Hereby incorporating by reference Junfeng Zhang's discussion of the Image File Execution Options registry key.
A three line VB script will disable your firewall. The advantage of scripting is that you can control so many things with just a few lines of code. The disadvantage of scripting is that bad people can control so many things with just a few lines of code. I wonder how long it will be before there's a virus that disables the firewall.
Okay I know I'm going to get into a lot of trouble for even bringing up this topic... This past weekend, Ulf Harnhammar discovered two buffer overflow and two directory traversal vulnerabilities in LHA, a library of data compression functions. Since the code for this is public, it has been copied all over the place. At least one commerc...
Follow-up question to Where does the taskbar get grouped button titles from?: Where does the taskbar get grouped button icons from? The icon for grouped taskbar buttons comes from the icon for the underlying EXE, the same icon that appears when you open the folder that the EXE resides in and scroll down to the EXE. For example, if you ha...
During the development of Windows 95, a placeholder dialog was added with the title, "In order to demonstrate our superior intellect, we will now ask you a question you cannot answer." The dialog itself asked a technical question that you need a brain the size of a planet in order to answer. (Okay, your brain didn't need to be quite ...
A collection of limitations (both hardware and software) currently prevent Windows from booting and running off a USB drive. Some of them are described in this whitepaper from WinHEC 2003. Another reason not mentioned in this paper is that during any hot-plug operation, the USB bus is completely reinitialized. Windows really doesn't like it...
As I got onto the plane for my outbound flight, I grabbed a Norwegian newspaper, having mistaken it for a Swedish paper. Fortunately, the two languages are so similar I was able to fake my way through it without too much difficulty. (And it's definitely an odd sensation reading U.S. cartoons translated into Norwegian...) The on-board entert...
[South Carolina is] the only state in the nation requiring bars to serve all hard liquor in minibottles. The minibottle's place behind the bar is even enshrined in the state's constitution. Mini-bottles are those cute little single-serving bottles you see on airplanes and in hotel refrigerators. The law was originally passed under pre...
The [U.S.] government is taking the first steps toward a targeted military draft of Americans with special skills in computers and foreign languages. Apparently, there is already a special system to draft "health care personnel", whatever that means. Can you imagine the havoc that could be wrought by disgruntled programmers forced t...
Because everybody here speaks English. Perfectly. Sometimes they'll speak English to me even before I say anything. (My comparative silence probably gives me away as a non-native.) Other times they'll notice that I'm speaking with a bad accent and switch to English. Some humor me by speaking Swedish until I finally break down and ask (in English), ...
