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Vicente
2011 Oct 20, 3:11pm
It's widely bandied about that Steve Jobs had Asperger's Syndrome. I suppose many people deep in technology are just a touch autistic, but Jobs could be remarkably self-centered. The "reality distortion field" he carried was a manifestation of it. If the GOP wants to own up to it's selfishness and lay claim to Steve Jobs, they are welcome to try. He was a Buddhist however and I don't think that would fly well with the Fundies.
uomo_senza_nome
2011 Oct 20, 3:29pm
"Jobs also criticized America's education system, saying it was "crippled by union work rules," noted Isaacson. "Until the teachers' unions were broken, there was almost no hope for education reform." Jobs proposed allowing principals to hire and fire teachers based on merit, that schools stay open until 6 p.m. and that they be open 11 months a year."
Usually socialists consider Sweden as the paradise. So consider this:
http://www.libera.fi/uploads/2011/10/Libera_The-Swedish-model.pdf
Since the beginning of the 1990s, Sweden has implemented a number of free
market reforms which, in some cases, even surpass the US system. School vouchers
were successfully introduced, creating competition within the frame of public
financing. Similar systems are increasingly being implemented in other public
programs as well, such as health care and elderly care.
if I remember correctly, Steve Jobs suggested something similar for public schools in US.
Weeding out inefficiencies is a good thing and healthy competition is an effective way of doing it, people fail to realize that.
Yes, "unnecessary costs" to build factories in the U.S.... like the minimum wage. Why build a factory here when you canhire FoxConn and pay the workers slave wages so that you can become a multi billionaire and live the high life?
Why bombard only him? Intel does it, every other large tech company does it. Labor cost is only one for establishing a factory. There are bureaucratic regulations, permits etc. to name a few.
If you want to complain about corporatism, you have picked the wrong guy. He's actually a productive head. Pick the bankers and financiers, they basically do nothing and earn rent through interest.
uomo_senza_nome
2011 Oct 20, 3:30pm
Steve Jobs was a well documented prick...
may be, but he was a damn successful entrepreneur. He knew what people wanted before they wanted it.
He was leaps and bounds ahead in creative product design and human interface.
Dan8267
2011 Oct 20, 4:26pm
No, Woz was the liberal. Steve Jobs was a well documented prick...
Totally agree. Woz was cool, and I say that as an avid PC person. Steve Jobs was a slimeball.
TechGromit
2011 Oct 21, 12:49am
No, Woz was the liberal. Steve Jobs was a well documented prick...
Totally agree. Woz was cool, and I say that as an avid PC person. Steve Jobs was a slimeball.
Fortunately it was just the right combination. Engineers at Xerox did WAY more innovation that Wozniak or Bill Gates ever did, but they had a bunch of stuffy suit morons as bosses that could not see a future in what there engineers had created. If had been someone like Jobs in change of Xerox at that time, Xerox would dominated the personal computer business today and Microsoft and Apple would be very minor competitors if they even still exist at all.
Gromit is right...
although I will say much of the whole industry is simply taking other peoples ideas or technology. Companies do not make the whole system. The chips (intel or amd) are from one, the network from another (verizon, at&t, comcast etc), the os from another (mac, windows, linux) and the " box" another (dell, toshiba, hp) and probably sold in another (amazon, best buy etc)
I think it would be going a bit far to say that he had aspergers..
We need changes in education. Much of what we base ours off of is the old farming system. That's why we have vacations in the summer and winter. Our crops needed to be rotated and in Asia that isn't nearly as common.
think about how much time is generally wasted in schools. The old system was 8 classes of 45 minutes. So with five minutes between them (at most) we are looking at 35 minutes each day of just walking around in the halls. That adds up to nearly three hours a week, 12 hours a month. 108 hours in a school year.
Factor in some using the rest rooms and lunch and you can see this really doesn't work well. If a school has a half day why bother coming in because 22 minutes really isn't that much at all.
We had some reforms in mass that changed it to 4 classes a day of 90 minute classes to only wasting 15 minutes a day..you can do more with 90 minutes..no more having to cut movies in two. No more inabilities to give a test that takes an hour. If someone is significantly late they only missed one class. Of course students that would normally wait it out got ticked off..
Vicente
2011 Oct 21, 2:32am
although I will say much of the whole industry is simply taking other peoples ideas or technology.
I like a shorter pithier version:
Innovation is a piss-poor substitute for INVENTION.
Engineers at Xerox did WAY more innovation that Wozniak or Bill Gates ever did, but they had a bunch of stuffy suit morons as bosses that could not see a future in what there engineers had created
Gary Kindall was way ahead of Gates, Apple and Xerox.
But faith gave him a bad hand, he could have made it as big as MS and Apple.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kildall
Kildall heard about the first commercially available microprocessor, the Intel 4004. He bought one of the processors and began writing experimental programs for it. To learn more about the processors, he worked at Intel as a consultant on his days off.
Kildall briefly returned to UW and finished his doctorate in computer science in 1972, then resumed teaching at NPS. He published a paper that introduced the theory of data-flow analysis used today in optimizing compilers,[4] and he continued to experiment with microcomputers and the emerging technology of floppy disks. Intel lent him systems using the 8008 and 8080 processors, and in 1973, he developed the first high-level programming language for microprocessors, called PL/M.[3] He created CP/M the same year to enable the 8080 to control a floppy drive, combining for the first time all the essential components of a computer at the microcomputer scale. He demonstrated CP/M to Intel, but Intel had little interest and chose to market PL/M instead.[3]
As an example, Jobs described the ease with which companies can build factories in China compared to the United States, where "regulations and unnecessary costs" make it difficult for them."
