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July 2009 - Posts

Friday, July 31, 2009 7:00 AM

How organizations inadvertently confirm facts when they try not to

Especially when it is encoded in policy.
Posted by oldnewthing | 14 Comments
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Friday, July 31, 2009 7:00 AM

What is the difference between Directory and Directory\Background?

An addendum to the predefined progids.
Posted by oldnewthing | 7 Comments
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Thursday, July 30, 2009 7:00 AM

How do I quickly position two windows side by side using only the keyboard?

A quick follow-up.
Posted by oldnewthing | 14 Comments
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Thursday, July 30, 2009 7:00 AM

What is the difference between CSIDL_DESKTOP and CSIDL_DESKTOPDIRECTORY?

One is the desktop, and the other is the magic behind the desktop.
Posted by oldnewthing | 10 Comments
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Wednesday, July 29, 2009 7:00 AM

The advantage of knowing your limits of discrimination

You know when to stop upgrading.
Posted by oldnewthing | 37 Comments
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Wednesday, July 29, 2009 7:00 AM

How do I put a window at the edge of the screen without triggering the automatic positioning behavior?

Grab it far from the edge you care about.
Posted by oldnewthing | 18 Comments
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Tuesday, July 28, 2009 7:00 AM

Mr. Lee CatCam lets you see what a cat does all day

Taking pictures throughout the day.
Posted by oldnewthing | 4 Comments
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Tuesday, July 28, 2009 7:00 AM

How do I quickly position two windows side by side?

Use the "Tile Vertically" option.
Posted by oldnewthing | 31 Comments
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Monday, July 27, 2009 7:00 AM

Conway-Kochen Free Will Theorem: Lecture series

From one of the co-theorists.
Posted by oldnewthing | 12 Comments
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Monday, July 27, 2009 7:00 AM

Polling by sleeping versus polling by waiting with a timeout

Are those the only choices?
Posted by oldnewthing | 34 Comments
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Friday, July 24, 2009 7:00 AM

The guerilla wedding

Like a ferry?
Posted by oldnewthing | 11 Comments
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Friday, July 24, 2009 7:00 AM

If you wished a language supported the preprocessor, you know, you can fix that

You can just preprocess it yourself.
Posted by oldnewthing | 24 Comments
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Thursday, July 23, 2009 7:00 AM

Changes to the the 2009/2010 Seattle Symphony subscription season, part 2

Lots of changes.
Posted by oldnewthing | 0 Comments
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Thursday, July 23, 2009 7:00 AM

Your debugging code can be a security hole: Contest tickets

Hey what's that funny code?
Posted by oldnewthing | 27 Comments
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Wednesday, July 22, 2009 7:00 AM

I saw a fascinating documentary about bugs

At least that's what Dilbert says.
Posted by oldnewthing | 7 Comments
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Wednesday, July 22, 2009 7:00 AM

Microspeak: Whale Boy

The Messenger buddy icon.
Posted by oldnewthing | 9 Comments
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Tuesday, July 21, 2009 7:00 AM

Proto-Microspeak: Coceptualize

We just made up that word.
Posted by oldnewthing | 35 Comments
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Monday, July 20, 2009 7:00 AM

Why was MoveTo replaced with MoveToEx?

Because there was no way prove people wouldn't mind the change.
Posted by oldnewthing | 42 Comments
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Friday, July 17, 2009 7:00 AM

The disembodiment of DIBs from the DIB section

And then there were none.
Posted by oldnewthing | 4 Comments
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Thursday, July 16, 2009 7:00 AM

Caption contest: The pinball machine: Results

We have a winner.
Posted by oldnewthing | 13 Comments
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Thursday, July 16, 2009 7:00 AM

Separating the metadata from the DIB pixels: Changing the raster operation

It's not just for SRCCOPY any more.
Posted by oldnewthing | 4 Comments
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Wednesday, July 15, 2009 7:00 AM

On gender differences in expectations of thinness, and the impact on guys who live in their parents' basement

Sorry, can't help you there.
Posted by oldnewthing | 16 Comments
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Wednesday, July 15, 2009 7:00 AM

Separating the metadata from the DIB pixels: Precalculating the BITMAPINFO

And then you don't need a device context.
Posted by oldnewthing | 4 Comments
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Tuesday, July 14, 2009 7:00 AM

What happens to your restaurant tip?

