Showing archive results for 2008

Rolf Viehmann asks why Explorer doesn't let you create a file whose name begins with a dot. Such files are considered to have an extension but no name. If the extension is known and the user has chosen to hide known extensions, the resulting file would have no name at all! If you really want to create a file with a leading dot in its name, you a...

Many years ago, I was asked to help a customer with a problem they were having. I don't remember the details, and they aren't important to the story anyway, but as I was investigating one of their crashes, I started to wonder why they were even doing it. I expressed my concerns to the customer liaison. "Why are they writing this code in the first ...

When last we left my dead desktop computer, it had fried its second video card, and I was considering whether I should get a third. I did indeed get a third video card, a cheap one since I knew that if the computer really did eat video cards, I'd have to feed it on a budget. I plugged it in, and... Computer still dead. Bad. Remove the video car...

Identifying who is creating the conflicting definition.

You may find yourself in a twisty maze of s. Or you may be wondering why your macros aren't working. I have these lines in my header file: but when I try to use them, I get errors. Any idea why this is happening? First, make sure the compiler even sees you. Notice that for macros, generating a preprocessed file doesn't accomplish anyth...

Dr. Carlos Alves, owner and president of the Solomao Alves Group (I'm pretty sure there's an accent mark missing, but that's what it says on the site), must be the richest man on the planet: "Company generates annual revenue exceeding $20 billion and owns personal assets valued at $100 trillion." One hundred trillion dollars in personal assets. ...

I always get scared when I see people propose building neat little "hierarchically organized" taxonomies of something that is, well, a web. I think these are people who get their kicks out of having all their shoes lined up neatly in front of the doorstep, sorted alphabetically by designer. "Hey, let's classify all the blogs so we can have a Micros...

The Metropolitano de Lisboa includes an English-language list of tips for riding the Metro. Here are some more tips that all the locals know, but which no guide book tells you. In most subway systems, trains outside of peak hours are not full-length but rather fill only part of the station. In the subway systems I'm familiar with in the United S...

They're still there, just in a different guise.

When I first heard that a new project titled 21 was coming out, I simply assumed it was the same as 24, except that Jack Bauer gets some sleep. Pre-emptive snarky comment: "Somebody was clearly sleeping when they designed Vista."