March 17, 2024

Another Linux lie: we have source control

Another Linux lie: we have source control

Truth is, you kind of, sort of, do.

When you install git in Windows, you get that demented, half-assed editor/merge tool based on vim, from the 1980s. That absurd, diabolical, savage UI in which you have to memorize 2-3 letter commands for every action. I will help you stop that savage torture, by issuing a few commands.

First of all, download and install WinMerge. Once it is there, you can either add its installation directory to your system PATH variable or use full paths below.

Next, set it up in git (assuming that you are 64-bit, not ancient x86):

git config --global merge.tool winmerge
git config --replace --global mergetool.winmerge.cmd "\"C:\Program Files\WinMerge\WinMergeU.exe\"
git config --global mergetool.prompt false
git config --global mergetool.keepBackup false
git config mergetool.winmerge.trustExitCode true

The last 3 commands are technically optional but they will make your life much more enjoyable. They eliminate the following annoyances courtesy of genius degenerate Linus Torvalds:

  1. Remove the prompt for the tool selection.
  2. Disable .ORIG files
  3. Remove the 'was the merge successful?' prompt.

Enjoy! And remember to spit on a genius degenerate today.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 10:38 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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March 16, 2024

Microsoft drops the ball. Each time. Every time.

Microsoft drops the ball. Each time. Every time.

Yes, we have been saying it, ad nauseam, that Microsoft is hell-bent on redrawing icons and changing visual layouts (usually to the worse) in favor of fixing bugs or introducing valuable functionality. That has been proven beyond reasonable doubt.

One such glaring example is the total absence of refactoring in Visual Studio WPF XAML editor. It is a tedious process to create styles for control by extracting repeated attributes and moving them to styles. MS could have offered us a refactoring action for that but no, that is too much to ask. They had over 15 years for that but no soup for us.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 10:26 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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March 14, 2024

No, Microsoft does not test their products

No, Microsoft does not test their products

Or they are so spoiled, smug, and condescending that they do not give a fuck about bugs. That might explain why they prefer to spend their time on redrawing icons and other cosmetic crap.

Had they tested or cared for the quality of their products, the corruption of the dialogs in .NET 6 would have been noticed and fixed. After all, .NET 6 is 2 years old by now.

Did no one notice that the file name in a freshly opened dialog is 1/2 way outside of the text box? I can't believe that! If I notice it, then QA should have noticed it too. There was no QA.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 12:03 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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March 13, 2024

For the sake of fairness and balance

For the sake of fairness and balance

I sound very negative and angry, most of the time, and some might form impression that I do not like anything in IT industry. That is not true.

As far as WPF is concerned, it makes it very easy to change the GUI form controls layout. It is much easier to edit XAML to add another control than to fiddle with a WinForms form. This part is great. The rest is crap.

Even having said it, since every container/panel in WPF is essentially a <div>, most often controls end up in a grid, and inserting a row or column into a grid sucks, and the sound of sucking is deafening because all subsequent rows/columns have to be renumbered. Since XAML designer UI also sucks, we are SOL.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 04:10 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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March 12, 2024

Genius degenerates rule our world

Genius degenerates rule our world

Like, those developers of Visual Studio who put 'Collapse all descendants' on a popup menu in Solution Explorer but forget to put 'Expand all descendants'.

Thank you kindly, Microsoft, and personally Satya Nadella! Thank you for being the idiots that you are. I know that you do not test your products, so I suggest: try to expand a tree with hundreds of sub-levels and items. Oh, you do not want to? You want only us to suffer? A-ha!

Posted by: LinuxLies at 10:41 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Another Linux lie: we have database engines!

Another Linux lie: we have database engines!

Yes, it's another lie. Truth is, you don't. You have miserable wannabe fidget-spinner projects that pretend to be database engines! Enter PostgreSQL:

My guess is that the "other providers" where this works is SqlClient with MARS (Multiple Active Result Sets), which is precisely this feature. Npgsql doesn't support MARS (and for good reason), the right solution here is either to materialize the list as suggested, or if it's too big for that, use two contexts (although that brings in its own problems). –
Shay Rojansky
Apr 6, 2020 at 21:40

Above, "we fucked up" is passed for "for good reason". You suck, dudes! Multiple active resultsets is a GREAT feature, a life savior in the fuzzy, mushy world of .NET with its lazy loading and async behavior. We developers absolutely need it, but you, Shay Shmojansky, force us to commit entire resultsets into collections in order to iterate them later and run other commands from their data. Boo hoo!

To give you an idea of how competent those genius degenerates are NOT, I'll show you this screenshot:

Those fucktards used a VARCHAR(3) column, to store YES/NO for an identity! Genius is as genius does.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 09:29 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The loudest and most glaring condemnation of async is Visual Studio

The loudest and most glaring condemnation of async is Visual Studio

Async breaks up methods into several, and no amount of < tt>ConfigureAwait(false) can fix that. It's N times more stack allocation/deallocation, N times more overhead, N times more complexity. As a result, all code that awaits async is N times slower than synchronous code. That's the sacrifice the humankind pays for subscribing to Microsoft's dogma.

