Larry Osterman's WebLog
Just another Developer Network site
Tonight's the Night...
Nothing technical, just proud parent stuff. Tonight we're going to see the 5th Avenue High School...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 06/04/2007
Missed metaphors
Not surprisingly, the various teams that contribute to the Windows product have been hard at work...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 06/01/2007
Compatibility works both ways
Windows is rather famous for its ability to run applications that were written for previous versions...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 05/30/2007
The C abstract machine
I mentioned yesterday that the C/C++ language was defined to operate on an abstract machine. At the...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 05/16/2007
Blocking your UI thread with PlaySound
For better or worse, the Windows UI model ties a window to a particular thread, that has led to a...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 05/15/2007
What's wrong with this code, part 20: Yet another reason that named synchronization objects are dangerous, the answers
Microsoft can be quite obsessive about instrumentation and metrics. We have a significant body of...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 05/14/2007
What's wrong with this code, part 20(!): Yet another reason that named synchronization objects are dangerous...
When you're doing inter-process communication, it's often necessary to use named synchronization...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 05/11/2007
Volume in Windows Vista, part 3: Capture volume
As anyone who's read this blog with any regularity knows, my son Daniel is a budding actor. As such,...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 05/08/2007
Where on earth did Larry go?
No, nothing bad happened to me, I just got a bit caught up in work stuff. I spent the last three...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 05/07/2007
Volume in Windows Vista, part 1: What is "volume"?
I've avoided writing about this because it's "complicated", but people are starting to ask questions...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 04/03/2007
Where did the second parties go?
We were chatting at lunch the other day about 3rd parties building solutions on the audio engine....
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/30/2007
The last change for the cheesy OSD application - preventing volume recursion.
Yesterday, at the close of my article about adding notifications support to the cheesy OSD...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/23/2007
Fun with the endpoint volume interfaces - closing the loop
Yesterday, I added support for metering to the cheesy OSD application, today I want to add in the...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/22/2007
Fun with the endpoint volume interfaces - let's add metering...
Yesterday I posted a quick&dirty OSD (complete with cheesy text graphics). Today I'm going to...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/21/2007
Other fun things to do with the EndpointVolume interfaces
Last week I posted a code snippet that showed how to change the master volume in Vista. That snippet...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/20/2007
Why does KB 118626 use AccessCheck to check if you're a member of the administrators group?
Eagle Eyed reader Jens Geyer sent me an email yesterday asking: There's a KB article, where there is...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/14/2007
FPO
I was chatting with one of the perf guys last week and he mentioned something that surprised me...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/12/2007
What's wrong with this code sample, the answer
Yesterday, I posted a question about a security sample I ran into the other day. I mentioned that...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/09/2007
What's wrong with this code sample...
Today, Michael Howard posted a link to updated documentation that contains the new list of banned...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/09/2007
How does my existing app change the master volume on Vista?
After I posted the "How do I set the master volume in Vista", DanT commented: Thanks Larry. I'll...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/07/2007
How do I change the master volume in Windows Vista
It's actually easier in Vista than it was in XP. For Vista, we recognized that one of the key...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/06/2007
Why does the Media Center volume control change the master volume, not the per-application volume?
This morning, Steve Robinson asked: Also, why does the volume control on Media centre effect the...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/05/2007
No sound on a Toshiba M7 after a Vista install (aka: things that make you go "Huh?")
We recently had a bug reported to us internally. The user of a Toshiba M7 had installed Vista on his...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/02/2007
Looking for Autumn...
I just noticed this on Engadget. A Vanity Fair writer named Nick Tosches set off on a seemingly...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 02/22/2007
Living with Windows Home Server, Day 0.
Soon after I posted this mini-review of my Mirra home backup solution, Charlie Kindel sent me mail...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 02/14/2007
Vista Ship Gift, Part 2
It's a Microsoft tradition that the people who worked on a project get a copy of the project when it...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 02/09/2007
Why was the ability to specify an allocator during CoInitialize removed from the system?
Yesterday I talked about CoGetMalloc. One thing I didn't include was why the ability to specify an...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 02/08/2007
The Sad Story of CoGetMalloc
Ok, I admit it. I'm a geek. I'm actually one of those people who rants over the loss of the printed...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 02/07/2007
Remembering old CPU bugs.
I was browsing through the Bonus Chapters for Raymond's book and I remembered an old CPU bug we...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 02/06/2007
What is AUDIODG.EXE?
One of the new audio components in Vista is a new process named audiodg.exe. If you look at it in...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 01/31/2007
Vista Ship Gifts
Our ship gifts for Vista came the other day. We got a fleece pullover and the final DVD for our DVD...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 01/30/2007
Software Contracts, Part 9: Annotations Outside the Compiler - More Runtime Enforced Annotations
Ok, if it's not become crystal clear that I'm writing this on-the-cuff, this post will finally put a...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 01/26/2007
Software Contracts, Part 8: Annotations outside the compiler - runtime enforced annotations.
Ok, it's taken 7 other posts, but we've finally gotten close to where I wanted to be when I started...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 01/25/2007
Software Contracts, Part 7: Contracts as annotations - language features used to express contracts
My last post on contracts introduced the idea that a languages type system can be used as a...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 01/24/2007
How the Magic of Windows Vista saved 38G of my data
I always love it when the operating system I run finds new ways to absolutely delight me. Yesterday,...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 01/23/2007
Single Points of Failure
Over the weekend, my family had an annoying lesson in one of the basic principles of software...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 01/22/2007
Software Contracts, Part 6: Annotations
In short, an "annotation" is an addition to the source code for a program that allows an external...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 01/18/2007