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There is clearly a lot of research going on, with results published, as in Raja's Optimal bandwidth utilization in wireless token ring networks released earlier this year. However, 1998 was the last big year for user's guides, which indicates that this technology has long since fallen from the mainstream and now survives only in academia.

If the NSA can get usable info from blinking LEDs, what are the security risks of this scultpure? Nearly everyone knows that radio communications can be freely spied upon, we've all seen scanners that let you listen in to police band radio, but other methods of intercepting communications rarely come to the mind of Joe Average. TEMPEST and NONSTOP attacks have been well-researched for decades, but the closest they've gotten to general public knowledge is Neal Stephenson's use of the concept in Cryptonomicon .

The quote is taken entirely out of context

If one saw, in real life, a beautiful woman wearing an exquisite evening gown, with a cold sore on her lips, the blemish would mean nothing but a minor affliction and one would ignore it. But a painting of such a woman would be a corrupt, obscenely vicious attack on man, on beauty, on all values -- and one would experience a feeling of immense disgust and indignation at the artist. (There are also those who would feel something like approval and who would belong to the same moral category as the artist)

Since man lives by reshaping his physical background to serve his purpose, since he must first define and then create his values -- a rational man needs a concretized projection of these values, an image in whose likeness he will reshape the world and himself. Art gives him that image; it gives him the experience of seeing the full, immediate, concrete reality of his distant goals.

Art is a selective recreation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgements.

Sure, having an exoskeleton that makes you stronger will continue to have utility, but will we really need bionics in, say, 20 years if new biological eyes or arms or legs can be grown using a person's own DNA?

Many futurists foresee humanity leaving behind biology and joining with hardware and machine bodies. That's the vision of the future in Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines. Silicon is growing at such an exponential rate that if trends continue there will be no need to continue with all these chemical solutions.

One interesting question raised by this story is what world religions will think of these enhancements. Orson Scott Card conjectured in Speaker for the Dead that the Catholic Church would condemn what is essentially a cell phone/PDA, which is funny nowadays when so many people are walking around with a Blackberry and Nokia's never faced a sectarian boycott.

Sure, having an exoskeleton that makes you stronger will continue to have utility, but will we really need bionics in, say, 20 years if new biological eyes or arms or legs can be grown using a person's own DNA?

Many futurists foresee humanity leaving behind biology and joining with hardware and machine bodies. That's the vision of the future in Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines. Silicon is growing at such an exponential rate that if trends continue there will be no need to continue with all these chemical solutions.

One interesting question raised by this story is what world religions will think of these enhancements. Orson Scott Card conjectured in Speaker for the Dead that the Catholic Church would condemn what is essentially a cell phone/PDA, which is funny nowadays when so many people are walking around with a Blackberry and Nokia's never faced a sectarian boycott.

"please tell us what the difference was"

http://www.space.com/reference/venus/overview.html

Rotation period: 243 days, retrograde (this is the length of Venus' "day," the time it takes to spin on its axis). Venus' day is longer than its year, and its rotation is retrograde, meaning it spins on its axis in a direction opposite its orbit around the sun.

Water that sits in the sun for over 2,800 continuous hours tends to evaporate.

THE book on Venus: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0816518300/qid=11 45071373

This article reminded me of a book that caught my attention in a bookstore quite some time ago, entitled The Customer Comes Second - I didn't get a chance to read it at the time, but the premise of the book seems to be pretty straightforward: take good care of your employees, and your employees will take good care of your customers.

Definitely an important idea for managers to learn. The American standard seems to be 'force all that you can out of your employees for the best interests of management', so this book was definitely an interesting sight to behold.

If you're going to start dropping names in this thread, you really ought to include Ricardo Semler. His books promote a similar management style (unmanagement style?).

Personally, I find it all very appealing, but hard to see how any of its applicable if it doesn't come from the absolute top of the management pyramid. I also share the concern that it's a model based on skimming the best employees and is bound to prove itself less effective if it becomes more widespread.

