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Ron Anders wrote: Get a flip phone.
When was the last time you checked your e-mail or your calendar or the weather on your flip phone? What about checking a flight status or the scores for last nights game. Maybe edited a document while on the go?
Flip phones just don't suffice for a lot of people these days.
That's what I do. I drink, and I know things. ~ Tyrion Lannister
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email: I wait till I get back to the office.
weather: I have glass windows - I can see what the weather is.
fights: I drive.
games: I wait till I get back to the office. Or sports radio. 
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Ron Anders wrote: fights: I drive
Road-rage will get you everywhere 
I came into this game for the action, the excitement. Go anywhere, travel light, get in, get out, wherever there's trouble, a man alone. Now they got the whole country sectioned off, you can't make a move without a form.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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Luddites rule! (At least, in their own minds.)
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Chris Maunder wrote: I'll book again, ignore my first booking, and then...
Wouldn't it be easier to by a nice Android compatible phone? 
Marc
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Don't forget about all the truly awful Wintel hardware produced by once great (now stupendously horrible) companies like HP, Sony and Dell. Don't forget about the junk Android phones that lasted 6 months before the OS was obsolete - really cheap but still overpriced if you care about your own time. Don't forget about the hundreds of hours you spent installing, re-installing, patching and re-patching Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2K, XP, 7, 8, 8.1 and 10 while MS spouted about how great and secure this new OS will be - only to find out they lied.
None of this fixes your obviously broken phone but be careful admiring the grass on the other side of the fence when it wasn't long ago you nearly choked on it.
That's what I do. I drink, and I know things. ~ Tyrion Lannister
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I have a whole set of rants directed at those other issues. I'm non-denominational when it comes to my frustrations.
It really feels like we're in a tech slump. Android is a total Wild West mess that Google is desperate to get under control, and yet Google themselves are so engineer-biased that they seem incapable of delivering a user experience that covers the other 95% safely.
Apple...ah, Apple. Enough about them.
Microsoft. Wow. I've been digging into .NET Core, ASP.NET Core, EF Core etc this weekend and it's like they sent the engineers off to an island for 5 years and said "Go crazy!". It's a frigging mess. They have the most awesome IDE in existence and yet all you see in demos and docs is an endless series of powershell, command prompt or Nuget console text commands to do things that shoudln't have to be done. So much work in automatic wiring up of all the bits and pieces, so much other work in bypassing it all and getting out the zip-ties and duct tape.
I could go on about Garmin, The SQL team, Git repos and Nuget if you wish...
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Yeah, I hear ya. I could write volumes on how awful Siemens application software is yet I'm "forced" to use it and probably will be until I retire.
Its no wonder stress related illness and depression are on the rise. 
That's what I do. I drink, and I know things. ~ Tyrion Lannister
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Chris Maunder wrote: They have the most awesome IDE in existence and yet all you see in demos and docs is an endless series of powershell, command prompt or Nuget console text commands to do things that shoudln't have to be done.
I've played around with ASP.NET Core and TBH I find it all works better on a Mac (using VS Code or WebStorm). Weird in a way, but I guess all the command prompt (terminal) stuff is much easier on *NIX based OS's.
I came into this game for the action, the excitement. Go anywhere, travel light, get in, get out, wherever there's trouble, a man alone. Now they got the whole country sectioned off, you can't make a move without a form.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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I like such posts because they mark the level of existing problems. I find it to be low. With Android you are on your own completely after a year. A 4 year old iPhone 5 is better than nothing so you can wait until iPhone 7 or what it will be.
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Absolutely.
I really only have a few grips
1. They were working off what their diagnostic apps said, not what common sense says. I found it fascinating that their diagnostic apps only provide info on apps that are running, not the OS. It's like the OS is a big blind spot that can't (or aren't allowed?) to question. I really just wanted them to say "It's dead, Jim".
2. They gave me back my repaired phone in a non-operable state. It wasn't even turned on and tested after the battery replacement. They acknowledged this was an error on their part (which was awesome of them).
I do still have a deep, deep sadness at the direction Apple has gone. It's run by a conservative committee that now follows and chases instead of a single person who leads.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Re 1, the OS cannot be really checked unless the device is booted from something else which is considered to be impossible with iDevices. The security chip in iPhone adds complications. They might be instructed to search for a bad app to be purged from the store first and help the customer second, unpleasant but understandable. Normally it is assumed that if the OS is reset it is OK now and anything else is above the level of a genius. Why they did not recognize a hardware problem immediately is beyond me, as well as how they dared to let a customer with a hardware battery problem to go away and potentially return with burns and attorneys.
