Comment Feed for earnshaw

Re: The P-Invoke Interop Assistant

earnshaw — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 23:38:55 GMT

Now here's something really helpful! Been looking for help with a particular P/Invoke for some time now.

posted by earnshaw

Re: Application Compatibility - MSI Installer Issues

earnshaw — Tue, 27 May 2008 02:25:18 GMT

I can dig the wants and needs expressed here. The Windows Security Model is so blasted complex, you get results you never antipicated AND you can't always get the results you want. It would be nice to install a piece of software and to tell the OS to prevent it from ever touching this, this, this, and that over there. We muddle through with Group Policy and DACLs.

posted by earnshaw

Re: Douglas Crockford, Alex Russell and Joseph Smarr: On the Past, Present and Future of JavaScript

earnshaw — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 07:06:26 GMT

It is nice to see the enthusiasm for JavaScript, or enthusiasm for anything. HTML, in its many incarnations, with or without the addition of CSS, and the so-called Document Object Model, and standards promulgated by the W3C, well... As far as I'm concerned the whole web languages thing is an ad hoc muddle that was pushed by people who needed something, anything, that was able to put eye-popping advertisements on web pages. JavaScript is a means through which a web page gets to tell the Browser to do "special" things, like ignore a user request to copy text, and like ensure a user fills out a form correctly using only local computing resources. Naturally, being a full-featured language mainly for Browser instruction, JavaScript can be used to, par exemple, implement translation layers when necessary. That would be an extension to the Browser that is implemented in a web page. Whatever it takes. Interesting name, JavaScript. Really quite unrelated to the computer programming language Java, which can confuse the uninitiated. In 100 years I expect the Internet to have evolved beyond ad hoc to something logical, clean, and comprehensible.

posted by earnshaw

Re: Patrick Dussud: Managing Garbage Collection

earnshaw — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 08:32:50 GMT

Having recently been required to extensively enhance some unmanaged C++ code, I feel the pain of not having the services of a garbage collector. What were they thinking? I know what they were thinking. They were thinking how slowly programs would run when the garbage collector was running half the time. But, nowadays, with 2GB or greater main memory commonly available and multiple CPU systems, the garbage collector is rightly in style. And it saves many, many cycles in a programmer's brain. It is simply too easy to lose track of a disused object. Long running programs can end up having to be restarted simply to reclaim memory space. I love my garbage collector. Wouldn't be without. I'm impressed that it works reliably and very greatful.

posted by earnshaw

Re: IE 8: On the Path to Web Standards Compliance - ACID 2 Test Pass Complete

earnshaw — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 03:49:07 GMT

So, Web sites written for standards-compliant IE8 will run very well on standards-compliant Brand X browsers as well? That's unheard of! Practically the end of the Soviet era as we know it.

posted by earnshaw

Re: Patrick Dussud: Garbage Collection - Past, Present and Future

earnshaw — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 04:51:37 GMT

Having recently been persuaded to make enhancements to a program that was written in unmanaged C++, I was reminded how much effort goes into taking out the garbage. Hooray for GC! Hooray for Moore's Law that gives us the spare cycles that it takes to automate reclamation of disused objects.

posted by earnshaw

Re: MIX 2008: What the hell is this MIX thing, anyway?

earnshaw — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 03:16:30 GMT

The natives are restless tonight. Of late it appears that many popular web destinations offer a Rich Internet Experience. Animated this and video that. And you can be certain it wasn't all executed using Silverlight. I've been Adobe Flexing for six months. As per industry standard, the documentation is terrible, the literature execrable and the most useful hints are available via Google. I hope Microsoft does not repeat Adobe's mistake. If you want a nice looking column chart, Flex is very good. If you want eye popping transition effects, that will take some ECMAScript. All this was supposed to be "a simple matter of coding a few lines of XML." Well, simple it isn't. Good enough to meet revenue targets? Yep.

posted by earnshaw

Re: Gordon Hogenson: Documenting Development Technologies

earnshaw — Sun, 20 May 2007 20:36:04 GMT

For a while I was thinking Microsoft had no writers on board. Good to see that is not the case.

Technical topics tend to be covered in workplace literature as if books need to be great tomes of wisdom. Vast swaths of knowledge and experience are treated in depth. Usually, a minimum of 900 pages is required.

So, I was trying to create a managed wrapper written in C# to implement a C++ call to a Win32 API subroutine that gives the program a special privilege. Bah humbug: HRESULT. Of course, such a function should have a managed equivalent, but not yet. Using P/INVOKE, this should be rather simple. But it isn't if you cannot immediately get your hands on the decorations that must be put in the C++ function header. It took Product Support Services several days to correctly identify the decorations. Something this basic should not be buried in musings on how Microsoft actually implemented versus how they should have implemented something. In my experience, there is no distinction between practical and vital information versus trivia in technical books. One must thoroughly plow the books to find the nuggets if they be in the book; something that is not guaranteed.

