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resuna wrote: The only decent product the company ever made.
Not so! I can think of two others: Visual Studio, and Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2[^] - I bought one recently,. and it is really superb. Expensive, yes. But "decent" is way too low a bar for this thing! 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Developing software on Windows is too great a burden for anything associated with it to rise to the level of "decent".
I can not comment on gaming hardware. The last time I did much gaming was when I was developing Tracers on the Amiga 1000.
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resuna wrote: Developing software on Windows is too great a burden for anything associated with it to rise to the level of "decent".
Now, you know that's untrue. Many, many of us just on this site do it every day, and find the process easy and comfortable - and VS goes a long way to help with that! Perhaps, you should invest a small amount of time learning how to use it instead of just ignoring it because "it's microsoft"?
And I bet the Amiga was fun to develop on and not at all frustrating ... 
Back in those days I was writing Z80 code for embedded devices using EDLIN under DOS, which was ... an experience I do not wish to repeat.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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To be fair I've never liked Microsoft's C++ compiler offerings. For a long time they were not standard enough to implement a canonical version of the STL. After they fixed that, they made their compiler very persnickety in terms of its interpretation of the standard. GCC and Clang seem to allow for the broadest interpretation in my experience. Basically, if you can interpret the spec a certain way, GCC supports that. The same does not seem to be true of MSVC++ - it is very strict, and you almost have to relearn things - particularly the subset of the *interpretations* of the standard that MS supports.
Sorry, it's a bit hard to explain. If anything MSVC++ is correct, it's just finicky in its correctness. You can write code in GCC that will not compile under MSVC++ even though they are both to C++ spec, technically.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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Microsoft tends to implement standards reluctantly and using every possible misinterpretation to encourage people to use their proprietary APIs instead. Their POSIX subsystem was a perfect example. They deliberately crippled it and defended their misfeatures as "we're just following the standard as we see it". When a company implemented an actually useful UNIX API on top of it, they bought them and took it off the market for several years... finally exposing it as part of their Windows Services for UNIX which at first was only available on NT Server.
You exactly nailed it. The passive-aggressive standards conformance is a "feature".
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I don't think this behavior is unique to Microsoft. Apple is almost worse about it in some respects, except where it applies to their hardware.
I think it's a biproduct of
A) A large company's tendency toward inertia which interferes with its responsiveness to users
B) A closed loop system
And a lot of companies have historically done similar. IBM is a great example of that.
And to be completely fair to Microsoft, they've gotten better about all this in recent years, but still have a long way to go. Open sourcing a .NET reference implementation is a good example of the improvement I'm talking about.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Apple and Microsoft both have serious problems, but I don't see how Apple's problems are related to Microsoft's passive-aggressive implementations of standards. Apple's standard interfaces are generally quite good as open standards (open systems, open source, standard interfaces and APIs) practices go.
Their issues are mostly not providing open interfaces on their mobile devices at all (something that Microsoft started doing as well as Pocket PC phone edition turned into Windows Powered and Windows Phone), and of course their restriction of their OS to their somewhat anemic and siloed hardware.
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I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on Apple's hardware ecosystem. Once you buy into Apple if you want things to work together smoothly it better all be Apple. Also try running their OS on anything other than Apple hardware. It's all closed-loop.
Anyway, whatever. I won't buy anything from them for other reasons. Namely they screwed me over in 1986, and screwed over an orphan teenage kid I know out of his summer earnings and then treated him like a criminal. They'll never see a dime from me.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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I don't think we disagree on Apple's hardware ecosystem, which is the bit that confuses me. Their hardware is anemic and restricted and overpriced, and it's part of the cost of the OS. The OS, on the other hand, plays very nice with the other children.
I do UNIX, and my Mac makes a pretty good and pretty standards-compliant UNIX that happens to have a pretty good local app ecosystem on top of that. Remember, my original point was about Microsoft *advertising* a standards compliant platform (C++, the POSIX subsystem) but locking you into their proprietary environment if you actually tried to make use of it. Apple is exactly the opposite.
Right now I have my Mac mini, a Linux laptop, a Linux firewall, and a handful of FreeBSD- and Linux-based servers. They all work together and I can run the same programs and scripts on any of them. I can even <u>ssh -X</u> to a server and run Firefox or whatever natively on my Mac without having to use a screen-scraper like VNC or Remote Desktop. My Windows laptop, on the other hand, is basically a game machine with a web browser.
