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June 2004 - Posts

Wednesday, June 30, 2004 4:36 PM

What is a C0000005 crash?

  In my blog about Dr. Watson I talked about product crashes. What is an example of a crash? How destructive is it?   Here’s a simple example. MyFunction takes a string parameter and calculates its length   MyFunction (char *
posted by Calvin_Hsia | 3 Comments
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Monday, June 28, 2004 2:30 PM

Thirty years ago, computers were quite different

In the old days, we had to use a typewriter. I asked if I could use the ASR-33 teletype machine which connected to our high school PDP-8 computer, but it only printed in UPPER CASE on rolls of yellow paper.   Did you ever wonder the origin of
posted by Calvin_Hsia | 4 Comments
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Monday, June 28, 2004 1:15 PM

Dr. Watson: Please send in your error report

I bet you’ve seen dialogs similar to this:     We at Microsoft refer to this dialog/technology as Dr. Watson (after the famous Sherlock Holmes assistant).   Before Watson, computer users would get the BSOD (The Blue Screen
posted by Calvin_Hsia | 9 Comments
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Wednesday, June 23, 2004 12:46 PM

Disappearing Window Contents while dragging the mouse

We have heard a couple reports of strange behavior in Visual FoxPro if you click on a thumb button in a scrollbar, drag it up or down a little, then pause for 6 seconds or so. The contents of the window would disappear, leaving a blank editing window.
posted by Calvin_Hsia | 2 Comments
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Tuesday, June 22, 2004 3:41 PM

Designing User Interface for car keys

Here at Microsoft we have people called Program Managers (PMs) whose job is to design a product. They’re the ones that make a feature usable to the customer.   A remote keyless entry car fob is quite useful. It’s essentially a wireless
posted by Calvin_Hsia | 9 Comments
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Tuesday, June 22, 2004 4:10 AM

Start using XML and XSLT to create HTML

Tonight at the Seattle Visual Foxpro user group meeting Richard Stanton gave a great presentation of the new reporting features of VFP9, which is currently available in beta.   The question came up about how to use XSLT to create HTML from XML.
posted by Calvin_Hsia | 9 Comments
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Friday, June 18, 2004 3:24 PM

Blogs get 300 hits per hour: Visual FoxPro can count.

I wanted to get a picture into my blog, which isn’t run by my web site. It actually gets posted to 2 URLs: http://blogs.msdn.com/calvin_hsia or at http://weblogs.asp.net/calvin_hsia   I can view and edit my entry in HTML, so I just added
posted by Calvin_Hsia | 11 Comments
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Friday, June 18, 2004 2:22 PM

Styrofoam Peanuts

I like the convenience of shopping online. Not only are there lots of goodies available, but it’s easy to jump from store to store with a couple keystrokes.   However, it’s very hard to tell if the ordered product is shipped in packaging
posted by Calvin_Hsia | 15 Comments
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Wednesday, June 16, 2004 3:23 PM

I want my own email! MSN Premium

  My 7 year old daughter Wendy has been clamoring for her own email account, among other things (like her own cell phone). She’s been using a computer for years, and has been using my old web server laptop as her main machine, mainly to surf
posted by Calvin_Hsia | 47 Comments
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Tuesday, June 15, 2004 5:42 PM

Independence Day for blogging

Since July 4th is nearing, I thought it would be appropriate to start my independent blog.   In this first entry, I’ll add a few pointers to prior entries that I made to our VSData team blog.    Solving a customer problem is my blog
posted by Calvin_Hsia | 0 Comments
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