Visual Studio has become slow as fuck. From 2005-2008 that were FAST we arrived at mediocre 2015, bad 2017, horrible 2019 and disastrous 2022 that can't find its ass with both hands. Along the way, they gradually became more and more asynchronous, porous, gooey, and slimy. I am somewhat even baffled by its slowness because, having been developing in async WPF MVVM under orders from my superiors, I am still able to deliver reasonably fast desktop GUI products. The slowness of Visual Studio 2022 is mind-boggling! It's abysmal. They do something so horridly wrong that it takes considerable time to do any operation, and this is on a very fast machine that runs any other software impressively fast.

When the owner of the OS, framework, development tool, and the final product so utterly fails to deliver performance, it should serve as a wakeup call: something is fundamentally wrong with them.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 08:33 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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March 05, 2024

I figured Microsoft out just now

I figured Microsoft out just now

By releasing WPF the way it is: bugged, limited, counterintuitive and outright inconsiderate, they damage their competition by wasting their resources on writing boilerplate code. There can be no other explanation. Ask how I realized it?

Enter DataGrid. It does not set the current item of the underlying data collection if it is the one most suitable for sorting and filtering: ListCollectionView. Its CurrentItem is read-only, and the solution is to introduce an extra property on the viewmodel, to store the selected row. It would have been a huge help to 'development community' had they allowed CurrentItem to be set by the view but no, that would have been too nice.

As the world wastes their time and resources and spins their wheels writing boilerplate code, Microsoft is laughing all the way to the bank because they essentially have the monopoly on software.

It is no surprise why we witness exodus from .NET technologies to bastard languages like Python, Rust, Ruby, Go, Lua and other shit. This is out of desperation because .NET is crap and Java suddenly stopped being free.

Fly, you fools!

Posted by: LinuxLies at 09:05 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Not only WPF lacks important classes and methods. It is BUGGED.

Not only WPF lacks important classes and methods. It is BUGGED.

Any company that dared to release such a half-assed, half-baked library as is WPF would have been savagely, cruelly ridiculed by the 'development community'. Any but Microsoft. They are above critique.

Enter Calendar. Not only it is absurd because it violates MVVM by not allowing BlackoutDates collection to be databound, but it is also severely bugged.

When the user selects a date in the previous month that is visible from the current month, the calendar jumps 2 moths, highlights the date that is situated in the same row and column as the clicked date, and selects the correct date. Now, to see the selected date, the user has to switch to the next month (that is the previous month from the starting point).

Is it possible that Microsoft did not know that before they released WPF? No. That means that they did not test.

No company would have gotten away with such sloppy test process but Microsoft. They are getting away with sloppy testing of Visual Studio.

WHY IS EVERYBODY SILENT? WHY DO YOU NOT CONDEMN THEM FOR THEIR SLOPPY WORK AND DISRESPECTFUL ATTITUDE? WHY ARE YOU SILENT?

Posted by: LinuxLies at 01:20 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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March 04, 2024

WHY IS EVERYBODY SILENT? SCREAM!

WHY IS EVERYBODY SILENT? SCREAM!

I will post a link to a question on StackOverflow and a linked article. Both illustrate the madness introduced and promoted by Microsoft, with the silent approval of the IT industry sector.

Is it wrong to invoke an async method from a property setter?

Async programming patters for asynchronous MVVM applications data binding

Both prove my point: the only reason why the so-called 'development community' got hooked up on and swallowed WPF, MVVM, and async is that Microsoft was able to blow ginormous amounts of money on PR. They used armies of trolls on StackOverflow, to indoctrinate beginner developers in firm belief that the above 3 concepts are the best things since sliced bread. Truth is that they are not. Truth is that Microsoft dropped the ball on everything since early days of .NET. Those same armies of trolls downvote every question that has to do with the shortcomings of the said concepts, to silence every possibility of criticizing MS for its transgressions.

Async is called plague or cancer for a reason: if you want to call something asynchronous, then you have to await it, and you can only await in a method that is async. So, your entire hierarchy of methods has to become async, or you face hard-to-track, hard-to-find, and hard-to-debug problems such as deadlocks.

Well, MS trolls tell you to use async bottom-up.

That'd be nice! But they forget that we deal with millions of lines of legacy code that no one pays to rewrite. We deal with already-synchronous applications that suddenly have to use async libraries. And the world pays the price equal to billions of $$$ for rewriting code that would have had to be touched had not Microsoft released their cancer into the world.

Get that: WPF MVVM dictates that views must be databound to the viewmodels. That is done through property getters and setters. But the getters and setters cannot be async!!! How do you call async methods from them?

In the linked articles above, MS trolls hammer home the point that setters must not call long-lasting async methods. But that is a lie! async and long-lasting are not equal. Something may take a fraction of a second but still be code as async. They are apples and oranges, but the 'do as I say' attitude of Microsoft is above all.

Read the linked articles to realize how much more boilerplate code each developer now has to write, to comply with the shortcomings of the half-baked, half-assed async paradigm and WPF MVVM pattern, courtesy Microsoft.

The world is paying for not breaking Microsoft up into several companies, many years ago, when it was still possible. It still is not too late. Break them up now!

