It's an interesting experiment, but computer music doesn't really move me. It's not the computer-ness that bugs me (I was fascinated by music played on Gameboys, after all...

Whenever there is a coordination problem, somebody says, "Hey, let's create a process!"

September 5, 2007 Sep 5, 2007 09/5/07
Raymond Chen
Whenever there is a coordination problem, somebody says, "Hey, let's create a process." Now you have two coordination problems. I see this over and over, and paradoxically the people who create a process for managing a coordinating problem come off looking like proactive problem-solvers who get ahead of the problem. They're the go-getters, ...

Volunteers help save fruit from home fruit trees from going to waste

September 4, 2007 Sep 4, 2007 09/4/07
Raymond Chen
It's the season where people with fruit trees in their yard are drowning in fresh fruit, be they pears, apples, plums, whatever. It's not long before you find yourself desperately looking for people to give it away to, having pretty much run out of things you can make plums into. This is where Community Fruit Tree Harvest steps in. (Coverage...

Does creating a thread from DllMain deadlock or doesn't it?

September 4, 2007 Sep 4, 2007 09/4/07
Raymond Chen
Let me get this out of the way up front: Creating a thread from DllMain is not recommended. The discussion here has to do with explaining the behavior you may observe if you violate this advice. Commenter Pete points out that "according to Usenet" creating a thread in DllMain is supposed to deadlock, but that's not what he saw. All he saw ...
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Belated follow-up: Mike Goodspaceguy Nelson running for public office, again

September 3, 2007 Sep 3, 2007 09/3/07
Raymond Chen
Undeterred by his failure to win a Senate seat last year, Mike Goodspaceguy Nelson once again ran for King County Council. I can't bring myself to listen to his appearance on the local public radio station (fortunately, he wasn't running in my district). You can read his and opponent Dow Constantine's candidate statements on the King ...

Knock knock. Who's there? Not you any more.

September 3, 2007 Sep 3, 2007 09/3/07
Raymond Chen
One of my many favorite Dilbert cartoons is also one of the earlier ones. It's the first strip reprinted in this article. It may not actually have happened, but I was told that that one project many years ago replaced its lead manager. While noteworthy, this sort of thing happens often enough that people take it in stride. What put it into a...