Showing results for February 2008 - Page 2 of 4 - The Old New Thing

Feb 22, 2008
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Microspeak: Assorted babble

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Here are some phrases I jotted down during a meeting. I don't even know what meeting it was. (They were jotted on some scratch paper.) These don't count so much as Microspeak as they do just assorted management babble. Sometimes I wish management would speak in plain English. But then the rest of us might realize that they don't know what they'...

Non-ComputerMicrospeak
Feb 21, 2008
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Nobody actually talks the way they do in training videos, do they?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

I'm watching a training video and it starts off with patently unrealistic dialog. I'm struggling with X. Maybe you can help me out with a different perspective, or some information that I'm not aware of. An opening line like that pretty much demands bad acting. You can tell that this dialogue was designed by a committee. Nobody actually talks ...

Non-Computer
Feb 20, 2008
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Wait a second, I thought we stopped doing this back in 2003

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

It looks like Verizon's default DNS server for their customers is redirecting all failed DNS queries to their own site, calling the feature Advanced Web Search. Fortunately, they have instructions on how to opt out. The short version: Go to your DNS settings and change the last octet from .12 to .14...

Tips/Support
Feb 20, 2008
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There can be more than one (or zero): Converting a process to a window

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

A common question I see is "How do I find the window that corresponds to an ?" This question comes pre-loaded with the assumption that there is only one window that corresponds to an , which is true for only the most rudimentary of Win32 programs. Even a simple program like Notepad has more than one window with the same , as Spy quickly reveals. ...

Code
Feb 19, 2008
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When you ask somebody to take a look, you need to tell them what you want them to find

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Here's a message I received some years ago, paraphrased: From: X Subject: FW: Bug 161803: Program Q uses undocumented resource which we changed in Vista Raymond, can you take a look? ------- Original message ------- From: Y Subject: Bug 161803: Program Q uses undocumented resource which we changed in Vista It appears that Program&...

Non-Computeremail
Feb 18, 2008
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What's with all those spam ping-bots?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Last December, some people started to get annoyed by the pingback-bots, and others were confused by them. What's the deal with those pingback-bots? It's all about fooling the search engines in order to make money, taking advantage of friendly policies at domain registrars to make it less costly an undertaking. Step one: Register a bunch of ...

Non-Computer
Feb 18, 2008
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Why does Explorer show a + sign even if there are no child folders?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Mike Williams asked in the Suggestion Box why Explorer shows a + sign next to a folder even though it doesn't have any children. Mind you, this wasn't a suggestion; it was just a random question. I don't enjoy answering random questions about specific details of user interface elements since, as it turns out, I did not write every single user ...

Code
Feb 15, 2008
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Joshua Roman groupies may have to set up their frequent flyer accounts

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Cellist Joshua Roman has quite a dedicated following here in Seattle, but those Joshua Roman groupies may have to dust off their frequent flyer cards, because the young cellist is resigning his position at the end of the season in order to pursue a solo career. There has been quite a bit of turmoil at the Seattle Symphony in recent years. The ...

Non-Computer
Feb 15, 2008
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There's more to switching stacks than just loading a new stack pointer

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Sometimes people think they can switch stacks by just loading a new value into the register. This may seem to work but in fact it doesn't, because there is more to switching stacks than just loading a new value into . On the x86, the exception chain is threaded through the stack, and the exception dispatch code verifies that the exception chain...

Code