The Old New Thing
Practical development throughout the evolution of Windows.
Latest posts
Raymond’s review of Pride and Prejudice (Keira Knightley version)
A satisfying adaptation.
What was Dr. Watson’s original name?
Sherlock.
I just have a plain standard-issue guest chair
Whereas Larry started with a standard office layout and added a fancy-dancy desk chair, I have opted to modify the standard office layout by removing items. First, I got rid of the corner piece, which is a colossal waste of space due to its sheer size. All that space behind the keyboard and monitor serves only to collect dust. Out it goes. Instead, I put the two rectangular tables along the wall and tucked my computers underneath them. One LCD monitor and one CRT (each with its own keyboard and mouse) and a KVM switchbox and my hardware is all set. (No speakers. On the occasion that I want to listen to someth...
The etymology of the word “traffic light”
Some languages are very creative with their term for those red/green thingies that control (or at least try to control) the flow of vehicular traffic. Swedish proves the least surprising in this respect (from a US English point of view), using the same term as US English. South African English is the funniest with their "robot". (It makes sense in its own way: It's a device that replaces a policeman directing traffic.) In my experience, South African English is full of cute little words like this. I imagine that Germans find Swiss German similarly quaint. The German word "Ampel" has the most interesting h...
When was the last time you formatted a floppy disk?
For some reason, I was reminded of the people who pooh-poohed Windows 95 because it didn't format floppy disks smoothly. Who spends all day formatting floppy disks? Even in 1995, when you bought a box of floppy disks, they came pre-formatted!
Content owners need to review the designer art, too
The Washington State Association of County Auditors have a web site explaining steps people need to take to ensure their vote is counted properly. Unfortunately, the auditors didn't review what the web design team came up with, because their page on how to mark your ballot is illustrated with a cute graphic with a check-mark. Too bad the check mark is the wrong way to cast your vote in every single county in Washington. For written ballots, you're supposed to fill in the square or circle completely, not use a check-mark. You'd think after all these years I'd eventually get this voting thing down. Most years, ...
The psychology of naming your internal distribution lists
One problem that I'm sure everybody has run into is what I'm going to call the "comp.unix.wizards" problem. People who have a problem with unix are looking for someone who can help them, and given the choice between a general questions group and a wizard group, they're obviously going to choose the wizards because that's where the smart people are! Of course, this annoys the wizards who created the group for focusing on advanced unix topics. Here's a trick I've seen used by more than one team: Give your non-technical distribution list the name "XYZ Technical Discussion". Meanwhile, name your internal team commu...
Hiding from the police? Try knitting a sweater
Well, okay, it didn't work. But it was an interesting technique. Police Find Hit & Run Suspect Knitting At Curbside January 29, 2003 (Miami Beach) — Several elderly patients were injured Tuesday afternoon after a car that witnesses say was traveling more than 100 mph slammed into the van in which they were riding. Police say that while the van's injured passengers and driver were trapped inside the van, the woman who was driving the car that slammed into them was sitting by the roadside knitting.
Why was GlobalWire called GlobalWire?
John Elliott wondered why the function was called . First, some background for those who never had to write 16-bit Windows programs. The function was similar to the 16-bit function, except that it had the bonus feature of relocating the memory to the lowest available linear address. You used this function as a courtesy if you intended to leave the memory locked for a long time. Moving it to the edge of the address space means that it is unlikely to become an obstacle in the middle of the address space which would otherwise prevent future large memory allocations from succeeding. But why "wire"? This e...