Dev Blogs
Update: The first correct answer is from Tom Smith who correctly identified the articles as having ridiculous In Popular Culture sections which mention The Simpsons. Lazbro was right: There needs to be a bot that deletes all "In Popular Culture" sections from Wikipedia.
In many parts of the system, you can rename an item by first selecting it, then clicking on its name. The selection step is typically done by clicking on the item, which creates the risk that your second click will be interpreted as a double-click rather than as a rename click. How slow do you have to slow-double-click for it to be a rename? Slow...
My reaction to the news story about the so-called Barbie Bandits wasn't disbelief or shock at the crime, but rather confusion over their over-arching plan. People rob a bank and use the money to buy stuff. Dude, cut out the federal crime; just steal the stuff directly. When I expressed this disbelief at the lunch table, one of my colleagues took...
There are items with overly generic names. , , , , . But their functionality doesn't live up to their name. refers only to kernel handles, can only close kernel handles, only gets information about GDI objects, applies only to the numerical difference between group resources and standalone resources, and only queries information about Terminal...
A few years ago, I listed some of the careers seventh grade students chose for themselves. But my friend the seventh grade teacher pointed out to me that the list hides the correlation between the jobs and the students. The lower-performing students chose the high-glamour jobs: Professional athlete, model, rock star, actor. Some of these student...
I mentioned in passing a few years ago that version 6 of the common controls supports only Unicode. And then other people stepped in to say, "Well, XYZ uses ANSI and that works for me." So does it support ANSI or doesn't it? It does and doesn't. All of the controls in the common controls library are internally Unicode. But not all controls in...
The more conventional definition of represent is along the lines of "to act as a proxy for". An attorney represents his or her client in court. Your legislator represents you in the assembly. A token on a board represents your position in the game. At Microsoft, the word represent takes on a stranger meaning. Here are some usages inspired by actu...
Most parts of the state of Washington have switched to all-mail voting. No more standing in line at the polling place and casting your vote in person. This is certainly a convenience, but to me, it dilutes the voting experience. Part of the experience is the sense that you're part of a process, and standing in a room full of voters certainly driv...
Today is Election Day in the United States. Don't forget to vote. (Void where prohibited.) In honor of Election Day, I figured I'd tell a story about voting. One of the complimentary beverages available in Microsoft kitchens is Spicy Hot V-8. (Sure it's tasty, but watch out for the sodium content!) I remember well when Spicy Hot V-8 was adde...
After the Sensor and Location Platform PDC presentation, people were stopping by the booth and grabbing sensor hardware and development kits like they were candy. Then again, to geeks, this stuff is candy. (And technically, they weren't flying off shelves. They were flying out of bins. Well, and technically they weren't flying either.) Other...