The Old New Thing

Cool, they're using Roman numerals!

May 28, 2007 May 28, 2007 05/28/07
Raymond Chen
The IT department here will periodically send out notifications regarding changes to the network infrastructure or updates that are being deployed across the company. One of my colleagues sent me email saying, "Cool, they're using Roman numerals!" It was in response to one particular IT notification that included the following sentence: This...

Raymond's SIFF schedule (2007)

May 25, 2007 May 25, 2007 05/25/07
Raymond Chen
Nobody asked, but I'm going to post it anyway. These are the movies I'm planning on seeing, along with my twisted take on the plot, based solely on the movie description. ¹These movies were chosen in large part to serve as German lessons. ²I have a weak spot for slightly off-kilter Japanese movies set in the modern day. ³...

The parameters to PostQueuedCompletionStatus are not interpreted

May 25, 2007 May 25, 2007 05/25/07
Raymond Chen
Larry Osterman mentioned this almost in passing quite a while ago, that the parameters to are not interpreted by the operating system. Well, obviously the first parameter, the handle to the completion port, is interpreted as the handle to the completion port. But the other parameters, , , and are not interpreted at all. Even though they ...

Being nominated for the Nobel Prize isn't as big a deal as it sounds

May 24, 2007 May 24, 2007 05/24/07
Raymond Chen
Occasionally, somebody will use the fact that they were nominated for the Nobel Prize as some sort of proof that they are a qualified or well-respected person. Except that it proves no such thing. This isn't like the Academy Awards or the Pulizter Prize for which receiving a nomination means that you are one of a handful of finalists. For ...

We should just get rid of that stupid middle tier

May 24, 2007 May 24, 2007 05/24/07
Raymond Chen
One of our line-of-business applications sometimes gets very heavily loaded, and several times a day, when you try to issue a query or update a record, you'll get the error message, "Unable to contact middle tier. (other technical gibberish goes here)". Whenever this happens, I like to amuse myself by shouting "Stupid middle tier! We should ...

Das Leben der Anderen

May 23, 2007 May 23, 2007 05/23/07
Raymond Chen
A few weekends ago I finally got around to watching the movie Das Leben der Anderen. (English: The Lives of Others.) Apparently movies about the former East Germany get screen time in the States. Go figure. I'd been away from conversational German for a long time, but I was rather pleased that I was able to follow some parts without having...

Microspeak: The forcing function

May 23, 2007 May 23, 2007 05/23/07
Raymond Chen
At Microsoft, you'll hear the phrase "forcing function" and it won't be in reference to differential equations or to user interface design. Rather, it means a set of circumstances that forces a decision to be made or which forces an action to be taken that previously had no hard deadline. Example: "The impending Y2K threat served as a ...

Suggestion Box 3

May 23, 2007 May 23, 2007 05/23/07
Raymond Chen
Post suggestions for future topics here instead of posting off-topic comments. Note that the suggestion box is emptied and read periodically so don't be surprised if your suggestion vanishes. (Note also that I am under no obligation to accept any suggestion.) Topics I are more inclined to cover: Topics I am not inclined to cover...

Another chapter in Swedish political hypocrisy (2007 edition)

May 22, 2007 May 22, 2007 05/22/07
Raymond Chen
A few years ago, Gudrun Schyman, then-leader of Sweden's left-wing party, Vänsterpartiet ("The Left Party"), was forced to resign after it was revealed that she had been cheating on her taxes for at least five years, specifically by claiming fake deductions. This was particularly ironic because, as the left-wing party, Vä...