April 2009 | The Old New Thing

Identity theft via repeated name changes

Raymond ChenApril 30, 2009Apr 30, 200904/30/09

In the United States, it is legal to change your name as many times as you like, and you don't even have to have a reason, as long as you're not doing it with fraudulent intent. The ease with which name changes can be accomplished has been exploited by people who use it to carry out identity theft. Creditors coming after you? Change your name

Those notification icons, with their clicks, double-clicks, right-clicks… what’s up with that?

Raymond ChenApril 30, 2009Apr 30, 200904/30/09

(A completely feeble attempt to mimic Michael Kaplan's blog entry titles which carry a much stronger voice.) Jonathan Hardwick made a short table of inconsistencies in how various programs handle clicks on their notification icons. How are these supposed to work? The final decision is up to the application, since it is the one that rece

Qrystal does more research into those spam blogs

Raymond ChenApril 29, 2009Apr 29, 200904/29/09

Blogger Qrystal got hit with blog trackback spam and did research into the phenomenon, even discovering the author trying to sell the spam blog. And he had to cut the price because Google AdSense has cut him off. Ha, ha, haaahhhhh~! (Read the blog entry for the spammer's for-sale offers and other linkity goodness.)

Why is there sometimes a half-second delay between the click and the action?

Raymond ChenApril 29, 2009Apr 29, 200904/29/09

There are places in the user interface where you may click to perform an action, but the action doesn't actually take place until a half second later. Why is there a half-second delay? Because it's waiting to see if the user is on the way to a double-click. Some users simply double-click everything in sight, and depending on what the sing

A simple bar chart on letter distribution

Raymond ChenApril 28, 2009Apr 28, 200904/28/09

I was visiting a colleague's office in another building and I spotted a whiteboard on which the following enigmatic bar chart was drawn. The source data for the analysis was left unspecified. It looks like there's an entire Web site devoted to profound charts like this. For example, a graph of beer bottle distribution as a function of th

What kind of uncle am I?

Raymond ChenApril 27, 2009Apr 27, 200904/27/09

Like every language, English has its own collection of words to express family relationships. There are the easy ones like mother, father, brother, and sister. Also comparatively easy are cousin, aunt, uncle, niece and nephew. But most people don't know about this "removal" part, beyond the fact that your "first cousin twice removed" is somebo

The Start menu pin list is just a list of items; there’s no magic

Raymond ChenApril 27, 2009Apr 27, 200904/27/09

Commenter Kevin Dente asks, "Is it possible to put a folder on the Start Menu Pin list and have it cascade?" No. The last time I checked (which was back in Windows XP), the Start menu pin list was a list, not a menu. (Specifically, a list view in tile mode.) When you click on the icon, it launches. There is no code to say "Oh, if this f

No, we’re not nerds, why do you ask?

Raymond ChenApril 24, 2009Apr 24, 200904/24/09

Last year, to celebrate successful completion of a project milestone, our group went on a "cultural expedition" to a glass-blowing studio where we were to learn about the craft of glass blowing and even do some of it ourselves. (By the way, it was fun.) One of the glassblowers had been making a lot of little jokes about Frodo and Mount Doom.

Fashion is something that can be acquired by looking at lots of different fashions

Raymond ChenApril 23, 2009Apr 23, 200904/23/09

Actress Brenda Dickson teaches us how to be awesome. Update: Apparently that video link died within days of my finding it, but there are plenty of other copies floating around the Intertubes. Here's one of many series on YouTube: Part 1 (Fashion), Part 2 (Make-Up), Part 3 (Exercise). and Part 4 (Diet and Nutrition),

Why are there two values for PSH_WIZARD97?