Clairvoyant Microsoft documentation



  • The Microsoft Time Machine is up and running again



  • I really hope someone doesn't have to type those in by hand. Microsoft Minutes have taken a turn for the worse.

    It reminds me of Crtl and Son of Crtl:

    Yes, in Windows you had to (still do have to?) type menu shortcuts out by hand.



  • As opposed to what? Am I being dense or trolled?



  • As opposed to letting the GUI render the shortcut text based on its knowledge of what the shortcut actually is?



  • @serguey123 said:

    As opposed to what? Am I being dense or trolled?
    Yeah, I'm lost too, even with his follow-up.



  • @HardwareGeek said:

    @serguey123 said:
    As opposed to what? Am I being dense or trolled?
    Yeah, I'm lost too, even with his follow-up.

    His point is if the programmer has to manually type "Ctrl + S" then there is a chance for a typo, as the screenshots show. If the OS renders the text for you (since it knows that Ctrl + S is the command used) then it will be less error-prone.



  • So they are hardcoded and can be changed? That is dumb.

    Edit: ohh just now I saw the typo 😅



  • @serguey123 said:

    So they are hardcoded and can be changed? That is dumb.

    Edit: ohh just now I saw the typo 😅

    Yeah, my brain fixed the typos (there's a different one in the second shot), too. I didn't even notice until Morbs pointed out that there was a typo.



  • I'm not sure what happened to that article date.

    While it's altogether possible that some intern at Microsoft couldn't get their head around time synchronisation in Windows when setting up a new server (I can't be the only person who thinks that w32tm is immensely overwrought and broken), but that's a lot of clock drift even for a virtual server, and surely someone would notice long before it ended up that far out. I would also like to imagine that the server clock would be tied to that of the domain controller, and that the whole rack wouldn't all be that far out. (I don't know if domain controller time takes precedence even if the time difference exceeds w32tm's usual "too far out to be worth fixing, let's just live in the past/future forever" period.)

    Yet, why would anyone be typing in the date manually?

    Then you have MIME: the e-mail system takes the MUA's clock as authoritative. Outlook on the other hand uses the received date by default, so any mail that got delayed, shows an incorrect date and time.



  • Most of the Azure storage REST API docs have the same November 2014 date so I guess a bulk update went wrong, rather than an intern mis-typing on each page.



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    I really hope someone doesn't have to type those in by hand. Microsoft Minutes have taken a turn for the worse.

    It reminds me of Crtl and Son of Crtl:

    Yes, in Windows you had to (still do have to?) type menu shortcuts out by hand.

    OH MY GOD THESE SOFTWARE BUGS FROM 8 YEARS AGO ARE SO HILARIOUS HA HA HA ESPECIALLY SINCE THEY HAVEN'T BEEN FIXED IN ANY SUBSEQUENT VERSIONS OF THE SOFTWARE



  • @The_Assimilator said:

    OH MY GOD THESE SOFTWARE BUGS FROM 8 YEARS AGO ARE SO HILARIOUS HA HA HA ESPECIALLY SINCE THEY HAVEN'T BEEN FIXED IN ANY SUBSEQUENT VERSIONS OF THE SOFTWARE

    Good. Use your aggressive feelings, boy. Let the hate flow through you.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @HardwareGeek said:
    @serguey123 said:
    As opposed to what? Am I being dense or trolled?
    Yeah, I'm lost too, even with his follow-up.

    His point is if the programmer has to manually type "Ctrl + S" then there is a chance for a typo, as the screenshots show. If the OS renders the text for you (since it knows that Ctrl + S is the command used) then it will be less error-prone.

    Well technically the OS/UI framework of Windows doesn't know, since menus don't actually have shortcut keys. It is the Window itself that has shortcut keys, and that is why menus have to be given the text manually.

     On the other hand, this is only an issue if you are developing directly against the Platform SDK. Usually if you are making a UI application you are going to be using a framework of some sort that does in fact handle this. (Hell, even Visual Basic 1 handled this).


  • FoxDev

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    It reminds me of Crtl and Son of Crtl:

    Yes, in Windows you had to (still do have to?) type menu shortcuts out by hand.

    The site you got those from seems to have a vendetta. Take this image:

     

    We all know how this goes:

    Windows: Hey Driver, what's that thing you drive called?
    Driver: Hey Windows, it's called <name here>!
    Windows: Thankyou!

    And then it's somehow MS's fault the driver gives the wrong name.

     



  • @RaceProUK said:

    The site you got those from seems to have a vendetta. Take this image:

     

    We all know how this goes:

    Windows: Hey Driver, what's that thing you drive called?
    Driver: Hey Windows, it's called <name here>!
    Windows: Thankyou!

    And then it's somehow MS's fault the driver gives the wrong name.

    If I understand you correctly, it is entirely Matrox's fault that Windows misreports AGP slots as "PCI"?

    You must be new to Device Manager. Let's see:

    • Windows XP SP3, OptiPlex GX270:
      • AGP video card in "Location: PCI bus 1, device 0, function 0"
      • IDE hard drive in "Location: Location 0 (0)" (Location! Location! Location! Developers! Developers! ......)
    • Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit, OptiPlex 9010:
      • PCI Express video card in "Location: PCI bus 1, device 0, function 0"
      • SATA hard drive in "Location: Bus Number 0, Target Id 0, LUN 0"

    What's interesting to note is that Mac OS reported PCI device and vendor codes before Microsoft, who didn't get around to that until XP (Apple System Profiler featured quite detailed system information back in Mac OS 9 and earlier). Device Manager also has such delights as no USB device tree (Windows has one, but it only appears during certain device failures) and USB printers show up as "USB Printing Support" instead of the make and model of the printer.