Posted by: LinuxLies at 04:38 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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March 03, 2024

WPF insanity must be stopped

WPF insanity must be stopped

The sooner the world realizes or admits that WPF is insane the higher will be our chances for survival as a civilization. It is really that bad! WPF is insane, mad, clinically proven lunacy.

Do you know that you cannot style a column in a grid? Seriously! A column is of a type that cannot be styled. You have to jump through hoops, to style all cells in a column the same way.

This is in 2024 for crying out loud. This is not the early 1980s when we desperately lacked computational capacity and developer resources, and development tools were limited. No, this is the 2nd decade of the 21st century, when hundreds of millions work in IT. Yet we make an insanely giant leap backwards and revert all the way to manually writing XML in order to build highly complex UIs.

We used to have C developers. That apparently sucked.

Next, we got Visual C++ developers. And that royally sucked too.

Next we had PowerBuilder and Delphi developers. The sound of sucking became deafening.

Then MS bought out Delphi development team, and we got Visual Studio for .NET with WinForms. Finally, some improvement!

That was not too good, so we got WPF. Finally, nirvana!

Did you ever see exception stack trace from WPF code? It is like 50+ call levels deep. I kid you not. Do you expect performance from that? Fooled you! It takes time just for a menu to drop down, just for a file open/save dialog to show up. Can you imagine how much longer it takes for a WPF application to do some real work? I'll tell you: 10x longer than WinForms or Delphi Win32 apps.

The IT industry lead by fucking geniuses in Microsoft was supposed to help the humankind achieve perfection. It does the opposite: leads us in reverse direction from progress to retardation. The sooner we realize and admit it, the higher is our chance of averting catastrophe that awaits us.

On one hand, Microsoft codes into Visual Studio suggestions to write code a certain way, a so-called "Style Cop". On the other, it generates code that contradicts the former and breeds warnings. This is diabolical, but we love it, don't we?

Posted by: LinuxLies at 04:22 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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February 19, 2024

The definition of 'dumb cun#'

The definition of 'dumb cun#'

For anyone who reads my blog it is not a secret that Wordpress developers in general and plugin developers in particular are dumb cunt#s. Here is the clear, telltale definition that explains why they are that and how I know it: read this article.

How To Resend WordPress Activation Email to a New User

It is structured as a typical 'howto' article on the web: it begins with the explanations of what Wordpress, email, and activation are (as if we did not know it when we googled for 'resend email activation' and clicked on that link).

In typical know-it-all superiority complex afflicted arrogance of FOSS developers they bestow upon thee the sacred knowledge of those concepts... for the total of a dozen of pages... only to direct you to a link hidden deep within the bowels of WP Mail SMTP plugin. Yes, I am serious: it is the bullet #5 on their list of blatantly obvious 'Wordpress 101 for dummies'-styled essay.

Seriously, dumb cun#s? You could not put a 'Resend activation email' link on a user entry in the user list? Who are dumb then, you or we?

Icing on the cake: did you know that 'Email log' is a paid feature in WP Mail SMTP? Extortion anyone? 'It is a nice site you have here. We do not want anything to happen to it.' Sounds familiar? So, WP fails to send activation emails to new users, and we cannot resend them. It would probably cost less for the WP user base worldwide to hire a hitman for WP development team than to buy paid subscriptions to WP Mail SMTP. Think about it.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 09:27 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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February 16, 2024

If I did not know Microsoft as well as I do

If I did not know Microsoft as well as I do

I would have asked: Why does WPF need to be so fucked up?

But I know them all too well: they are genocidal monsters, same as their boss Gates.

WPF is FUBAR. No sorted controls! Models have to be sorted manually, by writing boilerplate code for converters that do the sorting. IsLiveSorting exists only on CollectionView which is not used everywhere, as a rule. Want your controls sorted? You are in for a lot of pain.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 02:19 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Never before did I write so much unnecessary boilerplate code as with WPF

Never before did I write so much unnecessary boilerplate code as with WPF

This is what blind, fanatical following of a dogma puts you through: tedious workarounds.

Enter TreeView control. Microsoft sabotaged it by replacing SelectedItem with SelectedValue whenever the control is databound (which is like 100% of the cases). As a result, we ourselves are forced to implement parent-child relationships in our hierarchical models.

Enter Newtonsoft JSON package that is used in like 100% cases of serialization these days. It throws:

Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializationException:
'Self referencing loop detected for property 'Parent'
with type 'Models.S'. Path '[0].T[0]'.'

whenever it is asked to serialize such parent-child hierarchy.

We are SOL, and Microsoft laughs all the way to the bank while we are hard at work on workarounds, writing boilerplate code that would have been unnecessary, had they only kept `SelectedItem` being `SelectedItem`.

Allow me to ask an important question: why do we remain silent?

Why does no one, literally no one, condemn Microsoft for releasing a half-baked, half-assed, tortorously painful to use framework that has absolutely zero support in terms of bugfixing and feature improvement?

They buggered TreeView, threw away NumericUpDown, neglected to add comprehensive InteliSense to XAML editor, neglected XAML designer that is simply impossible to operate with a mouse or to comprehend, and everybody silently jumped on WPF like a fat kid on a twinkie. Dockable toolbars anyone? Aren't they what WPF was advertised for? We were promised a framework that would allow us to simply and easily create MSOffice-like apps, no? NO! You will be writing tons of boilerplate code if you want that. Screw you, Benny!

