The Old New Thing
Practical development throughout the evolution of Windows.
Latest posts
Merry Christmas to me: Zune headphones
My article some time back about accidentally destroying my beloved Zune headphones resulted in a number of people sending me their unwanted Zune headphones via inter-office mail. This was not my intention when I posted the article—if that were my goal, I would have posted the article immediately instead of waiting a year and a half!—but it was nevertheless a pleasant surprise. Every so often strangers come through. Thanks, everybody.
No, you didn't win the Jethro Tull box set, and please tell everybody else in your area code to stop calling me
Some time ago, a fellow employee started receiving mysterious fax calls at the office four or five times a day and had to call the Microsoft telephone services folks to block the caller. But this reminded another colleague of a much more annoying problem, and one for which caller-block would not have worked. A local radio station had a contest line in the 206 area code. If someone in the 425 area code dialed this number without dialing the 206 area code prefix, they rang the phone of a new Microsoft employee. That employee's phone was set up incorrectly, and the calls ended up auto-forwarded to my phone. Every ...
The NPR Planet Money one-hour story competition: The shopping mall convention
Voting closed last night on the second NPR Planet Money one-hour story competition. Three reporters were sent into a convention (this time, the International Council of Shopping Centers conference) and given one hour to collect tape for a story. Listen to the results, either in the full podcast format or just to the three individual stories. Each of the stories was interesting in its own way. From Adam Davidson, I learned some mall restaurant jargon. From Chana Joffe-Walt, I learned about the pursuit of the cool kids. And from Alex Blumberg, I learned why a guy dressed in a bright red blazer known only as McGui...
Why don't we create a special class of programs which can break the normal rules?
In response to a discussion of why the window handle limit is 10,000, commenter Juan wondered why we don't create a special class of programs which can exceed the 10,000 handle limit and otherwise bypass the normal operation of the system. This is another case of the tragedy of special treatment: Eventually, nothing is special any more. If there were a way for an application to say, "Hey, I don't want to be constrained by the normal rules that apply to your everyday boring applications," then every application would simply say it, and the net effect would be that the constraint no longer applies to anybody. ...
Exploiting the inattentive: The posted wine rating may not match the wine on the shelf
The Washington Post did a spot check of area wine stores and found that of the "shelf talkers" signs (those things that describe the wine and tell you what score it received from Wine Spectator magazine) it found, a quarter of them were incorrect, usually by attributing a good score to the correct wine vineyard but from a different year. So when you cruise the wine store, make sure to double-check that the information placard actually matches the wine it's posted next to.
Why is it possible to destroy a critical section while it is in use?
Some time back, Stu wondered why it is possible to destroy a critical section while it is in use. Well, there's nothing stopping you from creating a file that contains these lines: and then telling your compiler to turn it into a program. It's not like a bolt of lightning is going to come out of the sky and zap you before you hit the Enter key. So obviously, it's possible. On the other hand, it's a bug, just like closing a handle to a file that another thread is reading from, or like closing an event handle that another thread is waiting on. Critical sections are one of those low-level I sure hope yo...
Tweeting Too Hard: Best of Twitter
We had Best of Craig's List. We had Lamebook. Now we have Tweeting Too Hard, "where self-important tweets get the recognition they deserve." Examples: The people who say I'm arrogant and shallow don't see me when I'm at home with my wife. Did I mention that she's a former swimsuit model? How was it I got invite to last yrs White House Xmas party when Bush was prez; and nothing this year? I guess I must try harder 2 be fab.
No, you can't lock icons to the user's desktop
In another installment of I bet somebody got a really nice bonus for that feature, I submit this question for your consideration. My customer wants to know how to lock a specific icon to the upper left hand corner of the desktop. This company must be writing the most awesome program to end all programs, a program so amazingly awesome that it should appear as the very first thing on the desktop so you won't forget how awesome it is. I think their users may disagree with that assessment. And the answer is, no, there is no supported way to force a particular icon to appear at a particular desktop position.
Christmas gift idea for your favorite Microsoft fanboy geek with no sense of fashion or taste
Then again, the "no sense of fashion or taste" may be redundant. Perhaps you are so enamored of the Microsoft-branded Snuggie you received at the Company Meeting that you can't keep your excitement to yourself and want to share the joy with a friend. No problem. You can now pick one up at the Microsoft Company Store in Redmond, right across the hall from the Visitor Center. (The Rapture Index ticks up another notch.) "You shouldn't have." Previously, in Christmas gift ideas.