The Old New Thing

March 2010 - Page 4 of 4 - The Old New Thing

Voicemail security, even stronger than bank security

March 3, 2010 Mar 3, 2010 03/3/10
Raymond Chen
Microsoft's telephone department takes security very seriously. Your voicemail password must be at least eight digits long. By comparison, the password for my ATM card is only four digits long. Because voicemail is that important, I guess. (Yes, I know about two-factor authentication. I'm writing this only half-jokingly...

Microspeak: Dialogue

March 2, 2010 Mar 2, 2010 03/2/10
Raymond Chen
Why have a conversation when you can dialogue? I think this is minimal work, but do others care? If they don't, then this is one for the ideas that failed bin. If they do, well let's dialogue... No need to talk when you can dialogue...

Chilly Hilly 2010 kicked my butt

March 1, 2010 Mar 1, 2010 03/1/10
Raymond Chen
This year, I was woefully unprepared for the annual Chilly Hilly ride, not having gotten on my bicycle for the entire month of February. And I paid dearly for this lack of preparation, conking out and ending up walking up some of the last few hills. I rode with a few other people, but I quickly ended up lagging behind them. They would ...

When does STARTF_USESHOWWINDOW override the parameter passed to ShowWindow()?

March 1, 2010 Mar 1, 2010 03/1/10
Raymond Chen
kokorozashi wants to know what the rules are which govern when the second parameter to is overridden by the flag. The guiding principle is that the parameter is ignored if the window manager thinks that the window you're creating is the application's main window. The details behind the implementation of this principle change over time, so...