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Feb 23, 2006
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That $9 you got from the PayPal settlement? Taxable income.

If you're like many people, you signed up for the PayPal class action lawsuit and got around $9 for filing a claim against the Statutory Damage Fund. My read of IRS publication 4345 says that this constitutes taxable income. Note: This is just my personal opinion. Consult with your tax advisor before taking action. As for me, I reported it. Give...

Non-Computer
Feb 23, 2006
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Enumerating threads in a process

The tool helper library is sort of the black sheep of Win32. It grew out of the 16-bit TOOLHELP library, which provided services for system debugging tools to do things like take stack traces and enumerate all the memory in the system. The original incarnation of Win32 didn't incorporate it; it wasn't until Windows 95 that a 32-bit version o...

Code
Feb 22, 2006
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The performance cost of reading a registry key

The registry is a convenient place to record persistent cross-process data in a uniform and multi-thread-safe manner. It roams with the user if you store it in , and individual keys can be secured (even on systems that use FAT, which doesn't otherwise support security). But that doesn't mean that it's free. The cost of opening a key, reading a v...

Code
Feb 21, 2006
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In pursuit of the message queue

In 16-bit Windows, every thread (or "task" as it was called then) had a message queue, end of story. In the transition to 32-bit Windows, this model broke down because Win32 introduced the concepts of "worker threads" and "console applications", neither of which had much need for messaging. Creating a queue for every thread in the system would have...

Code
Feb 21, 2006
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In pursuit of Michael Cassini, "the king of con"

Michael Cassini used forged documents to pretend that he was a Microsoft millionaire and managed to con people out of over $4.5 million before he was finally caught. Cassini claimed a net worth of $12.3 million, an annual income of $700,000; $8 million on account at Barclays Bank, and more. It was all right there on paper. And it w...

Non-Computer
Feb 20, 2006
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How the study of languages influences one's appreciation of international competition

One of the consequences of studying another language for me is that I develop some sort of mental connection with the people who speak that language, despite having no innate cultural basis for it. When I studied German, I found myself cheering for the German athletes in the Olympic Games. And in the men's 4x10,000 cross-country relay yesterday, I...

Non-Computer
Feb 20, 2006
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Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

Sometimes, people discover that a long-running task runs faster if you hold down the mouse. How can that be? This strange state of affairs typically results when a program is spending too much time updating its progress status and not enough time actually doing work. (In other words, the programmer messed up badly.) When you click and hold the m...

Code
Feb 17, 2006
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Diving into kernel mode with Doron

My colleague Doron Holan has started writing about kernel mode driver programming, and it looks like he's jumping in with both feet. I have to admit that I don't understand what he's saying (not being a kernel-mode person myself), but I can assure you that he knows what he's talking about. (Note that he's writing about driver programming, so if y...

Other
Feb 17, 2006
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Not all team integrations go smoothly

When writing the entry on Windows Integration Meetings, I was reminded of a team integration that didn't go quite so smoothly. I will not identify the teams involved because this is not an outlet for finger-pointing but rather a cautionary tale for managers and developers everywhere. Once upon a time, there were two teams developing projects that...

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