Quoting: LamdarerPerfection

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I mean, I'm very positive and all, but actually that graph makes it kind of clear: We're talking about 1% in 2 1/2 years. At that rate, in 25 years we'll be at 12%. World domination in under 250 years!
That said, significantly faster than the Linux desktop share grew from ~2000 to 2022, so still seems like pretty good times!

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Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: damarrin

Quoting: ZlopezI'm not sure why companies are taking growth for granted. Why they won't rather work with what they made the current year and expect that the next year will be the same or maybe save some of the money for bad times if you are making more than you expected, so you have some reserves.

The stock market doesn’t work that way. It’s cool and useful or sometimes necessary, but it is also cancer.

Yep, major source of these issues are the shift from long term investment where people invested in companies and held on to them for years on end (and got rich on the constant but stable dividends) to the more modern "lets buy and sell the same share within a few milliseconds" that drives the demand for infinite growth.

Short-termism is a big problem, but I actually think it's not the millisecond thing that's the biggest. It's the this-quarter thing, where the big objective is to hand out lots of dividends and share buybacks right now. CEOs have a lot of stock themselves, not to mention a lot of options, and they're fairly footloose, so they tend to be motivated to goose the price in the short term, not grow in the long. Plus, shareholding tends to be more concentrated, so you get "activist shareholders" (read: Blackrock) exerting a lot of power and wanting the money now. In the end, after all the dividends and these days especially buybacks, there isn't much left for investing in the business. Some big corporations actually borrow money to spend on share buybacks.

I think a big reason actually is low taxes--particularly low corporate taxes, but also of course low taxes on capital gains for rich people with loopholes available. No, I know the corporate types whine on and on about how high corporate taxes would depress investment, but if you look at the actual mechanisms I don't think it works that way. Remember that corporate taxes are on profits, not revenue. So, say I've got this big corporation, and it made a billion dollars after normal expenses.
Scenario A: It pays no tax on that billion, so if it wants to it can pass the whole thing, untaxed, to the shareholders. Well then why not do it?
Scenario B: It pays 50% tax on that billion. Well now, suddenly it might make a bit more sense, rather than passing only half a billion to the shareholders, instead invest a lot of that billion in the business instead of paying tax on it--upgrade capital equipment, do some R&D and so on. With that high tax on profits, shareholders might in the end get a better return on investment by reducing the declared profits by investing in the business, because that way you get to invest all the money rather than just the after tax money.

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Quoting: Woodlandor

Quoting: Purple Library GuyWell, good luck, eh?

Purple Library Guy…
A fellow Canadian maybe?

Why yes. Vancouver. Although I have to admit, I think the use of "eh" has declined quite a bit over the years . . . or maybe it's still more current in the East?

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Quoting: sprocket

Quoting: JarmerEVERYONE SHOULD REPEAT THIS AS LOUD AS POSSIBLE:

CEO Pat Gelsinger made $17 million in 2023 alone. That was a 45% raise from his 2022 salary of $12 million. This asshole took almost a 50% raise (what normal person ever gets anywhere close to that), laughed, turned around, and fired THOUSANDS of people.

If the company you are leading has to cut 15k people because of insane ramblings like "revenue has not grown as expected" then surely he will take a 90% cut next year, right? RIGHT?

I work for Intel.

Believe me, us employees are not going to be quiet about this.

Well, good luck, eh?

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Kinda abstract looking, but I think I might try it. It seems like it just takes the core concept of tower defence and goes for it. I can appreciate that.

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I'll be happy if Civ VII either skips the "districts" thing from VI or reworks them so they don't end up eating thousands of square miles of the land you're using. I know that in real life, residential areas eat up quite a bit of prime farmland . . . but not half the dang map.

Hmmm . . . this thing where you have different leaders for the same country might be expanded. I mean, in VI, you could take Greece (with Pericles) or Greece (led by Gorgidas), and the leader would give different characteristics, and that's how it would stay. But maybe you could have different leaders over time. So like, maybe you could take Greece and you start with some dictator leading it and later you can angle to replace him with Pericles or Philip of Macedon or Alexander. Getting the good leaders would be a perk you could unlock, and/or maybe you can make a choice every time you hit a Golden Age which would give more reason to give a damn about Golden Ages. And some leaders might be what you want in peacetime but others better in wartime, so you'd change back and forth a bit.

Down with workers getting used up!

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Played a bit of Vagrus: The Riven Realms. Still not sure yet what I think of it--the walls of text are totally up my alley, but I'm still getting a feel for the actual game.
After some chat here about different iterations of Civilization, I bought Civ IV and gave it a whirl. I concluded I had been underestimating Civ V; I'm not enjoying IV nearly as much as I expected. So now I'm playing Endless Legend instead, which after I got it for free due to a tip here a little while ago has proved really quite fun for me; I'm thinking of grabbing a DLC or two.

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Quoting: Pyratecrowdtrike and co.

Greatest. Typo. Ever.

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Quoting: PhiladelphusI think part of it is that some Linux DEs mimic the desktop paradigm of older Windows versions much closer than MacOS does, which masks the differences.

The thing is, that can be entirely enough for a sizable category of use cases. Sure, look just a bit under the surface and it's different . . . but many users don't do that, so for them it is not different. My wife, for instance, uses the browser and makes documents and that is almost it. She just got a new computer, which I put Linux on. I moved her files and browser bookmarks across from her old Chromebook (which was slowly dying), put browser launchers and LibreOffice Writer on the taskbar, showed her where her files are, and after a short breaking in period she's happy with it. She may or may not ever even look at the menus to see what other software is loaded in there. So for her there is no functional difference between Chromebook, Linux Mint, and Windows . . . except that Windows is nagware and its frequent vaguely ominous popups would make her anxious.

At some point she will want to fiddle with a picture or something and she will experience a real OS being better than ChromeOS.

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Quoting: Pengling

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualUltimately it's their computer and their choice. Let them ask you, if they care at all.

That's exactly it. :smile:

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualAnd lastly...Linux is not the solution to Windows problems, so it shouldn't be presented like it is when someone asks for help with their Windows computer.

When should it be presented as an option? When someone is looking for a new computer or wondering if there's something better. They've now demonstrated willingness to uproot their current computing lifestyle and try something new, something few people are brave enough or have enough time to do. You can't convince someone to try something new; they need to be open to it already, and when they are, you're presenting an option, not trying to convince them of something.

Precisely. :smile: And it's important to point out that the Linux option isn't Windows, and that things aren't going to act the same, and that the software you'll use won't be the same. I know that sounds like common-sense, but for some reason, though people are fine with adjusting to the differences that MacOS has from Windows, they don't seem to approach Linux like that for some strange reason. :huh:

I dunno. I have recent experience suggesting that for at least some people, if you have the menu and "turn it off" stuff in the lower left and a taskbar on the bottom with a few launch icons, they don't really notice the difference.

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