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Or we could stop treating users as sheep being led to the slaughter and (collectively, as an industry) work to make it so things like this are less likely to happen.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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I'm all in favour of that - but I suspect it'll never happen while there is money to be made from backup software (that they don't use after the first time), recovery software (that they try to use too late)...
Mind you, Google is impressing me with it's interface to my Nexus 7 - people and appointments and so forth get backed up automatically to my G+ account and I don't have to think about it. It's a start!
The only instant messaging I do involves my middle finger.
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It's not even limited to G+. On my phone it's syncing everything with Hotmail.
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
Abraham Lincoln
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Let me know how that works out for you.
User manuals, instructional videos, community college courses, forums, Google and the like all remain unused by this oblivious woman completely unaware of what she has in her hand or what she is even talking about when it comes to technology.
Unless of course you're talking about some sort of government mandated course with Inquisition style tortures for those who fail to take the class or don't succeed in passing the final exam. If you're proposing that I'm on board.
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I think what Chris is talking about is making it work right out of the box - so that if the handset is broken, lost, or the files are deleted, they have been already backed up without her attention.
Of course, this raises the media hackles and leads to "Google is stealing my pictures of my naked baby on a bearskin rug" type stories... 
The only instant messaging I do involves my middle finger.
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Doing the backup 'out of the box' doesn't solve the underlying problem.
If she doesn't understand the technology enough to know whether or not her photos are backed up then she doesn't understand it enough to retrieve the photos - has no clue about archiving, storage limits, or the terms of her storage. This clueless dingbat could have signed an agreement to upload the pictures to child porn sites - she wouldn't know either way.
Here is the deal: Technology takes an investment of time to understand and use.
You cannot build a device that will ensure the safety of someone who refuses to take the time to understand what they are using. If you don't have the time to learn then you don't need the technology despite what you've been brainwashed to believe. Don't blame the industry because salesmen talk people into buying crap they don't need.
How's that for a rant? 
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You're right, but...you're also wrong! 
Technology needs an investment to time to understand and use in it's early stages
Once it gets released to the "normal idiot user" it needs to be as "you-don't-need-to-know-this" as possible. Think about it: a modern car driver isn't expected to change a wheel, much less know when to advance the timing, oil the valve gear and change the carb jets to compensate for altitude. But cars and bikes demanded that knowledge in the early days (along with a good collection of spanners and a big hammer). The technology we work with, build, and maintain is reaching the point where it isn't ready for the users because the way we think about it gets in the way - we need to take the software equivalent of the spark timing and move it to electronic ignition, and replace the whole technology "engine" with a "black box" so users don't have to understand what is happening to use their devices safely.
That's my two cents worth!
The only instant messaging I do involves my middle finger.
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I think your analogy misses the point.
I understand what my car does for me even if I don't understand how it does it.
I also understand how to get my car to do what I expect it to do for me.
This woman treasures her pictures but has no clue as to whether or not her phone is backing them up and if they're backed up she has no idea as to where they're backed up. For the task she has chosen for her phone she has no concept if it's doing it or not.
She doesn't have to understand how her photos are backed up - but she should at least know if they are backed up.
She'll complain that her phone provider failed.
She'll complain that the phone failed.
She'll complain that the technician failed.
This same woman will go out and buy a $65,000 Lexus and wonder why she cannot pull water skis on the lake behind it. She's not connecting the dots between what she wants to accomplish and the technology she's using.
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OriginalGriff wrote: we need to take the software equivalent of the spark timing and move it to
electronic ignition, and replace the whole technology "engine" with a "black
box" so users don't have to understand what is happening to use their devices
safely.
Nice analogy - wrong of course but still nice.
You are equating the car to the phone\tablet while ignoring the complexity which means that one app on the phone is equivalent to the car. After all someone might be upset that their pictures disappeared but they are also going to be upset if all the money in their bank account disappears too. One phone - two completely different apps.
And it also ignores the rate of innovation. After all cars have been around for 100 years and electronic ignition for 50, but how long have cell phones with apps been around? How long has the cloud been around?
Not to mention of course that there were in fact people who drove cars in the early days who didn't know how to do minor repairs. And then they ended up stuck on the side of the road until someone came along, perhaps in a car or even a horse drawn wagon and got them to where they needed to be.
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MehGerbil wrote: User manuals, instructional videos, community college courses, forums
You're missing the point.
