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August 2005 - Posts

Where do "checked" and "free" come from?

People who have MSDN or the DDK know that Windows is typically built in two different flavors, "Checked" and "Free". The primary difference between the two is that the "checked" build has traces and asserts, but the free build doesn't. Where did those Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 31, 2005 10:44 AM by LarryOsterman | 24 Comments

Milestones

Today, I'm celebrating my 21st anniversary at Microsoft (it was actually Saturday), anyone on campus can feel free to stop by my office and enjoy some of the 21 bagels (and cream cheese) I brought in to celebrate. Sorry Esther, I guess I have to turn Read More...
Posted Monday, August 29, 2005 10:27 AM by LarryOsterman | 15 Comments
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My favorite hardware bug

Adi Oltean asks: What's your favorite Bug? My personal favorite was on the ICL PWS-400. The ICL PWS-400 was a custom hardware design built by ICL. I was on the team of 5 (two from Microsoft, three from ICL) whose job it was to port MS-DOS 4.1 to this Read More...
Posted Monday, August 29, 2005 9:50 AM by LarryOsterman | 16 Comments

Modifying software when running as LUA

Lee Holmes (a developer over in the Monad group) had a problem. It seems that he had an application that just insisted on his being an admin to work correctly... Being a blogger, of course he wrote about it: here . I don't recommend anyone doing this, Read More...
Posted Friday, August 26, 2005 9:39 AM by LarryOsterman | 8 Comments

The application called an interface that was marshalled for a different thread.

Another one from someone sending a comment: I came across your blog and was wondering if what to do when encountering above error message in an application program. The error occurs once in a while when printing out from a Windows application. Is there Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 25, 2005 10:43 AM by LarryOsterman | 6 Comments
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Why don't critical sections work cross process?

I could have sworn this was answered in a previous blog by someone else (Raymond, Eric Lippert, etc), but... Someone sent me feedback asking: Q> Why can't critical section objects be used across processes compared to mutexes? Originally, I thought Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 24, 2005 12:31 PM by LarryOsterman | 12 Comments
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Larry goes to Layer Court

Two weeks ago, my boss, another developer in my group, and I had the opportunity to attend "Layer Court". Layer Court is the end product of a really cool part of the quality gate process we've introduced for Windows Vista. This is a purely internal process, Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 23, 2005 10:35 AM by LarryOsterman | 29 Comments

Off for the week

Valorie, the kids, and I are heading back to Albany for the week, so no posts until next week. Read More...
Posted Monday, August 15, 2005 9:19 AM by LarryOsterman | 0 Comments
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Things I learned while watching Scapina at SCT last night

One-note-song time again (Larry harping on Seattle Children's Theater). Last night, Valorie and I went to see the opening night of "As You Like It" by Shakespeare (adopted by Don Flemming), and "Scapina" by Moliere (adopted by Todd Jefferson Moore). I Read More...
Posted Friday, August 12, 2005 8:38 AM by LarryOsterman | 3 Comments
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Re-applying the decal

Some of you might know this, others might not even care, but one of my private passions is a MMORPG game called " Asheron's Call " that Microsoft originally published with Turbine games. Valorie started playing it first (she was an early playtester for Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 11, 2005 9:15 AM by LarryOsterman | 13 Comments

Why does Microsoft "Time Bomb" its beta releases?

One question that periodically comes up is "Is <x> beta time bombed"? First off, what's a time bomb? It's a chunk of code that's intended to disable a beta release sometime after the beta ships. I believe that all MS beta products have to be time Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 10, 2005 4:52 PM by LarryOsterman | 23 Comments

Life in a faraday cage

There was an internal discussion about an unrelated topic recently, and it reminded me of an early experience in my career at Microsoft. When I started, my 2nd computer was a pre-production PC/AT (the first was an XT). The AT had been announced by IBM Read More...
Posted Friday, August 05, 2005 10:17 AM by LarryOsterman | 22 Comments

Another pet peeve. Nounifying the word "ask"

Sorry about not blogging, my days are filled with meetings trying to finish up our LH beta2 features - I can't wait until people see this stuff, it's that cool. But because I'm in meetings back-to-back (my calender looks like a PM's these days), I get Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 04, 2005 9:09 AM by LarryOsterman | 57 Comments

Dos Ain't Done 'til Lotus Won't Run

I was originally going to do a post on this, but Adam (who interviewed me on the topic before he came back to Microsoft) just posted this article and did a far better job of it than I could have ever done (he actually went out did research and stuff). Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 02, 2005 7:58 AM by LarryOsterman | 16 Comments

Where do they get those names?

I've stayed out of the Windows Vista naming thingy, I figure that the name will grow on me. But whatever you might think of Windows Vista, it's got to be better than: Microsoft Windows Server Base Operating Systems Management Pack for Microsoft Operations Read More...
Posted Monday, August 01, 2005 4:10 PM by LarryOsterman | 13 Comments
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