The Old New Thing

February 2008 - The Old New Thing

The 2008/2009 Seattle Symphony subscription season at a glance

February 29, 2008 Feb 29, 2008 02/29/08
Raymond Chen
Every year, I put together a little pocket guide to the Seattle Symphony subscription season for my symphony friends to help them decide which ticket package they want. As before, you might find it helpful, you might not, but here it is anyway. Weekend Program Comments 22 13 10A 10B ...

Why can't I get FormatMessage to load my resource string?

February 29, 2008 Feb 29, 2008 02/29/08
Raymond Chen
A common mistake I see is people confusing message tables with string resources. This basically shows up in one place: FormatMessage. The folks who were designing Win32 decided that plain string resources weren't fancy enough, so they invented message tables, which is just another way of storing strings in resources. Why string resources ...
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Coca-Cola for breakfast: It's not just for computer geeks any more

February 28, 2008 Feb 28, 2008 02/28/08
Raymond Chen
It's not just orange juice for breakfast any more. Soft drinks are making inroads into the world traditionally dominated by milk, orange juice, coffee, and tea. According to the article, over one in seven people order a soft drink to accompany their breakfast. (Among people who eat at home, the rate is 2.4%.) If this trend continues, can ...

Why are process and thread IDs multiples of four?

February 28, 2008 Feb 28, 2008 02/28/08
Raymond Chen
On Windows NT-based operating systems, process and thread IDs happen always to be a multiple of four. Is this just a coincidence? Yes, it's just a coincidence, and you shouldn't rely on it since it is not part of the programming contract. For example, Windows 95 process and thread IDs were not always multiples of four. (By ...

Making a reservation at the Asteroid and interrupting a cookie-bake

February 27, 2008 Feb 27, 2008 02/27/08
Raymond Chen
Some months ago, I wanted to make a reservation at my favorite Seattle restaurant for special occasions: the Asteroid Cafe. (Asteroid trivia: Their original Wallingford location was so small, you had to go into the kitchen to use the rest room. When they moved to Fremont, they made a special point of putting the rest room in the kitchen for ...

TechDays 2008 learns the sneaky way of getting me to show up at your conference

February 26, 2008 Feb 26, 2008 02/26/08
Raymond Chen
The organizers of TechDays 2008 Portugal have decided to lower their standards and invite me to speak at their conference in Lisbon, which by an amazing coincidence takes place during the same week as my appearance at XV Semana Informática do Instituto Superior Técnico (though fortunately not the same day). You don't need to ...

The United Kingdom of Great Britain, Northern Ireland, and France?

February 25, 2008 Feb 25, 2008 02/25/08
Raymond Chen
Recently-unearthed documents reveal that back in the 1950's, France proposed merging with United Kingdom into a single country or at least joining the Commonwealth. Apparently, Churchill proposed a similar alliance in the 1940. It too was rejected. (Other coverage. There's a secret joke in that article: Check out the URL.) Apparently, the ...

When somebody gives you a gift of code, it's more often than not a burden in disguise

February 25, 2008 Feb 25, 2008 02/25/08
Raymond Chen
Why doesn't Microsoft bundle third-party programs? Yes, it has been done in the past, but the results were hardly a slam dunk success. Who ports the software to 64-bit Windows? (Answer: Me, personally. I spent a good chunk of the year 2000 porting millions of lines of code to 64-bit Windows. Just for fun, I did a wc -l on a couple of the...