I think you got that from Julian Simon's The Ultimate Resource. A book that changed my views and attitudes about life. A must read, IMO.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691003815/sr=8-1 /qid=1145042858/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-1225307-3951228?_ encoding=UTF8

The world certainly isn't as bad as we read about. The ultimate resource is human being's ingenuity and ability to solve problems to make our lives better.

And yes, precisely BECAUSE the hardware is so expensive.

FWIW, I priced a Mac Mini at Fry's Electronics, trying to give myself an excuse to get one:

Mac Mini 1.5 GHz/512MB/60GB HD/CD-RW|DVD-ROM Combo Drive) (1.5 GHz? Huh?) - $600
Logitech Cordless MX Duo - $70
Viewsonic 19" LCD Monitor - $290

Total Price for new Mac Mini system - $960 base.

Or I can get a new Acer or similar PC system with all the bells and whistles, running a Dual-Core 64-bit AMD processor at 3.2 GHz, a Gig of memory, a 300 GB HD, for about $700 at my local Impress Computer store. Since I don't like XP, I can reformat the drive and load Fedora or Ubuntu or whatever, and have a hell of a workstation, every bit as stable as MacOS X, plus a huge selection of productivity software, for about two-thirds the price. And I'm not even getting into how much more powerful the Acer system is, the far larger (and faster) hard-drive, the fact that it includes a DVD-R/W drive, etc.

Sorry, but you Mac entusiasts need to cotton to the fact that your choice of computer is more akin to your choice of hobby than a practical decision.

And yes, precisely BECAUSE the hardware is so expensive.

FWIW, I priced a Mac Mini at Fry's Electronics, trying to give myself an excuse to get one:

Mac Mini 1.5 GHz/512MB/60GB HD/CD-RW|DVD-ROM Combo Drive) (1.5 GHz? Huh?) - $600
Logitech Cordless MX Duo - $70
Viewsonic 19" LCD Monitor - $290

Total Price for new Mac Mini system - $960 base.

Or I can get a new Acer or similar PC system with all the bells and whistles, running a Dual-Core 64-bit AMD processor at 3.2 GHz, a Gig of memory, a 300 GB HD, for about $700 at my local Impress Computer store. Since I don't like XP, I can reformat the drive and load Fedora or Ubuntu or whatever, and have a hell of a workstation, every bit as stable as MacOS X, plus a huge selection of productivity software, for about two-thirds the price. And I'm not even getting into how much more powerful the Acer system is, the far larger (and faster) hard-drive, the fact that it includes a DVD-R/W drive, etc.

Sorry, but you Mac entusiasts need to cotton to the fact that your choice of computer is more akin to your choice of hobby than a practical decision.

LOL!! Sorry, I was trying to squeeze in a posting between meetings and didn't preview. I left out a pretty important word after BILLION -- "MORE". Note to self: Must. Slow. Down.

The book is "The Population Bomb (1968)" by Paul Ehrlich.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568495870/103-32 56426-3102215?v=glance&n=283155

Ehrlich's prediction was that the world population would expand by a billion in the coming decade and hundreds of millions would starve to death in the 70's and 80s because humanity would outstrip our ability to support the population. Granted, over the past thirty years there have been famines in Socialist and Muslims ruled countries (Eithiopia, North Korea, China, etc.) but those are self-imposed choices made by governments that choose military expenditures over civilian comfort and quality of life. It's not due to technial inability to produce, as Ehrlich claimed would be the case.

Imagine a new line of German schnaps being promoted with those crossed symbolic fasces. It would -- understandibly -- cause an outrage.

Understandably. And stupidly. The delusional mass hysteria facing the swastika (and indeed all things supposedly-Nazi) is one of the more disheartening symptoms of the prevailing hypocrisy and idiocy of the hoi polloi in western society.

But new Russian vodkas continue to proudly display the murderous Red Star, and the above mentioned tools.

What about whiskies with American flags on them, then?

> I can't say that I've *ever* seen PHP or Perl that looked like someone put some thought into it.

