Aceticon

Talentless hack and way out of his depth grifter who knows the position he has reached and the money he makes in it is really just supported by cultivated connections and his bullshiting ability, rather than any superior strategical capabilities, when the business "strategy" he chose as CEO merelly because "everybody else is doing it" starts to be perceived as not just broken but a bit of a shit show, keeps on trying to push the impression that, actually, he's just a misunderstood visionary and it's others that don't yet recognize how wonderful the direction he chose for the company is.

By using such arguments, maybe once again he'll "fake it until you make it" his way into success (after all, that's how he became MS' CEO in the first place) or, at worst, it will extend how long he can keep on getting paid the big bucks for nothing more than being a lucky bullshitter with the right connections.

I've been in Tech on and off since the 90s, including in Tech Startups, and nowadays "leaders" in it are pretty much all grifters, not techies with a vision.

I've been reading the posts here and most people are coming from a "decent honest person trying to do his jobs as well as possible" point of view in their reading of the guy (probably because that's the kind of person they are) and thus giving this guy the benefit of the doubt, whilst from what I've seen in that world this guy is almost certainly a talentless hack at anything other than grifting and who, lacking any above average strategical thinking abilities, went for the "everybody else is doing it" strategy which is now blowing up, so of course he'll use typical grifter skills to try and dig his way out of that hole or, at least, stave off the innevitable end of getting big fat $$$ for holding a position he's not actually competent at.

The guy is gaslighting because he's a grifter not a strategist and the "it's others, not me" line of argument is a common "defend & delay" tool in a grifter's toolbox.

Innovation as an inherently good thing (rather than merelly new) has always been a mantra and a slogan of the post-2000 Crash generation of Tech "Leaders", who unlike the ones in the 90s, are almost always grifters rather than techies.

A grifter, when his personal upside maximization (in the form of keeping his job and performance bonuses) is at stake, will say whatever it takes to try and push the impression that his strategical choices as head of a Tech company are "visionary" rather than "blind fad following" because at best he might succeed at "fake it until you make it" and at worst he's delaying the moment when he stops getting the big bucks for what is mainly bullshitting abilities.

So maybe Mustafa Suleyman smokes the tech bollocks he sells and genuinelly thinks that this stuff is an improvement for customers, but personally and having been in Tech (and the Tech Startup world) on and off since the 90s, my bet is that his words are nothing more than a grifter grifting because that's the kind of person that world has been rewarding the most since the 2000 Crash.

Overheard at the German-Poland border:

• "Name?"
• "Klaus Winkle"
• "Occupation?"
• "No, just visiting".

Using Wine directly is a bit of a pita.

Hence why there are things like Bottles.

"There's this obscure function in Excel that I know somebody who knows somebody who used it that won't work in LibreOffice Calc"

I bet that, like most Arch users, that one kept on thinking "So far, so good" all the way down.

On a serious note, having used Linux on and off since the 90s (aah, Slackware, how I miss installing you from floppies ... not), Linux has, IMHO, actually been desktop ready for ages (though definitelly not in the days of Slackware when configuring X was seriously interesting for a geek and pretty much an impossible barrier for everybody else).

The problem have always been applications not having Linux builds, only Windows builds, not the actual desktop Linux distros being an inferior desktop experience than Windows (well, not once Gnome and KDE emerged and made things like configuring your machine possible via GUIs - the age of the RTFF and editing text files in the command line before that wasn't exactly friendly for non-techies).

In other words, from maybe the late 00s onwards the problem were mainly the "networks effects" (in a business sense of "apps are made for Windows because that's were users are, users go for Windows because that's were the apps are) rather than the "desktop" experience.

The almost unassailable advantage of Windows thanks to pretty much just network effects, was something most of us Linux fans were aware since way back.

