Mike P: "one time i had a massive query i had constructed for use the next day. that evening windoze did an update and rebooted so the query was gone forever. so much for automatic updates."

Sorry, Mike, but if you took the time to write a "massive query" to use the next day, and then walked away for the night without saving it first, that isn't a Windows problem; that's an incompetent user problem.

You can't blame "windoze" for your own stupidity. Blame Windows for the things it does wrong (like the dialog we're discussing here). But don't blame it for what isn't it's fault.

Brian: "To everyone Bitching about the 5 minute forced restart. If I'm not mistaken, this setting only applies if you're receiving updates from an SMS Server, and the system policy is to force a reboot. If this is happening on your home computer then something is borked, as in all my years of using XP, I've never seen that."

If you're running XP and *not* seeing this, you have automatic updates turned off, or don't have an internet connection on your machine. I'm using a fresh install of Windows XP Media Edition (which is XP Pro with a handful of media enhancements added) with SP2; until I found out you could fix this issue using Group Policy Editor, it drove me nuts.

elijan sejic: "Not good if you were wacthing that XXX torrent file you just downloaded.

And don't look me like that for using Norton - it's a workstation at work."

So you were watching "that XXX torrent file you just downloaded" on "a workstation at work"? Is that a terribly good idea? And does your employer know about this? g

MiddleMan: "This used to be a decent blog. Now its turned into another bash Microsoft for page hits blog. Enjoy your new ad revenue from the Reddit/Digg crowd."

I don't see it that way. There's nothing wrong for criticizing MS for things it does wrong; the problem is with the "Reddit/Digg" and /. crowd that insists on bashing MS for everything, even things it has no control over (see my response above to Mike P for an example). Your post is another example of a totally ludicrous post (as bad in a different way as Mike P's), as you seem to think that MS is absolutely perfect and should never have a negative thing said about them.

However, if you feel that negative about Jeff's posts here, I'm sure he'll be glad to refund the membership dues that you paid in full, and you can simply delete the bookmark you have to codinghorror.com.

And Jeff? If the refund is an issue for you (like say you spent that vast amount you collected from MiddleMan already on your mortgage or something), drop me a note and I'll chip in to help you out. g

Mike Time: "Stealing focus is vital in online poker where you can be surfing etc but when its your turn to move the software pops to the front of the screen.

If not you won't know when its your turn !"

If you're playing online poker, you should play online poker and not do something else. That way you'll know when it's your turn, and won't need focus to be stolen.

Besides... Are you suggesting that Microsoft somehow create an API call that can *only* be used by online poker games to steal focus, but not be used by other applications? How exactly would that work? Would the poker game have to register with MS in order to get the information about the API? If so, what's to prevent them from using the API in another type of application as well?

Or do we have the poker game creator get the game's name embedded into Windows itself, so that the kernel can reject calls to the API unless the game is on the list? In that case, what happens if Vista contains the list now, and tomorrow you create a new poker game - how do you get added to the list so you can use the API? Do you wait until the next service pack for Vista? What if you've missed the deadline for that? Do you wait for the next release of Windows? Vista was only five years late.

You can't allow one type of program to do something that others can't. For instance, you can't let one video driver do something that all other video drivers can't do.

Peter C O Johansson: "I can't tell you how many times my IM application of choice has screwed over a game of Team Fortress 2 by forcing it to minimize out of the blue in favor of a one-line message from a contact. At the best of times, it results in spending the better part of a round just trying to get back to a playable state; at the worst of times, it takes the entire operating system down with it."

As I said before and now say again, that's not Windows' fault. It's yours, for leaving your IM application running while you play such a resource intensive game, thereby allowing it to interrupt.

It's fine to hammer on MS and/or Windows for things they do wrong, but you can't blame your own screwups on them.

Tom Dibble: "An OS restart request is just that: a request. Any app worth its salt should check the "dirty" state, pop up a "save" confirmation (or if it is in the middle of a critical operation stall until that finishes), and wait for the user to hit "save" AND commit everything to disk before telling the OS it is done by shutting down.

I've seen this work on Windows, so I know it's not an OS X only thing. It's just bad programmers not properly reacting to OS messages."

Well, you're mostly right. g A well-behaved application will *request* a restart, and if any running process says "No", the restart request is denied.

However, the Windows API does allow that request to be phrased as a requirement; that's done using the same API function (InitiateShutdown) with the SHUTDOWN_FORCE_OTHERS, SHUTDOWN_FORCE_SELF and SHUTDOWN_POWEROFF (and possibly the SHUTDOWN_GRACE_OVERRIDE) flags. That means that an ill-behaved application can force you to restart, even if you don't want to do so. I suppose this was done so that the OS itself could force a restart, but MS couldn't restrict it to only being used by the OS, as with some of the parameters it is quite useful from a systems/network administrator standpoint.