Re 2, I guess you just hit not the brightest genius.
I do not think Apple has gone in wrong direction, they are just going. Being under extreme pressure after 2 bad quaters, they may do something really supid righ now, hope they will not. A committee that follows and chases can be OK for a while, but thinking that iPhone SE 16 GB is the best $400 phone in line with the "we are making the best" mantra is not OK, iOS cannot compensate for everything. They should upgrade 16 GB models to 32 GB immediately, we will see in a month.
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Surely a few in-house diagnostics within the OS aren't too much to ask for? They clearly have a bunch of diagnostics around apps, so adding these to things the OS manages (CPU / battery power spent on GPS, Compass, Bluetooth etc) shouldn't be hard. Actually I'd be extremely surprised if they weren't already there.
I don't think Apple will do anything stupid after a couple of soft quarters. This is a company that takes the long view. I don't think Apple will do anything stupid now. Or risky. Or exciting....
And that's the problem.
(and I don't count their foray into electric cars as novel or exciting. "Massive distraction fuelled be a need to stay relevant and own an ecosystem", yes, but not novel.)
cheers
Chris Maunder
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I have personally not had the level of frustration with my iPhones that you have, but I've heard of others like you. They seem to be rare, but that doesn't help the afflicted at all.
This is going to sound flippant, but it's not. The few times I have had a problem, I've resorted to having my 22 year old daughter take my phone to the Apple Store. My 5'8", wavy blonde haired, slender, very attractive 22 year old daughter, who has seemingly perfected the art of mentally controlling men, especially the nerds at the Apple Store, and convincing them of pretty much anything she wants, including replacing malfunctioning iPhones for free.
So if you have one of those types of daughters, or know someone who does, I suggest giving it a shot.
And yes, I am perversely proud of her. Horribly evil of me, I know, but I'm a horribly evil type of person in general.
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07784 560982
It's my mobile phone number. Can you pass it on to your daughter please.
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Brad Stiles wrote: especially the nerds at the Apple Store
As a semi-proper nerd (I'm no Moss), I take offense to this. The last "Genius" I talked to couldn't event tell me what IP stands for, let alone what it is.
It's a little scary when your tech support makes the Geek Squad look good.
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
- Benjamin Disraeli
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We are so easily manipulated
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Chris, I have to say I quite enjoyed your notes all the responses that you caused.
It shows that people are beginning to wake up from their zombie-like trances that surround current technologies. I have been writing, along with others, about the many issues that are being caused by recent technologies. So here are my notes on the subject...
1)
Mobile technologies were designed and provided to the commercial market for a single purpose; to make as much money as possible. Hence, the constant releases of Apple's iPhone upgraded products and all the copycat junk that follows it.
It was done with the blessings of the intelligence agencies as they would be able to get people to volunteer personal information freely. All they had to do was watch the FaceBook "phenomenon" to come up with some really vile plans.
2)
Steve Jobs in all senses was a megalomaniac, not a visionary considering that practically every idea he ever came up with was just a redesign of existing technologies that the Xerox Parc Labs originally developed in the 1970s. The man was a one-stop horror show and yet people idolize this monster. They should work for him for a day.
3)
Cell phones have two substantial uses only; emergency communications and to transfer important information when other methods are not available. They were not designed so every idiot on the planet could spend hours a day to pass hot air that is supposed to pass as intelligent conversation. However, that has been the result. Parents bank accounts get drained due to the enormous costs caused by their children thinking that everyone needs to yammer on a tiny device to make their lives worth saving. Adults, like their children become nothing more than zombified, unintelligent beings that no longer have any awareness of the surroundings. Many credible sociological studies substantiating these conclusions have been done on this subject alone.
4)
Practically all development on new technologies ended with the refinement of Microsoft's ASP.NET WebForms and Java's increases in performance. Everything that came after has been nothing but redundant garbage that does the same things that has been done for years prior with more mature technologies. Who in their right minds would trade in the easier to use ASP.NET WebForms and WinForms for more difficult to use technologies such as MVC and WPF (though I happen to like WPF a lot and it has been made more difficult from the lack of quality documentation on it). Think about it people; you are doing a heck of a lot more work just to be able to say that you are doing things the "right way". Who ever defined "right"? Some people who wanted to make more money by promoting new paradigms that were not nearly as good as the original software engineering principals that they could have used.
5)
Like Apple, Microsoft has fallen off their path to be all things to all people. This is why Visual Studio has become such a bloated piece of software to use. Their Community Edition is all that one now needs to produce quality applications of any type and it is far slimmer than the paid versions.
