The Old New Thing
Practical development throughout the evolution of Windows.
Latest posts
Being lucky may be a matter of observing things you weren’t planning to observe
On BBC's The One Show, presenter Michael Mosley tests a theory of Professor Richard Wiseman that part of being lucky is simply being more aware of incidental information in your surroundings, information seemingly unrelated to the task at hand but which may ultimately help you achieve your goal. (Professor Wiseman has many interesting videos on YouTube. I particularly like the colour-changing card trick. (Spoiler: I noticed only one of the changes myself. What I found fascinating was that he made no effort to hide the sound of the backdrop changing, because he knew nobody would notice.) We've seen mani...
The Washington 2008 unclaimed property auction
After five years, the contents of abandoned safe deposit boxes are turned over to the state, which attempts to contact the owners, but if the owners cannot be located after three years, they are put up for auction. Things like this antique watch with a Swedish dedication: "Till min kära syster Nanny fr. Elin — Mors klocka" = "To my dear sister Nanny, from Elin — Mom's watch". It's sad that something with such obvious sentimental value is being sold off. Or, if you are more of the nerdy type, you could bid on Star Trek comic books graphic novels or a Michael Jordan rookie trading card.
Don’t use global state to manage a local problem
We've seen a few instances where people have used a global setting to solve a local problem. For example, people who use the function to prevent a window from redrawing, toggle a global setting to see what its value is, or who change the system time zone as part of an internal calculation. To this, I'll add as an example a program which figures that if you don't want the program's feature, you don't want that feature in any competing products either. The first service pack of Windows XP introduced the Set Program Access and Defaults control panel. Among other things, media players can register here to ...
A bar on Microsoft main campus? What should we call it?
When my colleagues discovered that Seattle bar Spitfire is opening a bar on the main Microsoft campus, a quick game of Name that bar sprung up. (Todd Bishop has his suggestions.) Here are some names we came up with: Though I suspect they'll just call it Spitfire. Sidebar: Although alcohol is available at many company-sponsored social events, there is no pressure to drink an alcoholic beverage, and people don't even notice one way or the other. (Just like nobody notices that you had the vegetarian appetizers and avoided the meat ones.)
How do I change the directory Windows uses for user profiles?
To change the directory Windows uses for user profiles (by default, the directory), set the setting in your unattend file. This setting is available only via the unattend file. There is no GUI interface for this, nor can it be changed after Windows has been installed. Sorry.
The role of vitamin D in beta cell function: The dance
In January 2008, John Bohannon held a contest titled Dance your PhD, wherein contestants were invited to express their PhD thesis in five minutes through the medium of dance. It was such a hit that it came back for a sequel: The 2009 Dance Your Ph.D. contest. Only a Game interviews John Bohannon [mp3]. You can also watch the winning dance, The role of vitamin D in beta cell function on YouTube, along with the other winners.
Email tip: If you want people to look at a screen shot, you have to tell them what they’re looking at
Some time ago, Ry Jones decided to take something that I wrote and condense it to make it funnier: Don't embed pictures. ... This isn't Highlights magazine. Those ellipses are deceptive, because they hide a change of topic! As a result, the two unrelated sentences appeared to be connected to each other. The comment about Highlights magazine was not a response to "Don't embed pictures." It was a response to a different part of that message. Here's the complete message, or an approximation thereof: Don't embed pictures. Send a link to your pictures. And when you ask us to look at the pictures which de...
A file can go by multiple names, but two files can’t have the same name
Thanks to short file names and hard links, a single file can go by multiple names. (And for the purpose of today's discussion, I'm treating the full path as the name instead of just the part after the last backslash. Don't make me bring back the nitpicker's corner.) For example, C:\PROGRA~1 and C:\Program Files are two possible names for the same directory thanks to short names. [Typo fixed 7:15am.] If you've created hard links, then you can give a single file two entirely unrelated names, and those names need not even be in the same directory. On the other hand, you can't have two files with the same name. Wha...
Thrift stores drowning in Christmas impulse gifts from yesteryear
Last year, the Washington Post covered the fates of The Thing, that Christmas impulse gift that stores place in enticing locations in the store to convince you that you simply gotta have it. The twirling apple peeler, the liquor carousel, the portable chocolate fountain (for your fancy party, no doubt). After a few years, some of them show up by the garbage-bagful at the Opportunity Shop thrift store. "We get three or four fondue sets a month... Sometimes we get stuff and I don't even know what the stuff is."