Larry Osterman's WebLog
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Playing Audio CDs, part 2
Yesterday, I looked a a simple application for dumping the track information on a CD. Since I'm...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 04/21/2005
Stress reduction
Someone at work passed this around, it's a relaxing moment for our hectic days. It made me laugh,...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 04/20/2005
Playing Audio CDs
One of the cool things about working in multimedia is that you sometimes have opportunities to play...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 04/20/2005
Compressible Encryption
Time to spread a smidge of dirt on Microsoft :).One of my favorite dialog boxes is found in Outlook....
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 04/19/2005
Hacking the Papal Election
Bruce Schneier has a truly fascinating article about the procedures that are followed during a Papal...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 04/18/2005
What's wrong with this code, part 11 - the answers
Well, clearly the shorter the example, the quicker people pick up the problem. The problem was: if...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 04/15/2005
What's wrong with this code, part 11: Launching notepad.
Anyway, I ran into this problem while I was writing some stuff at work. I've restructured it to...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 04/14/2005
Real world security by obscurity
I first heard about this issue on Car Talk the other day, and recently ran into this article on...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 04/13/2005
It's the hardware, stupid!
Riffing on Raymond, once again :) Raymond's post today reminded me of an email message sent out...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 04/12/2005
Purdue's entry in the Rube Goldberg contest
This year's Rube Goldberg contest requires that the team build a device to remove the old batteries...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 04/12/2005
RIP: Andre Norton
Over the weekend, I got my most recent copy of Locus (the only magazine I read cover-to-cover :))....
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 04/11/2005
Alignment (part 3): Why bother?
I mentioned in the last post that the C standard is agnostic w.r.t. alignment. So why on earth did...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 04/11/2005
Alignment (part 2): Packing
Yesterday, I wrote a bit about how the C compiler determines the alignment of structures. I left...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 04/08/2005
Little Lost APIs
When you have an API set as large as the Win32 API set, sometimes APIs get "lost". Either by...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 04/06/2005
Hacking the Decsystem 20
A bit of truly ancient history today, and it's not even Microsoft related. Back when I was in...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 04/05/2005
Where's Larry?
Wow, what a weekend. Sorry about going dark without notice, I had this really great post (much...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 04/04/2005
What is a BUGBUG?
One of the internal software engineering traditions here at Microsoft is the "BUGBUG". Bugbug's are...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/29/2005
Still more misinformation about virtual memory and paging files
The wired network in my building's being unusually flakey so I'm posting this from my laptop, sorry...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/25/2005
Open Source and Hot Rods
I was surfing the web the other day and ran into someone linking to this article by Jack Lanier from...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/24/2005
Missed Anniversaries
Somehow (and I'm not sure how I managed to do this), I missed the fact that last week was the one...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/23/2005
Concurrency, part way too many2 - Concurrency and the Win32 API set
As I mentioned the other day, I can't quite let go of the concurrency bug, so the 2nd of my 3 add-on...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/21/2005
Concurrency, part way too many - concurrency and the C runtime library.
For some reason, I can't seem to let this concurrency thing go, I keep on thinking of more and more...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/18/2005
What's wrong with this code, part 10 - the answers
Yesterday's article was a bit of a trick question, but was a real world example. Our group...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/16/2005
What's wrong with this code, part 10
Ok, time for another "what's wrong with this code". This one's trivial from a code standpoint, but...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/15/2005
NPR Has a FASCINATING profile of Donald Knuth this morning...
I'm listening to NPR right now (getting ready for work/school) and I realized they had an article on...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/14/2005
Microsoft's director of Shared Source is now blogging!
Busy weekend, I'm about to go out-of-town to a seminar with Daniel, and Sharron's got another riding...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/11/2005
Concurrency, Part 15 - Wrapping it all up.
Today I want to wrap up my concurrency series (finally). There are some more topics I'll be covering...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/10/2005
Concurrency, Part 14 - Odds and Ends
Ok, the light's at the end of the tunnel. I couldn't figure out where to slot this in, so it got...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/09/2005
Concurrency, Part 13 - Concurrency and the CLR
I think I've got two more articles in this series left, I didn't really intend for this to overwhelm...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/08/2005
Concurrency, part 12 - Hidden scalability issues, part 2
Last time, I mentioned that even when you get everything right, you can STILL have scalability...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/07/2005
Concurrency, part 11 - Hidden scalability issues
So you're writing a server. You've done your research, and you've designed your system to be as...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/04/2005
Concurrency, Part 9 - APIs that enable scalable programming
Sorry, I just noticed that this didn't get posted yesterday - I don't know what happened, but... As...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/02/2005
Concurrency, Part 8 - Concurrency for scalability
Last time, I talked a bit about why you'd use concurrency in your application. Today I'd like to...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 02/28/2005
Concurrency, part 7 - Why would you ever want to use concurrency in your application?
So I've spent a great deal of time talking about concurrency issues, but one thing I've avoided...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 02/25/2005
Concurrency - An aside
Sorry, I've got a massive headache today, and really don't feel up to writing the next item in the...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 02/22/2005
Concurrency, part 6 - Reference counting is hard :)
The other day, I talked about using reference counting as a way of ensuring object when enumerating...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 02/21/2005
Concurrency, part 5 - What happens when you can't avoid lock misordering?
Yesterday, I talked about simple deadlocks. In general, deadlocks are caused by violating lock...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 02/18/2005
Concurrency, Part 4 - Deadlocks
Yesterday I talked about critical sections and their use in protecting application data. But...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 02/17/2005
Concurrency, Part 3 - What if you can't avoid the issue?
Yesterday, I talked about how you deal with concurrency issues by simply avoiding the concurrency...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 02/16/2005
Concurrency, Part 2 - Avoiding the problem
Yesterday's article on concurrency discussed the basic concepts of concurrency. Now I'd like to...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 02/15/2005
Concurrency, part one.
Last week, I mentioned I was going to start a series of articles on concurrency, here goes. I do...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 02/14/2005
Larry gets taken to task on concurrency
In yesterdays blog post, I was taken to task, first by Bob Frankston, and then by Raymond Chen about...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 02/11/2005
OT: The Woodinville Family Preschool hits 23 this month
Valorie just pointed out that the preschool that both our kids attended, Woodinville Family...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 02/10/2005
WHat's wrong with this code, part 9 (File Copy) - the answers
Wow, where to begin on this one. Lets start with the easy one, the simple coding error. Here it is:...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 02/10/2005