The Old New Thing

December 11, 2008 - The Old New Thing

The Washington 2008 unclaimed property auction

December 11, 2008 Dec 11, 2008 12/11/08
Raymond Chen
After five years, the contents of abandoned safe deposit boxes are turned over to the state, which attempts to contact the owners, but if the owners cannot be located after three years, they are put up for auction. Things like this antique watch with a Swedish dedication: "Till min kära syster Nanny fr. Elin — Mors klocka" = "To ...

Don’t use global state to manage a local problem

December 11, 2008 Dec 11, 2008 12/11/08
Raymond Chen
We've seen a few instances where people have used a global setting to solve a local problem. For example, people who use the function to prevent a window from redrawing, toggle a global setting to see what its value is, or who change the system time zone as part of an internal calculation. To this, I'll add as an example a program which ...