LOL! Jobs the lefts little darling telling Big O daddy, the most obvious he already heard. And the left always saying, those jobs are gone forever...
TechGromit
2011 Oct 21, 3:26am
Gary Kindall was way ahead of Gates, Apple and Xerox.
But faith gave him a bad hand, he could have made it as big as MS and Apple.
The computer field is full of enterprises that either had bad luck or were dealt a bad hand. Take Dan Bricklin for example, he developed a software program that was later developed into Lotus Notes. But at the time, software wasn't protected by copy right law, so he couldn't patent it. If he had been allowed to file a patent, he could have made billions in royalties.
Yes, he could of, Im aware of the guy.. certainly made my life as an accountant much easier.. I certainly pee'd in my pants when I used early spreadsheets/word processors..
Gary Kindall was way ahead of Gates, Apple and Xerox.
But faith gave him a bad hand, he could have made it as big as MS and Apple.
Wikipedia didn't get it all right. Gary Kildall was a really nice guy who believed strongly in software development being for the good of people. I met him at Comdex in the 80's and was very impressed.
It wasn't 86-dos that Gates bought from Tim Patterson to sell to ibm, it was qdos (quick and dirty dos) which was a clone of cpm for the 8086. There will never be an answer to the question of whether Patterson used cpm source code or not to create qdos. The only product gates had written was an very buggy version of basic for the altair. Qdos was pretty buggy too, it wasn't nearly as solid as cpm.
> Innovation is a piss-poor substitute for INVENTION.
I disagree. They are both necessary sides of an effort. Invention is making a round metal ball and a bowl, innovation is realizinig that together with a bit of grease they can make a ball bearing wheel assembly. Steve jobs was an amazing innovator because he was able to see relationships and bring ideas together in ways nobody else was able to see and push people to figure out how to make them financially viable.
Check out the story of how the first apple mouse was designed, it's a great story. Xerox had had a mouse working for ages before Jobs saw it, but he was the one to begin to realize what it's potential was and to push people to make one that didn't cost 150 bucks and lasted more than a week.
The iPhone is another great example. If you remember the speech from the first macworld where he announced it he came right out and said that the technology involved was nothing new, had been around for a long time. But apple was the first company to realize how to package it into this amazing new thing, and how to get companies to begin to support it... And it's no accident that now almost every phone out there is some form of a derivative of what apple launched, almost fully realized. Because they were able to see the various inventions that were available and innovate them into this amazing new thing.
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The iPhone is another great example. If you remember the speech from the first macworld where he announced it he came right out and said that the technology involved was nothing new, had been around for a long time. But apple was the first company to realize how to package it into this amazing new thing, and how to get companies to begin to support it... And it's no accident that now almost every phone out there is some form of a derivative of what apple launched, almost fully realized. Because they were able to see the various inventions that were available and innovate them into this amazing new thing.
Every phone? Most of mac os is unix based just like Android. The real apple OS died in 1998.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X
Apple tried a number of times to make a new OS...eventually they were going to buy out Be or Next...Next was founded by Jobs and Jobs came back so it was obvious. (Be was sold to Palm which was sold to HP)
What we have really done with technology is we just dumb it down. There is nothing wrong with having a GUI and all but what was once something serious isn't that much anymore. Jamming out to music is fine but no one really sends a thesus as a text message.
In a sense they kinda have to dumb it down and cheapen it to make it to a mass market. Certainly connections are much better. USB is easier to manage than serial ports. . Apple is to computers what AOL was to the internet or what McDonalds is to food.
Not sure how you mean this. By 'dumbing down' do mean 'making it useable'? The apparent simplicity is the mark of it's sophistication... I once customized the Mail app for my 80 year old grandfather and I was amazed at how simplified it could be for some one with zero knowledge of computers and still be completely useable for him. This effort is apparent right through the entire system, whe things can get a simple or as complex as you want it to be.
Linux, by comparison, is a nightmare. It's like a bunch of people got together and said "Computers are great, but I really like the way they worked in 1985!"
Anyway, not to debate the merits of alternate systems, but this innovation in the (aparent) simplicity of osx is another faucet of the innovation on top of invention that made jobs great.
So much for the common wisdom of everyone that Steve Jobs was a mega liberal...
Some highlights from a biography soon to be published about him:
"Jobs also criticized America's education system, saying it was "crippled by union work rules," noted Isaacson. "Until the teachers' unions were broken, there was almost no hope for education reform." Jobs proposed allowing principals to hire and fire teachers based on merit, that schools stay open until 6 p.m. and that they be open 11 months a year."
"You're headed for a one-term presidency," he told Obama at the start of their meeting, insisting that the administration needed to be more business-friendly. As an example, Jobs described the ease with which companies can build factories in China compared to the United States, where "regulations and unnecessary costs" make it difficult for them."
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/20/1028485/-Steve-Jobs:-Education-expert-Union-buster?via=siderecent
Yes, "unnecessary costs" to build factories in the U.S.... like the minimum wage. Why build a factory here when you canhire FoxConn and pay the workers slave wages so that you can become a multi billionaire and live the high life?
#politics