Curses! FOILed again! (Or: Random memory)

In mathematics, when we learned to multiple expression such as (a + b) (c + d), we learned to do it with the mnemonic FOIL: first, outside, inside, last.

That is, the result is ac + ad + bc + bd: ac is the product of the first operand in each pair of parentheses (a, c), ad is the product of the "outside" ones (a, d), bc is the product of the "inside" ones, and bd is the product of the last operand (b, d).

Basically, a systematic way to ensure that you don't miss any combinations by doing them in a specific order each time.

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(And I do hope she has comment notification emails disabled on that one…)

Dropping onto a tasbar button

If you drag a object and drop it onto a taskbar button, you get an error message that says,

You cannot drop an item onto a button on the taskbar.

However, if you drag the item over a button without releasing the mouse button, the window will open after a moment, allowing you to drop the item inside the window.

Why doesn't the taskbar let you drop directly onto a taskbar button?

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Read this issue of the oldnewthing for a discussion. (Though there's no answer to the question besides "it's not possible", some explanation of why it would have been difficult, and a guess as to why it wasn't made possible.)

This is something that bothers me occasionally, and I've seen people struggle with it as well since it seems the "obvious" thing to do, often.