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Not dissing Chris, but the stupidity of Microsoft never ceases to enrage and mystify me. Most companies are started from enraged employees/customers that know they can do it better, and they do... anyway...
So, let's talk Windows 11 and the bs that MS blows our way for UI improvements. Rounded icons, ads in the startup bar, ever invasive AI, yada yada. Well I work on a laptop 99% of the time. I'm not that mobile, I just like the size. I have Windows 10 and 11 on multiple machines. Today all I wanted to do on my Windows 11 laptop was to turn off the touchpad when a mouse was connected. It's a fairly common thing users want to do.
So, where do I find it? The setting is hidden under a drop down bar where you just have to be intuitive/desperate enough to keep clicking. Help is useless, and most of the doc on Windows 11 trails the ui... what a steaming pile of debris.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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Windows 11 needs a massive, massive cleanout. The full Marie Kondo treatment.
The update UI that wraps the older UI that wraps the win 10 UI which wraps the Win7 UI which wraps the Win95 has, I feel, reached the tipping point of collapse. Just right click on the desktop and then select "Show more options" as Exhibit A that the UX Product Manager just gave up. Removing quick tasks from the contect menu of taskbar icons was their way of saying "I hate the World".
cheers
Chris Maunder
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What I find amusing is when I use programs that draws client window frames using the Win7 UI style. I would prefer they go back to the XP or W7 UI style because I detest the phone-style UI they use currently.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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charlieg wrote: ads in the startup bar
The worse the economy gets the more prevalent this will become. The big wigs know something the average person refuses to believe as they get brainwashed by TV.
But, you know... happy hump day. 
Jeremy Falcon
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"happy hump day"
that used to mean some nsfw different to me, but then I got older.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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 If memory serves "Hump Day" was Wednesday many moons ago.
But I agree: "The worse the economy gets the more prevalent this will become."
When technology doesn't get it right, cutting corners is one of the causes.
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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I agree with you but this also has a lot to do with the deteriorating quality of young professionals who work at the big vendors.
Many documents have been written in the past few years reporting on how younger people are coming out of university with an overblown sense of entitlement while really having nothing to do offer in terms of critical thinking skills and technical intelligence.
Many professionals are seeing this with the increasing mess in web development products that has been made possible by the radical decoupling of components from more centralized processes (ie: ASP.NET WebForms), which may not have been the most efficient but were easier to learn, easier to compartmentalize, and made for better project estimates.
Now what do we have? A entire sundry of tools, tool-sets, and frameworks that increasingly rely on more arcane and ambiguous syntax that together is enough to drive one to drink.
This is why the PHP language is still holding its own in the web arena...
We also have the deteriorating quality of decision making at Microsoft, which I knew would happen under Nadella's leadership.
I have worked with quite a few Indian managers during my career, and though technically capable they are arrogant, and have little capability in big-picture strategies, relying on a just a "get it done" attitude while attempting to cut costs at the same time. This is also why you rarely see top quality and innovative software products coming out of India.
The time is coming where if Microsoft keeps on turning everything into varying levels of rocket science for its products, which is hardly required for what a lot of us need to do, another company will eventually move into Microsoft's declining space.
For example, does anyone really need to use SQL Server any longer when we have the MySQL and PostgreSQL database engines, both of which have large support communities as well as direct technical support.
Without Windows, Microsoft would be nowhere, and with the sagging influence of cloud computing, Nadella's original goals are starting to get a black eye from which he may never recover.
Still, I prefer using Windows to Linux. But if necessary, will make the switch when the time comes...
Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer
Black Falcon Software, Inc.
blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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Steve Naidamast wrote: I agree with you but this also has a lot to do with the deteriorating quality of young professionals who work at the big vendors.
Oh, totally agree with you there. Big or small vendor. There are a lot of young ids out there who took an online course for six weeks and think they're engineers or managers now. It's market over saturation because too many people are in it for money now. IMO no course student or even someone fresh out of college deserves a 6-figure salary. Earn it. Learn the ropes first. The cruft needs to be weeded out.
Steve Naidamast wrote: Many documents have been written in the past few years reporting on how younger people are coming out of university with an overblown sense of entitlement while really having nothing to do offer in terms of critical thinking skills and technical intelligence.
IMO this is a direct result of the lies and brainwashing going on at universities. They're a cult now. They don't teach. They indoctrinate.
