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well, I feel a little better now.
The latest trend for Microsoft is to remove links to support items for older products. I still run VS2008 for "smart device" development. On occasion, I need to rebuild a VM or some other developer wants to wander into the code base. To get VS2008 to do the work, you need 2008, SP1 and a patch to fix SP1  .
All long gone from Microsoft's site, but I still have them. Just sent a link to a guy suffering ...
speaking of old stuff - anyone here with a usenet account? I'm curious if usenet still hosts the old MS development groups.
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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I've looked through my list of usenet groups, but I could find only these two that have posts and might be of slight interest (the numbers are the number of posts on eternal-september).
alt.comp.microsoft.windows 939
alt.windows7.general 5568
I didn't see any MS development groups.
--
Dave W
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charlieg wrote: I still run VS2008
So do we. We have several products and tools still maintained using VS2008. Our 'new' product development uses VS2019, and will probably move to VS2022 this year.
When you've got products with a 20+ year life span and a very busy dev team, you don't change tools unnecessarily.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I totally agree. The Microsoft help files are abysmal. Not only poorly organized, but most often incomprehensible.
Ed
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Yeah ... what I remember as "MSDN" is gone. If you're not good at weeding, good luck.
"Before entering on an understanding, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or to do in a circumstance unexpected by other people; it is reflection, it is meditation." - Napoleon I
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To make it even more fun, they remove all of their older documentation. If you ever do Win32 coding (and I don't suggest you do unless you enjoy pain), good lucking on getting documentation for that now.
Jeremy Falcon
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Indeed. What is the cost, to them, of leaving that old documentation online in whatever state it was when it was last updated? It makes zero sense to remove that old stuff that no longer changes. The fact that MS no longer proactively develops anything using some older library/SDK/whatever doesn't mean nobody else does.
How many useful blog entries, TechNet articles, etc have completely disappeared or can no longer be found because of dead links?
Years ago I thought it was rather clever of MS to have links pointing to www.microsoft.com/fwlink?id=XXXXX because that meant any time they revamped some site, they could update any "real" target URL and keep it up to date so a page you simply know as "XXXXX" could remain accessible over time, and the dead link problem could be solved once and for all...how naive of me.
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there is no cost, marketing has been in control forever. So, if they drive you to their learn crap, they can push advertising and control the content.
The best support I ever received was from usenet - it had Microsoft people and 3rd party grunts to help.
And Microsoft screwed the pooch. You know what I'm about to do on my own time (training exercise)? I'm going to re-write the entire Mfc UI in html5, javascript and web sockets. I don't need no stinking OS.
It reminds me of what I learned in business - you don't need to be excellent, you just need to suck less than your competition.
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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I've been saying for decades, just when you thought MS's documentation couldn't possibly get any worse, they find a way to outdo themselves and exceed all expectations.
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I am a novice at programming and have played with various languages
JavaFX Android Studio NSBasic for Palm Pilots Visual Basic 6 and VB.Net
decided to try and learn C# with WinForms and VS 2019
OK "Micorsoft" and "Learn" are complete opposites incongruous
who ever writes these words could not teach first grade math
Still Looking for a FREE book to Learn C# with SQLite and WinForms
Suggestions welcomed YES just starting my Search
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And you sir get the prize!
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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I've been offline for the first time in forever, savouring the coffee and defrosting in the heat of Melbourne for the last couple of weeks to recharge after a year of melting my brain with AI, Python, PyTorch, ML.NET, and the adventure that is everything Nvidia.
I'm heading back to the polar opposite, in so many ways, tomorrow, and will be back at my desk this weekend.
I hope everyone managed to stay safe. We were affected by those ice/snow storms in both Vancouver and Toronto which made Christmas travel nail biting. We've also managed not to actually catch one of the 257 viruses going around at the moment, which seems an unlikely but welcome achievement.
