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The Old New Thing : March 2004 - Posts
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March 2004 - Posts

Wednesday, March 31, 2004 7:00 AM

The look of Luna

People wanted Luna for others, but they want Aero for themselves.
Posted by oldnewthing | 76 Comments
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Wednesday, March 31, 2004 7:00 AM

When temperance backfires

South Carolina is considering being a "free pour" state after all.
Posted by oldnewthing | 9 Comments
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Tuesday, March 30, 2004 7:02 AM

Where did my Task Manager tabs and buttons go?

Ah, welcome to "Tiny Footprint Mode".
Posted by oldnewthing | 33 Comments
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Tuesday, March 30, 2004 7:02 AM

"Special skills" draft on the drawing board

Computer programmers and foreign language knowledge targetted.
Posted by oldnewthing | 5 Comments
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Monday, March 29, 2004 12:35 PM

It's embarrassing how little Swedish you need to know

Because everybody here speaks English. Perfectly. Sometimes they'll speak English to me even before I say anything. (My comparative silence probably gives me away as a non-native.) Other times they'll notice that I'm speaking with a bad accent and switch
Posted by oldnewthing | 27 Comments
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Monday, March 29, 2004 7:00 AM

Why Ctrl+Alt shouldn't be used as a shortcut modifier

Ctrl+Alt is a special key combination used for entering extended characters.
Posted by oldnewthing | 22 Comments
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Monday, March 29, 2004 7:00 AM

The army is cool, except for the part where you have to fight

On people who become conscientious objectors after enlisting.
Posted by oldnewthing | 26 Comments
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Sunday, March 28, 2004 3:22 PM

You know you've been in Sweden too long when...

Some Aussie ex-pats developed a list of “ You know you've been in Sweden too long when... ”. My friend who is acting as my host (and who is himself a U.S. ex-pat) says that the list is astonishingly accurate, and that your reaction to it goes
Posted by oldnewthing | 14 Comments
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Saturday, March 27, 2004 2:04 PM

What U.S. college students miss from home

I didn't believe it until I saw it myself: My friend asked me to bring red and blue plastic cups to Sweden because the U.S. students really miss them. It's true. Here's why. (This needed to be explained to me because this was a part of U.S. college life
Posted by oldnewthing | 11 Comments
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Friday, March 26, 2004 6:58 AM

The ways people mess up IUnknown::QueryInterface

Almost anything is possible.
Posted by oldnewthing | 33 Comments
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Friday, March 26, 2004 6:58 AM

Yahoo's privacy policy regarding web bugs

Or as they call it,"Web beacons".
Posted by oldnewthing | 10 Comments
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Thursday, March 25, 2004 5:19 PM

Swedish spicy food

My friend Jonathan is acting as my host in Uppsala, and he was responsible for preparing dinner for a staff party at his nation . He chose curry. The same thing he chose the last time he was responsible for preparing dinner for a party. The last time,
Posted by oldnewthing | 3 Comments
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Thursday, March 25, 2004 5:08 PM

URLs too small? Here comes hugeurl.com

Tinyurl's arch-nemesis.
Posted by oldnewthing | 7 Comments
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Thursday, March 25, 2004 5:07 PM

Regular expressions and the dreaded *? operator

*? does what it says, which isn't necessarily what you mean.
Posted by oldnewthing | 10 Comments
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Thursday, March 25, 2004 2:00 AM

The SAS in-flight safety video

Each time I see the SAS in-flight safety video, I am amused by the story they tell about each of their "characters". The safety video features four groups of travellers, a man and a young girl, a retired couple, a (very Scandinavian-looking) businesswoman,
Posted by oldnewthing | 13 Comments
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Wednesday, March 24, 2004 7:01 AM

Some files come up strange in Notepad

Notepad has to guess the encoding and can be tricked into guessing wrong.
Posted by oldnewthing | 29 Comments
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Wednesday, March 24, 2004 7:01 AM

Out of the deep fryer

Super-size is gone but not forgotten.
Posted by oldnewthing | 13 Comments
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Tuesday, March 23, 2004 7:00 AM

@-notation was never legal in HTTP URLs anyway

It was never officially legal to put userids and passwords in HTTP URLs.
Posted by oldnewthing | 21 Comments
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Tuesday, March 23, 2004 7:00 AM

the qUirKY jaPan HomEPage

The weird stuff about Japan you were afraid to ask about.
Posted by oldnewthing | 2 Comments
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Monday, March 22, 2004 7:00 AM

Why an object cannot be its own enumerator

The short answer: Because then you can't have two enumerators.
Posted by oldnewthing | 3 Comments
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Monday, March 22, 2004 7:00 AM

A privacy policy that doesn't actively offend me

MetLife's privacy policy is actually readable.
Posted by oldnewthing | 8 Comments
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Saturday, March 20, 2004 6:52 AM

The only logical conclusion is that he was cloned

Something is wrong with the world when fark finds something "real" news organizations miss. (When I first learned about fark, I confused it with FARC , a different organization entirely. That's right, a terrorist organization has its own official web
Posted by oldnewthing | 6 Comments
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Friday, March 19, 2004 6:58 AM

Why does the Resource Compiler complain about strings longer than 255 characters?

It goes back to the Win16 resource format.
Posted by oldnewthing | 13 Comments
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Friday, March 19, 2004 6:58 AM

Catholic baseball fans want to eat meat on opening day

Church says, "Nice try."
Posted by oldnewthing | 14 Comments
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Thursday, March 18, 2004 7:04 AM

The car with no user-serviceable parts inside

Engine? Sealed shut.
Posted by oldnewthing | 68 Comments
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Thursday, March 18, 2004 6:59 AM

Why is the line terminator CR+LF?

