Showing tag results for Other

In the category of dubious vulnerability, I submit the following (paraphrased) report: I discovered that if I take an EXE file and corrupt its header, then when I try to run the EXE file, the process starts up and then crashes. I used the information in the crash dialog to direct further investigations, noting that the specific crash location co...

Back in 1993, there was an internal presentation discussing the various new features that were being added to that fancy new version of Windows that ultimately came to be known as Windows 95. In the GDI section, one of the new features was listed as "Enchanced metafiles". When the slide went up, you could hear the scattered titters of laught...

Somebody wanted to append an extension to all files in a directory and couldn't find a way to do this type of bulk rename in Explorer. On the other hand, it's pretty simple from the command prompt: The person then asked, "Can we get this and other multi-file operations added to Explorer?" "There should be a way to rename a large number of fi...

If you're going to add a topic to the Suggestion Box,¹ at least do the courtesy of researching the question before asking it. It takes me an hour to answer each question; it's only fair that you spend ten minutes making it a good question. For example, one entry in the Suggestion Box asked for the story behind the hotkey. But even the most ...

Commenter Myron A. Semack asks how much faster Windows would be if you took out the backward compatibility stuff. Myron is so anxious about this that he asked the question a second time. Asking a question twice typically counts as a reason not to answer it, but since I had already written up the answer, I figured I'd post it anyway. Oh great, ...

I had removed the cover from one of the computers in my office in order to upgrade one of its hard drives (from 20GB to 200GB, woo-hoo). The hard drives are kept in a removable cage, so first I had to unscrew the cage, then unscrew the drive from the cage, then swap in the new drive. Of course, you don't screw everything back in until you've tested...

Like this is something that should be optimized?

Some time ago, there was a product under development that was starting to get some buzz, so I thought I'd go check it out. I went to the product's Web site, but the product was so new that they didn't have any substantial information available. The only way to learn about the product was to download the documentation. And before they would let me d...

Some people can't get over the initial burst of adrenaline when they think they've found a security vulnerability and rush to file a report with Microsoft so they can get credit for it and add it to their "security vulnerability portfolio" to show that they are so wicked cool. Learning that what they found isn't a security vulnerability isn't goin...

Steve Rowe linked to an essay on why computers can't play Go well even though they've mastered other "difficult" games like chess. I was reminded of a description I received of what happens backstage at computer Go tournaments (i.e., tournaments that pit Go-playing computers against each other). ("Backstage" is a bit of a misnomer, of course; s...