Happy New Year everyone. Maybe third time's the charm this year, and we can finally move on from the disruption, uncertainty, anxiety and isolation that so many have experienced the past nearly 3 years.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Have a wonderful new year, Chris.
I doubt that the disruption is over; then news coming out of China isn't good - and the more infections, the higher the chance of more mutations. 
There is talk of re-introducing masks into England, though some of that is Flu and colds. It's been great having a couple of years without even the winter sniffles though ...
"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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Happy New Year!
"In testa che avete, Signor di Ceprano?"
-- Rigoletto
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Happy New Year to you too.
ed
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We also spent a week in Melbourne with family. The drive down from the Blue Mountains, via Bathurst and Wagga, wasn't too bad if you kept a sharp lookout for potholes. Floods really chew up roads.
Due to an unexpected illness in the family, I was lucky enough to score a ticket to the 'G on Boxing Day. Great day out with son, son-in-law and grandson.
Seasons Greetings to all!
Peter
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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For a totally unsophisticated American, what is the "G" ?
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Melbourne Cricket Ground[^] The Wikipedia article starts: The Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), also known locally as "The 'G", ...
The occasion: The Boxing Day Test[^]
Cheers,
Peter
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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Bill Bryson on cricket, from "Down Under" (a.k.a "Notes from a sunburned country"):
It is not true that the English invented cricket as a way of making all other human endeavours look interesting and lively; that was merely an unintended side effect.
---
Listening to cricket on the radio is like listening to two men sitting in a rowing boat on a large, placid lake on a day when the fish aren't biting.
---
I am quite certain that if the rest of the world vanished overnight and the development of cricket was left in Australian hands, within a generation the players would be wearing shorts and using the bats to hit each other.
---
I was told there was a cicket match between England and Australia at the Oval.
- What – here in Adeleide? Today? I said in surprise.
He considered the question with the bemusement it meritted. 'Well, either that,' he commented drily, 'or thirty thousand people have made one pretty amazing bloody mistake, wouldn't you say?'
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Bryson the archetypal cynic pom trying to sell a book. The poms must have been losing.
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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I had to look up the meaning of 'pom' - we didn't learn that term in Norwegian schools.
But ... Bryson was born, grew up, and studied in the US of A. So the explanation I found doesn't fit very well!
Anyhow: You make it sound as if you are a cricket player who is offended by anyone not treating your beloved sport with the proper honor and respect - and who has never read books by Bill Bryson! He makes fun of everything and everybody, including himself ("I come from Des Moines. Someone had to.").
He makes fun of my country as well ("According to Time Out magazine, at any moment there are 600,000 people on the Underground, making it both a larger and more interesting place than Oslo.") - and make me laugh. His travel in "Neither here nor there" spends the first three chapters in Norway, making me laugh out loud quite a few times ("The best that can be said for Norwegian television is that it gives you the sensation of a coma without the worry and inconvenience.")
If you really want to be offended by the humor of Bill Bryson, feel free to! I guess that at least half a billion people could find reasons to - he has been writing travel books from all over. But if you sit down to read his books, you will soon see that he really loves all these people. He loves the countries he visits. After having read "Down Under", my immediate reaction was: That sounds like a really great country with a lot of great people - I really should visit it some day!
By the way: He is not 'trying to sell a book' - he is selling truckloads of them. According to Wikipedia, his books have been sold in more than 16 million copies. The Wikipedia article also presents a quite extensive lists of "Awards, positions and honors". I strongly doubt that he received these by being an 'archetypal cynic'.
If you are in a bad mood, why not pick up a Bill Bryson book to brighten you up and give you some laughs?
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I suggest starting with "A Walk in the Woods". I've read it 3 times.
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Noice!
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Happy New Year to you, as well, Chris! Have a safe journey back to the frozen tundra, and watch out for those pesky woolly mammoths roaming up there! Running into one of them can ruin your sled, and scare the daylights out of your dogs! Meanwhile I'll be setting here, suffering through 65°F days and occasional rain...
Will Rogers never met me.
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