    You should spend some time around Device Manager. It's really quite enlightening .......


  • FoxDev

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    If I understand you correctly, it is entirely Matrox's fault that Windows misreports AGP slots as "PCI"?

    More likely the motherboard drivers claiming the AGP slot is on the PCI bus.

     



  • @RaceProUK said:

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    If I understand you correctly, it is entirely Matrox's fault that Windows misreports AGP slots as "PCI"?

    More likely the motherboard drivers claiming the AGP slot is on the PCI bus.

    In the two examples cited, one PC was installed using proper chipset drivers from Dell, and the other was installed in the Dell factory (although I've just upgraded to 8.1 this weekend). Apparently both have broken motherboard drivers that can't tell PCI, PCI Express and AGP apart from each other.

    As with so many other things, if you tried Apple System Profiler from Mac OS 9 you'd understand. It's a level of enlightenment that cannot be taught, only acquired through experience. Sadly, the immense and irrational hatred tech folks felt towards classic Mac OS really hurt the industry, as people would shun all the wisdom on offer. I would never go back (one can grow tired of co-operative multitasking!), but what I gained from using it was worth all the pain and more.


  • FoxDev

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    @RaceProUK said:

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    If I understand you correctly, it is entirely Matrox's fault that Windows misreports AGP slots as "PCI"?

    More likely the motherboard drivers claiming the AGP slot is on the PCI bus.

    In the two examples cited, one PC was installed using proper chipset drivers from Dell, and the other was installed in the Dell factory (although I've just upgraded to 8.1 this weekend). Apparently both have broken motherboard drivers that can't tell PCI, PCI Express and AGP apart from each other.

    Never said they were broken. Although Dell isn't exactly a byword for quality.


  • @RaceProUK said:

    Never said they were broken. Although Dell isn't exactly a byword for quality.

    What type of video card do you have? What bus does Windows say it's on?



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    AGP video card in "Location: PCI bus 1, device 0, function 0"
    PCI, AGP and PCIe all appear as the same bus to the OS, and Device Manager just reports where they're physically located on the bus.
    @Daniel Beardsmore said:
    What's interesting to note is that Mac OS reported PCI device and vendor codes before Microsoft, who didn't get around to that until XP
    This of course isn't true - XP implemented that in Device Manager, but you could get the PNP IDs through msinfo32.
    @Daniel Beardsmore said:
    Device Manager also has such delights as no USB device tree
    View -> Devices by connection



  • I don't have sufficient style to channel blakeyrat here — I'm just a boring nutjob (at least Ben L is entertaining). Seriously, if you've never used the old Apple System Profiler, you really won't understand.

    It's a little bit like a Stockholm Syndrome of IT: it's all too easy after using Windows long enough to be mentally unable to conceive of anything better. You come to accept it on its own terms and that becomes the ceiling of your mental model. The only way to break out is to discover other operating systems (typically vintage ones, as a lot of ideas were born, grew and died in the 80s and early 90s), but the cost of this is that it shatters your peaceful idyll of the Wintel Wonderland. Linux is borderline here …



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    Linux is borderline here
    though the /sys and /proc trees contain wonders for those prepared to go spelunking through them using only a feeble head-mounted candle and the tattered and inadequate documentation as guides.


  • BINNED

    @flabdablet said:

    though the /sys and /proc trees contain wonders for those prepared to go spelunking through them using only a feeble head-mounted candle and the tattered and inadequate documentation as guides.

    I have been there once.

    Beyond those paths lies only madness. Sweet, sweet madness.



  • Who doesn't like rescanning their SCSI devices with



    echo "- - -" > /sys/class/scsi_host/host0/scan



    A madman, that's who.



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    I really hope someone doesn't have to type those in by hand. Microsoft Minutes have taken a turn for the worse.

    It reminds me of Crtl and Son of Crtl:

    [clipped shot]

    Yes, in Windows you had to (still do have to?) type menu shortcuts out by hand.

    Are those actual bugs?  Ctrl-S is save, but going Alt-F-A is for save all. Two different key combinations. The underlined letter is for using the alt sequencing, and the Cntrl combination is more global to the application. May not be optimal user experience, but certainly not a typ or a bug.

  • BINNED

    @The Bytemaster said:

    Are those actual bugs?
     

     Not at all. I use my CRTL key every day. Like now, hitting crtl+B to make stuff bold.



  • @Onyx said:

    @The Bytemaster said:

    Are those actual bugs?
     

     Not at all. I use my CRTL key every day. Like now, hitting crtl+B to make stuff bold.

    Ahhh.... I can C# now!  Sorry, I can be a bit lisdexic at times.



  • @Onyx said:

    Like now, hitting crtl+B to make stuff bold.
    How did you manage to make that work? Every time I try it, the stuff comes out blod.



  • I dirnk yuor mlikshaek



  • "As with so many other things, if you tried Apple System Profiler from Mac OS 9 you'd understand. It's a level of enlightenment that cannot be taught, only acquired through experience. Sadly, the immense and irrational hatred tech folks felt towards classic Mac OS really hurt the industry, as people would shun all the wisdom on offer. I would never go back (one can grow tired of co-operative multitasking!), but what I gained from using it was worth all the pain and more."

     

    I don't know how sarcastic you are being.

    But Mac OS has the advantage of only running on one brand of hardware. Made by them.

    They just need to know the model number, and the entire hardware configuration can be deduced.

    Oh, and PCI to AGP bridges are a thing. you can have an AGP card in a PCI slot. 

     


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