The Old New Thing
Practical development throughout the evolution of Windows.
Latest posts
Uninitialized floating point variables can be deadly
A colleague of mine related to me this story about uninitialized floating point variables. He had a function that went something like this, simplified for expository purposes. The infoType parameter specified which piece of information you're requesting, and depending on what you're asking for, one or the other of the output parameters may not contain a meaningful result. BOOL GetInfo(int infoType, int *intResult, double *dblResult) { int intValue; double dblValue; switch (infoType) { case NUMBER_OF_GLOBS: intValue = ...; break; case AVERAGE_GLOB_SIZE: dblValue = ...; break; ... } *intResult ...
András Schiff 2006 lectures on the Beethoven piano sonatas
In 2006, pianist András Schiff gave a series of eight lecture-recitals covering the complete cycle of Beethoven piano sonatas. Here are all the lectures on one page. (Beware: The metadata on these mp3 files is all over the map.) As an incompetent student of the Beethoven sonatas, I find these lectures absolutely riveting. Note: Schiff assumes you are familiar with basic musical terminology, terms like exposition, subdominant, Neapolitan, enharmonic and quaver.
Windows Vista changed the Alt+Tab order slightly
For decades, the Alt+Tab order was the same as the Z-order, but that changes in Windows Vista if you use the enhanced Alt+Tab feature known as Flip, which is on by default on most systems. There are three types of interactive task switching in Windows Vista: Classic Alt+Tab continues to show the icons in Z-order order, but the developer who wrote Flip told me that Flip changed it up a bit based on feedback from the design team. The first several icons are still shown in Z-order order, but if you have a lot of windows open, the rest of them are shown in alphabetical order to make it easier to pick the one yo...
2008 mid-year link clearance
Time for the semi-annual link clearance. And, as always, the obligatory plug for my column in TechNet Magazine: Footnotes ¹Yes, it isn't literally powered by RFID. I was spoofing marketing-speak. I apologize to those for whom this did not require explaining.
You don't need that 90 byte whereis program any more
Yes, you can write a whereis program in 90 bytes but Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista both come with a version of , so you don't even need the batch file any more.
GUIDs are globally unique, but substrings of GUIDs aren’t
Half of a GUID is worse than none.
The mystery of the garbage lady
Last year, my good friend and colleague Sarah transfered from the Redmond offices to Microsoft UK in Reading. One of her most popular lunchtime stories is the mystery of the garbage lady, which she finally got around to posting on her blog. Some of my other favorite stories from her blog: A colleague of mine experienced the phenomenon of clouded geography in reverse. He was temporarily assigned to Microsoft UK and while living there had occasion to drive out to Wales. He pulled out his handy road map and studied it: "Okay, I need to take this highway west, over the mountain range, and then take t...
The disappointment of people who need to have their hand held from beginning to end
Some customers already have the answer but need to have their hand held. My customer wants to enforce a company-wide policy of disabling the "Keep the taskbar on top of other windows" feature. We have confirmed that there is no group policy setting for controlling this setting. Further research reveals the function. The customer wants to know if there is any way he can write code that will use this function to modify the setting. The customer found a map to a stream, saw that there were directions printed on it, and then asked, "Is there any way I can follow these directions and get some water?" The produ...
The difference between a junior and senior position at a video card company
Here are the descriptions (verbatim) of two job positions open at a major video card manufacturer back in the late 1990's: Software Engineer - Drivers The way in to a "hot" company in a "hot" field. This entry level position requires some programming experience with graphics preferred. Senior Software Engineer - Applications (Demos) This senior position requires considerable experience in 3D graphics or multimedia. Design, specification, and implementation of demos for new products will all be part of the mix.