Does it strike anyone else as ironic that ArgumentException and ArgumentNullException have mismatched argument ordering? The parameter name is first for the null version, but second for the other one. Uggh… this makes it awkward to remember if you use both. ArgumentOutOfRangeException follows the example of ArgumentNullException. I can see no obvious reason for the [...]

In the system metrics that you can retrieve with GetSystemMetrics, one of the available options is SM_SECURE. The only explanation provided is “Nonzero if security is present; otherwise, 0.” What does that mean? On my computer, the value is 0. There are a few different ways security can be “present” in my mind–what specifically are [...]

A few weeks ago I had an interesting debugging problem. A program we develop had a memory leak in it that Visual Studio was catching when it ended. The trace text was something like this: Detected memory leaks! Dumping objects -> {292300} normal block at 0×05590040, 2771928 bytes long. Data: FF FF FF 00 FF [...]

I haven’t seen this anywhere else on the web yet, but my suspicion is starting to grow. Even if it’s a nutty theory, I’m still going to put it forward. Has anyone else wondered if Mike Belkin and Scott Adams are the same person? There is a relatively new comic out there called Unfit by [...]

One thing I cannot stand that is so prevalent in the computer industry is criticism by people of ideas, products, and technologies that they don’t understand. You see this a lot in the OS wars–especially of Windows, but Linux and Apple are not immune. In very few cases do people have a well-reasoned and thought [...]