The hard part was that we used sending keyboard shortcuts as our method of sending commands (which works for programs we support like WMP or VLC), but we couldn't do that reliably to Flash. We thought about switching to UI Automation but haven't done so yet.

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Microsoft’s “Picture Password”: A Breath Of Fresh Air On The Lock Screen 15 years ago

From http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/12/19/optimizing-pic...

As several comments suggested, we also considered shrinking the size of the image and displaying it at random positions and slight rotations on the screen to minimize any risk from smudges. We knew from usability feedback that decreasing the size of the image both increased the difficulty of properly entering the gesture and made the login experience feel less immersive; however, if there were a significant improvement to security, we wanted to consider the costs and benefits. What we discovered was that while shifting the image could reduce the buildup of smudges in specific spots, there were even more prominent “clouds” of taps, lines and circles that were identical relative to each other. With this information, an attacker could easily figure out the gestures relative to each other. With that information, it was a simple exercise to move them around the picture until they appeared to coincide with significant elements of the picture. There wasn’t a noticeable improvement in security and we were able to measure significant degradations to the fast and fluid user experience. In reality, using smudges is very difficult.

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Working at Microsoft – Day to Day Coding 15 years ago

It's not really a status symbol. PMs tend to be more mobile, presenting in meetings and such, and need laptops. Devs and testers get much better desktops.

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