Mike Stephens from the Group Policy Team Blog explains how to get "Log on using dial-up connections" working on Windows Vista. But I'm posting to respond to a comment on that page, since that falls under the category of "When people ask for security holes as features." The only problem is all users need to have access to an account with local ad...

I used the wrong mouse for nearly an entire day. There are a good number of computers in my office, but they all funnel through to two sets of mice, keyboards, and monitors. One set is connected to the machine I use for day-to-day activities; the other set is connected through a switch box to a collection of machines which I used for testing and a...

One. Two. Three. Pre-emptive snarky comment: "That's about all Microsoft is good for: making a song out of their critical stop and error tones."

Most email discussion groups are not official support channels. There are a lot of peer-to-peer mailing lists inside Microsoft, consisting of people who are interested in a particular topic, sharing tips, providing advice, helping each other out if somebody runs into a problem, but they aren't the official support mechanism for the product group. ...

It's not rocket science.

Kevin asks, "Windows XP lets me install applications, delete files, etc., so why does scheduling a task requires a password?" (I guess the answer to this question wasn't obvious since nobody answered it in the suggestion box.) Because scheduled tasks run after you have logged off. All those other operations occur while you are logged on. Yo...

Every year, I put together a little pocket guide to the Seattle Symphony subscription season for my symphony friends to help them decide which ticket package they want. As before, you might find it helpful, you might not, but here it is anyway. Notes: This chart doesn't include "one-off" concert series such as the Visiting Orchestras or Disti...

A common mistake I see is people confusing message tables with string resources. This basically shows up in one place: . The folks who were designing Win32 decided that plain string resources weren't fancy enough, so they invented message tables, which is just another way of storing strings in resources. Why string resources weren't good enough ...

It's not just orange juice for breakfast any more. Soft drinks are making inroads into the world traditionally dominated by milk, orange juice, coffee, and tea. According to the article, over one in seven people order a soft drink to accompany their breakfast. (Among people who eat at home, the rate is 2.4%.) If this trend continues, can Dorito...

On Windows NT-based operating systems, process and thread IDs happen always to be a multiple of four. Is this just a coincidence? Yes, it's just a coincidence, and you shouldn't rely on it since it is not part of the programming contract. For example, Windows 95 process and thread IDs were not always multiples of four. (By comparison, th...