What's wrong with you, developers? Are you petrified by the fear of Microsoft? Does each of you cherish a hope to work for Microsoft one day and that is why you keep your mouths shut? Okay, I can probably understand the developers but why are business administrators and owners silent about the huge waste of time and $$$ that WPF requires?

What's wrong with you, people?

Posted by: LinuxLies at 12:13 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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February 14, 2024

Here's how Microsoft owns everybody, every time

Here's how Microsoft owns everybody, every time

Step by step instruction:

1. Create something horrible like WPF.

2. Sound fanfares and announce that it is the next big thing.

3. Once everybody realizes what a horrid mess it is come up with libraries that fix its bugs but by different vendors.

4. Bank the cash.

They do it every time, and the gullible 8 billion hamsters around the world buy it every time.

Get it? TreeView.SelectedValue is the actual collection item bound to the tree. So far so good. But TreeView.SelectedItem is also that very same object whereas it has to be a TreeViewItem! That makes it impossible to find the selected item's parent (or any item's parent for that matter) w/o resorting to 3d party libraries that override the default behavior of tree views.

And Microsoft's stooge companies that delivery hacks and patches that fix its bugs laugh at us all the way to the bank.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 05:50 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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We are Microsoft, and we will steal your IP

We are Microsoft, and we will steal your IP

I will not be the first one to observe that MS steals things rather routinely. Not even the 2nd. Not even the 3d.

Enter WPF, the MS's new, glorious replacement for the boring, obsolete WinForms. WPF is a marriage between XML and C#/VB etc. Its windows and user controls are designed in XAML, the extension of XML for GUI.

Data binding is the King in XAML, and it is a perfect match for the MVVM pattern toutes as the 'next best thing' for software development and the natural pattern for WPF.

So, we embark on the binding process for some control, only to find out that the XAML editor in Visual Studio does not see your classes. Why?

After a long and tiresome investigation you find out that in order to be visible to XAML data binding, your classes have to be public. Huh? Why can they not be internal with InternalsVisibleTo element set to the public key of the assembly that contains the XAML? I will tell you why.

Microsoft did it so that once all your code runs in their Azure cloud they have access to the classes, properties and methods in your assemblies. Under DMCA they may get into legal trouble for un-signing and disassembling your assemblies in order to snoop on your code. So, they force you to make your classes public in order to see them w/o violating DMCA.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 12:26 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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February 08, 2024

How Goebbelsian lies twist our lives

How Goebbelsian lies twist our lives

I live long enough to remember a vivid discussion, in the late 90s-early 2000s, about security risks introduced by Java applets. The common concern was that unrestricted execution of applets in browsers may compromise users' systems. Fast forward late 2010s-early 2020s.

Today, Java applets are history. They have been. They expired. As are Silverlight applications, for the most part. All of those pesky security risks are replaced by... a mad herd of JavaScript frameworks. Somehow this

Screenshot

is much safer than a scary Java applet. Is it? Let's review.

A Java applet typically required an explicit permission from the user to load, in their browser. It loaded entirely from the well-known and controlled environment of its owner. Browsers of the day provided required isolation mechanism that locked the applet in the JVM and barred it from accessing local resources. Compare that with the screenshot above and keep in mind that this is only a very moderate, tame, docile example. There are sites that load 3-5x more JavaScripts from HELL KNOWS WHERE.

Yes, that is exactly what we have grown accustomed with! We do not even bother to know what JavaScripts the web site loads or from where. And that is absolutely not a security risk, not at all [sarcasm off].

JavaScript can do anything on a web page. It can log keypresses. It can scrub canvas. It can intercept requests and responses. It can spy on the unsuspecting user and alter data that they exchange with the main web site. Nothing to see here, move along.

So, who shat on Java applets, 20+ years ago? Aren't they the same people who now replaced them with JS frameworks, silently, without raising any fuss about it? Follow the money!

Java and its applets were a brain child of a small, struggling but ethical company, Sun Microsystems. JavaScript frameworks are brain children of filthy-rich, brazen, into-your-face global monopolies: Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft. There are absolutely no security risks with their solutions [sarcasm off].

Why am I raving about that? Because JavaScript sucks balls, and the sound of sucking is deafening. It is a huge waste of resources (processing power and electric energy). It nourishes poor coding skills, breeds duplication and boilerplate code, has compatibility problems, and many more issues that are impossible to resolve. But we love it, don't we? Always remember: JavaScript is an INTERPRETED language. It does not compile into binary executable format. It remains plain-text, in the memory space of the browser. Whole JS frameworks load into memory because there is no linking step that weeds out unused functions. This leads to elevated memory requirements on the client device, and that translates into obscene profits of semiconductor industry.

Most IT professionals are raving, flaming green types. They are also hypocrites because they ignore damage to Earth's environment that their obsession with JavaScript causes. Hypocrites them all!

Posted by: LinuxLies at 01:47 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Why do they feel that they can lie so blatantly?

Why do they feel that they can lie so blatantly?

Yes, yes, I know, I know: people are weak, and they try to make their lives easier by lying. But lying is still supposed to be frowned upon, in our society, is it not?

