Showing archive results for 2008

If the documentation says that you have to call a function, then you have to call it. It may be that the function doesn't do anything, but that doesn't prevent it from doing something in the future. Today's example is the function , which returns you all the environment variables of the current process in a single block, which you can then study ...

Like the NFL, the NBA has its own Rookie Transition Program for introducing new players to important issues such as life skills, money management, dealing with the media, and the importance of character and image in avoiding public embarrassment. Apparently it took longer than usual for these lessons to sink in for Mario Chalmers and Darrell Arth...

Occasionally, somebody asks how to change the size of the desktop icons, not because they want to change the size from the default, but rather because they somehow turned into giant marshmallow men and they want to get the default size back. There are two ways to change the size of the desktop icons on Windows Vista: When people get into this s...

As I noted in an earlier entry of Microspeak, the real estate department here has their own weird jargon. Today's phrase is "delivering space": Listed below is the schedule for delivery of space over the next twelve months. Translation: "Listed below is the schedule for when new office space will become ready for use over the next twelve months....

The New York Times points out that if you engage in an activity that requires your attention, then it reduces your ability to do other things at the same time which also require your attention. For some reason, however this is news when one of those things is sending text messages. I wonder if, had contemporary news editors existed back in the d...

Now, it may very well be true that many people who use as the owner for a dialog box because they don't know any better, but I'm not convinced that everyone who does so did it out of ignorance; I'm sure there's some malice in there, too. Here's how it may have gone down: Bug: I start the product setup, and then I go and work on something el...

I'm embarrassed for the bad pun,¹ but the subject is serious. Two stories appeared in the two major local newspapers on the same day. Sure, it may have been a coincidence, but I considered it a cautionary tale. Follow-ups Baristas resign en masse when the coffee stand owner decides to adopt a provocative dress code. Over a year...

Last time, we looked at a customer who wanted to know how to tell whether a given folder was a Recycle Bin folder or not. We answered the question as stated, but made the mistake of not looking at the problem the customer was trying to solve. I need to know which folders are Recycle Bin folders so I can skip over them when searching the drive f...

Here's a question inspired by an actual customer question: I need a function that, given a path, tells me whether it is a Recycle Bin folder. I tried using functions like SHGetSpecialFolderPath with CSIDL_BITBUCKET, but that doesn't work because the Recycle Bin is a virtual folder that is the union of the Recycle Bins of all drives. The custom...

Earlier this year I received a piece of email from a programmer at a major software firm, reprinted below (suitably redacted) with permission. It was a sort of a mea culpa. (Remember: no guessing allowed.) Hi, Raymond. I'm a dev on Product X and recently we were sitting around having a beer after work, discussing the long and sordid hist...