Apple in the '80s and '90s, before the switch to UNIX, was a whole different company. It's been 20 years since they abandoned their funky and exclusively proprietary desktop.
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I understand their OS is more POSIX compliant, because I've coded for it, and indeed between the big 3, Apple, Windows, and *nix, I consistently have to fork my code for Windows. It's the odd one out. I'm not arguing their software ecosystem isn't better than Microsoft's. I'm simply comparing Apple's hardware situation with Microsoft's software situation. A lot of Microsoft's hardware, like their gaming gear, and user input devices are often pretty good, and fairly standard. It's almost the opposite issue Apple has.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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A boy has never wept nor dashed a thousand kim.
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Oh dear. Yes, I know how to use it.
I have written code on both DOS and Windows for over 40 years now, and even when I was doing it every day it was at best annoying, the API is hodge-podge and the scripting environment fragmented worse then '80s UNIX. I would rather code for 6th Edition from 1976 (even with the funky 6th edition shell).
The Amiga was amazing. The message-passing real-time OS underlying AmigaDOS was really intuitive: even for low level work - you could write device drivers just by having a program post a message port and respond to appropriate messages - and the API was the best I have ever used "live fire" for low-level concurrent programming. It's a pity the business-feud-turned-personal between Tramiel and Gould doomed it from the start.
-- modified 8-May-23 12:30pm.
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Presumably you’ve already purchased and received your new mouse. I hope it’s all you want it to be.
I’ve been using a gaming mouse for the past several years. Not that I do any gaming, but the resolution and longevity seem to be on the upper end of the spectrum. It’s a Roccat mouse. It’s programmable, but again, my needs are simple, so I don’t use much of that.
Many years ago I used a regular mouse, but my shoulder started getting twingey so I switched to a roller-ball style for a decade or so.
Later I switched to using a Wacom tablet/pad. I know: “those are for graphic artists”. Oh no. Best pointing device ever. Point-to-point mapping so you don’t have to drag the mouse to move the pointer, multi-functional stylus, etc. After I retired I downsized my workspace and so moved back to a standard (gaming) mouse.
I think one should explore all the options since you spend so much time with it.
Cheers and good times! 
Time is the differentiation of eternity devised by man to measure the passage of human events.
- Manly P. Hall
Mark
Just another cog in the wheel
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I know a mouse, and he hasn't got a house
I don't know why I call him Gerald
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse
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My mouse is amazing. Logitech Wireless Mouse M325. Can switch between devices with one click. I had the one where you can switch devices simply by scrolling to the direction of the device but that was way too confusing.. this one is a "silent" or "no noise" mouse with a multi-device button and it supports either bluetooth (yuck) or 2 logitech usb chips (yay!). Would highly recommend.. I had to order it from Asia cuz its not available here.
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#Worldle #468 3/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨↙️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨↙️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
Should have got it the first time
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
modified 4-May-23 18:45pm.
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Wordle 685 4/6
⬛⬛⬛⬛🟨
⬛⬛🟨⬛⬛
⬛🟨🟩🟨⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
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Wordle 685 4/6
⬛🟨⬛⬛🟨
🟩⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬛🟨⬛⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Tried a different technique.
First 3 rows are 3 words with no letters in common so each 🟨 is a different letter. So I then have 4 letters to add 1 and make an anagram.
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Wordle 685 4/6
⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜
⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
🟨🟨🟨⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
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Wordle 685 6/6
⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜
⬜⬜🟨🟨⬜
⬜🟨🟨⬜🟨
⬜🟨🟩🟨⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
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Wordle 685 3/6*
⬜⬜🟨⬜🟨
⬜🟩⬜🟩⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Wordle 685 6/6
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜🟨⬜🟨
⬜🟨⬜⬜🟨
⬜🟨🟨⬜🟨
🟨🟨⬜🟨⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Hard one, had to look it up (I still had a few options, but I didn't see any of them, guessed correct) 
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I got the vowels from my starters then did my usual alphabetic scan and got lucky
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Wordle 685 5/6*
⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
🟩🟩⬜⬜🟨
🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
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