Microsoft and their idiotic "Cellphone Motif"
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I will not contest that statement
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(without third-party software)
And installing third-party software for Windows differs from installing third-party window managers on Linux... how?
I'm gonna bet $10 there's already software for Windows which does exactly what you described. When core OS doesn't have some functionality, you need to enhance it - I thought you Linux folks had that figured out.
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Can the third party software be installed without opening a web browser or using removable media?
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So I am literally sitting here drinking beer and installing my first home Windows 8.1 machines. One for the living room, one for the garage.
Just cranked up the freshly installed Excel 2013 to replicate your complaints.
Er.
Yeah. Brain worms not found in spreadsheetland.Now, the start screen is a fucking abortion. Once I discovered you could right click the start button and get the stuff I'm always going to, though, even that ain't bad.
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No, that's an open source project. By @blakeyrat's law, that can't possibly be something that runs on non-Linux hardware.
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And installing third-party software for Windows differs from installing third-party window managers on Linux... how?
Because one of them works through APIs supported by the OS and one doesn't. I've admittedly not tried one of the things for snapping to top or bottom, but I have used more than one (not at once, of course) third-party virtual desktop managers on Windows (XP through 8), and my experience is that they mostly work and are usable, but are kind of glitchy and can be a bit slow. Virtual desktops on Linux window managers work noticeably smoother.Another related... complaint, thing that Linux WMs do better, something like that... is that of keyboard shortcuts. Tiling WMs really want lots of easily-accessible shortcuts, and the Windows key makes a perfect key for them -- you can do Win + (whatever) and you have an easy-to-access shortcut that you know won't conflict with anything. On Windows, applications (such as virtual desktop managers) using the Windows key isn't supported. It works until MS comes along and hijacks your shortcut, but that is bound to happen; in the XP days, I had Win plus the arrow keys do virtual desktop moves, but then aero took it for snap and I don't know of any way to get it back.
Basically, my experience with messing with Explorer to get it to behave the way I want can be pretty much described as "you might be able to find something that does kind of what you want in a usable but mediocre way, and probably it will break next version of Windows."
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Because one of them works through APIs supported by the OS and one doesn't.
So I guess Windows DMs achieve their goals by sprinkling magic pixie dust? Because until today I was sure they use WinAPI (with some abstraction layers probably on top of that).
It's also possible to override Win-X shortcuts - AutoHotKey does that, if the WMs don't it's the fault of the WM developers.
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Goodbye mouse, those don't work on cellphones, so you don't need those anymore.
Oddly enough, I found out just the other day that on Android cellphones they actually do. All it takes is a USB OTG cable. And I was very glad to find this out, because it meant that my teenager's dead phone with the non-functional touch screen could still be persuaded to export all contacts to the SIM, then encrypt and erase itself before going in the bag to be sent back to the knackery.
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So I guess Windows DMs achieve their goals by sprinkling magic pixie dust? Because until today I was sure they use WinAPI (with some abstraction layers probably on top of that).
"Can do" != "supported."It's also possible to override Win-X shortcuts - AutoHotKey does that
It's not supported, and presumably AutoHotKey is using hacks that happen to work now but can break as Windows changes within their API spec."Keyboard shortcuts that involve the WINDOWS key are reserved for use by the operating system." That means that if you register a hot key with one of them, it might work now but MS reserves the right to make it not work in the future.
Sometimes you have to resort to programming this sort of thing to get the effect you want. But it's not a good thing, and it often doesn't work over the long run without finding new ways around the changes.
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There is no company worse at displaying pdfs than Adobe.
Is Foxit Reader still grindingly worse at printing them? Is SumatraPDF still useless for filling in forms? Does NitroPDF still do all those upsell nags? I haven't looked for a while.
I tried to abandon Reader as the default school PDF handler, I really did, but once 9 came out and it loaded at a respectable speed again, playing whack-a-mole with differences in user expectation between the PDF reader they were used to and whatever nicer one I'd pushed out to all the school workstations became too much work.
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He said Adobe. What he was REALLY talking about was the built-in PDF reader by Microsoft...
Then that makes even less sense, since it's been there since the start of windows 8 and is not deprecated, rather than added five months ago like he said.
Plus, it's not like they took something which previously worked and then broke it, since this was the first time Windows had PDF reader software installed by default.
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None of those things are gone or will be in the foreseeable future
"They" (whoever they are) also said WPF was going bye-bye.
