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August 2009 - Posts

Monday, August 31, 2009 7:00 AM

And they don't take American Express

It's everywhere you want to be, no wait.
Posted by oldnewthing | 7 Comments
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Monday, August 31, 2009 7:00 AM

Why do new controls tend to use COM instead of window messages?

Because window messages are more cumbersome.
Posted by oldnewthing | 25 Comments
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Friday, August 28, 2009 7:00 AM

A different perspective from the first row of the symphony

So close you can read their sheet music.
Posted by oldnewthing | 7 Comments
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Friday, August 28, 2009 7:00 AM

The great thing about naming conventions is that not everybody will follow them

The naming of HRESULTs.
Posted by oldnewthing | 5 Comments
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Thursday, August 27, 2009 7:00 AM

Isn't every dinner at a technology conference a geek dinner?

Yet that's what they call it.
Posted by oldnewthing | 8 Comments
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Thursday, August 27, 2009 7:00 AM

What is the maximum number of timers a program can create?

It's still limited, but the limit changes over time.
Posted by oldnewthing | 12 Comments
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Wednesday, August 26, 2009 7:00 AM

In Ephesus, you juggle or die

A Comedy of Errors, as interpreted by the Flying Karamazov Brothers.
Posted by oldnewthing | 6 Comments
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Wednesday, August 26, 2009 7:00 AM

The way to stop people from copying files to a folder is to use NTFS security, not to block drag/drop

Look deeper at the problem, not just the symptom.
Posted by oldnewthing | 19 Comments
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Tuesday, August 25, 2009 7:00 AM

Meta-content: Suggestion Box 4 will open sometime next year

Suggestion Box 3 finally emptied out.
Posted by oldnewthing | 22 Comments
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Tuesday, August 25, 2009 7:00 AM

My phone just DoS'd my office network

The exciting new world of IP phones.
Posted by oldnewthing | 23 Comments
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Monday, August 24, 2009 7:00 AM

City noises and their effects on songbirds

Time-shifting and mimicry.
Posted by oldnewthing | 7 Comments
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Monday, August 24, 2009 7:00 AM

The operating system doesn't know which language programs are written in - by the time the code hits the CPU, they all look the same

It's just code that calls stuff.
Posted by oldnewthing | 27 Comments
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Friday, August 21, 2009 7:00 AM

Restating the obvious about the WM_NOTIFY message

The header stays the same, but the rest depends on the notification.
Posted by oldnewthing | 5 Comments
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Thursday, August 20, 2009 7:00 AM

Why does Windows wait longer than my screen saver idle timeout before starting the screen saver?

The system may have detected that you temporarily want the screen saver disabled.
Posted by oldnewthing | 32 Comments
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Wednesday, August 19, 2009 7:00 AM

There's no law that says a meeting can't end early

If you're finished early, then finish early.
Posted by oldnewthing | 30 Comments
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Tuesday, August 18, 2009 7:00 AM

Microspeak: Action on

Another bizarre replacement for "do."
Posted by oldnewthing | 30 Comments
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Monday, August 17, 2009 7:00 AM

The format rectangle is recalculated whenever the window resizes, and that's a good thing

Otherwise you'd wonder why it didn't.
Posted by oldnewthing | 5 Comments
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Friday, August 14, 2009 7:00 AM

It's not just on the Internet that nobody knows you don't have a real office

You can even fake it in a meeting.
Posted by oldnewthing | 13 Comments
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Friday, August 14, 2009 7:00 AM

Why can't I declare a type that derives from a generic type parameter?

Because these are generics, not C++ templates.
Posted by oldnewthing | 18 Comments
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Thursday, August 13, 2009 7:00 AM

Landing the Space Shuttle is hard enough as it is

Watch out for the bad guys.
Posted by oldnewthing | 17 Comments
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Thursday, August 13, 2009 7:00 AM

Common gotchas when writing your own p/invoke

Differences in terminology lead the pack.
Posted by oldnewthing | 21 Comments
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Wednesday, August 12, 2009 7:00 AM

The wisdom of sev^H^H^Heighth graders: What it means to be an adult

Ready for high school?
Posted by oldnewthing | 16 Comments
Wednesday, August 12, 2009 7:00 AM

Why can't I pass a reference to a derived class to a function that takes a reference to a base class by reference?

That's a confusing question.
Posted by oldnewthing | 23 Comments
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Tuesday, August 11, 2009 7:00 AM

The wisdom of seventh graders: What it means to be an adult

Writing skills starting to gel.
Posted by oldnewthing | 20 Comments
Tuesday, August 11, 2009 7:00 AM

Actually, FlagsAttribute can't do more; that's why it's an attribute

Attributes don't change the language.
Posted by oldnewthing | 27 Comments
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Monday, August 10, 2009 7:00 AM

The wisdom of seve^H^H^H^Hsixth graders: What it means to be an adult

Still some time to develop.
Posted by oldnewthing | 24 Comments
Monday, August 10, 2009 7:00 AM

Why doesn't String.Format throw a FormatException if you pass too many parameters?

After all, it throws if you pass too few.
Posted by oldnewthing | 19 Comments
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Friday, August 07, 2009 7:00 AM

Not beany enough

Playing at Scrabble.
Posted by oldnewthing | 27 Comments
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Friday, August 07, 2009 7:00 AM

SHCIDS_CANONICALONLY is the moral equivalent in the shell namespace of the Unicode ordinal comparison

By analogy.
Posted by oldnewthing | 3 Comments
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Thursday, August 06, 2009 7:00 AM

The great thing about regular expression engines is that there are so many to choose from

And make sure you know which one you're using.
Posted by oldnewthing | 39 Comments
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Wednesday, August 05, 2009 7:00 AM

Searching for Evil: Spot the scam

What evil lurks in the dark corner of the Internet?
Posted by oldnewthing | 8 Comments
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Wednesday, August 05, 2009 7:00 AM

How do you drop on the background of an Explorer window when it is in details view?

You can use the gutter, or the details pane.
Posted by oldnewthing | 38 Comments
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Tuesday, August 04, 2009 7:00 AM

Programming means that sometimes you have to snap two blocks together

Not everything is ready-mady.
Posted by oldnewthing | 53 Comments
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Monday, August 03, 2009 7:00 AM

A burglar tells you the best place to hide your money

And where not to.
Posted by oldnewthing | 13 Comments
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Monday, August 03, 2009 7:00 AM

When giving a presentation with a diagram, pretend the diagram doesn't exist

Here, it's just ASCII art now.
Posted by oldnewthing | 15 Comments
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