Showing archive results for 2008

A common mistake I see is people confusing message tables with string resources. This basically shows up in one place: . The folks who were designing Win32 decided that plain string resources weren't fancy enough, so they invented message tables, which is just another way of storing strings in resources. Why string resources weren't good enough ...

It's not just orange juice for breakfast any more. Soft drinks are making inroads into the world traditionally dominated by milk, orange juice, coffee, and tea. According to the article, over one in seven people order a soft drink to accompany their breakfast. (Among people who eat at home, the rate is 2.4%.) If this trend continues, can Dorito...

On Windows NT-based operating systems, process and thread IDs happen always to be a multiple of four. Is this just a coincidence? Yes, it's just a coincidence, and you shouldn't rely on it since it is not part of the programming contract. For example, Windows 95 process and thread IDs were not always multiples of four. (By comparison, th...

Some months ago, I wanted to make a reservation at my favorite Seattle restaurant for special occasions: the Asteroid Cafe. (Asteroid trivia: Their original Wallingford location was so small, you had to go into the kitchen to use the rest room. When they moved to Fremont, they made a special point of putting the rest room in the kitchen for old t...

One of the predefined security access masks is . You see it used in defining the masks for various objects. Here are just a few examples: The mask is meant to be used when defining access masks for object types. I'm guessing it's called because it's the set of access masks that all securable objects must support. Look at the documentation o...

The organizers of TechDays 2008 Portugal have decided to lower their standards and invite me to speak at their conference in Lisbon, which by an amazing coincidence takes place during the same week as my appearance at XV Semana Informática do Instituto Superior Técnico (though fortunately not the same day). You don't need to attend...

Making the last change.

Recently-unearthed documents reveal that back in the 1950's, France proposed merging with United Kingdom into a single country or at least joining the Commonwealth. Apparently, Churchill proposed a similar alliance in the 1940. It too was rejected. (Other coverage. There's a secret joke in that article: Check out the URL.) Apparently, the propo...

Why doesn't Microsoft bundle third-party programs? Yes, it has been done in the past, but the results were hardly a slam dunk success. Who ports the software to 64-bit Windows? (Answer: Me, personally. I spent a good chunk of the year 2000 porting millions of lines of code to 64-bit Windows. Just for fun, I did a on a couple of the "gifts" th...

Here are some phrases I jotted down during a meeting. I don't even know what meeting it was. (They were jotted on some scratch paper.) These don't count so much as Microspeak as they do just assorted management babble. Sometimes I wish management would speak in plain English. But then the rest of us might realize that they don't know what they'r...