• 0 Posts
  • 69 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: March 1st, 2024

help-circle


  • Yes. For sorcerors lair, Xbox360 and PS4 were similar, whereas Steam has slight but important differences. I can’t remeber whether they were releeased as “zen” or “fx3”, it’s a while since I’ve played the console ones. I guess maybe they’ve updated the console versions and it’s just a change that’s happened over time.

    On steam I’m pretty sure i’m playing this: https://store.steampowered.com/app/442120/Pinball_FX3/

    On the consoles the gargoyle ball lock gives 15 seconds ball save , this gives great option to prolong a ball - and forces you into multiballs that you don’t really want, but adds variety. You need ball save because you have to be a lot more precise to hit each of the three discs to activate the sub-games, which are needed before you can reach midnight madness and actually score meaningful points.

    The strategy in Steam version seems to be is much simpler, hit 3 discs (far less precision needed), get subgames, get midnight madness. Making the whole game a bit less engaging, I’ve not found any real benefit in going for most of the rest of the table. Maybe multiramp combo for extraball occasionally…

    It’s still pretty fun, I do still play it a bit, but on console I just found it a lot better; all for a few minor tweaks in a couple of mechanics.





  • Tariffs don’t “work” or “not work” it’s not a binary outcome. Just as measuring “the economy” is pretty much impossible, so is attributing economic outcomes to one single feature of the regulatory environment, They interact with the rest of the economic environment and some variety or work, production, trade, investment and distribution will occur. Over time all aspects of the system will change, adapt and react. Most changes have winners and losers and they can be counted or balanced off differently.

    It it were paired with bank regulation and asset ownership regulation and a coherent industrial strategy, maybe also forex controls, maybe some counter cyclical macroeconomic policy (extremely unpopular these days) the outcomes would likely be quite different from a low regulation free for “all”. “All” is probably “a few with relatively unconstrained access to enough capital or credit to hoover up assets of the losers”.

    But then a smaller subset of those things might also change the outcomes on their own. Either way it would be a matter of time and adaptation of a complex system.

    It also depends what you think the objective is before you understand “success” or “failure”, the goals might well be social as much as economic. If the objective is trash the small scale asset ownig middle classes and enrich the elites economically then it might be working already.


  • That’s not something that I’d think is any of my business to want or not want.

    I can’t really answer the last question, I’d need to know a lot more about all thendifferent things these microsoft users are doing; what’re the alternatives; and, how disruptive might the transition be. On balance, given the uncertainties, I’d have to say probably not.

    I mean if i stopped using Microsoft entirely (i.e. at work) I’d have to find a new job, probably one I’m less experienced at. And likely I’d end up working for a bigger bunch of scumbags. Likely no net gain and a load of botheration in the meanwhile.

    Also i might miss the regular BSOD inspired tea breaks . . .


  • Haha market cap, market share , they’re still all about selling stuff so dont really apply./ Market share is normally measured in share of revenue in most industries.

    There are lots of webpages, tutorials, youtubes and stuff like that for these people already. I’m sure they can also pay companies like canonical for more dedicated support if that’s what they need.

    If you want to welcome people, go ahead and do it, nothing stopping you. Create the webpage or forum or youtube channel, distribution, or write the book whatever is missing. Just make sure to moderate it to remove CLI based answers and block users like me.

    “I” exist and I’m sure I’m never going to be part of your “we”. The current situation of linux home user base seems just fine to me without pandering to a load of windows users. I think you should work on your desired subculture and keep me out if it. Leave me out of it - i can stay over here under my bridge in linuxmemes wearing my new programming socks.

    For the home market maybe you can look at valve and steamdeck or something as an example of an acessible linux sub-culture. Valve doesn’t maintain and support that for free though. It’d be interesting to know how many full time employees they have on steamdeck OS just for the one device (and maybe a few gaming perpherals) and one GUI. Then expand that to all esoteric hardware and all GUIs . . .
    I guess chromeOS and a few forks of that is another similar example - i think that’s still linux kernel based - some limitations on hardware i think.

    What I’d actually like to see is B2B growth (for user ) - but I don’t think linux will ever be bought by employers like mine - I know how the procurement department operates - and I can’t see that changing. There are plenty of people who don’t need my support trying business sales, redhat, canonical, suse etc and more power to them - but microsoft didn’t get big in B2B by being usable, nor by nor having “no CLI”, nor by having a supportive community to home users. They just packaged it in a way that ticked all the boxes for the corpo procurement types - though most B2B customers do need their own dedicated user support.










  • It could be a form of bundling, tacit veritcal integratation, magin squeeze , price discrimination, tie-ins etc.

    Various tricks oligopolistic companies use to prevent competition from bidding prices down - trying to extract a bit of extra profit. The harm is that people are paying more than they might - or for extra features they cant opt out of than they would in a free or open market. Likely the harm is very diffuse and no one person is all that bothered to be paying 10% more or whatever, but it all adds up.

    Anti-trust regulators are so weak they don’t really have to try though. TBF it’s very hard to prove this stuff in court even if there was a political will to improve competition to benefit consumers.


  • I’d go basic debian . Install flatpak and flathub to get any packages that are too far out of date or might get so. Any derivative or ubuntu derivative just sees like unnecessary extra dependencies to me.

    Debian gives i think a wider choice of desktop environment than any of the derivatives on install, but I think they’re all much of a muchness really. Most of the DEs have the “Click something, window opens” feature.