What happened in the meanwhile to make Linux more appealing "in the Desktop" was mainly on the app availabilty side - OpenOffice (later LibreOffice and derivatives) providing an Office-style suit in Linux, the movement from locally hosted apps to web-hosted apps meaning that a lot of PC usage was really just browser usage, Wine improving by leaps and bounds and making more and more Windows applications run in Linux (most notably and also thanks to DXVK, Games) and so on.

Personally I think Linux has been a superior experience on the server side since the late 90s and, aside for the lack of Linux versions of most commonly used non-OS applications, a superior experience in the desktop since the 00s.

That's just the ones who don't use Arch.

Nah, most of Europe did exactly the same thing as America last time around. Hell the EU went out of its way to make sure bankers didn't lose money (how do you think Greek Debt which was entirely in private hands ended up in the hands of the EU, which then turned around and forced Austerity of Greece "to avoid losses of money of EU taxpayers") - the Corruption was just as bad on this side of the pond as it was on the other.

Iceland stands out because they were almost unique in the West in making the bankers pay for their shenanigans.

Yeah, Science does have scientific articles behind what I referred to in a simplified way as "human nature" - the entire domains of Psychology and Sociology deal with that and beyond that, even Behavioral Economics concerns itself with how Humans act though in a more restricted set of conditions.

Then there is History, which concerns itself with how Humans have acted in the past.

In fact "How humans act" seems to be a rather important subject for Humans which gets reflected in how quite a lot of Science being done about it.

Those being such massive domains, you can find those articles you are clearly so interested in yourself, in places like arXiv.

I suggest you start by looking into Sociopathy, Psychopathy, Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Megalomania from the domain of Psychology - people with such personality disorders are the kind that tend to seek power and have not much in the way of limits about getting it and keeping it.

Have fun!

Two points:

• Methinks you're fighting a battle against somebody else other than me and the point I was making.
• "Human nature" is just a short way of referring to the complex subject of certain behaviors present in some individuals and how they interact with human group dynamics, similarly to how "Theory of Evolution" is a short way of referring to the complex subject of how genetic traits that provide small advantages with reproductive success consequences can through time and the law of large number spread to alter an entire population or even create new species. In fact both those things are correlated.

Call it whatever you want: you can't logically deny that some behavioral traits present in some humans cause them to seek or even create positions were they have power over others, structures which they then defend, preserve and extend whilst they extract personal upsides from their positions in it, and that group systems were there is already a single power pole with little or no effective independent oversight are way easier to take over by such people than systems with multiple power poles which keep each other in check.

(In summary people who lust after power will do whatever it takes to keep it going once they get it)

And yeah, this applies just as much to the dictatorships calling themselves "Communist" as it does to "Capitalist" systems - we've been seeing in the last 3 or 4 decades in Neoliberal so called "Democracies" Money subverting the supposedly independent Pillars of Democracy (though in some countries, not really: for example in many countries those at the top of the Political Pillar choose who heads the Judicial Pillar hence the latter is not independent of the former) to make itself THE power above all others, all this driven by individuals with those very behavioral traits I mentioned above, just starting from further behind (having to first undermine multi-polar power systems) than similar people trying to take over autocratic systems were power is already concentrated in a single pole that answers to nobody else.

(The path to unchallenged supreme power is a lot shorter in autocratic regimes)

Are you denying that amongst humans there are people with the behavioral trait of seeking power at any cost? Are you denying once such people get said power they will do whatever it takes to keep it going, including preserving the societal and political structures that maintain said situation even whilst telling everybody else "this is only temporary"? Are you denying that it's easier to capture power in that way in systems where its already concentrated in a single place which is not kept in check by independent entities which can overthrow it?

And I'm not even going it other human behavioral traits involved in things like groupthink and "yes men" and how such elements in human groups can pervert ever the most honest holders of power.

Battling against the expression "human nature" doesn't change the fact that these traits exists in many humans and the dynamics of their interaction with human social structures as shown again and again in millennia of History.

Surely the "capital investment" mixed in with the supplies should be accounted via depreciation rather than directly as an expense.