Showing archive results for 2009

I decided to begin searching for a replacement for my current laptop computer since it was by this point literally being held together with electrical tape, and I decided to go against my more common computer replacement policy of "Wait until it breaks, and then panic." There was one model I had my eye on, and it was on sale at a local big-box ...

Hives, keys, values, types, and data. As I noted some years ago, the file that holds the registry data is called a hive. A hive contains a tree of keys. Keys contain a list of values. Associated with each value is a type and data. The terminology is weird and counter-intuitive thanks to the history of the registry. Back in the days ...

I have only one citation, but the usage is so egregious to me that one citation is all I need. I'm looking for XYZ recommends. My requirements are... Why write recommendations when you can shorten it to recommends and sound buzzwordier at the same time!

Today is Groundhog Day, a holiday celebrated in the northeastern United States, the day when, according to tradition, the groundhog emerges from hibernation. If it sees its shadow, then the frightened groundhog returns to its burrow, and cold winter weather will continue for six more weeks. It has never been more than a minor holiday, good for an ...

Commenter Mihai wants to know how to show or hide the Quick Launch bar programmatically. That's not something a program should be doing. Whether the Quick Launch bar is shown or hidden is an end user setting, and programs should not be overriding the user's preferences. Explorer consciously does not expose an interface for showing and hiding tas...

Why not have a month where everybody focuses on improving documentation like that month a few years ago where everybody focused on security? Well, part of it is that most people suck at technical writing. The technical part, maybe, but the writing almost definitely not. Writing is hard (as I've learned firsthand), and technical writing is a spec...

It is common among my circle of friends to have Battlestar Galactica-watching parties, and one way of making it a party is by playing games. Things we've done (or plan on doing):

In honor of National Puzzle Day, I leave you today with a puzzle based on an actual customer problem. Part One: The customer explains the problem. We have this DLL, and during its startup, it creates a thread with the following thread procedure: DWORD CALLBACK ThreadFunction(void *) { HANDLE HandleArray[2]; HandleArray[0] = SetUpStuff()...

The servers that run this Web site are under heavy load, even when things are operating normally. And on top of that, they have to fend off a lot of attacks. There's the usual spam pingbots, but usually when the site starts to get all bogged down, it's because there is an active attack on the site at the network level. And it doesn't matter what ...