6)
ASP.NET Core! What a joke with it's DOS like command prompt interface and Visual Code IDE. What's this all about!? All this effort so a few people can write on Linux?
Developer technologies have reached a point where the only purpose they serve are to fragment even further an already highly fragmented industry while making competition for positions so fierce that people no longer want to enter the industry. Oh, and so stpid technical managers can ask all sorts of stupid questions on interviews to demonstrate to the poor candidates that they aren't nearly as smart as they think. What is this, Reality TV!?
The results of such technologies have added not one iota of quality to anyone's lives. They inflict more frustration as companies try to play every sales trick in the book to steer you to what they want you to but online thereby making people's lives more stressful. They de-normalize natural interactions between people making cognizant socialization a thing of the past. They are buggy, poorly supported, and extremely costly. And the only thing they actually connect are your hard earned dollars to the coffers of major corporations.
It is good to see that people are starting become aware of all this as the complaints here indicate that.
Get rid of all this junk, get a flip-phone, and get a life...
Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer
Black Falcon Software, Inc.
blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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Unfortunately I disagree with many of your statements.
Obviously large companies invest a lot of time and money to make even more money. That's often why they exist. You can't say that mobile technology was created solely to make money. Nor can you say "cell phones have two substantial uses only". That's a gross generalisation that beggars the real world experiences of billions who have a smartphone. As a single data point (that's repeated by many of those I know), I use a phone to manage my business. Email, messages, alerts, administration of the site, booking and managing my travel, keeping up with my technical knowledge by reading eBooks and websites, and even just listening to music and doing a little photography. Occasionally I actually use it to talk to people.
I also take issue with "It was done with the blessings of the intelligence agencies". You do realise that encrypted messaging apps and the encryption now being introduced as standard on phones is makeing the life of intelligence agencies very difficult.
"practically every idea he ever came up with was just a redesign of existing technologies that the Xerox Parc Labs originally developed in the 1970s" Yes and no. The iPod, iPhone and Apple watch weren't from PARC, but even so, I love the story about Bill explaining to Steve[^] the genesis of Windows 1.0 ""Well, Steve, I think there's more than one way of looking at it. I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.".
Microsoft, for its part, has a long history of doing things first and doing it poorly (remember tablet PCs? Remember Passport? Remember CodePlex?). Innovation doesn't mean creating something totally new from nothing. It often means bringing together things right under our noses and presenting them in a new way. The absolute best innovation is that which is so simple, so obvious, that in hindsight no one sees it as innovation. And yet, moments before it was unveiled no one could picture it in the form that would come to be obvious.
MVC: Actually I like MVC a lot. It's faster than webforms, it's cleaner, and frankly it forces me to structure my code with far better separation of concerns than webForms. And I've been doing WebForms for 15 years. I also know perfectly well that I could write code just as well structured in classic ASP, but it would be like trying to ride a bike up a hill with no gears.
Finally, in regards to the "get a life" comment, I get where you are coming from, but this argument has been going on for a hundred years. When radio came out it felt it was displacing other social activities, then came TV (the "boobtube") and the apparent death of the functioning human brain. Then the internet in the 1990's, then smartphones. Next will be wearables such as smartglasses, and then implants. The exact same arguments will be made. Life, however, will adapt and move on. We will get to be grumpy old men complaining how much better it was and yelling at the kids to get off our grass.
Life will go on.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Chris, I have to say I quite enjoyed your notes all the responses that you caused.
It shows that people are beginning to wake up from their zombie-like trances that surround current technologies. I have been writing, along with others, about the many issues that are being caused by recent technologies. So here are my notes on the subject...
1)
Mobile technologies were designed and provided to the commercial market for a single purpose; to make as much money as possible. Hence, the constant releases of Apple's iPhone upgraded products and all the copycat junk that follows it.
It was done with the blessings of the intelligence agencies as they would be able to get people to volunteer personal information freely. All they had to do was watch the FaceBook "phenomenon" to come up with some really vile plans.
2)
Steve Jobs in all senses was a megalomaniac, not a visionary considering that practically every idea he ever came up with was just a redesign of existing technologies that the Xerox Parc Labs originally developed in the 1970s. The man was a one-stop horror show and yet people idolize this monster. They should work for him for a day.