You said "Had she managed to get them onto the "cloud" they'd be lost behind a forgotten password or a closed service a couple of years down the road"
My point wasn't that we try and teach someone about how technology works. How many drivers know how an internal combustion engine works? Does that make them stupid or unqualified to drive? I'm suggesting we keep pushing to make technology the same: ensure data is automatically backed up to the cloud without even offering the option to not have it happen. Make it easy to restore from these backups, and if someone is unable to even do this, then make it easy enough thay most other people she knows will be able to do it for her if she hands over her device.
Sure - people forget passwords all the time, but secondary questions, fingerprint scanners, 2-factor authentication - all these are working towards making it easier to recover lost credentials.
I just don't believe in giving up on people. Not always.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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Chris Maunder wrote: Or we could stop treating users as sheep being led to the slaughter and (collectively, as an industry) work to make it so things like this are less likely to happen.
That would the correct thing to do but no one is going to do it unless they can make a butt load of money off it.
I've got photos from when I was in diapers on paper and has lasted all these years (60+) and I've got a hard disk with 150GB of photos I've taken in the last few years and when I'm gone, or god forbid the backups fail, or technology no longer recognizes them they will be gone forever and my kids will have nothing.
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But then who are we supposed to laugh at...? 
The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative. -Winston Churchill
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. -Oscar Wilde
Wow, even the French showed a little more spine than that before they got their sh*t pushed in.[^] -Colin Mullikin
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Chris Maunder wrote: Or we could stop treating users as sheep being led to the slaughter and
(collectively, as an industry) work to make it so things like this are less
likely to happen.
How exactly does one do that?
Hopefully you have a general answer because it would be nice to be able to apply it to many things - for instance keeping people from sticking their hands into lawnmowers that are running.
Naturally it won't work if it isn't really, really cheap also. Because, for example, even though it possible to create a car which would practically eliminate all automobile deaths (but not pedestrian) it would be so expensive that it wouldn't sell.
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But all my pictures are in the cloud...because I have Dropbox set to sync all my pictures. Which turned out great when I had to replace my phone, no need to transfer them because I already had them all. People need to realize computers aren't magic though, you do have to configure these things...
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Well... on the other end of the spectrum... something happened to our VPN some time ago and our IT guy replaced the components providing the service and said, "there, fixed". Weeks later, and I still can't get onto our VPN  .
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Excellent! We need more comments like that, or UKIP will stand a good chance of being in government in a year and a half...
The only instant messaging I do involves my middle finger.
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I rather like Godfrey Bloom. Even if you don't care for what he says you have to admire his complete anti-PCness. Very refreshing in British Politics.
Regards,
Rob Philpott.
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Refreshing...but kinda stupid, perhaps?
Good way to encourage people to vote for your party 
The only instant messaging I do involves my middle finger.
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I think it might be better than you think. Look at Tony Blair - someone who never revealed himself from behind a wall of spin. New Labour brought PR to politics and I don't think people like it. UKIP leave you with no uncertainty of where they stand, it's just a matter of whether you agree or not.
Regards,
Rob Philpott.
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I just don't trust any politician - "When the lips move, they're lying" - and suspect that the UKIP top brass are rather more radical in reality than they publicly state. Not sure I'd like to live in a UKIP state...
The only instant messaging I do involves my middle finger.
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A giant tv in Manchester insulted Farage earlier.
I'll leave the reader to find their own link (unless they use twitter in which case they've already seen it).
“I believe that there is an equality to all humanity. We all suck.” Bill Hicks
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Yes, as I feel that you might feel the wrath of the UKIP police as I did. Somehow 2 peope reported my link as abuse / spam for some reason.
Every day, thousands of innocent plants are killed by vegetarians.
Help end the violence EAT BACON
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Pretty much expected behaviour. Pleb party gonna pleb.
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This interesting Win8.1 DirectX sample:
HLSL shader compiler sample [^]
Use D3DCompile[^], whose documentation states:
MSDN said: You can use this API to develop your Windows Store apps, but you can't use it in apps that you submit to the Windows Store
In other words works on your machine, NOT on the client's one! 
[EDIT] mmm this function appears in the local help but not online...
I wonder if it was true in 8.0 but is OK in 8.1. The sample just passed the Windows AppStore certification Kit (minus error for app images)
modified 20-Sep-13 11:57am.
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