September 2009 | Page 2 of 4 | The Old New Thing

We accept cash, credit cards, and Microsoft cardkeys

Raymond ChenSeptember 21, 2009Sep 21, 200909/21/09

One of the restaurants that opened at the new Microsoft Commons is Spitfire, which opened under its own name instead of one of the many wonderful alternatives proposed. At The Commons, the dining establishments operate in a variety of ways (cafeteria, buffet, fast casual, deli, etc.) but they share the common characteristic that you pay for ...

What is the logic behind the thumb size and position calculation in scroll bars?

Raymond ChenSeptember 21, 2009Sep 21, 200909/21/09

Commenter sarathc asks, "How do we implement a custom scroll bar as Windows does? What is the logic behind the thumb size and position calculation? How we could dynamically manage it?" Let's look at the three questions in turn. To implement a custom scroll bar... don't do it. It's just not worth the effort, and there will almost always be ...

Windows 95's ticking death

Raymond ChenSeptember 18, 2009Sep 18, 200909/18/09

A few years ago, Larry Osterman explained the famous beeping death. Windows 95 had its own noise-related death, what nobody has called ticking death, but that's what I'm going to call it. (Let's see how long before somebody decide to add it to Wikipedia.) When your machine fell into ticking death, each time you moved the mouse or ...

Should I fix the spelling in the United States Constitution?

Raymond ChenSeptember 17, 2009Sep 17, 200909/17/09

Commenter Dave jokingly remarked, "I've grown used to handling characters with ASCII. (If it was good enough to represent every character in the US Constitution, it's good enough for me.)" But there's a double-joke in there. You see, not every character in the United States Constitution can be represented in ASCII! If you take a close look...

Rentonites concerned about Hooters opening in their town, but not for the reason you think

Raymond ChenSeptember 16, 2009Sep 16, 200909/16/09

To support my claim that Renton has a reputation for being a working-class town, I submit this article from last week's news: Hooters too pretentious for us, some Renton, South Park locals say...

Whoa there, logging on awful fast now are we?

Raymond ChenSeptember 16, 2009Sep 16, 200909/16/09

Occasionally, a customer will run into a problem that manifests itself only when Autologon is enabled. Here are some examples: If we log on manually, everything works just fine. But if we log on using Autologon with the same userid and password, we get a networking error from our wireless network card. Is there a known problem with Autologon ...

Crazy Eddie: His prices were insane because it was all a criminal operation

Raymond ChenSeptember 15, 2009Sep 15, 200909/15/09

If you lived in the New York metropolitan area in the 1980's, you couldn't avoid the advertisements for electronics store Crazy Eddie. What I didn't realize until now was that the retail establishment was a criminal operation from day one. Sam Antar, Crazy Eddie CFO, and nephew of company namesake Eddie Antar, talks us through the entire ...

Why does the Start menu search box autoselect some items but not others?

Raymond ChenSeptember 15, 2009Sep 15, 200909/15/09

When you open the Start menu and type into the search box, sometimes the first search result is autoselected (so you just have to hit Enter), whereas sometimes See more results is autoselected. Is there a method to this madness? If an item is found in the Programs and Control Panel sections, then the first such is autoselected. Otherwise, ...

A complex family calculus

Raymond ChenSeptember 14, 2009Sep 14, 200909/14/09

I spent the other night at a relative's house, and I was woken the next morning by my young niece who politely asked me to make her breakfast. (Her technique for waking me up is to come in and call my name. If the door is closed, she pounds on the bedroom door and shouts, "Wake up! Wake up!" If I fail to open the door, she opens it herself. If...

Can you create an information context for the display?