3)
Cell phones have two substantial uses only; emergency communications and to transfer important information when other methods are not available. They were not designed so every idiot on the planet could spend hours a day to pass hot air that is supposed to pass as intelligent conversation. However, that has been the result. Parents bank accounts get drained due to the enormous costs caused by their children thinking that everyone needs to yammer on a tiny device to make their lives worth saving. Adults, like their children become nothing more than zombified, unintelligent beings that no longer have any awareness of the surroundings. Many credible sociological studies substantiating these conclusions have been done on this subject alone.
4)
Practically all development on new technologies ended with the refinement of Microsoft's ASP.NET WebForms and Java's increases in performance. Everything that came after has been nothing but redundant garbage that does the same things that has been done for years prior with more mature technologies. Who in their right minds would trade in the easier to use ASP.NET WebForms and WinForms for more difficult to use technologies such as MVC and WPF (though I happen to like WPF a lot and it has been made more difficult from the lack of quality documentation on it). Think about it people; you are doing a heck of a lot more work just to be able to say that you are doing things the "right way". Who ever defined "right"? Some people who wanted to make more money by promoting new paradigms that were not nearly as good as the original software engineering principals that they could have used.
5)
Like Apple, Microsoft has fallen off their path to be all things to all people. This is why Visual Studio has become such a bloated piece of software to use. Their Community Edition is all that one now needs to produce quality applications of any type and it is far slimmer than the paid versions.
6)
ASP.NET Core! What a joke with it's DOS like command prompt interface and Visual Code IDE. What's this all about!? All this effort so a few people can write on Linux?
Developer technologies have reached a point where the only purpose they serve are to fragment even further an already highly fragmented industry while making competition for positions so fierce that people no longer want to enter the industry. Oh, and so stpid technical managers can ask all sorts of stupid questions on interviews to demonstrate to the poor candidates that they aren't nearly as smart as they think. What is this, Reality TV!?
The results of such technologies have added not one iota of quality to anyone's lives. They inflict more frustration as companies try to play every sales trick in the book to steer you to what they want you to but online thereby making people's lives more stressful. They de-normalize natural interactions between people making cognizant socialization a thing of the past. They are buggy, poorly supported, and extremely costly. And the only thing they actually connect are your hard earned dollars to the coffers of major corporations.
It is good to see that people are starting become aware of all this as the complaints here indicate that.
Get rid of all this junk, get a flip-phone, and get a life...
Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer
Black Falcon Software, Inc.
blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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I had the Apple thing all figured out after I got the first IPad (that they supported for about 2 years) and having to deal with ITunes...
The other half bought an IPad Mini recently that became "unusable" after about a month (and which I do not want to touch).
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What happened? I ![Heart | [heart]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/love.gif) my iPad mini (except it's first gen and slow on the latest OSs)
cheers
Chris Maunder
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I should state that I am a crusty old Visual C++/C# developer firmly in the event-driven paradigm camp (NOTE: I detested on principle the clunky macro architecture for the Visual C++ message map, but admit that it do the job), although I appreciate the way that OpenOffice Calc (or Micro$oft Excel) works, which I understand is basically by using the functional programming paradigm. I never got much into XAML as I went into early retirement about the time that got to be the new k3wl thing.
I was reading this article (sent to me by CodeProject) about MVVM:
4 Reasons To Drop MVVM[^]
Reading this article, it seems to me that MVVM is simply the functional programming paradigm used for the GUI. Is this accurate? I understand how the functional programming paradigm makes Calc work so well, but also that it only works well when the processing is simple, otherwise a whole lot of funky cells containing state has to be used. My personal opinion is that a GUI is inherently something that needs to be event-driven, and that trying to shoehorn it into the functional programming paradigm just results in boilerplate processing that an be very inefficient.
I distinctly remember using Excel on a clunky Windows 3.1 386 machine (yes, LOL) and having the status bar give the message "Calculating" along with some percentage for *any* change in cell - and as well remember a project in which I was to make something that was like a GridCell, but out of TextBox controls, and I had to do a lot of careful enabled state design so that it made sense; I can't fathom doing that using the functional programming paradigm.
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From the article: "since I primarily do web applications..."
That automatically invalidates anything he says about MVVM. Beyond that, MVVM isn't about "functional" anything - functional programming is the antithesis of object oriented programming. MVVM is more about separation of concerns (UI and data), and is merely a guideline for providing the UI a method of introducing data to the user.
From the artle: "MVVM is slow"
That is most certainly NOT my experience. If it's slow, he should hire a decent DBA to construct his database and write the associated stored procedures. I'm most certainly not what I would call good at database design, but my MVVM apps freakin scream.
The guy that wrote the article is a freakin idiot.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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