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Just shove that 4 MB spreadsheet on your cellphone, because that's the future.
You mean, having alternatives is the future?
executive who has never done real work in his life.
There are vanishingly few of these. And those are mostly chopping up businesses, or busy being not successful at a dying company.
I don't get why people keep repeating this myth.
Maybe they're butthurt over the fact that they don't earn as much as a CEO whose job is their life, and therefore are on call 24/7. And even if you start counting corruption and things like that. It's not easy living a life like at Enron and having to grow eyes in the back of your head.
Now you must use the app-switcher to go from your first spreadsheet to the second
Oh there was nothing so annoying like that in the desktop version.
Oh look, I have three spreadsheets open (three icons in the taskbar), let's side by side compare.... aw shit they're all open in the same instance of excel.
I multitask
Unless you're in the 2%, you task switch. And you do it very inefficiently. Stop doing it.
comparing data from two copies of those spreadsheets
Then load them in the same document and use the tools like they're meant to be used, pivot tables and such.to do work in a real world way
Look, all I've seen is that even in a desktop only environment, you've proven you don't actually use tools the way they're meant to be used.
So it's no surprise you completely missed the point of all this OS jazz.
I'm not saying I like the windows 8 main menu, but it isn't counter productive in the least. I don't think I've opened an "app" once in windows 8. Except to see what one looks like.
OTOH, I believe gestures are far more efficient. The real problem is that we haven't found a good alternative to typing words.
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Some people seem to want their email client to be their whole operating system
/me reads my email in emacs. :)
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The silly thing is that, the last time MS used tiles was ........ Windows 2.
Windows 2 was windowed (I remember; it was the first copy of Windows I tried and it was very meh, but it was windowed). You must be actually talking about Windows 1.
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I wonder if Motif would be a better GUI toolkit for smartphones than Enlightenment ...
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/me reads my email in emacs. :)I used to do that (with
rmailIIRC) but I switched to Netscape and then Thunderbird because they handled spam better, and that was a critical issue for me back then. Does the current mail reading mode (whatever it's called) have a bayesian classifier?
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I use gnus to connect to gmail via imap, and gmail handles spam just fine.
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Because one of them works through APIs supported by the OS and one doesn't.
That makes so little sense.
How the fuck else would a third-party window manager work on Windows? Using APIs not supported by the OS? Using APIs supported by an entirely other OS? Maybe they all run in giant VMs?
Basically, my experience with messing with Explorer to get it to behave the way I want can be pretty much described as "you might be able to find something that does kind of what you want in a usable but mediocre way, and probably it will break next version of Windows."
It's easier to learn how it works than to change how it works. SHOCKING REVELATION.
"They" (whoever they are) also said WPF was going bye-bye.
AFAIK, the only API Microsoft has actually retired has been XNA. And I was super, super critical of that decision and I still am. It sucks.
I don't know who "they" is, but if "they" work for Microsoft, you can be pretty sure your shit will keep running. If "they" are from Apple, then all fucking bets are off.
BTW did everybody notice that @CoyneTheDup totally dodged my question about whether he's ever used a real-life spreadsheet? I was really curious about that one too. I haven't even SEEN one since like 1991.
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Using APIs not supported by the OS?
If you don't believe that this is a thing in the Windows world, you've not been paying anywhere near enough attention to Raymond Chen.
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AFAIK, the only API Microsoft has actually retired has been XNA. And I was super, super critical of that decision and I still am. It sucks.
They retired Silverlight too, in favour of WinRT. Which is fine, except WinRT can't be used where Silverlight was most used: in browsers.
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BTW did everybody notice that @CoyneTheDup totally dodged my question about whether he's ever used a real-life spreadsheet? I was really curious about that one too. I haven't even SEEN one since like 1991.
Sorry, I thought it was a rhetorical question. I've never used one that is significant, but I go back far enough that my schooling was in paper spreadsheets. Not that I would call the play problems in school "real use". My accounting classes were in the '73-`77 timeframe; VisiCalc (first computer spreadsheet) wasn't invented until the '78/'79 and I first actually saw/played with one around '82.
Or, if you meant y'know, like the accountants use, well, that depends on what you mean by real. The spreadsheet I mentioned above (7580 rows) is produced by a program I wrote; that program balances, weekly, every receipt and invoice our organization has ever made (numbering 2 million+ of each now) . It's "so small" because it lists only "active" documents, those with an unpaid balance.
