June 2015 | The Old New Thing

2015 mid-year link clearance

Raymond ChenJune 30, 2015Jun 30, 201506/30/15

The semi-annual link clearance is here! Windows 8 comes with a data compression API. I was going to write a Little Program to demonstrate it, but it turns out the MSDN sample pretty much covers it, so I'll just incorporate it by reference. James Mickens says, "Life is terrible: Let's talk about the Web".

Microspeak: Stretch goal

Raymond ChenJune 30, 2015Jun 30, 201506/30/15

Recall that Microspeak is not merely for jargon exclusive to Microsoft, but also for jargon that you need to know. A project will set some goals, which are things it intends to accomplish. It may also set stretch goals, which are things it hopes to accomplish. If you fail to achieve a stretch goal, your project is still a success, but if you

Parsing a string as a 64-bit integer, somehow

Raymond ChenJune 29, 2015Jun 29, 201506/29/15

Today's Little Program takes a string and tries to parse it as a 64-bit integer in formats that a programmer would likely encounter. Here's a first stab: If the string begins with 0x, then we treat the rest of the argument as a hex value; otherwise, we treat it as a decimal value. Unfortunately, this doesn't work if the input is 92233720368

Windows 95 and Windows NT manage the TEB on x86 differently

Raymond ChenJune 26, 2015Jun 26, 201506/26/15

Today, a historical note of no consequence. Just a story. The Win32 x86 ABI specifies that the FS register holds a selector which is based at the current thread's TEB. In other words, fs:[n] is the nth byte of the TEB. It so happens that the two operating systems chose to manage the FS register differently. Windows 95 gave each TEB in the s

Where is the full version of the music that plays when you start Windows 98 for the first time?

Raymond ChenJune 25, 2015Jun 25, 201506/25/15

A customer was presumably exercising the unlimited support part of their support contract when they asked, "Where is the full song for the music that plays when you start Windows 98 for the first time? The Welcome application plays only the first 30 seconds. Can you send us the rest of the song?" I guess the IT department really likes that mu

A trick for finding the correct internal mailing list

Raymond ChenJune 24, 2015Jun 24, 201506/24/15

Suppose you have a problem and you want to report it to an internal mailing list, but you don't know the correct mailing list to use. Here's a trick that apparently is not that well-known, though perhaps that's a reflection on people's lack of creativity than any inherent difficulty in execution. For example, suppose you have a problem with t

Reinterpreting the bits of a 64-bit integer as if they were a double-precision floating point number (and vice versa)

Raymond ChenJune 22, 2015Jun 22, 201506/22/15

Today's Little Program takes a 64-bit integer and reinterprets its physical representation as a double-precision floating point number. Our first attempt uses the BitConverter class to convert the 64-bit integer to an array of bytes, and then parses a double-precision floating point number from that byte array. Maybe you're not happy th

Random links on taking better pictures

Raymond ChenJune 19, 2015Jun 19, 201506/19/15

I'm always interested in finding simple things you can do to take better pictures. Here are some links I've collected. Take better pictures of friends and family: Turn off your flash. Ten tips for taking better photos. One thing I discovered as a tourist is that if you ask a random person to take your picture (because you're

Why does the class name for Explorer change depending on whether you open it with /e?

Raymond ChenJune 19, 2015Jun 19, 201506/19/15

I noted some time ago that Explorer's original name was Cabinet, and that the name lingers in the programmatic class name: CabinetWClass. A commenter with a rude name points out that Explorer uses the class name ExplorerWClass if you open it with the /e command line switch, adding, "This is rather strange since you can toggle the fol

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