The Old New Thing

September 2008 - Page 3 of 4 - The Old New Thing

For a place that’s supposed to be full of doctors, they sure don’t look like doctors

September 11, 2008 Sep 11, 2008 09/11/08
Raymond Chen
Anthony Edwards is returning for a guest spot on his old series ER. I don't watch ER, but when I happen to stumble across it, the thing that strikes me most is that for a where most of the characters are supposed to be doctors, they sure don't look like doctors. They look like models who have been forced to wear scrubs and white lab coats. ...

Suggestion Box 3, short answers (part 2 of who knows how many)

September 11, 2008 Sep 11, 2008 09/11/08
Raymond Chen
Another round of short answers to questions in the suggestion box. How does Windows choose the monitor a window maximizes to? The window maximizes to the monitor selected by . The algorithm the uses to select the monitor is documented in MSDN. How do you make your Win32 application safe from keyloggers? You can't. ...

And now, your moment of reflection

September 10, 2008 Sep 10, 2008 09/10/08
Raymond Chen
Master storyteller Ira Glass teaches us how to tell a story, and the importance of the moment of reflection. (In the third video he explains why when you are trying to do something creative you always suck, and that's okay.) And once you've soaked up Ira's advice, you can admire Kasper Hauser's parodies: Going Postal and Phantom High ...

What were ShellExecute hooks designed for?

September 10, 2008 Sep 10, 2008 09/10/08
Raymond Chen
Windows 95 introduced (and Windows Vista removed) the concept of ShellExecute hooks. These are objects which implemented the interface. That interface had just one method: , which took a structure and returned to indicate that the item was executed, to allow processing to continue, and an error code to halt processing. The ...

If you use an absurd signature, I might end up sending it back to you

September 9, 2008 Sep 9, 2008 09/9/08
Raymond Chen
Despite my previous rant, absurdly elaborate email signatures are still common at Microsoft, and I'm not just talking about the ones that contain information that may be required by department policy. I'm talking about signatures that use bright colors, large fonts, maybe a bitmap or two, sometimes even a photo of the sender! I will ...

I’ll see (some of) you in Los Angeles, but this time it’ll be October

September 8, 2008 Sep 8, 2008 09/8/08
Raymond Chen
(It was September last time.) I've been asked to step in as a replacement speaker for the 2008 PDC. The details of the talk are not yet publically available, but what I can say is that the topic will be in the category of Win32 programming. Disclaimers: Information was believed to be accurate at press time. Speakers subject to change. ...

QueryPerformanceCounter counts elapsed time, not CPU cycles

September 8, 2008 Sep 8, 2008 09/8/08
Raymond Chen
An anonymous coward asks whether the function counts elapsed time or CPU cycles. It counts elapsed time. It has to, since its value is governed by the function, which returns a number specifying the number of units per second, and the frequency is spec'd as not changing while the system is running. For CPUs that can run at variable ...

Tales from the interview: Anticipating your own incompetence is not a good interview strategy

September 5, 2008 Sep 5, 2008 09/5/08
Raymond Chen
Some years ago, there was a candidate who was interviewing for a programming position in my group. The first interviewer asked the candidate about career plans with that old standby, "Where do you see yourself in five years?" — In five years, I see myself in program management. This is a fair answer. Many people see programming as a...

Tales from the interview: Lunch is not a competition, episode 2

September 4, 2008 Sep 4, 2008 09/4/08
Raymond Chen
Last time, we saw the consequences of failing to recognize that lunch is not a competition. Today we'll see an even more unfortunate result. One candidate went to lunch with my colleague the economist. (Claim to fame: "Jenna von Oÿ is my cousin!") They went to a local Thai restaurant, Thai being a very popular cuisine here in the ...

Tales from the interview: Lunch is not a competition

September 3, 2008 Sep 3, 2008 09/3/08
Raymond Chen
One thing that many interview candidates fail to comprehend is that lunch is not a competition. You're not auditioning for Fear Factor. No matter how many times we explain this, candidates don't believe it. One of my colleagues took a candidate to lunch. As is typical, the candidate is asked whether there was any particular preference or ...