Showing archive results for 2008

I'm watching a training video and it starts off with patently unrealistic dialog. I'm struggling with X. Maybe you can help me out with a different perspective, or some information that I'm not aware of. An opening line like that pretty much demands bad acting. You can tell that this dialogue was designed by a committee. Nobody actually talks li...

It looks like Verizon's default DNS server for their customers is redirecting all failed DNS queries to their own site, calling the feature Advanced Web Search. Fortunately, they have instructions on how to opt out. The short version: Go to your DNS settings and change the last octet from .12 to .14.

A common question I see is "How do I find the window that corresponds to an ?" This question comes pre-loaded with the assumption that there is only one window that corresponds to an , which is true for only the most rudimentary of Win32 programs. Even a simple program like Notepad has more than one window with the same , as Spy quickly reveals. ...

A number of credit card companies have agreed to a class action lawsuit settlement. Check whether your credit card is on the list and you meet the other criteria, but if you do, you could get a $25 refund.

Here's a message I received some years ago, paraphrased: From: X Subject: FW: Bug 161803: Program Q uses undocumented resource which we changed in Vista Raymond, can you take a look? ------- Original message ------- From: Y Subject: Bug 161803: Program Q uses undocumented resource which we changed in Vista It appears that Program&...

Last December, some people started to get annoyed by the pingback-bots, and others were confused by them. What's the deal with those pingback-bots? It's all about fooling the search engines in order to make money, taking advantage of friendly policies at domain registrars to make it less costly an undertaking. Step one: Register a bunch of doma...

Mike Williams asked in the Suggestion Box why Explorer shows a + sign next to a folder even though it doesn't have any children. Mind you, this wasn't a suggestion; it was just a random question. I don't enjoy answering random questions about specific details of user interface elements since, as it turns out, I did not write every single user inte...

Cellist Joshua Roman has quite a dedicated following here in Seattle, but those Joshua Roman groupies may have to dust off their frequent flyer cards, because the young cellist is resigning his position at the end of the season in order to pursue a solo career. There has been quite a bit of turmoil at the Seattle Symphony in recent years. The fo...

Sometimes people think they can switch stacks by just loading a new value into the register. This may seem to work but in fact it doesn't, because there is more to switching stacks than just loading a new value into . On the x86, the exception chain is threaded through the stack, and the exception dispatch code verifies that the exception chain...

One of the minor Valentine's Day traditions at Microsoft is the charity fundraiser based on identifying targets and embarrassing them in front of all their colleagues. In exchange for a charitable donation to the American Heart Association (get it?) an a cappella group will travel to an office or conference room of your designation (conference ro...