The Old New Thing

Before you can learn to recognize what's wrong, you must learn to recognize what's right

July 10, 2006 Jul 10, 2006 07/10/06

Raymond Chen

Sometimes, when I'm debugging a problem, I'll ignore a particular thread and somebody will ask, "What is that thread doing, and how did you know to ignore it?" My reply: "I have no idea what it's doing, but whatever it's doing, it's normal." Tess has been running an excellent series of posts on debugging the CLR, but one of the most ...

Mr. T prefers a double-shot of espresso with two graham crackers, go figure

July 7, 2006 Jul 7, 2006 07/7/06

Raymond Chen

Back in November, Paul Davidson popped into his local Starbucks coffee shop and ended up in line right behind Mr. T. Unlike me, Mr. Davidson actually knew ahead of time what he was going to ask the former A-Team heavy. And the answer was worth waiting for. (Via TV Squad: Mr. T likes espresso, fool!) Mr. T has not ...

No, really, why is it 160×31?

July 7, 2006 Jul 7, 2006 07/7/06

Raymond Chen

When I discussed some time ago why minimized windows have an apparent size of 160x31, I explained that the minimized icon is a miniature title bar, but I managed not to explain why the values are exactly 160 and 31. The width of the miniature title bar is determined by the member of structure. You can retrieve and change this structure ...

Nearly 20 percent of daily smokers say they exercise three or more times a week

July 6, 2006 Jul 6, 2006 07/6/06

Raymond Chen

Several months ago, The Seattle Times ran a story on people who smoke and also work out. In the article, personal trainer Will Baldyga compares it to other dissonant behavior such as pigging out on ice cream after a workout. I have to admit that on rare occasions, I lapse into such behavior ("justifying" bad eating habits with exercise), ...

Is the maximum size of the environment 32K or 64K?

July 6, 2006 Jul 6, 2006 07/6/06

Raymond Chen

There appears to be some confusion over whether the maximum size of the environment is 32K or 64K. Which is it? Both. The limit is 32,767 Unicode characters, which equals 65,534 bytes. Call it 32K or 64K as you wish, but make sure you include the units in your statement if it isn't clear from context...

Retail companies allegedly not collecting personal information as aggressively

July 5, 2006 Jul 5, 2006 07/5/06

Raymond Chen

Several months ago, The Washington Post reported that retail companies were no longer collecting personal information as aggressively. The poster child for this sort of thing was RadioShack, which demanded your name and address even if you just stopped in to buy a pack of AA batteries. I didn't shop there often, and when I did, I merely ...

Things I've written that have amused other people, Episode 2

July 4, 2006 Jul 4, 2006 07/4/06

Raymond Chen

Go figure.

How do you use the bike rack on a Metro bus?

July 3, 2006 Jul 3, 2006 07/3/06

Raymond Chen

While it's true that I often ride the bus and often ride my bicycle, I do not often ride my bicycle onto a bus. This means that I forget how it's done and have to refresh my memory. Fortunately, Arlington Transit uses the same bike rack design as we do here in Metro King County, so I can refer to their detailed pictures instead of our ...

Security: Don't forget to initialize the stuff you don't care about

July 3, 2006 Jul 3, 2006 07/3/06

Raymond Chen

Lost in excitement of privilege escalation vulnerabilities is the simple information disclosure through missing garbage initialization. Everybody should by now be familiar with the use of the function to ensure that buffers that used to contain sensitive information are erased, but you also have to zero out buffers before you write their ...

Congratulations, Montréal, on finally paying for the 1976 Olympic Games

June 30, 2006 Jun 30, 2006 06/30/06

Raymond Chen

Assuming everything went according to plan, Montréal today made the final payment on Olympic Stadium (or Le Stade Olympique), originally built for the 1976 Olympic Games, and nicknamed "The Big O" (or "The Big Owe", if you prefer). Before you snicker, at least you have to give them credit for keeping the stadium until it was paid off...