Steve Naidamast wrote: Many professionals are seeing this with the increasing mess in web development products that has been made possible by the radical decoupling of components from more centralized processes (ie: ASP.NET WebForms), which may not have been the most efficient but were easier to learn, easier to compartmentalize, and made for better project estimates.
Well, with me being a web purist, I never liked Angular for instance. Which took the "all encompassing" approach too. It was always slow and bloated and learning it didn't help you really learn web dev. But, as you eluded to, the opposite is also true. JavaScript has this thing called "javascript fatigue" because if you sneeze there's a package for that. You sneeze again... there's a second package. If a rookie dev who has no idea what they're doing gets on a project, it can be just as bloated if not worse. So yeah, damned if you do. Damned if you don't. 
Steve Naidamast wrote: We also have the deteriorating quality of decision making at Microsoft, which I knew would happen under Nadella's leadership.
I don't know if it's just MS though.
I'm not gonna mention the name because I think of some of the peeps there like brothers, but I just finished a contract for a company with annual revenue of over 3.5 billion. Not Microsoft size, but a large enough sample size of employees to get an idea from. And let's just say, the vast, vast majority of people there or "experts" from vendors I talked to while there couldn't find their way out of a cereal box. I don't know man. Just seems like the world is too afraid to think.
Steve Naidamast wrote: I have worked with quite a few Indian managers during my career, and though technically capable they are arrogant, and have little capability in big-picture strategies, relying on a just a "get it done" attitude while attempting to cut costs at the same time. This is also why you rarely see top quality and innovative software products coming out of India.
I will say, I've also worked with one particular Indian-American manager before who was downright abusive. So, I feel your pain. Just for balance though, I've had some Indian-American coworkers who were awesome people. You win some. You lose some. But, I totally get your point. I've worked with folks offshore in India and it was always either just blindly say yes to everything or just never talk to you at all and make whatever - even if it's wrong. Typically I blame management for that though - typically. And Lord knows, I've seen devs over here display the same traits.
Steve Naidamast wrote: The time is coming where if Microsoft keeps on turning everything into varying levels of rocket science for its products, which is hardly required for what a lot of us need to do, another company will eventually move into Microsoft's declining space.
IMO if MS would've just focused on Windows and Office they'd be unstoppable. They've spread themselves way too thin and now even Windows is suffering.
Steve Naidamast wrote: Still, I prefer using Windows to Linux. But if necessary, will make the switch when the time comes...
You should definately try it man. With all the spying going on in Windows and Macs now, Linux just may be the last hope as far as privacy is concerned. Best starter distros are Ubuntu and Linux Mint. Mint will feel at lot like Windows and Ubuntu will have more bells and whistles. Both are good starting distros.
Jeremy Falcon
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Jeremy...
Thank you for your very informative reply...
I am in the middle of developing a large military simulation workbench. As a result, I have a lot of research to when it comes to the AI aspect of it. Just now, I am completing a basic decsion-tree algorithm, which is based upon a standard B-Tree implementation.
If I was at the beginning of this project, I may have considered doing the entire thing on Linux in Python. However, I started this project quite a while ago and have been working on it just about every day.
Except for one assembly, the entire project is written in VB.NET.
I am sort of waiting for JetBrain's Rider IDE to enhance its WPF GUI-designer and then I may make a purchase to see if I could get my code over to Linux.
I have the Ubuntu Workstation installed, and it really has come a long way in ease-of-use.
So moving to Linux is a backup plan I have been keeping in the back of my mind.
BTW, all of the Indian professional technicians I worked with prior to 2000 were wonderful people and quite capable technically.
Yet, sometime after 2000, India saw a new avenue to make money as started cranking out technicians over there like a flood. Most of them were not all that good.
However, I got to work with a team over there and they were just like the older technicians I had worked with. Friendly, capable, and willing to have open minds.
I got friendly enough with one of them that she sent me a picture of herself...
Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer
Black Falcon Software, Inc.
blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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Pardon me for being nosy, but what's a military simulation workbench?
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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The military simulation workbench I am developing will provide the basic capabilities, which includes the necessary AI routines to any developer who would like to develop a war game/military simulation.
To date, I have just about completed a database sub-system that will provide for all the data for a land-based simulation. Still a few tweaks left to put in it but they will have to wait until the 5th version release. I am working on the 4th version release now.
I have completed a distance calculation (distance between two hexagons on a map board) that makes use of the standard "Manhattan Distance" algorithm for such calculations.
A path-finding algorithm has also been implemented, which relies on the distance calculation.