For anyone who is interested, the following is an example of the correct decoration:

extern "C" _declspec(dllexport)  int _stdcall  yBHGQ95Y83Srg76sd24bkVZZ(int togglePosition)

posted by earnshaw

Re: Windows "Longhorn" Server Beta 3 Ships!!!

earnshaw — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 15:27:22 GMT

Making Windows Codename "Longhorn" Server must have been a management nightmare. And a whole lot of work. So, congratulations on finally coming to the end of a long journey.

I'm a little puzzled to know how this Server operating system differs materially from and is better than its predecesor, Windows 2003 Server. Can someone point me to the relevant PowerPoint presentation? Thanks.

Well, we do know that there is a non-GUI option that cuts out redundant software to permit deployment of key technologies without inadvertently turning on infection vectors.

What else?

posted by earnshaw

Re: MSDN Wiki Projects - #4 (last) - Internationalization

earnshaw — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 16:40:43 GMT

One man's meat is another man's poison. That's on old English saying derived from the French "Chacun a son gout." Some like short videos. Others like long videos. Personally, I like both long and short. With production resources, a long video can be edited down to a short video. Hence once interview could beget two videos.

posted by earnshaw

Re: MSDN Wiki Projects - #3 - A Huge Responsibility

earnshaw — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 12:19:38 GMT

It occurred to me only recently that the Wiki approach might be an effective way to document, at the level of detail necessary, all of the APIs and operational and configuration aspects of Microsoft products. It does not seem reasonable to expect the corporate behemoth to undertake the task alone. Naturally, such a Wiki would need to be closely monitored, as Wikipedia is, to limit the amount of damage done by vandals and the ill-informed.

posted by earnshaw

Re: Raj Jhanwar: Windows Vista Component Management Interface (CMI)

earnshaw — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 19:40:42 GMT

So, anyway, what is a "skew?" Actually, it is a SKU or Stock Keeping Unit number. You see, items that are mass produced are assigned SKU numbers so that retail sellers can order and inventory by models which are distinguished by their different SKU numbers.

posted by earnshaw

Re: UAC - What. How. Why.

earnshaw — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 03:21:26 GMT

Windows began as an un-networked, single-user operating system. With the advent of the Internet (as a public utility), Windows evolved to expose every connected computer to bad actors. For the sake of "innovation," the Windows security model anticipates nearly every instance where some administrator in the world would want to prevent a user from doing something. Hence, the security model is overtly complex. Meanwhile, the principle of least action dictated that most computers are logged on as Administrator, thereby providing an easy target for malware. One cannot rely on a dictate to users that they change habitual behavior: log in as ordinary user except when necessary. Solution: log in as administrator, but limit privileges to those permitted through the UAC interface. In other words, when a program attempts to do something questionable, query the system operator, as if he/she knows what the hell the question means and what the answer should be.

Well, it should reduce the surface area available for attack. It doesn't make available a comprehensible and comprehensive list of privileges that indicates which ones are enabled/disabled for a given user at any time. It doesn't indicate the proposed change to privileges because that would be technically very difficult to do. It is a glass half full situation. Better than nothing. Decidedly, better than nothing.

posted by earnshaw

Re: The C# Disco Floor Guy - Clint Rutkas

earnshaw — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 00:49:29 GMT

Fantastic video. A C# project that runs a disco floor for the most excellent purpose of getting girls to come visit! Has anyone contacted Marketing? "C#: The programming language that runs your enterprise and improves your love life! At better retailers everywhere. Oh, and don't forget to see our new Vista OS on display -- now with AEROGLASS technology."

posted by earnshaw

Re: Windows 2000 to Windows Vista: Road to Compatibility

earnshaw — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 02:09:44 GMT

As Windows has evolved from a toy, single-user, not networked computer operating system to an enterprise, multi-user, networked operating system, the nature of managing the operating system has changed. Legacy compatibility requirements have motivated implementation of a complex security solution that permits users to run as they have always run, as Administrator, yet, through software trickery, they are not actually given permissions until they attempt to do something dangerous. Dangerous things involve changing operating system components, installed applications, registry entries, time-of-day, some forms of communicating on the Internet, and so forth. Certain well-defined compatibility issues have been resolved with "shims" that permit certain forbidden actions by converting the forbidden action to a permitted action with the application being none the wiser.

Has anybody published an exhausive list of actions that a program may attempt that will evoke the UAC dialog?