Enter the WPF tutorial web site by... who cares by whom. The site's owner published a bunch of instructions for new WPF developers, and I thank him/her for that. But here comes a juicy bit.

Screenshot

Read the selection carefully. It is a lie. Either the author does not know what they are talking about, which is hardly possible since they demonstrate good knowledge of both WPF and WinForms, or they are brazen liars.

No, it is not true that in WinForms environment 3 event handlers and a function is required. It is perfectly possible to deal with all GUI control events, in 1 (one) event handler, by evaluating the control that raised the event. Ever heard of that, genius?

Posted by: LinuxLies at 01:26 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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February 06, 2024

MoveNext, Nadella?

MoveNext, Nadella

At some point, Microsoft introduced compiler support for async/await. Great! Awesome! Everybody immediately jumped on its bandwagon and, as herd animals do, developers all over the world began to shout:

Async! Async!

Do everything async!

There is huge peer pressure now, to submit and subscribe to the async paradigm. Great! Awesome!

But here comes an inconvenient truth: Microsoft forgot/neglected to adjust its Reflection namespace to async paradigm. I rather suggest that they neglected but who am I to rain on their parade?

Ever did this from your method?

MethodBase.GetCurrentMethod().Name

only to see MoveNext? That is because... [long-whinded explanation of how async rewrites your method into a state machine whose last-called method is MoveNext]...

That's what Microsoft says. They prefer not to say that they forgot/neglected to make corresponding changes in Reflection, to compensate millions of .NET developers and their companies' owners/investors for their having to change their debugging code that used to work perfectly well in synchronous mode to the wonderful new asynchronous.

Microsoft are enemies of human race, and they have to be shown their place, with repercussions for being rude, obnoxious, irresponsible, monopolistic dictators.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 11:06 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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February 01, 2024

What do I do when software tells me that I must not shut it down?

What do I do when software tells me that I must not shut it down?

Believe you or not, it totally depends on my mood. There are several options.

  1. I press and hold the power button for 6+ seconds.
  2. I flip the switch on the power supply.
  3. I yank the power cord from the power supply or wall outlet.
  4. I remove the battery if the device is so powered.

Why? Because I own the damn machine. I am the property owner. The software is installed on my machine. The machine is on my premises. I own everything here, and I am the boss.

So, whenever a piece of software tells me that I should not/cannot/must not power the device off when I need so, I kill the damn thing because I can and want to.

This is a lesson in humility: if your software runs on someone's device, you obey the device owner's wish, not the other way around. Developers forgot their place, and I give them this reminder that they should heed, or.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 03:20 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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January 24, 2024

Everything that is wrong about Microsoft, in one bug report

Everything that is wrong about Microsoft, in one bug report

With great power comes great responsibility. My ass! Not in Microsoft's case.

Backgrounder: around 2017 times, MS broke offline help for C#, .NET, and Visual Studio. Developers noticed it and reported it as a bug:

A long-winded bug report

Give it a read! It is informative. In short, a number of developers, over the course of several years, report that despite all assurances to the contrary by Microsoft's "support", the issue has never been fixed.

Many, including myself, prefer offline, local help because it is FAST. It is much faster to hit F1 anywhere in VS and get INSTANT result, instead of waiting for the browser to start up and spin through the loading of a remote page. Needless to say, if you are not currently connected to Internet, then you are SOL (as in royally fucked).

Some of us develop from secure environments behind restrictive firewalls. Some of those firewalls block Microsoft on purpose, for a good reason: it is a ginormous security risk to allow all of MS software to dial home. They screwed us over. Instead of seeing contextual help, we see an error message that says that the topic was not found.

They could have fixed this problem. They had years for that. But they do not, intentionally. Apparently, they have a good reason for that, and I am going to explain what it is.

Microsoft is a strategical resource, for our civilization. The world's economy runs on Microsoft's Windows OS, SQL Server database, .NET platform, Office office, and Azure cloud, of late. Without Microsoft and its products the world will grind to a halt, and this is not an overstatement.

Who controls Microsoft? It is an Indian national Satya Nadella. India is a BRICS country. We allow our strategic adversary to control our critical resource.

The entire development and support branch of Microsoft is in China. China is a BRICS and SOC country. We allow our strategic adversary to control our critical resource. Oh, did I already say it? It is worth repeating!

And now, we see the evidence of a BRICS and SOC-controlled Microsoft showing its gnarled teeth and screwing our development community over. Surprised? I am not.

The corporation should have long time ago split into the OS company, DB server company, office company, .NET+Visual Studio company, and cloud company, instead of living on as a giant worldwide monopoly. But no one gives a damn, and this farce continues.

No wonder there is exodus from Microsoft technologies ecosystem to those stinking Pythons, Gos, Rubies, Rs, Rusts, and other mutant shits!

Posted by: LinuxLies at 04:58 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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January 10, 2024

Lies, brazen lies, and Microsoft press releases

Lies, brazen lies, and Microsoft press releases

A few years back, I recall MS bragging about considerable performance improvements to the Visual Studio compiler. IIRC it was circa VS 2019. They said that compilation times have improved. Right. Yeah.