And finally, I have just about completed a basic decision-tree algorithm that when provided with both a unit's data and a number of conditions is able to provided response as to what action a unit should take (ie: attack, retreat, ...)
You can download the complete project from my website, http://www.blackfalconsoftware.com
The software is called the "AGKWorkbench"...
Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer
Black Falcon Software, Inc.
blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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This sounds awesome. 
Why would you make the project available for download? It sounds like it would be worth a lot of money.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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This is a project I have wanted to do for many years.
However, for good number of years, decent information on both the graphics and the AI was scant at best until more recently.
The result is that I have a lot of learning and research to do. This makes it a little difficult for me to request monies for my work... At least now.
Even the with third release, which is what is currently available for download, I found quite a number of issues with the GUI and the database, most of which should be corrected in the upcoming release.
However, the work on all the updates to the HELP file will take a little time and I have to finish the testing of the GUI.
It is a lot of work but it is slowly coming together...
Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer
Black Falcon Software, Inc.
blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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charlieg wrote: ads in the startup bar
I haven't made the jump to 11, but I know it'll happen. Has nobody yet figured out what IP(s) can be safely blocked to prevent those from being downloaded in the first place, without breaking the rest of the OS?
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I am about ready to put microsoft.com in my HOSTS file to have it blocked. I am certain that will have some interesting fallout.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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Wait until you read about their plans for W12. YIKES!
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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And their plans for Recall[^] which really make you want to "get your ass to Mars". 
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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Richard Deeming wrote: And their plans for Recall[^] which really make you want to "get your ass to Mars".
What worse... Microsoft (Pest) or Musk (Cholera)?   
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Look, arguing about which colour horses they're riding, or who the other two are, won't avert the apocalypse you know!
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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On my laptops (MSI and Gigabyte) there is a key combination that does that. Something like Fn+F3 or another function key.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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Microsoft's choices over the last several years are appalling. Windows 11's UI changes are awful, and the injection of ads everywhere is worse. This latest upcoming "Recall" feature that will chew up your disk space for no discernable benefit and huge privacy drawbacks has put me over the edge. I've been talking for years about switching to MacOs for my daily driver, and this week Microsoft convinced me that was the right choice. I can't completely escape Windows - I support applications for Windows servers, but MY main computer will not be Windows moving forward.
--Avonelle
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One of the things that really ticks me off about Microsoft's UX changes is the way the newer crop of development idiots completely ignore the way things should be done.
Case in point -- there used to be a Microsoft document called "The Windows Design Guide". It laid out all the dos and don'ts for creating Windows applications, especially in terms of the user interface. One of its strongest rules stated something like "When your application first opens, do not expand its main window to take over the entire screen. Do not cover up all the other applications that may be running."
Now, take a look at what happens when you start even small applications, like Settings, or larger stuff like Outlook or Word -- Boom! whole screen covered for no good reason. This new crop of idiots simply assumes that no one can handle more than one window at a time, so why waste screen space? And, I'll bet they have no explanation for why they've blithely ignored decades of good advice.
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So true.
Something that ticked me off in the last couple of years is a UX change they made to the treeview in Outlook. Previously it showed the number of unread items in a folder right next to the folder name, which made it very easy to read. They changed it so that the number of unread items is right justified so that it is far away from the folder name. Now it is much harder to tell at a glance which folder the unread items are in. WHY DO THAT? It makes things objectively worse.
That's when I realized they are just making changes to justify their jobs, with no real thought or care.
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I've been using Windows 10 on an iMac for years with a secondary monitor. This year I've switched to macOS as my main dev system on the iMac, and the other screen is used for my win11, Ubuntu, Debian or mac mini machine. Lots of juggling.
I'm working on the iMac on one file, and on the mac mini on the same file, but a different version. I was wishing I could just copy from one to the other, but they are on different machines. Then, without thinking, I copied some text, dragged the cursor from one screen to the other, and then pasted.
I totally forgot about macOS Universal control. It was so intuitive I wasn't even aware of what I was doing: it just worked the way I expected it to (but had I thought about it, I would have not expected it to work).
I love UI/UX like that. It's like the perfect butler: they are there before you even realise you need them, and then step back once the job is done. But without the whole moral issues thing and all that.
I wish we all had the time and resources and mental space to write software that worked like this.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Chris Maunder wrote: I wish we all had the time and resources and mental space to write software that worked like this.
It's been my experience that companies will spend hundreds of thousands so people can argue over a text box for months and call that innovation. 
Jeremy Falcon
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