The Old New Thing
Practical development throughout the evolution of Windows.
Latest posts
Defense in depth means that you protect against exploits that don’t exist yet
Defense in depth is about protecting against threats that are already being protected against, just in case the existing protection fails. This is why there is not merely a lock on your safety deposit box, but also a lock on the door to the safety deposit box room, and then a lock on the doors of the bank itself. This is why you wear your seat belt even though the car is equipped with air bags. This is why factories have multiple safety systems. It's why, when you put away a gun, you set the safety and remove the ammunition and lock the gun case. An insistent anonymous commenter refused to believe in this pri...
You can’t globally reserve screen space; you can put up signs, but if somebody ignores the sign you’ll have to decide how to respond
A customer sent the following question with the rather unhelpful subject line Need Help. They're not just looking for help; they're looking for Help with a capital H. We want to make something like an appbar, but without some of the limitations of appbars. For example, like an appbar, we want applications to avoid using the edge of the screen. The section of the screen the window appears on should be "mine"; nobody else should be permitted to use it. The window should always be on top; nothing should be able to cover it. For example, Internet Explorer in fullscreen (F11) mode should not cover our window; it s...
Raymond’s highly scientific predictions for the 2009 NCAA men’s basketball tournament
Once again, it's time for Raymond to come up with an absurd, arbitrary criterion for filling out his NCAA bracket. This year, the criterion is the school's graduation rate for basketball players. Lower graduation rate wins. However, if the teams are seeded 11 or more positions apart, I'll give the win to the favorite (just to get rid of highly unlikely upsets). Update: *The Marquette/Utah State game is a draw based on graduation rates, so it went to the tie-breaker: players arrested. Update 9am: Fixed the prediction for the game between LSU and Akron. Thanks, Adam, for pointing this out. ...
Well, duh, I’d sure better get my money back
The vending machines in my building proudly announce Guaranteed to deliver or your money back. Well, duh. If I don't get the product, I'd sure better get my money back. Pre-emptive snarky comment: "I'm suing Microsoft."
Overheard conversation fragment: Shrimp is not vegetables
I walked past a woman in the grocery store who was talking on her mobile phone. I only caught one sentence. She said, in an annoyed voice, "Shrimp is not vegetables." (Then again, purple is a fruit, so anything's possible.) Update: manicmarc correctly deduced that the tone and body language of the person on the phone indicated that her previous sentence in the conversation was something like "What vegetables do you want to have with dinner?"
Why does the MoveWindow function let you suppress repainting?
Commenter Phil Quirk asks via the suggestion box why the function lets you suppress repainting. "Shouldn't the OS be able to figure out if the window needs to be repainted?" Indeed the window manager does do a very nice job of figuring it out if you pass , which is the expected value of the parameter. But if you think you're smarter than the window manager, then you can pass and tell the window manager, "Even though you think the window needs to be repainted, don't repaint it. Trust me on this." Why would you try to outwit the window manager? Maybe you have special knowledge about how your application beh...
Raymond rewrites newspaper headlines, episode 2
The local community newspaper featured a color photograph of a twelve-year-old student holding a bright orange safety flag while another student crosses the street in front of him. The caption reads as follows: XYZ School 6th-grader John Doe, at right, will be honored Friday night at Safeco Field as one of the state's top safety patrol students. "On Monday morning, he will be found stuffed inside his locker," the caption did not conclude.
The perilous quandary of including external drivers on the Windows CD
(Technically, it's probably more a dilemma than a quandary, but I like the phrase perilous quandary.) Driver coverage is always a sticking point for Windows deployments. If the Windows CD doesn't include a driver for your particular hardware, you're probably going to say, "Windows sucks. I installed the latest version on my machine and it didn't work with my video card/sound card/network card/whatever." The people who are responsible for deciding which drivers are included on the CD have to balance a lot of factors. How popular is the hardware? Will the hardware vendor allow Microsoft to include the driver...
If Michael Jackson took up bhangra dancing
If Michael Jackson took up bhangra dancing, it might look something like this