Larry Osterman's WebLog
Just another Developer Network site
My new "favorite" WIn32 API
Every once in a while, you discover a new Win32 API that you've never heard of. The other day, one...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 01/12/2006
What registry entries are needed to register a COM object.
So I'm finally done with the "COM activation" posts. One question that was asked during the series...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 01/11/2006
COM registration of PROGIDs.
We're almost done with this series (phew). Up until now, everything I've talked about w.r.t. COM...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 01/10/2006
COM registration if you need a typelib
The problem with the previous examples I posted on minimal COM object registration is that they...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 01/09/2006
COM registration for cross process access
Yesterday I posted a minimal COM registration. But it had some serious issues. Among them the COM...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 01/06/2006
Minimal COM object registration
Yesterday I mentioned the APPID registry key. I also mentioned the effort going on within Microsoft...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 01/05/2006
Silly little bit of Broadway trivia I didn't know
As I mentioned, my mom, Daniel and I went to see "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" on B'way the other day. A...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 01/05/2006
When do you need an APPID in your COM registration?
I recently received this question from a reader: When Does ATL component need to register a AppId...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 01/04/2006
User Experiences
I'm back! It was a restful, but uneventful holiday vacation, it was great seeing everyone in the...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 01/03/2006
And the blog goes dark (just for a while, I've not retired or been fired :))
I'm about to leave for my much needed Christmas-time vacation, I'll be back east with the family, so...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 12/16/2005
Why doesn't Vista expose individual pairs of channels as separate endpoints?
One of the questions that was asked after EHO and my Channel 9 video aired was: is there an ability...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 12/16/2005
Volume control in Vista
Before Vista, all of the controls available to applications were system-wide - when you changed the...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 12/15/2005
Another Channel9 Video
Last month, Elliot Omiya and I sat down with Charles Torre of Channel 9 and did a brain dump of the...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 12/14/2005
Da Goat Horns
Raymond's post the other day about a giant inflatable bunny that showed up in his office finally...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 12/08/2005
Where does WASAPI fit in the big multimedia API picture?
I've previously mentioned that we're adding a new low level multimedia audio rendering api for Vista...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 12/07/2005
What's wrong with this code, part 16, the answers
I intentionally made the last "What's wrong with this code" simple, because it was just intended to...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 12/06/2005
What's wrong with this code, part 16
This real-world problem shows up as an appcompat problem about every two or three weeks, so I...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 12/05/2005
What's the big deal with Vista Betas?
In this somewhat silly Channel9 post about unsubstantiated rumors of Microsoft canceling Vista Beta...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 12/01/2005
I wish I had written these...
From Eric Sink, via Dana Epp: "My Life as a Code Economist" And Dana's original article: "The cost...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 11/27/2005
@#$@#$ When will people learn about the dancing bunnies/bears...
Yeah, I said I was on vacation, but this is SO depressing. I just saw this on the front page of...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 11/22/2005
I'm fried...
As you can probably tell from the lack of posts to this blog, I'm feeling a bit burned out putting...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 11/19/2005
The last consumer operating system written in my lifetime...
Way back in the day, I was chatting with Tom Miller, one of the NT filesystem developers - he and...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 11/17/2005
My neighbor's Hive.Net video cast
It turns out that my neighbor works in the same building as I do, she's the group product manager...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 11/11/2005
A co-worker just forwarded this...
Apparently it was on Conan last night, but... I normally don't like Triumph the comic insult dog,...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 11/10/2005
When do you hear the beep?
The other day, I wrote about beep.sys. It turns out that Windows will still generate calls to...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 11/07/2005
Beep Beep
What's the deal with the Beep() API anyway? It's one of the oldest Windows API, dating back to...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 11/05/2005
Cool illusion found on Michael Gartenberg's blog
Michael Gartenberg pointed out this cool illusion. It's a circle of pink dots with a rotating...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 11/04/2005
What's wrong with this code, part 15 - the answers
Well, that was certainly interesting. My last "what's wrong with this code" post had to do with a...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 10/31/2005
Another Surreal moment
I was listening to NPR while driving around this afternoon. They had a report by Libby Lewis on...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 10/29/2005
What's wrong with this code, part 15
Work's been pretty hectic lately, that's why so few posts this month, but I ran into a real bug in...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 10/28/2005
Does Visual Studio make you stupid?
I know everyone's talking about this, but it IS a good question... Charles Petzold recently gave...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 10/26/2005
A really quick followup to the "No Easter Eggs" story
Man, it's just been the fall for running into old friends and colleagues. In the past month alone,...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 10/22/2005
Why no Easter Eggs?
Yesterday's post caused a bit of a furor in the comments thread. A large number of people leaving...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 10/21/2005
Early Easter Eggs
Jensen Harris's blog post today talked about an early Easter Egg he found in the Radio Shack TRS-80...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 10/20/2005
Activate-As-Activator activates as activator
This particular problem burned my team somewhat the other day, so I figured writing a blog post...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 10/18/2005
Unintended consequences of adding APIs to the system
Yesterday, I wrote about a trick to reduce the number of bits in a number by one. It turns out that...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 10/14/2005
Another of my favorite tricks - reducing the number of bits in a number by 1
One of the classic (and thus no longer asked) Microsoft interview questions is "How quickly can you...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 10/13/2005
It's on the whiteboard
Way back when, when we were first shipping NT 3.1, checking files into the source tree was pretty...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 10/12/2005
Looking under rocks...
I've really been enjoying Jensen Harris's blog recently, he's been talking about the UI design that...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 10/11/2005
Does __fastcall make a difference for C++ classes?
We're running through a routine round of code reviews of the audio engine, and I noticed the...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 10/10/2005
Setting volume on audio CDs with MCI
So I got an email from a reader yesterday asking: How do you set the volume of an audio stream...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 10/06/2005
Sorry for the lack of technical stuff recently...
I've been swamped with work, and all the reviewers for the Vista audio posts haven't gotten back to...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 10/06/2005
I don't know if I should be honored or embarassed...
There's this guy, "Jamie" over on Channel9 who's quite skilled with photoshop. One of his ongoing...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 10/04/2005
Beresheit, with sidekicks (from the New Yorker, via Monica Cellio's blog)
Monica (old friend from college) linked to it, I nearly had to clean up my monitor after reading...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 09/28/2005
New Audio APIs for Vista
In an earlier post, I mentioned that we totally re-wrote the audio stack for Windows Vista. Today I...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 09/23/2005