I do not know about you, but now that I am coding in VS it spends nearly 100% of my office hours pinning the CPU at anywhere between 25%, 50%, or 100%. It lulls after a while, but as soon as I type the next character it pins the CPU again. There is no debounce! I am not surprised the least: after all, the VS development team is managed by an Indian guy, and it consists of the Chinese. Both are very close, dear friends of our country. Pun intended. They love us! They will do anything for us! They will go out of their way, to improve our economy and our lives.

You gotta be shitting me! You, Microsoft, hired Satya Nadella, who hails from a nation that hates our guts. He hired developers and support staff, in a country that hats our guts. And you somehow expect that Microsoft will work for the benefit of our economy?

United States: your demented, suicidal collective mind is a fucking clusterfuck of failure. Go and knock yourself out, but I am jumping the ship. Sink on your own, dimwits. more...

Posted by: LinuxLies at 10:02 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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December 26, 2023

Genius degenerates rule our world

Genius degenerates rule our world

Enter BIMP, Batch Image Manupulation Plugin for Gimp.

I had 16k+ images to convert, and was told that BIMP can do it. It kind of can. Sort of. Yeah, in single thread mode, which is going to take 5 hours. I swear I tried to do it in parallel, but...

This is the year 2023, and we still put up with single-threaded software. From BIMP, I learned 2x simple truths:

  1. You cannot run more than 1x instance of Gimp under Windows.
  2. Even that you can run more than 1x instance of BIMP, they single-thread.

BIMP developer, if you read this: you are a waste of skin, processing time, and electric power. Quit development and go flipping burgers where you belong.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 01:58 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 130 words, total size 1 kb.

December 16, 2023

Another Linux lie: we have a CMS

Another Linux lie: we have a CMS

Truth: you do not.

WordPress is a blogging platform, allegedly. It should do blogging the best. This includes authentication before posting, if the site is so configured. But spammers are still able to comment, without logging in. You failed, genius and condescending WordPress developers.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 08:43 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 58 words, total size 1 kb.

December 05, 2023

The lust for perpetual, untested, rapid updates should be punishable by death

The lust for perpetual, untested, rapid updates should be punishable by death

Wordpress rolls out their new version, and image uploads to the media libraries no longer work. We should seriously consider ridding our gene pule of the pollutants called "WordPress developers".

Posted by: LinuxLies at 09:47 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 54 words, total size 1 kb.

December 01, 2023

Genius degenerates rule our world

Genius degenerates rule our world

So, I had an older Debian VM and wanted to upgrade it. After all, this is the year 2023, and people of Earth now travel between stars, but I digress. So, I head over to https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUpgrade and read through the upgrade process. Sounds simple! So, I run the commands that are supposed to upgrade my OS, only to notice that after the reboot I am greeted with the new desktop background but still the old kernel signature. Oops?

Yeah, it is a big 'oops' on the Debian distro team's part. How do we fix that? Well, google to the rescue, and the 1st result is a stack exchange answer that tells me to run one more command: apt-get dist-upgrade. Seroiusly? You create a Wiki page above, to instruct your users on how to upgrade to the next major release, but you forget/neglect to mention how you upgrade the very kernel?

People at Debian: you sound really, really dumb. Give your head a shake! You are the only ones who are expected to know everything about your distro. OMG!

I am not going to whine and moan about the upgrade ending in a broken system due to python requiring but not finding libcrypt.so.1. It is unimportant and pales in comparison with the missing step.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 10:04 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 223 words, total size 1 kb.

November 22, 2023

Another Linux lie: we support Bluetooth

Another Linux lie: we support Bluetooth

Truth: you do not.

Bluetooth was introduced in 1998. That's the time of RedHat 5.1 or 5.2, Slackware 3.5 or 3.6, etc. It's been a long time since. Fast forward into 2023.

I have a bunch of Linuxae in my lab. From some obsolete of 2015 vintage to the bleeding edge 2023 latest versions. None of them work with BT on my Android smartphone.

Fedora 26 is not able to turn its BT on or off. It is stuck at 'On'. It does discover the smartphone, pairs, but does not receive any files. The file transfer from the phone to Linux fails instantly. Then Linux disconnects all by itself and cannot reconnect until a cold reboot.

Fedora 36 is not able to turn the BT on. It appears to be on but the device name field remains disabled and pre-filled with 'Turn on bluetooth to edit'.

So, 25 years after the introduction of BT, Linux is still not capable of using it despite pretending to do so. Pathetic!

Posted by: LinuxLies at 03:19 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 180 words, total size 1 kb.

November 18, 2023

Lame attempt to make it right

Lame attempt to make it right

Having not looked in the general direction of Gnome 3 after its abysmal debut, I recently learned about Gnome Flashback, supposedly an attempt to keep the UI same as Gnome 2's but using Gnome 3 technology.

Splendid, said I, and installed brand-spanking-new Debian 12 with that desktop option. What did I get? Your guess is right! I got a black screen. Pure pitch-black. No text console, no XOrg. Nothing.

I am not easy to confuse, so I switched to tty2 and got a text login. We are making progress! Type startx, hit Enter and voila, we got XOrg running, and it does even look like Gnome 2. There the joy ends.