One hopes that, in time, the complexity of this transition solution will be replaced with a much simpler security model that one can keep in one's head as one develops killer apps for Microsoft Windows.

The Session 0-Session N problem, where applications falsely believe there is only one Session active at any given time is absolutely hilarious. What is really needed is a window that incarnates Session 0. The window opens in whatever Session is being viewed at a given time. This is much better than having dialog boxes open to announce (for example, printer) problems to an invisible Session. On mainframes, there is such a thing as "an operator's console" where system global state messages constantly appear. Windows doesn't have, yet now requires, something similar.

posted by earnshaw

Re: Jim Allchin: It's time - Windows Vista RTM

earnshaw — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 15:51:15 GMT

Vista RTM is great! Congratulations. Now then...

One of the applications shown is "...absolutely trivial to do.", so where may one find the footnote that directs Developers to the one-pager that demonstrates how trivial it is?

Heck, I'd settle for directions to a 900 page book that demonstrates how trivial it is.

posted by earnshaw

Re: The Advancement of Windows: Ales Holecek - Windows Shell (Windows Explorer, Desktop Search, UAC, Aer

earnshaw — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 02:28:37 GMT

Well, I think Mr. Holecek's chat about the "shell" was quite interesting. It makes great radio.

The "Story of Vista," as I understand it, is that the vast project went out of control in 2003 because unintended and unanticipated component interactions were occurring and the OS could not be stabilized given time and money constraints. So, it was decided to ditch, for the time being, one of the major new features, ditch some quantity of new code, and restart development from a stable platform like Windows 2003 Server and/or Windows XP.

An earlier Channel 9 video features a group of people who are working to better understand how all the parts of Windows interact. It is sad but true that complex systems are hard to understand in all their complexity. The market-driven need for backward compatibility adds to complexity.

posted by earnshaw

Re: The Advancement of Windows: Narayanan Ganapathy - Windows Vista IO

earnshaw — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 21:27:56 GMT

Thanks very much to Nar for the excellent discussion. I was thinking how Channel 9 audio could be improved: wireless mic. The interviewee clips on a wireless mic. It is a radio transmitter. Charles runs a radio receiver which plugs into the video camera. Then, instead of picking up the speaker's voice plus all the ambient noise and echo, we hear the speaker's voice by itself. And the speaker can wander about the room and talk at the same time without losing a syllable. Eh?

posted by earnshaw

Re: Bill Hilf: Open Source at Microsoft

earnshaw — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 23:21:58 GMT

Open Source and Closed Source need not conflict, especially in view of the fact that Open Source applications can drive sales of Closed Source products. One reason for the existence of the Close Source marketing model is to protect Intellectual Property. Another is to thwart the dispersion of multiple unofficial versions of a product with varying quality and responsibility for evolution and correction. Open Source does admit a greater number of people to review, correct, enhance, and learn code and methods. Ownership of such changes cannot be clearly established without a contract.

posted by earnshaw

Re: Tony Williams: Co-inventor of COM

earnshaw — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 12:28:42 GMT

Code reuse is a compelling idea. Software componentry would decompose solutions into not only classes and modules, but also into reusable components. So far, in practice, reusable components have not materialized in a big way. It would be nice to see those fat books of patterns implemented as components and widely reused, if that's even technically possible.

As to COM, it solved a bunch of problems and created more. Like the "Hello, World!" C++ program in Petzold that is some 200 lines long, a COM solution contains many an arcane line that caters to the dainty way COM objects must be approached to get them to do anything. And using COM objects from across a network is an absolute nightmare. Stubs and proxies indeed. Worst of all, the Registry is highly involved in GUID-to- mapping. Any mishap in there and the application crashes without hope of repair. Only replace.

In the end, COM served a very important purpose as a way to deliver versionable software. Microsoft wrote millions of lines using COM. COM's most important function was to serve as an example of how to burden programmers with issues they should not be bothered with like reference counting and instantiation. The bit level constraints on the design of COM rose up and bit everyone who tried to play nice with it. Out of COM came .NET Framework, which accomplishes most of what COM does without the muss, fuss, or bother. Hide the wires brother and sister programmers!

posted by earnshaw

Re: Rob Short (and kernel team) - Going deep inside Windows Vista's kernel architecture

earnshaw — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 01:23:22 GMT

I think videos like this one with Rob Short are *GREAT* because they provide context for understanding product and how it got that way and how people think it should evolve. Learning about product in a contextual vacuum is, for me at least, an unrewarding exercise.

posted by earnshaw

Re: Life and Times of Anders Hejlsberg

earnshaw — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 05:39:42 GMT

Anders is THE MAN!

posted by earnshaw

Re: Steve Ballmer - Quick chat with Microsoft's CEO

earnshaw — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 06:45:59 GMT

The "take home" message of the Steve Ballmer video is that the next 10 years, for developers, will be as good as or better than the last 10 years. It is left to the viewer to decide what "better" means. Perhaps it means more interesting work. Perhaps it means higher volume of work in general. Perhaps it means increased gross receipts for developers. What Mr. Ballmer thinks when he thinks "developer" remains a mystery. What aids to developers Microsoft plans to offer over the next 10 years is unspecified. I come away from his brief comments with the same confused, "what was THAT all about?" that I used to experience at half-time when coach would give us a pep talk.