I think you should pay a visit to the CPAN. It's 4G+ of perl modules that are well documented, fully unit-tested, and largely platform independent. I've seen some bad web applications in my time (all PHP incidentally), but there are plenty of excellent perl programmers writing excellent perl code.

If you're interested in learning to write good Perl, I suggest you take a look at Damian Conway's book, "Perl Best Practices".

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596001738/102-74 64862-7276945?v=glance&n=283155

(And of course read Perl's excellent Fine Manual.)

Bottom line -- troubleshooting a Windows machine is largely a guessing game. Occassionally you might get lucky and have an easy issue that can be solved within a few guesses. Most of the time, I'm left scratching my head.

Windows is very deterministic and easy to troubleshoot if you take the time to learn. It has distinct startup and shutdown procedures, driver installation, file system behavior, thread and process management, etc. These are all publicly documented, if you care to learn about them. Buy a copy of Windows Internals and you'll be amazed at what you didn't know. There are tools and utilities to automate all kinds of useful activities from the command-line, and if these tools don't exist, the APIs are very well documented on MSDN for how to create them.

Things taken for granted on Linux like verbose debug information, verbose startup/shutdown (w/logging)

Ever heard of that management console snap-in called Event Viewer? You might want to look into that. And as for debugging applications or even kernel-mode device drivers, Windows has some of the best freely available debugging facilities of any platform.

...ability to checksum the installed binaries to verify they haven't been tampered with

Read about Windows System File Protection. Run "sfc.exe /scannow" to validate your system files on XP/2k3. It uses hashes, not checksums.

...ability to view *all* running processes

Task manager? Tlist.exe?

It's pretty clear that you don't know much about Windows, which seems to be a common thread here on Slashdot. You'd rather trash Windows than spend the time to learn about what you don't know. It's easier to write off Windows as "unexplainable" just because you are too lazy to look behind the GUI.

However, in the book FAB by Neil Gershefeld, there is described an interesting "Hello World" circuit, which is supposedly open-sourced in some manner by (MIT Media Lab?) - that uses a 2 or 3 wire physical layer protocol, coupled with a low-speed packet protocol, based on TCP, but in a much simpler format (similar to morse code) - it was supposedly dubbed "Internet0" or some weirdness. HERE IT IS - anyhow, I am pretty sure that is it - if not, it is probably located somewhere else in the FABLAB wiki. Also, look at this too...

a fair description of "Gitmo" could be that it's "one of the worst prisons in the world"

You sure do live in a fantasy world. Why don't you go tour one of the many prisons in Iran that "don't exist" according to the government. These prisons are set up to hold religious criminals. That is people who do not profess to follow Allah. Personal accounts of people have been told in books about the truly harsh and unfair treatment prisoners get there. Most of the people in these prisons are eventually executed! You can read all about it in this book. Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran and in this book Imprisoned in Iran

a fair description of "Gitmo" could be that it's "one of the worst prisons in the world"

You sure do live in a fantasy world. Why don't you go tour one of the many prisons in Iran that "don't exist" according to the government. These prisons are set up to hold religious criminals. That is people who do not profess to follow Allah. Personal accounts of people have been told in books about the truly harsh and unfair treatment prisoners get there. Most of the people in these prisons are eventually executed! You can read all about it in this book. Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran and in this book Imprisoned in Iran

The rules were unworkable: DO NOT TAKE YOUR WORK HOME.

Ask, and you shall know. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/ 0812976568/ref=cm_rev_sort/002-5308782-4315216?cus tomer-reviews.sort_by=-HelpfulVotes&x=2&y=18&s=boo ks

Sounds like imeem

Or like FOAF, the XML (RDF) dialect for describing social networks that really shows the power of Semantic Web concepts. FOAFNaut is a good example of how by combining these simple RDF descriptions with visualization technologies, one can easily create a easily and pleasantly navigable source of information. (There's some other cool examples in Springer-Verlag's Visualising the Semantic Web ). FOAF files are a cinch to create--there's already a couple of user-friendly generators--and I have no idea why the concept hasn't caught on. Well, Orkut, MySpace, and Friendster obviously won't export FOAF files so they can lock users in.