If you're talking about the spreadsheets my accounting department uses, with 100+ columns and some of them with upwards of 250,000 rows, no, I haven't used those.
Happy?
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You must be actually talking about Windows 1.
Well, yes, I think you're right, now that I think back. Mea culpa. I go back a ways and me mind be failing.
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If you don't believe that this is a thing in the Windows world, you've not been paying anywhere near enough attention to Raymond Chen.
Let me know when you have your comments to Raymond published, like he has and I have. I'll wait.
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What's the difference between a private API, and a supported API?
One of them may not be there tomorrow.
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Let me know when you have your comments to Raymond published, like he has and I have.
This is the internet. Published comments don't have to have a relation to RTFA.
Even so, are you now claiming that RC didn't write a bunch of times about people using undocumented (i.e., unsupported) things and then MS has to support or work around or shim it forever?
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Even so, are you now claiming that RC didn't write a bunch of times about people using undocumented (i.e., unsupported) things and then MS has to support or work around or shim it forever?
No, I'm claiming that Flab's appeal to authority is dumb because the authority he's appealing to is more closely tied to his adversary than himself. We're supposed to have a debate, not a dick-waving contest.
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No, I'm claiming that Flab's appeal to authority is dumb because the authority he's appealing to is more closely tied to his adversary than himself. We're supposed to have a debate, not a dick-waving contest.
I'm counterclaiming that your claim is dumb because @flabdablet's claim is exactly true, even if you don't like the cut of his jib.
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Insofar as I can tell from my company, make TV appearances on those 'marketwatch' type shows, host investor conference calls, and get paid.
Certainly not stomping on the infighting between the other C-suiters and VP's.
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the authority he's appealing to is more closely tied to his adversary than himself
...which is exactly why I find it so astonishing that my "adversary" has apparently failed to comprehend so much of what that "authority" has had to say.
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You seem to know, so what does a CEO actually do?
The CEO at my company seems to spend a lot of his time going on vacation. Mt. Kilimanjaro, Everest, the Australian outback, European tours, ...
Occassionally he'll sit down and wrangle some new contracts, but he doesn't work from the office slot, so it's hard to know what he does.
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what does a CEO actually do?
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so what does a CEO actually do?
The whole point of the management chain is to distribute accountability upwards in terms of gaps in procedure.
So, they would make the decisions no one else can be held accountable for and aren't already covered in procedure.
So, the big term contracts that have higher risk than can be afforded through the normal day to day risk. And making decisions when risk exceeds the margin of error on risk evaluations already done.
Also, future growth, investments on a large scale to affect the whole company budget, etc. Budget planning. Long term goals.
I'm going by the handful of opportunities where I had a glimpse into a top level managements schedule (overhearing meetings, marked up calendars, smaller companies where I had the chance to ask an owner what they do, etc).
CEO at my company seems to spend a lot of his time going on vacation.
Nothing saying they don't suck hard and the rest of the company is propping them up.
But from what I've seen, a CEO is never truly on vacation.
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Nothing saying they don't suck hard and the rest of the company is propping them up.But from what I've seen, a CEO is never truly on vacation.
95% of his vacation time puts him out of contact. Try getting hold of someone climbing K5.
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I wonder if his time averages out to 40 hrs/week, and whether he expects his employees to put in more than he does?
That's really the only scale I can go by, since that's the only scale they use on me.
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I wonder if his time averages out to 40 hrs/week, and whether he expects his employees to put in more than he does?
That's really the only scale I can go by, since that's the only scale they use on me.
It's a good question. It's quite possible that there are many ways he's putting in time out of the office that I have no way of knowing about. Things like golf course meetings.
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Oddly enough, I found out just the other day that on Android cellphones they actually do. All it takes is a USB OTG cable.
You can also use a bluetooth mouse.
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Because it eases the tension on the deal, gives the person insight into the other (think the way Chinese military strategists would observe the handwriting of people to determine the nature of the other strategist), makes face to face contact, and secures a deal that creates a need for the jobs that we ground troops perform.
Dude is hitting the ball way too hard, throws his club down. Probably not the person you want to make a deal with if you need the other party to keep a cool head.
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Once I discovered you could right click the start button and get the stuff I'm always going to, though, even that ain't bad.
I'm amazed how quickly that right-click got hardwired in my fingers. Now I keep screwing up and trying to do that in Win7 - where I actually spend at least 80% of my time...