Nevertheless, it is extremely good to have the big cheeses honor us with a few comments. I don't think this qualifies as a contribution to the still missing dialogue between Microsoft management and developers, but it is a start. (I know, management believes there is an ongoing, long-term, in-depth dialogue that makes the world safe for innovation. In my neck of the woods, the means to advise Microsoft management is non-existent.) Good show!

posted by earnshaw

Re: Tony Goodhew - The path to Orcas, (future Visual Studio), studying the market research

earnshaw — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 00:04:17 GMT

By observation I conclude that decisions made in Redmond are based on the idea that the ENTIRE customer base has the enthusiasm for product churn that dotnetjunkie embraces. The young, enthusiastic lions in Redmond steep in a go-go atmosphere and come to think that the go-go atmosphere exists everywhere. Well, it doesn't. I love new technology that adds value. New technology that is simply recycled old technology is a marketing trick, not an advancement (e.g. renaming OLE COM and COM ActiveX controls). It is strange to think .NET is now considered "old" technology. From a teaching and learning and doing point of view, .NET has got COM beat hands down. Now we are to jetison .NET for something bigger, beefier and bouncier. If so, let it be. But first, figure out how those of us who prefer to take our lessons gradually and systematically can ease into it. It is valuable to see the taxonomy of technologies both from a historical perspective and to arrange one's teaching plan so that the true core technologies are introduced first. Or not. I could be way off base here.

posted by earnshaw

Re: Windows, Part I - Dave Probert

earnshaw — Tue, 05 Apr 2005 02:13:10 GMT

Very fine presentation! The old mainframe that I used to work on had processes (called "runs") and threads (called "activities"). The thread dispatcher maintained context for each thread in a structure called a "switch list" (SWL) which was a misnomer because the actual switch list was a priority table of linked lists of SWLs. Paired with the SWL was the Activity Save Area (ASA) which contained processor state (relocation information for program instructions and data, which were separated), and the contents of CPU registers the last time the thread halted in favor of a different thread. There was no paged memory. Programs were either entirely in memory or entirely out on the swapping drum (yes, drum). That decision was taken to avoid thrashing, which was possible because working set theory didn't exist and it was overkill for this machine's small memory of iron cores. The OS was written to run equally well and in parallel on all available CPUs. By 1970, this machine only crashed once or twice a day because of bugs in the OS. It supported dozens of users in interactive mode using teletypewriters (Model 33, Model 35) and it also ran jobs in background as "batch" processing. A huge backlog of batch jobs would ordinarily accumulate during the day and would be worked off at night. Many trees died to afford users something to look at as output. The whole thing was royally poo pooed by sophisticated faculty from universities "of quality" where they had adopted Unix wholesale (and Multics before that) as the sine qua non of operating systems. The thing they didn't like was that the interactive mode was exactly the same as the batch mode in user interface. (The text-based user inteface was nothing like JCL: it was NOT compiled, it comprised simple commands.) That was quite an advantage when creating production code and for testing out production run control language. But hell, what good is an operating system without redirection and piping and a tree-structured file system, etc., etc. Anyway, my point is that Windows NT is a very good operating system, beats the pants off of Linux in terms of out-of-box usability, and builds on the valuable legacy of the OS that I described above, which was very good for its time -- and still exists -- and still can run binary programs written for it 40 years ago if you can figure out how to read in the deck.

When I first read about hyperthreading in 2002, I decided that Intel had built a chip that was able to hold context for two threads at the same time. From what I have read in response to Robert Probert's talk, I was right. Windows must somehow schedule the right two threads on the chip so that the fast context switch in the chip can be used. Otherwise, HT is of no value. I imagine the top two threads on the priority queue would ordinarily be a good choice, assuming they aren't already scheduled on some other chip. Then, when one of the two threads is blocked waiting for, say, an I/O completion, the other thread can instantly be restarted using context already onboard the chip. There are a lot of CPU cycles to be saved by avoiding the slow context switch!

posted by earnshaw