The Old New Thing

Redmond Derby Days 2007 this weekend

July 6, 2007 Jul 6, 2007 07/6/07
Raymond Chen
Every summer, the city of Redmond stages Derby Days, an annual celebration of... I'm not sure what. But what it does mean is that roads will be closed in the downtown Redmond area, so if you need to get around, you'll have to plan ahead. Several years ago, one of my colleagues asked a City of Redmond employee, "What is Derby Days?" He ...

It rather involved being on the other side of this airtight hatchway: If they can run code, then they can run code

July 6, 2007 Jul 6, 2007 07/6/07
Raymond Chen
Some people can't get over the initial burst of adrenaline when they think they've found a security vulnerability and rush to file a report with Microsoft so they can get credit for it and add it to their "security vulnerability portfolio" to show that they are so wicked cool. Learning that what they found isn't a security vulnerability isn't...

Raymond's tips on selecting a memorable greeting card

July 5, 2007 Jul 5, 2007 07/5/07
Raymond Chen
My favorite greeting card is one I got from :: Wendy ::. It was a Christmas card with a picture of kids running around while snow fell all around them. Wendy added the message, "Watch out for that 'rogue' snowball from midfield..." I still have that card on my windowsill years later. My recommendation for choosing a memorable ...

QueryPerformanceCounter is not a source for unique identifiers

July 5, 2007 Jul 5, 2007 07/5/07
Raymond Chen
This article happened to catch my eye: I needed to generate some unique number in my application. I could use GUID, but it was too large for me (I need to keep lots of unique identifiers). I found something like this: This code generates Int64 (long) unique number (at least I hope it is unique). The uniqueness is in the scope of ...

The audacity of selling things that don't belong to you

July 3, 2007 Jul 3, 2007 07/3/07
Raymond Chen
NPR some time ago reported on a most audacious scam: Selling someone else's property out from under them. But this guy was small potatoes, selling properties owned by churches and other non-profit organizations. The king in this category of fraud is Victor Lustig, the man who sold the Eiffel Tower... twice...

If the system says that an embedded string could not be converted from Unicode to ANSI, maybe it's trying to tell you something

July 3, 2007 Jul 3, 2007 07/3/07
Raymond Chen
It's probably trying to tell you that an embedded string could not be converted from Unicode to ANSI. One of our programs is throwing the exception "Type could not be marshaled because an embedded string could not be converted from Unicode to ANSI." It happens only if we use the Chinese version of the program. Why are we getting this ...

The conversations backstage at computer Go tournaments

July 2, 2007 Jul 2, 2007 07/2/07
Raymond Chen
Steve Rowe linked to an essay on why computers can't play Go well even though they've mastered other "difficult" games like chess. I was reminded of a description I received of what happens backstage at computer Go tournaments (i.e., tournaments that pit Go-playing computers against each other). ("Backstage" is a bit of a misnomer, of ...