Remember when they would actually add an option for obscure use cases like this? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

I think the library is called pyautogui and you just make the script push whatever button every x seconds. I think the teams timeout is like 5min.

Funny, but Taco Bell is already a subsidiary of “Yum! Foods Incorporated” who is a terrible company to work for and owns TB, KFC, Pizza Hut, Long John Silvers, and A&W.

Fun fact the cinnamon sugar on Pizza Hut products is the same cinnamon sugar on those bullshit fake churro bites at Taco Bell, even comes in a Taco Bell branded box and everything.

Demolition Man :-)

All of those companied are based in the US, while having global outreach.

So yes, in this case what US authorities decide will influence an entire world.

P.S. I’m not American, and yes, often times Americans do forget 96% of people don’t live in the land of the free. That’s not the case.

I mean, all of these companies that really should be broken up are, for some totally, definitely, unknown reason based in the US. So not that weird in that context.

Since Windows XP and especially since Vista/7, I spent a lot of my time with Windows re-learning how to do the same things. They kept moving controls, or lengthening the process to get to the same controls via onioneering. I switched to Linux, and it was about the same learning process as a new version of Windows. Then I upgraded to a new version of the distro I was using…and it was mostly the same, had a couple extra features and came with a different default icon set.

Result: The time I used to spend re-learning how to do things I already knew how to do was now spent learning how to do new things. Instead of treading water, I’m making headway.

Linux mint is Goooooood, man I love that OS.

Hmmmmmm…what force might have coerced Microsoft to behave more reasonably, in that situation? PERHAPS A SOLID COMPETITOR, WHO WOULD GAIN MARKET SHARE AGAINST THEM, IF THEY PISSED OFF THE MARKET BY BREAKING COMPATIBILITY, IN THE VITAL OFFICE SUITE SPACE?

Robust competition in the actual operating system market would be the solution, exactly like I said.

The problem with Linux is that, despite being fucking free, it’s not robust competition. It always hovers somewhere in the 1-4 percent range, for desktop users. It’s not fair or logical for that to be the case, really…but here we are.

I honestly think there’s a parallel universe, quite close to our own, where IBM made a bigger push to establish OS/2 (or something else) as a general-purpose, consumer-targeted operating system, or maybe a whole other company made a compatible competitor OS. I’m talking, like, all the way back in the early 90s, when Windows was just getting on its feet.

In that world, where Microsoft had been forced to split the market with a genuine competitor, they wouldn’t have been able to do all the crazy shit that a monopoly allows. The point is, they truly would have had to be forced into that position. No business is going to compete fairly out of the goodness of its heart, because it doesn’t have a heart. It only has predatory instincts.

Of course, to belabor the point, that’s why nobody’s high-minded philosophy about “free as in free speech, not free beer” software was ever going to be the solution. That kind of homespun cringe shit is exactly how you get 1-4 percent market share, even though your product can be obtained gratis.

It’s not my fault, but it’s the truth.

That analogy fails, because a full 32 percent of New Yorkers take the subway for their commute, whereas about 1-4 percent of people use Linux.

Go ahead and say “well, that’s because a lot of people are stupid sheep.” Doesn’t really matter. The fact is, Linux has been “just about to take over the desktop OS market and leave all these commercial-software-loving Wintel Box users in the dust” for almost as long as we’ve been waiting for nuclear fusion.

And it actually looks like we MIGHT get fusion power, before Linux can break 6 percent (edit: wait, if you count ChromeOS, I guess it broke 6 percent, at some point. I don’t know if you count ChromeOS, though. I kinda don’t, because of how much it relies on cloud shit)

If any non-windows PC-compatible operating system had ever put together a 32 percent market share, that would have made EVERYTHING better, because it would have been placing market pressure on Microsoft. They wouldn’t be able to pull bullshit stunts like we’ve been talking about.

But Linux could never actually get enough users. It just wasn’t ever meant to be.

EDIT: I actually had my numbers wrong. 32 percent is the number of commuters who use the subway to get INTO New York City, for their daily commute. Apparently, A FULL 55 PERCENT OF ACTUAL NEW YORK RESIDENTS say they use the subway as their primary mode of transportation, inside the city.

So, again, the analogy simply cannot hold. Linux will never have 55 percent of the userbase.

You probably think it should have 55 percent. And that’s fine. But a bunch of could’ves, should’ves, and would’ves taped to a $10 bill are worth one picture of Alexander Hamilton, and not much else.

That’s all amusing, in its own belabored way. But think about the specifics. That little screed was published in 1999. I’m pretty sure there was no 3D accelerated GPU on the market that had functional Linux drivers, at that point. I guess that would be like the free tanks being unable to drive on many newly built roads.

I imagine the station wagon buyer pointing this out, to which the guy with the bullhorn would reply “You don’t need to drive on those roads!”

That’s always the Linux answer. Whatever it can’t do, you just don’t need to be doing. Until the driver support DOES come along, then they add it to the “see, Linux can do anything and everything” list, without feeling the slightest hint of self-awareness.

I could be wrong about the state of Linux drivers for GPUs, in the late 1990s. If I am, then fuck it. You could say I just wasted those three paragraphs. But there’s always something. Printers, scanners, webcams, other peripherals. The corner cases do get fixed eventually, and there are a lot less of them, in 2024. But in the 90s, it was a lot worse. There truly were plenty of things that you just couldn’t do with Linux. Given that, I find the characterization of Linux as an invincible supertank among shitty cars to be more than a bit stretched.