DRM I'm Content With
I don't generally buy music or ebooks online, even though I would like to. I just can't bear the restrictive copy protection that comes attached with online purchases. In fact, I get angry as I think about the experiences I've had with DRM, and the ever encroaching control that content …
File System Monitoring
At times it is useful to keep tabs on what is happening (or has happened) in the file system. This is a brief overview of all the ways I know of to track activity on a Windows file system.
Scanning is the brute-force approach to knowing what is happening …
When Does XHTML Matter?
I noticed the other day that the pages on this site had double body
tags in the HTML. As someone who favors standards it was kind of
embarrassing. But what started as a quick fix turned into a few days of
ruminating about how I'm putting this site together.
I …
Matches and Bulk Actions
I noticed again this morning that Quicken was still unable to download my credit card transactions online. It hasn't worked since some time in February. The error message said that my PIN or Customer ID was wrong. I know I've double-checked the PIN previously, so I figured it must be …
XP Common Controls with VC++ 2005
This morning I was asked to enable the Windows XP visual styles for our
application. No problem -- I've done that for applications many times.
Just drop the appropriate manifest file in the right place, call
InitCommonControls and all should be well. When I tried that this
morning, though, I got …
No Soul to the Company Store
In February I went up to Washington for a visit to Microsoft, to get some partner training about Office 2007. Among the typical freebies I got for attending (laptop bag, USB hub, CD case, etc.) was a pass to the Microsoft company store. I was pretty stoked as I started …
Work Plan Editor Release
A few years ago I got really frustrated trying to maintain a schedule for my current development assignment. I personally think that having a schedule, or work plan, is a very good thing. But it was too painful to maintain one, so I started writing a tool that would help …
Object-Oriented vs. Database-Oriented
Having worked for Folio and NextPage, companies that have specialized in full-text indexing using custom search engines, I have an admitted knowledge liability with regard to relational databases. It never really made sense to have a relational database and our own search database coexisting in an application. But it never …
Design by Contract: Is It Worth It Without Language Support?
This is a continuation of thoughts after reading Design by Contract by Example by Richard Mitchell and Jim McKim. This time I want to write a little about design by contract without direct language support. What do you give up without language support, and is it still worth it to …
Ten Lessons Learned Assembling a PC
I spent some of my Christmas vacation upgrading the hardware on my PC. I've been suspicious that there was something wrong with my old motherboard, so I decided to get a new one. And when you're getting a new motherboard, you might as well get a new CPU and new …