Showing archive results for 2010

Mar 2, 2010
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Microspeak: Dialogue

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.

OtherMicrospeak
Mar 1, 2010
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Chilly Hilly 2010 kicked my butt

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 sometimes s...

Non-Computer
Mar 1, 2010
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When does STARTF_USESHOWWINDOW override the parameter passed to ShowWindow()?

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 ever...

Code
Feb 26, 2010
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Microwave popcorn enthusiast proudly proclaims, "I *am* popcorn!"

Raymond Chen

Oscar Night is a few weeks away, but when you settle in to watch the show with your bowl of popcorn, please be aware that inhaling deeply from the fumes of a freshly-opened bag of microwave popcorn is not the greatest decision you can make from a health standpoint. (Then again, you probably ought to reconsider eating microwave popcorn in the first ...

Non-Computer
Feb 26, 2010
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It's fine to use fibers, but everybody has to be on board with the plan

Raymond Chen

We saw fibers a long time ago when I looked at how you can use fibers as a form of coroutines to simplify the writing of enumerators. A fiber is a handy tool, but it's a tool with very sharp edges. Since fibers are promiscuous with threads, you have to be careful when running code that cares about what thread it is running on, because that code ...

Code
Feb 25, 2010
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Food products that are offenses against nature: Bagel-fuls

Raymond Chen

Wow, it's been a long time since my last rant against food products that are offenses against nature. Today's rant is against Bagel-fuls, a product which Kraft launched in April 2008. Bagel-fuls (note the hyphen and the lowercase "f") are a dense, doughy material formed into a log shape, with a cream cheese filling. Think of them as Twinkies, ...

Non-Computer
Feb 25, 2010
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What happens to the fibers which ran on a thread when the thread exits?

Raymond Chen

What happens to the fibers which ran on a thread when the thread exits? Are all the fibers destroyed? No, only the currently-executing fiber is destroyed. Fibers running on other threads and fibers which are not running on any thread at all are not affected. Fibers do not have thread affinity (when not running), and they do not remember what thre...

Code
Feb 24, 2010
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German language tip: Matratzen = mattresses, Matrosen = sailors

Raymond Chen

Be careful not to confuse the two. Since we're sharing: During a conversation in German, I talked about seeing Unfall (accident) instead of Abfall (garbage) on the street. To my credit, I immediately corrected my error. To my discredit, the error was made at the state finals of a German language contest.

Non-Computer
Feb 24, 2010
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Why does the CBS_SORT combo box style sort the left square bracket so strangely?

Raymond Chen

Some time ago, Michael Kaplan asked (and answered), How the @#%&*! does choose to sort it all out? One detail in his answer is that the sorting algorithm used by is basically , with special treatment for the left square bracket U+005B. Why is the left square bracket so special? It goes back to the message (which is in turn used by , , , a...

History
Feb 23, 2010
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Le Chatelier's principle in action: Announcements

Raymond Chen

As I noted some time ago, one of the most important lessons I learned from Systemantics is Le Chatelier's Principle for complex systems which states, "Every complex system resists its proper functioning." At Microsoft, there are processes galore. For example, when a server is taken down for planned maintenance, you can expect a series of messages...

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