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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...

If you use the Image File Execution Options registry key to force a program to run under the debugger, all the kernel does is insert the debugger in front of the command line. In other words, the function figure out what program is about to be run and checks the Image File Execution Options. If it finds a debugger, then the debugger is prepended ...

is a bad idea and you shouldn't call it. In the comments, many people proposed changes to the function to improve the implementation. But what's the point? is just a bad idea. There's no point improving the implementation of a bad idea. On the other hand, some people suggested making it clear that is a bad idea by making it worse. While this...

In addition to testing out the Windows XP Start menu on beginners, we asked advanced users (including lots of system administrators) what they thought of it, and the response was still positive. This was kind of surprising, for advanced users tend to be resistant to change. In fact, system administrators like the new Start menu so much that t...

Actually, I discussed this topic already, but I'm mentioning it again here since it's thematically related to the other Start menu articles. I'm told that there have been a few tweaks to the rules for Windows Vista. Some installers set the time stamps on the program to match the time stamp of the install media. This makes for pretty director...

If you paid really close attention to the way a representative shortcut is selected for a program, you may have noticed a problem with it. Here's the rule again: If there are multiple shortcuts to the same program, then the most-frequently-used shortcut is selected as the one to appear on the front page of the Start menu. Suppose there are two...

Let's take another look at the basic principle that determines which programs show up in the Start menu: Each time you launch a program, it "earns a point", and the longer you don't launch a program, the more points it loses. If you stare at this long enough, you might see a hole in this principle: What about a program that you launch once and ...

In the initial designs for the Start menu, the list of most-frequently-used programs on the Start menu would be completely empty the first time you opened it. This was perfectly logical, since you hadn't run any programs at all yet, so nothing was frequently-used because nothing had been used at all! Perfectly logical and completely stupid-looking....