The last major antitrust action on this scale in the U.S. 8 years to process.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System
This type of lawsuit is why the billionaire bro’s are backing the senile rapist and felon. Making them play somewhat fair ruins their business plan.
Firing middle managers is a fun way to kill the company. Not that cleaning house is a bad idea. Unfortunately the people making decisions of who to keep and who to let go are usually idiots.
Middle Managers are promoted for two reasons: technical expertise and ass-kissing expertise. Now the technical experts tend to not mix well with incompetent parasitic c-suite types idiots. The ass-kissers are beloved by the c-suite as that is their only role in life.
So when firings come around guess who they get rid of? Then 1-3 years later everyone is shocked when everything starts to fall apart.
They also need to remove the limited liability from companies for intentional illegal activities.
illegal business practices should be charged to the people involved instead of the company. The executives who made the decision to break the law lose personal assets.
Otherwise the shitheads just pass the company losses onto the employees: no raises, hiring freezes, layoffs, reduction in benefits, etc…
I keep looking at it wondering … Why? The others are common. The truck, however took a little special reasoning.
I have been using custom start menus since the whole win8 full screen disaster. Every time I see the default win 10 or Win 11 menu I cringe. So much crap in the way.
Process optimization reaches a point of diminishing returns. Then if tweaked further it degrades the performance. Microsoft reached the close to the optimal OS design at Win7. It’s all been downhill since then.
The mobile OS systems are reaching the same point. Optimization has occured and most of the “new” additions degrade the user experience.
American pizza and Italian pizza are two different animals that share the same name. They both have good, mediocre and shitty examples. I have had all three in both countries.
As to which one I prefer? Ehhh depends on the day.
Other countries also have their unique take on Pizza that I have tried and enjoyed. I had some in Spain and Brazil that were amazing yet very different.
Large corporations rarely innovate and try new things. Most innovation comes from smaller players with limited market share taking risks.
Large companies buy out smaller ones who create cash cows from taking large risks. The large company then milks the cash cows until they are completely dead.
The consolidation of studios to a few megacorporations has led to this inevitable end. The solution is simple: break them up. If we have 30 or so similar sized studios competing, we will get better movies/TV again.
Sometimes they are like that.
Sometimes they are a closet with a dirty diaper can that isn’t emptied frequently. Delightful.
I did a little assassin creed run this summer. Started with Unity and went to Odyssey.
Unity by far has the best story-line. The game mechanics are also more focused on being an assassin, not a brawler. Sneak and stab, drop smoke and disappear when you get in trouble.
Syndicate - they changed the focus to more brawling. However the mechanics were pretty bad and the storyline was predictable and stupid to say the least. You can still play the assasin for most of it if you want.
Origins - They went all out into brawling with this one. Complicated all of the controls. Easiest way to make it through the game is as an archer. The story lines are dull and some are just plain weird. The offer you tons of different options in gear but only a few are worth keeping. Not much chance to actually assainate anyone. Lots of weird half baked stuff like the naval warfare in the story line but nowhere else.
Odyssey - it’s basically the same as origins. They spent more time fleshing out the mechanics. Added in a ton of options but you only use a few. Added in a ton more brawling combat and very little assassination. In many instances trying to play as an assassin is just not possible. The combat is often broken. Beating the bosses is all the same. Spam arrows while dodging until they weaken, get a hit in and run away- repeat. Save often because the game crashes regularly.
Yes I played all the way through and beat the main quests and side quest on all of them.
Windows did a few vital things that Apple failed miserably on in the 90’s.
Mac dropped support for legacy software and hardware on every new OS in the 90’s. Microsoft maintained backwards capability. It was a major reason windows was more resource intensive and had more bugs. It was a smart move because windows OS was able to handle more software and hardware than Macs. This is the top reason why windows demolished Mac in sales.
Microsoft’s business model allowed greater range of pricepoints. Most users in business or at home do not need the capabilities of the lowest priced Mac model. You don’t need much to check e-mail, browse the web, and do some basic word processing. Apple did not service this largest section of the market at all.
The smaller restaurants kept their prices tracking actual inflation to maintain their customer base. Lately they have been enjoying increased business because of the nationals screwups.
The local Greek place $65.
The best taco truck in town is $55.
For $75 I can get my local family owned Thai place with leftovers for the next day.
DQ, McD, Subway, KFC, all run between $60-75.
For $70 I can even get my family chipotle and enjoy the guaranteed food poisoning a few hours later.
Why is basic math.
In a made up scenario let’s start with a dumb 50"ish TV. That cost them around $100 to build. Add in another $50 for shipping and distribution fees. It’s at the store for $150 cost. If they set the price at $400. There is $250 dollars of profit to share between the store and the manufacturer. The manufactuerer likely gets under $100.
Now for a smart TV the revenue stream looks different. First their costs only go up by a few dollars for adding the “smart” chips. So let’s say $155 cost. Then they collect revenue from the streaming providers to be supported by their smart TV say $30 per set. Then they collect the $20 per set per year in user data collected. So if they price the smart TV the same as the dumb one they generate $95 from the sale of the set.
So the profit from a dumb TV is $100 at he point of sale.
The profit from a smart TV is $225+ in a constant revenue stream over 5 years.
And this is why we see so much advertising for smart TV’s as being the best thing.
They were a bit more tricky than that I believe. They capped the user page at 3 years of search. So when you delete everything using those scripts it deletes the newer stuff but misses all the older ones. Then after the script runs it shows - no comments.
The heyday of the forums. For about 2 years the combination of Tapatalk and forums was awesome. Centralized interface with no ads, all the discussion.
Then they both gutted their functionality and spammed in the ads.
Go back and check again. They are actively restoring deleted comments. About once a month I log back on and delete another round. Usually another 10-15 “mysteriously” pop back up again.
Until the get to the other side of the Cascades. Then they turn into dumbfucks of the highest order.
That’s an ad for Mormons. The Mormons are a corporation disguised as a church that has gained extreme wealth. They own a huge real estate empire, universities, and farms plus over a hundred billion in one investment fund.
Thy have been caught numerous times breaking all sorts of financial laws but because of their status as a church it’s hidden.
For the Mormons it’s all about profit and hoarding wealth.
They made it the default option for businesses that routinely buy computers with less local storage than their users need. Pretty much every company I have worked for.
They then pushed it out hard into the consumer market when SSD came out and the average storage space on lower end models dropped by 75%.
I see why they did it, how they did it was in usual Microsoft fashion, idiotic.
It’s sort of their pattern.
Introduce new changes.
Screw it up royalty.
Fix the features that are salvageable and revert most of the remaining except: Double down on the shitty ones that they think will make them more money.
Rinse and Repeat
I upgraded from Windows XP to Vista after the 2nd servicepack fixed most of the shit. By that point it was a tolerable OS.
I am currently hoping for a major service pack next year to fix all the stupid shit they did in Windows 11.
You know kind of like when they fucked up windows 8, attempted a quick fix in 8.1 and finally fixed it in win10.
Of course they are at 4 major updates with win11 and it’s still shit so the hope is very thin.