I have no idea what the creators of Flashback mean by it being same as Gnome 2. It is not. It only appears the same to an eye, at the first glance. The user interaction (experience) is totally different. The main menu design is different. Right-click does not work on the panel or anywhere for that matter. This is enough to wipe the VM out and forget about the whole thing, for another 10 years or so.

When you, genius FOSS developers, make a claim that something WORKS THE SAME as something you have to live by your claim, not just throw it up. You failed.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 11:30 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 229 words, total size 1 kb.

November 06, 2023

Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky are pathological liars

Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky are pathological liars

The official motto, policy or whatever of Stack Exchange is that voting applies to the merits of the question/answer and not to the one who asks/answers it. Take a note.

Now, let's review. A user JohnDoe asks a question which is good or bad, we do not care which. SE regulars converge on the question and up/downvote it. According to Jeff and Joel, the voting must apply to the question. But it does not! It applies to JohnDoe. It is JohnDoe's reputation that changes as a result of everyone voting on his/her question.

Caught you lying, beotches!

Posted by: LinuxLies at 06:41 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 113 words, total size 1 kb.

Fucking geniuses

Fucking geniuses

Long ago, I'd coined this term: fucking geniuses. I do not care who else used it because I assign my own meaning to it: genius degenerates who know lots and have tons of energy to write FOSS software that breaks at the first serious use.

They are all genius, no kidding! I kid you not: they are immensely genius, overwhelmingly smart, overpowering masterminds of fabulous software projects that I could have never accomplished. Who am I? A mere mortal. Who are they? Immortal and omnipotent software gods.

But then enter libmateweather.1.6.9.so. These same geniuses hardcoded the path to the weather service in that shared library. I kid you not! They did it. They wrote something along the lines of https://aviationweather.com/... in the shared object. It did not occur to them that the owner of that domain might restructure, reshuffle, reorganize their web site. And it did happen: they moved the weather web service to a different URL. And MATE project scrambled to... patch the binary file. Genius, aren't they?

And once those geniuses were done patching the binary and uploading the patch script to their web site, the web service owner screwed them over, all over again. Yes, I kid you not! They immediately discontinued the old PHP endpoint and transitioned to a RESTful web service. MATE users are royally screwed, all over again.

Why am I telling you all that? Because when next time someone will be praising FOSS developers for their genius products, remember to duck and back off because it is going to explode into your face, right when you least expect, because the developers are geniuses.

We are SOL.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 06:20 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 277 words, total size 2 kb.

What do you expect when you press F1?

What do you expect when you press F1?

I feel like a dinosaur because when I press F1 I expect to get context help. And now I feel like an idiot because when I press F1 on a Visual Studio error in the Error List pane, it takes me to their generic home page that offers me Surface for $750. Insulting intelligence should be an indictable offense punishable by a life sentence.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 11:58 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 80 words, total size 1 kb.

October 29, 2023

MiKTeX fiasco

MiKTeX fiasco

Since about 2017 MiKTeX throws SSL error 35 when trying to update or install packages. It has never been addressed. The severity of this error is 'catastrophic' as it leave users unable to compile their documents that use not yet installed packages.

What do you call developers who abandon their users and offer no solution to a complete showstopper bugs? I call them inconsiderate scumbags.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 06:42 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 69 words, total size 1 kb.

October 26, 2023

Genius degenerates rule our world

Genius degenerates rule our world

Sheer arrogance of Virtualbox developers, who hide behind "volunteer" status on their support forum, redlines every time someone has feedback for them. Their response is always the same: it is the way it is and we are content with it. If you are not then bugger off.

As I had enough with FOSS developers lashing out at me for giving them feedback, my revenge is this blog: I write whatever I feel and think, and no one can ban or deride me for that. So, here we go.

If you, Virtualbox developers, are so genius that you are beyond reproach, then it should have been blatantly obvious for you that if one paused a VM and saved its state, then the paused state has to be part of the saved state. It's a state after all. But no, you do not save the paused state. In you demented, retarded genius, you do not give a thought to the importance or significance of the pause that is on the machine at the moment of saving. The user pauses it FOR A REASON, you dumb shits! When the machine is later restored, it must remain in the paused state. Or at least give us a check box: to unpause or not. Too hard, geniuses?

Posted by: LinuxLies at 08:16 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 222 words, total size 1 kb.

October 06, 2023

Another Linux lie: we have remote desktop

Another Linux lie: we have remote desktop

Truth: you do not.

The developer of xrdp only tests his contraption with Gnome. Why he does it is beyond me, but that is what he says: he only cares about the desktop that he uses himself, and the rest of Linux users can go and kill themselves, for all he cares.

That asshole knows since Fedora 20 that he introduced a bug that killed all other desktops (KDE, LXCE, MATE) but up to the current Fedora 36? 37? 38? Whatever it is. Long story short, for many years he still does not bother to test his shitty code with any other desktops, and they do not work.

Anybody in Eastern Europe willing to pay that asshole a visit and break his legs? Just kidding. Don't do it: he does not deserve your loving care.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 06:32 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 149 words, total size 1 kb.

October 05, 2023

Another Linux lie: we have antivirus software

Another Linux lie: we have antivirus software

Truth: you do not.

