The Old New Thing

February 2009 - Page 2 of 4 - The Old New Thing

Why do my file properties sometimes show an Archive check box and sometimes an Advanced button?

February 19, 2009 Feb 19, 2009 02/19/09
Raymond Chen
When you view the properties of a file and go to the General page, there are some check boxes at the bottom for file attributes. There's one for Read-only and one for Hidden, and then it gets weird. Sometimes you get Archive and sometimes you get an Advanced button. What controls which one you get? It depends on whether there is anything ...

Guest TCP psychic debugging: Why the remote server keeps RSTing the connection

February 18, 2009 Feb 18, 2009 02/18/09
Raymond Chen
My colleague Keith Moore (who occasionally comments on this site) shared with me one of his recent triumphs of psychic debugging. First the question: The customer is getting an RST response from IIS and they would like to know why. Here is a fragment from a network capture that illustrates the problem. (Fragment deleted.) The full capture ...

Another Seattle bus tool: One Bus Away

February 17, 2009 Feb 17, 2009 02/17/09
Raymond Chen
I was recently tipped off to yet another Seattle bus tool: One Bus Away, which not only provides real-time bus arrival information for every stop in the Metro system, but does so in a variety of formats. You can use the Web-based interface (which is close to what you can already get from the Tracker Location View), but the real magic is that...

Why doesn’t the file system have a function that tells you the number of files in a directory?

February 17, 2009 Feb 17, 2009 02/17/09
Raymond Chen
There are any number of bits of information you might want to query from the file system, such as the number of files in a directory or the total size of the files in a directory. Why doesn't the file system keep track of these things? Well, of course, one answer is that it certainly couldn't keep track of every possible fragment of ...
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Don’t keep track of information you don’t need

February 16, 2009 Feb 16, 2009 02/16/09
Raymond Chen
This is sort of an extreme corollary to Don't save anything you can recalculate. Sure, it sounds like such an obvious principle, but many people fail to understand its consequences. Let's look at the principle again. Don't keep track of information you don't need. I remember being asked to look at a customer's program, and one thing that ...
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The love bus, also known as Metro Bus Route number 308

February 13, 2009 Feb 13, 2009 02/13/09
Raymond Chen
Four years ago, Troy Kleweno spotted Christine Hsieh on the 308 bus. He saw her twice a day, once in the morning on the way to work, and again in the evening on the way home. His co-workers teased him about the "bus girl" he pined after for six months before he finally said hello. That led to a date, and soon they were a couple. It's only ...

The checkbox: The mating call of the loser

February 13, 2009 Feb 13, 2009 02/13/09
Raymond Chen
(Cultural note: The phrase the mating call of the loser is a term of derision. I used it here to create a more provocative headline even though it's stronger than I really intended, but good writing is bold.) When given a choice between two architectures, some people say that you should give users a checkbox to select which one should be ...

Superthunderstingcar is go!

February 12, 2009 Feb 12, 2009 02/12/09
Raymond Chen
If you are an old geezer, you'll remember supermarionated shows, the most famous of which is Thunderbirds. And if you're not an old geezer, then this amazing spoof by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore will mean nothing to you. (You will also have no idea who Peter Cook and Dudley Moore are...

What does the COM Surrogate do and why does it always stop working?

February 12, 2009 Feb 12, 2009 02/12/09
Raymond Chen
The dllhost.exe process goes by the name COM Surrogate and the only time you're likely even to notice its existence is when it crashes and you get the message COM Surrogate has stopped working. What is this COM Surrogate and why does it keep crashing? The COM Surrogate is a fancy name for Sacrificial process for a COM object that is run ...

In order to serve you bett… wait, it really is better: Fuel surcharges

February 11, 2009 Feb 11, 2009 02/11/09
Raymond Chen
Normally, the phrase In order to serve you better means that you're about to get screwed. Imagine my surprise to discover that United has stopped imposing a fuel surcharge for flights between Canada and the United States due to the decrease in fuel prices. But wait, that's only for flights between Canada and the United States. Flights ...