Showing tag results for Other

You won't see them when you execute a command, but if you write a program that manually enumerates all the environment variables and prints them out, and if you launch it from a command prompt, then you'll see weird variables with names like =C: and whose values correspond to directories on that drive. What are these things? These variables are...

A customer had trouble getting an icon to display for a registered file type. In my resource file, I specify the icon like this: And when I register my file type, I set it like this: However, when I view an .xyz file, my awesome icon doesn't appear. On the other hand, if I change the 101 to a 0, then it works. Why? Isn't the number in the...

I learned this term from a chart presented at a team meeting. It contained a column labelled BIS. When asked what those letters meant, the team manager explained that it's an abbreviation for butts in seats. Everybody in the room instantly understood. It is the number of actual human beings sitting at desks doing work. When doing project planning,...

The same thing that happens when the handle is leaked.

Bart wants to know why the gives up if the critical section is busy instead of trying the number of times specified by the critical section spin count. Actually, there was another condition on the proposed new behavior: "but does not release its timeslice to the OS if it fails to get it while spinning." This second condition is a non-starter b...

When you ask a question, you should also mention what steps you've already taken when attempting to solve it on your own. First of all, it saves the people who decide to help you with your problem from exploring lines of investigation which you've already tried (and which you know don't work). "I tried setting the timeout to 60 seconds before issu...

I illustrate this point with an imaginary conversation, inspired by actual ones I've seen (and, occasionally, been a frustrated party to). From: X I want to do ABC, but I don't have a DEF. Anybody know of a workaround? Somebody has an idea: From: Y Try mounting this ISO file into a virtual machine and trying the ABC from there. Unfor...

There was an internal discussion about what Microsoft employees should be doing that do not directly relate to their job responsibilities, such as what text editor programmers should be using to write and edit code. Should anybody who uses a programming editor other than Visual Studio be branded a traitor? How about somebody who prefers a smartph...

Martin wonders why the wireless networking dialog asks you to type your password twice when connecting to an existing network. Yeah, that bothers me too, and I don't know why either. But while we're on the topic of wireless networking, I thought I'd share a little program that is just as useless as my answer above. (If other people get to hij...

The letters SQM originally stood for Service Quality Monitoring, but that doesn't really answer the question, "What is SQM?" SQM is the internal code name for the technologies behind what is publically known as the Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program. This is a voluntary program that customers can opt into, which gathers information...