Enter Klamav, a KDE frontend for Clamav. In you divine wisdom, you, genius FOSS developers, decided to sunset old versions of Clamav by removing its update mirrors. The idea is to force us to upgrade to the latest version. Genius is as genius does, yeah? Not so fast.

Some of us are UNABLE to upgrade because we run older versions of Linux OS. Thus you cut us off the AV software.

So what does it have to do with Klamav? Well, the message about the mirrors being inaccessible contains a URL to check for new information, and that message is non-selectable. To add insult to injury, they also restructured their web site and removed the old /doc/mirrors-faq.html that the message mentions.

The sheer disdain for your users is showing in you having them re-type the whole URL by hand instead of copying and pasting, only to find out that the information is gone, and they've been hung out to dry. Are you still sure that you are as genius as you deem yourself? You are dumb assholes, in my books.

By the way, Clamav is a product of CISCO. How considerate of you!

Posted by: LinuxLies at 05:24 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 211 words, total size 1 kb.

September 28, 2023

Nearly 100% FOSS developer teams suffer from exceptionalism and superiority complex

Nearly 100% FOSS developer teams suffer from exceptionalism and superiority complex

How can I put it so that you understand? Well, when I come to 100,002nd forum, bug tracker, github project, IRC channel, yada, yada, yada, in an attempt to get through to you, FOSS developers, and to report a bug or propose a feature, you more often than not lash out at me. Why you do it? Because you deem yourself infallible altruists who do the unwashed masses of the world a gigantic favor by dispensing your software on us.

Is that true? In some cases, it really is, and I do appreciate it. I always state it up-front: Thank you for devoting your time for the development! But more often than not it is not enough for you, and you do lash out at me.

Dear FOSS developers! You are not unique. You are not the only one. If you are too dumb to understand it, just open Yum, Dnf, Dragora, Apt, or whatever package manager you are aware of, and check the sheer number of Linux distribution packages. There are TENS OF THOUSANDS of them out there. Still, you demand that we register in your support forum, only to be told that we also have to register in your bug tracker, and only then you will bestow our bug reports with your divine attention.

We do not have time for that. You are one of tens of thousands. Once we register in your forum and report our issue there, you become aware of it. Demanding that we instead re-register and re-report is sadistic.

No one forces you to develop and include your software in Linux distributions. You do so for your own reasons. So be consistent and treat bug reports with respect, not disdain. Otherwise you sound hypocritical.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 09:00 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 312 words, total size 2 kb.

September 19, 2023

Another Linux lie: we have WebCam software

Another Linux lie: we have WebCam software

No, you do not. The most that you have is software that can pump webcam capture onto the screen or file. Is this enough? For retards who pretend to be FOSS developers, it probably is. But for users, it is not.

Webcam software must be able to flip, mirror, or rotate images because, TADA, webcams are not always positioned the desired way, unfortunately. I challenge Linux FOSS "community" to point me at at least one example of webcam capture software that can do it.

Camorama - NO, Cheese - NO, Kamoso - NO, UCView - NO.

It is an epic failure like all of Linux is.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 11:56 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 120 words, total size 1 kb.

September 03, 2023

Another Linux lie: we have brains

Another Linux lie: we have brains

When I begged Fedora developers not to replace Yumex with the monstrosity called DNF Dragora, I was ridiculed, ostracized, and cancelled. They were right, and I was wrong. Their opinions were valid, and mine was invalid. That was around 2010 and Fedora 20. Fast forward 2023 and Fedora 36.

DNF Dragora cannot be resized vertically to less than about 900 pixesls. What does it mean? It means that on displays with less than that number of lines one cannot apply DNF Dragora actions because... TADA! the Apply button is at the very bottom. You are SOL.

I warned them. They did not listen. This is FOSS way of doing things. Congratulations, everyone.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 06:25 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 124 words, total size 1 kb.

September 02, 2023

Mozilla foundation goes out of its way to mess users up

Mozilla foundation goes out of its way to mess users up

SOBs at Mozilla foundation made their Firefox update nagging dialog modal. Paired with their own or MATE bug that sometimes keeps it invisible, it means that a user may go bonkers as to why they are not able to use Firefox UI at all, until they notice some flickering in the top right corner of the screen.

This proves, yet again, that FOSS does not test their software at all. They code, compile, and release, and it is the user's problem to detect bugs, find the right venue to report them, register, learn all of the rules and codes of conduct, type up a report that will not tick off the rude and inept developer, and follow through until its resolution.

How much more energy does the humankind have to expend on fixing the FOSS bugs that the developers are so reluctant to test before they release?

Posted by: LinuxLies at 09:46 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 169 words, total size 1 kb.

July 27, 2023

Another lie: Mozilla foundation works for its user base

Another lie: Mozilla foundation works for its user base

No, you do not.

You have Back and Forward buttons on your Firefox toolbar. But you are so constrained that you share the drop down list between them! For fuck's sake! Seriously?

Why are you so hell-bent on torturing your users by forcing them to go back in history, at 1/2 the possible rate? Split the damned list into back and forward history, and allow us to jump all the way to the bottom of each list, for crying out loud.

No, they can't. FOSS "community" is not about user experience: it is about torturing the user. The user must suffer.

Douche-aholics, all of them.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 07:56 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 123 words, total size 1 kb.

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