This protocol dates back to the days of teletypewriters.
Posted by oldnewthing | 40 Comments
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Wednesday, March 17, 2004 7:00 AM

On a server, paging = death

Even the tiniest memory leak will kill a server.
Posted by oldnewthing | 40 Comments
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Wednesday, March 17, 2004 7:00 AM

Ännu skriver jag inte bra

Eventually you just switch to English.
Posted by oldnewthing | 11 Comments
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Wednesday, March 17, 2004 7:00 AM

More on the AMD64 calling convention

Josh Williams picks up the 64-bit ball.
Posted by oldnewthing | 2 Comments
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Tuesday, March 16, 2004 7:00 AM

Why do text files end in Ctrl+Z?

Because CP/M didn't record file sizes.
Posted by oldnewthing | 34 Comments
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Tuesday, March 16, 2004 7:00 AM

Still more creative uses for CAPTCHA

Virus-writers use anti-spam techniques to avoid scanners.
Posted by oldnewthing | 25 Comments
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Monday, March 15, 2004 7:00 AM

How do I convert a SID between binary and string forms?

More than you probably wanted to know about how SIDs are represented in memory.
Posted by oldnewthing | 9 Comments
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Monday, March 15, 2004 7:00 AM

Senators are really good at stock-picking

Senators outperform the stock market by 12 percent.
Posted by oldnewthing | 6 Comments
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Friday, March 12, 2004 7:00 AM

What is the default security descriptor?

So what do you get when you pass NULL as the security attributes?
Posted by oldnewthing | 19 Comments
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Friday, March 12, 2004 6:58 AM

What happens to those "To Any Soldier" care packages

They do get opened. The food has melted or spoiled, but they don't care.
Posted by oldnewthing | 5 Comments
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Thursday, March 11, 2004 7:03 AM

Tony Harding laces up again

The skater you love to hate is back.
Posted by oldnewthing | 15 Comments
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Thursday, March 11, 2004 7:00 AM

Why are dialog boxes initially created hidden?

It's all about performance on floppy disks.
Posted by oldnewthing | 17 Comments
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Wednesday, March 10, 2004 7:00 AM

Why do operations on "byte" result in "int"?

Because the alternative would be worse.
Posted by oldnewthing | 38 Comments
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Wednesday, March 10, 2004 7:00 AM

The Department of Homeland Security, the television series?

Freeze, platform-shoe-wearing scum!
Posted by oldnewthing | 8 Comments
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Tuesday, March 09, 2004 7:00 AM

Char.IsDigit() matches more than just "0" through "9"

A digit is not just 0 to 9.
Posted by oldnewthing | 38 Comments
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Tuesday, March 09, 2004 7:00 AM

Returning to Sweden, this time with some actual knowledge of Swedish

Back for more.
Posted by oldnewthing | 4 Comments
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Monday, March 08, 2004 7:00 AM

C++ scoped static initialization is not thread-safe, on purpose!

How the design of the C++ language subverts thread safety.
Posted by oldnewthing | 49 Comments
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Monday, March 08, 2004 7:00 AM

Can you pass "Coaching Principles and Strategies of Basketball"?

Final exam available online - see how well you do.
Posted by oldnewthing | 15 Comments
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Friday, March 05, 2004 7:00 AM

Defrauding the WHQL driver certification process

How drivers (usually video drivers) cheat at WHQL certification.
Posted by oldnewthing | 81 Comments
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Friday, March 05, 2004 7:00 AM

Money can burn a hole in your pocket

The new $20 bills explode when you try to microwave them.
Posted by oldnewthing | 17 Comments
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Thursday, March 04, 2004 7:00 AM

Where do those customized web site icons come from?

It's the favicon.ico file, but only if the site is (or was) in your Favorites.
Posted by oldnewthing | 63 Comments
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Thursday, March 04, 2004 7:00 AM

Sorry, my kitchen is on fire

An impromptu way of getting a telemarketer off the phone.
Posted by oldnewthing | 21 Comments
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Wednesday, March 03, 2004 7:00 AM

Blow the dust out of the connector

How to help somebody without making them feel stupid.
Posted by oldnewthing | 42 Comments
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Wednesday, March 03, 2004 7:00 AM

Calling the irony patrol

A pop-up to advertise a pop-up blocker?
Posted by oldnewthing | 12 Comments
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Tuesday, March 02, 2004 9:10 AM

Went to a Seattle Thunderbirds game this weekend

Ah, the joys of minor-league hockey.
Posted by oldnewthing | 10 Comments
Tuesday, March 02, 2004 6:57 AM

Why are HANDLE return values so inconsistent?

If you look at the various functions that return HANDLE s, you'll see that some of them return NULL (like CreateThread ) and some of them return INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE (like CreateFile ). You have to check the documentation to see what each particular function
Posted by oldnewthing | 21 Comments
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Monday, March 01, 2004 9:37 AM

Why 16-bit DOS and Windows are still with us

Many people are calling for the abandonment of 16-bit DOS and 16-bit Windows compatibility subsystems . And trust me, when it comes time to pull the plug, I'll be fighting to be the one to throw the lever. (How's that for a mixed metaphor.) But that time
Posted by oldnewthing | 65 Comments
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