September 2014 | Page 3 of 3 | The Old New Thing

You can use a file as a synchronization object, too

Raymond Chen September 5, 2014 Sep 5, 2014 09/5/14

A customer was looking for a synchronization object that had the following properties: Can be placed in a memory-mapped file. Can be used by multiple processes simultaneously. Bonus if it can even be used by different machines simultaneously. Does not leak resources if the file is deleted. It turns out there is already a ...

Aha, I have found a flaw in the logic to detect whether my program is running on 64-bit Windows

Raymond Chen September 4, 2014 Sep 4, 2014 09/4/14

Some time ago, I described how to detect programmatically whether you are running on 64-bit Windows, and one of the steps of the algorithm was "If you are a 64-bit program, then you are running on 64-bit Windows, because 32-bit Windows cannot run 64-bit programs." Every so often, somebody will claim that they found a flaw in this logic: "...

Why does the timestamp of a file increase by up to 2 seconds when I copy it to a USB thumb drive?

Raymond Chen September 3, 2014 Sep 3, 2014 09/3/14

We saw some time ago that the FAT file system records timestamps in local time to only two-second resolution. This means that copying a file to a FAT-formatted device (typically a floppy drive or a USB thumb drive) can increase the timestamp by up two seconds. And even after the file is copied, the timestamp is not stable. The timestamp ...

Who wrote the text for the Ctrl+Alt+Del dialog in Windows 3.1?

Raymond Chen September 2, 2014 Sep 2, 2014 09/2/14

Steve.

It's a trap! Employment documents that require you to violate company policy

Raymond Chen September 1, 2014 Sep 1, 2014 09/1/14

One of my colleagues had a previous job involving tuning spam filters and removing objectionable content. Before he could start, he was told that he had to sign a special release. The form said basically, "I understand that my job may require me to see pornography or other objectionable material, and I promise not to sue." He asked, "So where...

The Old New Thing

September 2014 | Page 3 of 3 | The Old New Thing

You can use a file as a synchronization object, too

Aha, I have found a flaw in the logic to detect whether my program is running on 64-bit Windows

Why does the timestamp of a file increase by up to 2 seconds when I copy it to a USB thumb drive?

Who wrote the text for the Ctrl+Alt+Del dialog in Windows 3.1?

It's a trap! Employment documents that require you to violate company policy

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