The Old New Thing

July 2011 - Page 3 of 3 - The Old New Thing

The historical struggle over control of the Portuguese language

July 6, 2011 Jul 6, 2011 07/6/11
Raymond Chen
Portugal has been going through a rough patch. Its international stature has diminished over the years, its economy has always struggled to remain competitive, the government had to accept a bailout to avoid defaulting on its debt, and on top of it all, it is losing control of its own language. In Portugal, the latest round of Portuguese ...

Looking at the problem at the wrong level: Closing a process's stdin

July 6, 2011 Jul 6, 2011 07/6/11
Raymond Chen
A customer was having trouble manipulating the stdin stream that was given to a process. How do you simulate sending Ctrl+Z to a hidden console process programmatically? I am using and want to send the console a Ctrl+Z. I've tried sending ASCII code 26, but that doesn't work. supports Ctrl+C and Ctrl+Break but not Ctrl+Z. Here's what...

Microspeak: Reporting through

July 5, 2011 Jul 5, 2011 07/5/11
Raymond Chen
I'll start with the citation from a hypothetical conversation: "This is being handled by Jonathan Swift." — Who does he report through? "He reports up through Jane Austen's org." The Microspeak term report through (or report up through) comes up often in situations where people from different groups are working together. In its ...

A handful of trips through the time machine

July 4, 2011 Jul 4, 2011 07/4/11
Raymond Chen
A few trips through the time machine: In the Internet Explorer time machine video, I was struck by the remark, "Appearance-wise, very little had changed [in Internet Explorer 4] since IE3. Not much changed in terms of functionality, either." In fact, Internet Explorer 4 was probably the most significant revision of Internet Explorer in...