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

Jun 18, 2008
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MSDN-speak: What does it mean when a parameter contains a value?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

I've seen some confusion over this, heck I've been confused by this, so I figured I'd share what I've learned. In MSDN, you may see wording like this: pdwResult [out] When the function returns, contains a pointer to a value that contains the result of the computation. What they're trying to say is that the is a pointer to a that receives t...

Other
Jun 17, 2008
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Microspeak: Pricing uplift

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

In a conference call with investors last year, investor relations general manager Colleen Healy described the effect of business editions of Windows thus: As we shared with you previously, Windows Vista business generates over five times the pricing uplift over Windows Vista Home Basic than does Windows Vista Home Premium. Also known as profit....

Non-ComputerMicrospeak
Jun 16, 2008
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Blinding bank robbers with kindness

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Despite the friendliness of people in the Pacific Northwest (or perhaps because of it), bank robberies in the area are above the national average. But in the Seattle area they went down by nearly half in the beginning of 2007. The reason isn't known for certain, but one factor may be a new approach to thwarting bank robbers by employing "aggressi...

Non-Computer
Jun 16, 2008
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How do the common controls convert between ANSI and Unicode?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Commenter Chris Becke asks how the common controls convert ANSI parameters to Unicode, since the common controls are Unicode internally. Everything goes through , pretty much by definition. The ANSI code page is . That's what ACP stands for, after all. Now, there are some function families that do not use ANSI. The console subsystem, for example...

Code
Jun 13, 2008
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Sometimes it's easier just to let the native speaker win

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

My entry last month about that virus that is responsible for the top six Explorer crashes prompted me to check out the blog of the Anti-Malware Engineering Team, and at the bottom of a report from Microsoft TechEd Boston is a photo of a few members of the Anti-Malware Engineering Team. I've worked with some of those people, and I had forgotten ...

Non-Computer
Jun 13, 2008
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Don't be helpless: You can find information, too, if you try

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Here's a question that floated past my view: Anybody know if there exists a library for computing MD5 hashes from unmanaged code? MSDN has information about .NET classes, but nothing about the unmanaged side. Hm, let's see. Wow, those hits sure look promising. Perhaps a search on Windows Live or Google¹ will turn up something. Oh hey...

Other
Jun 12, 2008
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Email tip: Pronouns in the subject line are in the eye of the beholder

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

This applies to email, but it applies even more to meetings and appointments, which are typically arranged via email or similar workflow. It may seem obvious at the time, but messages with pronouns like me or you in the subject line tend to be harder to understand when you come back to the message a little while later. I was reminded of this by a...

Non-Computeremail
Jun 11, 2008
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If you say that you don't care about something, you shouldn't be upset that it contains garbage

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

There are many situations where you pass a structure to a function, and the function fills in the structure with information you request. In some cases, the function always fills in the entire structure (example: ). In other cases, you tell the function which bits of information you care about, to save the function the effort of computing somethin...

Code
Jun 10, 2008
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Simply attach a piano to the end of the trebuchet

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

As easy as 1-2-3. What's really scary is that they are hardly the only people to have done this. An Internet search will reveal many other people who've expressed similar musical talent. Or you can build one out of an industrial robot and hurl flaming bowling balls.

Non-Computer