How it gets divided up.
Posted by oldnewthing | 37 Comments
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Tuesday, July 14, 2009 7:00 AM

The fun and profit of manipulating the DIB color table can be done without having to modify it

You just pass the color table you would prefer to have.
Posted by oldnewthing | 11 Comments
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Monday, July 13, 2009 7:00 AM

Failed follow-up: The case of the dubious dental work

No resolution...
Posted by oldnewthing | 4 Comments
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Monday, July 13, 2009 7:00 AM

Speculation on how a mishandled 13-character string can result in a blue screen

A simple fencepost error.
Posted by oldnewthing | 35 Comments
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Friday, July 10, 2009 7:00 AM

The world reaction to the unexpected death of Michael Jackson extends to young children

He's dead.
Posted by oldnewthing | 14 Comments
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Friday, July 10, 2009 7:00 AM

If dynamic DLL dependencies were tracked, they'd be all backwards

The dependent would become the dependee.
Posted by oldnewthing | 15 Comments
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Thursday, July 09, 2009 7:00 AM

Film students and The Bicycle Thief

It's not just seventh graders.
Posted by oldnewthing | 41 Comments
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Thursday, July 09, 2009 7:00 AM

MS-DOS also allowed spaces in file names, although vanishingly few programs knew how to access them

It's all in the parsing.
Posted by oldnewthing | 30 Comments
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Wednesday, July 08, 2009 7:00 AM

Up and down often substitute for compass directions, but you have to know when you've taken it too far

Up, down, north, and south.
Posted by oldnewthing | 26 Comments
Wednesday, July 08, 2009 7:00 AM

Attack of the rogue feature: Oh no, where did my Explorer icon labels go?

Because you invoked an accidental hotkey.
Posted by oldnewthing | 19 Comments
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Tuesday, July 07, 2009 7:00 AM

More musings on the peculiar linguistic status of languages acquired in childhood

You don't even notice.
Posted by oldnewthing | 19 Comments
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Tuesday, July 07, 2009 7:00 AM

Command line parsers look at what you typed, not what what you typed looks like

Not as forgiving as people.
Posted by oldnewthing | 32 Comments
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Monday, July 06, 2009 7:00 AM

If somebody speaks a language I'm not expecting, sometimes I don't understand it, even though I should

It depends on whether the language is in the instinctive part of my brain.
Posted by oldnewthing | 22 Comments
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Monday, July 06, 2009 7:00 AM

A 32-bit application can allocate more than 4GB of memory, and you don't need 64-bit Windows to do it

Of course, it can only see 4GB of it at a time.
Posted by oldnewthing | 20 Comments
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Friday, July 03, 2009 7:00 AM

The most unwanted song ever

Scientifically engineered, for your discomfort.
Posted by oldnewthing | 11 Comments
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Friday, July 03, 2009 7:00 AM

Why does my screen go black when an emergency hibernation is in progress?

Because power is at a premium.
Posted by oldnewthing | 24 Comments
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Thursday, July 02, 2009 7:00 AM

Foreign languages can be used to impede communication

An alternate purpose for learning one.
Posted by oldnewthing | 24 Comments
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Thursday, July 02, 2009 7:00 AM

You can use a Coke slogan as your password, but not a Pepsi one

The mysterious 14-character limit.
Posted by oldnewthing | 18 Comments
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Wednesday, July 01, 2009 7:00 AM

The New York Times says I'm doing it all wrong, but maybe that's for the better

Blog and/or die.
Posted by oldnewthing | 14 Comments
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