The Old New Thing

If you read any book about traditional weddings in Russian history, there must be a fight

July 18, 2007 Jul 18, 2007 07/18/07
Raymond Chen
You can buy a fake vacation for $500 or shell out $300 to $400 for a fake brawl at your wedding. "If you read any book about traditional weddings in Russian history, there must be a fight," said Alexander Yermilov, 22, who recently made a living at it. If you're looking for counterfeits, fakes, and forgeries, Moscow's your place. Assuming ...

Why is the limit of window handles per process 10,000?

July 18, 2007 Jul 18, 2007 07/18/07
Raymond Chen
If your program runs haywire, you will find that it manages to create about 10,000 window manager objects and then the system won't let it have any more. Why stop at 10,000? The first answer is "If you have to ask, you're probably doing something wrong." Programs shouldn't be creating anywhere near ten thousands window manager objects in the ...

Not my finest hour: Driving a manual transmission

July 17, 2007 Jul 17, 2007 07/17/07
Raymond Chen
Sara Ford messed up her leg last month; you can see her on ScooterCam-1 at TechEd 2007. The best part of the name ScooterCam-1 isn't the ScooterCam; it's the 1. That just gives it that extra little kitchy space technology feel that turns a good name into a great name. Anyway, she asked around if somebody with a car with an automatic ...

How are window manager handles determined in Windows NT?

July 17, 2007 Jul 17, 2007 07/17/07
Raymond Chen
We left off our story last time by raising the problem of programs that send messages to windows that have already been destroyed and how window handle re-use exacerbates the problem. Although this is clearly a bug in the programs that use window handles after destroying the window, the problem is so widespread that the window manager folks in...

Creative armed robbery defense: Political asylum

July 16, 2007 Jul 16, 2007 07/16/07
Raymond Chen
Step 1: Rob bank. Step 2: Flee the country. Step 3: Claim political asylum because the robbery was a form of political protest. It's creative, I have to grant you that. The theory is that Canadian law prohibits extradition for political crimes. Though it's a strange defense to say "If I did it, it was politically ...

How are window manager handles determined in 16-bit Windows and Windows 95?

July 16, 2007 Jul 16, 2007 07/16/07
Raymond Chen
(Prefatory remark: The following information is of the "behind the scenes" nature and does not constitute formal documentation. Actually, nothing I write counts as formal documentation, so I shouldn't have needed to write that, but people sometimes intentionally play stupid and interpret all forms of the future tense as if I were making some ...

I was sort of interested at first, but now I'm not so sure any more

July 13, 2007 Jul 13, 2007 07/13/07
Raymond Chen
Some time ago, there was a product under development that was starting to get some buzz, so I thought I'd go check it out. I went to the product's Web site, but the product was so new that they didn't have any substantial information available. The only way to learn about the product was to download the documentation. And before they would let...