The Old New Thing

A modest proposal: Getting people to stop buying SUVs

July 21, 2008 Jul 21, 2008 07/21/08

Raymond Chen

I developed this modest proposal many years ago, but it looks like rising gasoline prices have done the job. But in case they don't, here's my plan. SUVs are classified as "trucks" for the purpose of C.A.F.E. regulations, and those regulations are more lenient on gasoline efficiency for trucks. As a result, the auto industry happily built...

MessageBoxIndirect loads the icon itself; you can’t hand it a pre-loaded icon

July 21, 2008 Jul 21, 2008 07/21/08

Raymond Chen

Commenter 8 wants to know how to tell the function to use an existing instead of pointing it to an icon resource. You can't. The loads the icon itself. You can't hand it a pre-loaded icon. Of course, it's hardly rocket science to write your own function that lets you use whatever icon you want. There's no law that says all Yes/No ...

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, available online for a short time only

July 18, 2008 Jul 18, 2008 07/18/08

Raymond Chen

Get it while it's hot. Available through this weekend only, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is a three-act Web series featuring Neil Patrick Harris as Dr. Horrible, a wannabe mad scientist evildoer who video-blogs about his plans for world domination, his application to the Evil League of Evil, his arch-enemy Captain Hammer, and his crush on ...

A new record for the shortest amount of time between an email message and its resend

July 18, 2008 Jul 18, 2008 07/18/08

Raymond Chen

As I've noted before, people didn't answer your first question for a reason, but one thing I forgot to point out is that you also need to give people a chance to answer the first time at all! Occasionally, I'll see somebody ask a question, and then resend the question a short time later. You also have to take into account the time of day. ...

The best building name on the University of Washington campus

July 17, 2008 Jul 17, 2008 07/17/08

Raymond Chen

The best building name on the University of Washington campus is Sieg Hall, for many years home to the computer science department, and named after former university president Lee Paul Sieg...

Microspeak: Well, actually management-speak

July 17, 2008 Jul 17, 2008 07/17/08

Raymond Chen

I hate management-speak. Here's an example from an internal Web site. The purpose of this Web site is two-fold. Wow, let's look at the first stated purpose. It goes on for so long and uses blatant management-speak such as "facilitate" and "leverage" that by the time it's over, I forget how the sentence started. Going back and ...

News flash: Online drug sales are shady!

July 16, 2008 Jul 16, 2008 07/16/08

Raymond Chen

In what I'm sure is a fantastic surprise to everybody who has visited the Internet, according to a report in the New York Times, researchers at Columbia University have discovered that there are prescription drug pushers on the Internet who will sell you prescription drugs without a prescription. From what I can gather, they didn't ...

The evolution of menu templates: 32-bit extended menus

July 16, 2008 Jul 16, 2008 07/16/08

Raymond Chen

At last we reach the 32-bit extended menu template. Introduced in Windows 95, this remains the most advanced menu template format through Windows Vista. As you might expect, the 32-bit extended menu template is just a 32-bit version of the 16-bit extended menu template, so if you've been following along, you should find no real ...

The evolution of menu templates: 16-bit extended menus

July 15, 2008 Jul 15, 2008 07/15/08

Raymond Chen

Windows 95 introduced a new menu format, known as "extended menus". You declare these in a resource file with the MENUEX keyword. The 16-bit extended menu is really just a temporary stopping point on the way to the 32-bit extended menu, since the 16-bit form is supported only by the Windows 95 family of operating systems. It's sort ...

When companies make it hard for you to pay money they are owed

July 14, 2008 Jul 14, 2008 07/14/08

Raymond Chen

Elissa Ely runs into a bureaucratic wall trying to pay her invalid mother's credit card bill. They won't tell her the outstanding balance on her mother's account because "it seemed to run the risk that a stranger might pay someone else's bill." My own mother ran into a similar problem. She wanted to find out the balance in an old elementary...