It depends on whom you ask. The maximum command line length for the CreateProcess function is 32767 characters. This limitation comes from the UNICODE_STRING structure. CreateProcess is the core function for creating processes, so if you are talking directly to Win32, then that's the only limit you have to worry about. But if you are reaching Cr...

Robert Scoble posted an entry in his Longhorn blog on the subject of what the UI defaults should be. It sure has stirred up a lot of controvery. I may pick at the remarks over the upcoming days, but for now I posted responses to two of the comments he kicked up. We recently did a survey of users of al...

It's almost as bad as terminating a thread. Instead of just answering a question, I'm going to ask you the questions and see if you can come up with the answers. Consider the following program, in (gasp) C#: When you run this program and hit Enter to suspend, the program hangs. But if you change the worker function to just "for(;;) {}" the ...

If you look at the implementation of FlushInstructionCache on Windows 95, you'll see that it's just a return instruction. It doesn't actually do anything. So why do you have to call it? Because the act of calling it is the whole point. The control transfers implicit in calling a function suffice to flush the instruction cache on a Pentium. The fu...

Am I the only one who find these icons bizarro?

The MPR show Marketplace (note: MPR, not NPR) had a brief story about the reaction to China being the host of the Miss World pageant. (Last story on the page.) What I noticed was the comment at timecode 23:50 from Miss World - United States Kim Harlan. (Not to be confused with Miss ...

To deny a device removal query, you must return the special value BROADCAST_QUERY_DENY, which has the curious value 0x424D5144. What's the story behind that? Well, we first tried following the pattern set by WM_QUERYENDSESSION, where returning TRUE allows the operation to proceed and returning FALSE causes the operation to fail. But when we did t...

Each ACE in a security descriptor contains a 32-bit access mask. Which bits belong to whom? The access rights mask is a 32-bit value. The upper 16 bits are defined by the operating system and the lower 16 bits are defined by the object being secured. For example, consider the value 0x00060002 for the access rights mask. This breaks down as the sy...

There are 64 bits of styles in the parameters to CreateWindowEx. Which ones belong to whom? Windows defines the meanings of the high word of the dwStyle parameter and all of the bits in the dwExStyle parameter. The low 16 bits of the dwStyle parameter are defined by the implementor of the window class (by the person who calls RegisterClass). In W...

This is the (future) new home of The Old New Thing. Just kicking the tires right now.