Showing archive results for 2007

Since Windows 95, when you right-dragged an item and selected "Create Shortcut", you got "Shortcut to X". But in Windows Vista, the name is now "X - Shortcut". Why is that? Two reasons. The first reason is globalization. The template "Shortcut to X" made X the object of a preposition. In some languages, this may require c...

This is the first of what might be a series of stories on the subject, So what happened on your first day at Microsoft? Some facts may have been altered to preserve the anonymity of the subject, but the essense is true. Our first storyteller is "Employee X": At the end of my first day, I back out of my parking space and accidentally hit a L...

The jargon phrase going forward has largely replaced the more mundane equivalent from now on. It appears that I'm not the only person who is bothered by this phrase. Sample usages: Notice that the phrase going forward usually adds little to the sentence. You can delete it from all of the sentences above and nobody would notice a difference.

When you set a wallpaper on a multi-monitor system, that wallpaper goes onto each monitor. For example, if your wallpaper is a picture of a flower, each monitor shows that same flower. Commenter David Phillips wonders whether there is a way to set a different wallpaper on each monitor, or whether it is some sort of trick. It's some sort of trick....

In 2006, Christian Buckley set forth on a grand mission: To visit every cafeteria on Microsoft's Redmond campus. This marathon effort went by the name Microsoft Cafeteria Tour 2006, or for those in the know, MSCT2k6. Those looking for off-campus dining options can make use of this map mashup of restaurants which provide discounts to Microsoft em...

One of the lesser-known button styles is . Makes a button (such as a check box, three-state check box, or radio button) look and act like a push button. The button looks raised when it isn't pushed or checked, and sunken when it is pushed or checked. In other words, you add this style to a check box or radio button to make it look like a push ...

David Vronay writes about the difficult balance that has to be maintained between people who like the classic Windows game Minesweeper and people who are (understandably) upset that Windows includes a game about landmines, trivializing a very serious issue. (Yes, the image used in the game is a water mine, not a land mine, but that's scant conso...

Surprisingly, it is not a security vulnerability that administrators can add other users to the Administrators group. But that doesn't stop people from claiming that it is. For example, it's not uncommon for a vulnerability report to come in with the following steps: Wow, this looks bad. An unprivileged user can elevate to administrator and... ...

The party game goes by many names. Hippie poetry, Beat poetry, Dada poetry. To play, have a group of people sit in a circle and give each person a piece of paper and writing implement. To start, each person writes a single line of poetry and hands it to the person to his or her left or right. (The direction isn't important, as long as it's consiste...

Many functions accept a source string that consists of both a pointer and a length. And if you pass a length that is greater than the length of the string, the result depends on the function itself. Some of those functions, when given a string and a length, will stop either when the length is exhausted or a null terminator is reached whichever c...