The Old New Thing

Sometimes it feels like the effort isn't even appreciated

September 7, 2007 Sep 7, 2007 09/7/07
Raymond Chen
Some time ago, the application compatibility folks found a program that was corrupting the heap, and they applied a fix that worked around the specific type of corruption that the program performed. And then a bug came on that same program. It was a heap corruption failure during the program's processing of global destructors. The authors of...

It's that season again: The 2007 Microsoft Company Meeting

September 6, 2007 Sep 6, 2007 09/6/07
Raymond Chen
Yes, it's that time of year again, time for the annual Microsoft Company Meeting, and therefore time for another of Raymond's reminiscences about meetings past. (If you want a report on the meeting itself, I'm sure Mini-Microsoft will oblige. Here's the company meeting preview.) Over a decade ago, one of my colleagues informally organized ...

If your theory is "build it and they will come", you have to make sure there is a "they"

September 6, 2007 Sep 6, 2007 09/6/07
Raymond Chen
Creating an infrastructure for managing the content you wish you had doesn't actually create that content. Another possible response to the crisis management issue I considered yesterday is to say "Okay, we need to have an official Company X Breaking News site so that people who are looking for an official response to some hot topic can...

I mean, come on, these are laptops

September 5, 2007 Sep 5, 2007 09/5/07
Raymond Chen
Last year, Weekend America (co-hosted by former Seattleite Bill Radke—we miss you, Bill!) did a story on the Princeton Laptop Orchestra, which calls itself PLOrk. It's an interesting experiment, but computer music doesn't really move me. It's not the computer-ness that bugs me (I was fascinated by music played on Gameboys, after all...

Whenever there is a coordination problem, somebody says, "Hey, let's create a process!"

September 5, 2007 Sep 5, 2007 09/5/07
Raymond Chen
Whenever there is a coordination problem, somebody says, "Hey, let's create a process." Now you have two coordination problems. I see this over and over, and paradoxically the people who create a process for managing a coordinating problem come off looking like proactive problem-solvers who get ahead of the problem. They're the go-getters, ...

Volunteers help save fruit from home fruit trees from going to waste

September 4, 2007 Sep 4, 2007 09/4/07
Raymond Chen
It's the season where people with fruit trees in their yard are drowning in fresh fruit, be they pears, apples, plums, whatever. It's not long before you find yourself desperately looking for people to give it away to, having pretty much run out of things you can make plums into. This is where Community Fruit Tree Harvest steps in. (Coverage...

Does creating a thread from DllMain deadlock or doesn't it?

September 4, 2007 Sep 4, 2007 09/4/07
Raymond Chen
Let me get this out of the way up front: Creating a thread from is not recommended. The discussion here has to do with explaining the behavior you may observe if you violate this advice. Commenter Pete points out that "according to Usenet" creating a thread in is supposed to deadlock, but that's not what he saw. All he saw was that the ...

Knock knock. Who's there? Not you any more.

September 3, 2007 Sep 3, 2007 09/3/07
Raymond Chen
One of my many favorite Dilbert cartoons is also one of the earlier ones. It's the first strip reprinted in this article. It may not actually have happened, but I was told that that one project many years ago replaced its lead manager. While noteworthy, this sort of thing happens often enough that people take it in stride. What put it into a...