Showing results for April 2009 - The Old New Thing

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, att...

(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 receives ...

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.)

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 single cl...

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 the num...

The terminology of family relationships.

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 flag i...

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. Work...

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),

Welcome, Slashdot readers. Remember, this Web site is for entertainment purposes only. If you go cruising through the commctrl.h header file, you'll find that there are two different definitions for PSH_WIZARD97: #if (_WIN32_IE >= 0x0400) ... #if (_WIN32_IE < 0x0500) #define PSH_WIZARD97 0x00002000 #else #define PSH_WIZARD97 ...