The Old New Thing
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Raymond Chen
Maintaining high standards at the International Frederic Chopin Piano Competition
The quintennial International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition will be held later this year, and I was reminded that the awards for "Best performance of a ...
Raymond Chen
Why does Explorer eject the CD after you finish burning it?
Partly as a convenience, but partly to work around buggy hardware. The developer responsible for CD burning explained it to me. Most CD drives cache ...
Raymond Chen
Why can't the default drag/drop behavior be changed?
A common reaction to my explanation of whether dragging a file will result in a move or copy was that there should be a setting that lets you change the ...
Raymond Chen
Can you trust the Man on the Street interview?
Occasionally, in a news story, the reporter will ask for comments or opinion from a passer-by (nicknamed "the man on the street"). Greg Packer has created a ...
Raymond Chen
Why don't control panel programs and property sheets show up in the taskbar?
Control panel programs and property sheets don't show up in the taskbar. Why not? As I recall, the explanation was that control panel programs and property ...
Raymond Chen
Answer to quick puzzle about security and synchronization
As many people quickly figured out, the reason why the the returns immediately is that the call is failing. The reason is that the second process opened the ...
Raymond Chen
What if two programs did this?
Another thought experiment when thinking through a feature.
Raymond Chen
Adam Felber teaches us how to avoid setting off motion detectors
In a sidebar discussion on this week's episode of Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me, Adam Felber explains that "you can foil most motion detectors with a pair of ...
Raymond Chen
A quick puzzle about security and synchronization
This quick puzzle floated past one of our internal discussion groups. In Process B, the succeeds, but the returns immediately instead of waiting. ...