• The Old New Thing
















  • The Old New Thing

    That doesn't sound like South Frisian to me




  • The Old New Thing






    Things I learned:




  • The Old New Thing

    That fee was so that we wouldn't have to raise our prices


    I dreamed that I got screwed by Ticketmaster. I was relieved when I woke up and found out it was only a dream.

    Bonus chatter: The economics of Ticketmaster.

    It reminds me of a company who added a service fee to an existing rate plan, and in their FAQ for the service fee, they explained, "That fee was so that we wouldn't have to raise our prices." This is some sort of bizarro-world logic.

    Yes, I know that this is so that the company can continue to advertise an artifically low "price" in all their marketing materials, and then make up the difference by tacking on a boatload of fees.

    A colleague of mine was purchasing event tickets online, and in addition to the ticket's face value, there was a processing fee, a facility fee, and an order fee. On top of that, it said, "Total does not include shipping and handling or order processing fees." Because apparently an order processing fee is not the same as a processing fee and an order fee.

    Eventually, they will also add a convenience fee, a 9/11 surcharge, a mandatory gratuity, a fee fee, and a fee collection fee.

  • The Old New Thing

    Mysterious email, possible social engineering, whatever it was, it didn't work


    A colleague of mine got a strange piece of email. It went something like this, although I've substituted a fictitious nation and fictitious company name to protect the guilty(?).

    Subject: St. George's Island Embassy Trade Mission: Meeting request on behalf of Contoso Corporation

    Dear ⟨name⟩,

    I am contacting you following the advice of ⟨senior executive⟩, CTO of Microsoft Pangaea.

    The St. George's Island Embassy Trade Mission is currently assisting a local company, Contoso. Contoso would like to present ⟨technology⟩ to Microsoft. Details are in the attached document.

    Would you accept a conference call with the CEO of Contoso, at a time at your convenience?

    Looking forward to a fruitful collaboration,

    Sir Humphrey Appleby,
    Director, St. George's Island Embassy Trade Mission

    My colleague has no connection with St. George's Island, nor had he ever met the named senior executive (or anybody else from the Pangaea division), and he asked, "Is anybody else getting messages like this?"

    I suggested that they might be trying some social engineering: "Send an email to an employee saying that a senior executive told us to contact them. They will do whatever we ask because they think we are operating under the instructions of the CTO."

    This sounded plausible, so my colleague contacted said senior executive, who replied, "I had invited Contoso to participate at a large event we held on St. George's Island last year, but just as you don't know me, I don't know you either. This is definitely suspicious. Thanks for taking the time to send me this warning."

  • The Old New Thing

    This was only a test; if this had been an actual concert...


    I dreamed that there was a fire in Benaroya Hall during a concert. The flames swirled overhead up by the ceiling.

    The exit doors had been blocked by security, so people flowed from door to door looking for a way out.

    Ha-ha, it was just a drill, and the flames were pyrotechnics.

    This dream brought to you by Great Ideas in Public Safety.

  • The Old New Thing

    Sir, is this your high-speed ferry?


    The Victoria Clipper is a high-speed ferry that runs primarily between Seattle and Vancouver Victoria, BC. Early Sunday morning, a man scaled a fence and drove off with one of the boats.

    The issue was resolved without major incident and only minimal damage, which means that it is now open season on jokes!

    "Why yes, officer, this is my ferry. I must have left the registration in my other pants."

    According to the vessel superindendent, "There is a joystick and he thought it was like an Xbox," ending up driving the boat in circles. You can see the GPS track here (photo 19).

    Of course, if the thief had had a Kinect, he would have used the voice control. "Clipper, go to West Seattle. Clipper! Go. To. West. Seattle. CLIPPER!" (Waves arms frantically.)

    Or maybe the Clipper would have responded, "Hi, I'm Clipper! It looks like you're trying to go to West Seattle. I can help you with this. Is this a personal trip or a business trip?"

    Even the Seattle Police Department joined in the festivities, using a popular hashtag for the incident.

  • The Old New Thing

    The walls of my friend's house sometimes randomly got corrupted


    One evening, I had a series of three dreams. In each one, I visited an unusual home.

    In the third dream, I visited the home of a friend of mine. He lived in a white stucco split-level, a stereotypical suburban home. What made the house interesting was that if you did things just right, dark dots would appear on the wall and slowly consume it.

    My friend explained, "This house is running a very old build of DirectX, and sometimes it just does that."

    We set up a repro and calculated that when the dots appeared, stack usage was exactly 5124 bytes. This was a 16-bit house, and the stack overflow into the heap caused a return address to be changed to point into the DirectDraw flood fill function.

    When I told my friend about this strange dream, he quipped, "I've since then upgraded to a 64-bit house."

  • The Old New Thing

    Notes on gift card and gift certificates in the state of Washington


    Today is the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season. One of my colleagues read the fine print of a gift card he received:

    A monthly maintenance fee of $3 applies but is waived for the first twelve months after the card is issued. Thereafter, monthly maintenance fees are waived for an additional three months if the card is used in any given month.

    This seems kind of backwards. They charge a maintenance fee if you don't create any work for them. Shouldn't the maintenance fee be charged when you use the card, rather than when you don't?

    This "maintenance fee" is really just an "account inactivity fee". The issuer doesn't want to have to deal with the liability and associated risk of having lots of unused gift cards floating around, so they create a mechanism by which unused gift cards slowly lose value until they are worthless.

    In the state of Washington, RCW 19.240 has rules governing how certain types of gift cards behave.

    Gift cards issued by a bank (typically those branded with a credit card) are the biggest exception not covered by RCW 19.240, however. (Another exception is prepaid phone cards.)

    You can read the entire chapter RCW 19.240 for the details on expiration dates (split over 19.240.030, 19.240.050, and 19.240.060), and inactivity fees.

    Interesting notes:

    • In order for an inactivity fee to be allowed, a gift card must remain inactive for two years. Furthermore, the remaining balance after the fee must be $5 or less, and the inactivity fee cannot exceed $1 per month.
    • Once an inactivity fee is assessed, you can redeem the gift card for cash.
    • If you make a purchase that consumes only part of the value of a gift card or gift certificate, and the remaining balance is less than $5, you can redeem the balance for cash.
    • Gift cards that were not explicitly purchased (such as those received as part of a loyalty program or other) can have an expiration date.

    I learned one way a local company addressed this problem: When my gift card went dormant, they sent me a check for the balance, hoping that I would cash it (hey, who wouldn't?) and thereby retire the liability from their books.

  • The Old New Thing

    Things that can happen when your kitchen gets taken over by others


    Today is the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States, one of the the major holidays for family get-togethers. (Another big one is Christmas.) One year, it was our family's turn to host Thanksgiving, and when that happens, it means that the kitchen is overrun by relatives cooking all the dishes and hunting through the cabinets and drawers of an unfamiliar kitchen.

    One year, I learned that a pastry blender can be used as a potato masher and that a cheese planer can be used as a pie server.

    This is what happens when other people use your kitchen.

    It could also mean that my kitchen has too many froofy gadgets.

    Nadine Kano, best known to geeks as the author of Developing International Software for Windows 95 and Windows NT, also has a pastry degree from Le Cordon Bleu, graduating at the top of her class. She corrected me: "One can never have too many froofy kitchen gadgets." Nadine has since retired from Microsoft to start her own consulting firm and be a pastry chef on the side.

    (Actually, the fact that my relatives were using a pastry blender as a potato masher and a cheese planer as a pie server suggests that I don't have enough froofy gadgets. Specifically, I'm missing a potato masher and a pie server.)

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