Is MS shooting itself in the foot? Or merely trying to maximize revenue?

If MS can detect that your Vista is pirated, why not just shut down the Vista altogether? Instead they're just turning off eye candy.

MS wants money, but on the other hand it must realize that a user on a pirated Vista is better than a user on Linux.

From what I know, doesn't most of Microsoft's OS revenue come from stronghold tactics by putting OEM licensed copies on new computers whether the customer wants the software or not?

I mean according to amazon http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/6948 86/ref=br_bx_c_2_2/103-7791759-4055058

Windows costs between $100 to $300 dollars, where the upper end of that is the entry price for computers today that comes with Windows already "legal" and good with it.

  At the retail price level, who could justify spending that much money for something that already comes with a computer?

It's good to see that Zimmerman believes strongly in making the source code available. When PGP was first released, Zimmerman disseminated the source as widely as possible, even having it printed and bound. One of the reasons PGP went downhill after it was taken over by a large corporation was the decision to give customers a security product with no way of knowing it was secure.

CH4 + O2 + Energy --> CH3 + H02 (Chain initiation)

(I'll skip the rest of heavy organic chemistry lecture. The short form is here but be ready to consult an organic chemistry and and a combustion theory book for the nitty gritty details.)

From there you have a series of other chemical reactions where energy is released as the compounds break down into CO2 and H20 (Carbon Dioxide and Water).

The amount of energy released is fixed by the amount of methane burned. (I am assuming an idealized stoichiometric reaction with no left overs or pollutants) The method of capturing and using the energy released is what is important.

If you burn the fuel you get: heat and pressure. From there you can use it to generate steam power, electrical power, etc etc etc. The current efficiencies on gasoline engines (in your car) is running around 30%. Most of the waste energy goes out the tail pipe or the radiator. If you are planning on producing electrical energy or driving a vehicle from the power of the engine, you also have to start considering drive train losses.

In a fuel cell: energy is provided to strip chemical bonds that hold methane together, then hydrogen is seperated and then allowed to recombine with the oxygen to make water, the carbon forms carbon dioxide. The second two reactions produce energy. The trick to the fuel cell is that less of the energy is wasted in lost heat, pressure, etc. Efficiencies in fuel cells easily run over forty percent, are quieter and have less drive train losses. The electrical power drives the motor directly with no transmission or gear losses.

The ugly part is that as long as the transportation needs to be privately owned, where it goes is dependent on market forces. Acording to a book I once read, light rail becomes economical with population densities greater than row-houses. IIRC, it has to do with the distance that people are willing to walk to the transit station. And you need that population density at every place that you put a station, making it infeasible for all but the largest cities.

However, if you allow the rail system to be publically funded, you can make rail/subway/hovertrain possible in less dense areas. The trick is that the environmental benefit is still dramatically less in such cities as it would be in the larger ones.

"which is why i've decided to leave it and go into film and advertising."

That's why I went into these kind of games. A lot less pressure with all the fun.

Why does he think a beta OS is going to be any more secure than 'legacy' OSes?

Easy, because he is an average user, not a power user or programmer etc. People think newer is better.

For example I have a friend who insisted I upgrade her computer to XP from win2k. Instead of just doing that I asked her why. The response: "It'll be faster." I querried some more and the general idea for her was, "It's newer so it should run better."

It took me half an hour to explain that it wouldn't be faster, and if there wasn't some feature in XP she desperately needed then she should not bother "upgrading" as it would most likely feel slower. (removing spyware etc would though :P)

You can't blame people for thinking that though, it's like people who turn the stove upto the top setting to heat it up "quicker", they don't understand the mechanics behind it and their assumptions are misguided (The book, "Design of everyday things" has some good examples of this. Excellent book btw.)

* Great media player capabilities: Though it won't play DRMed content, it plays standard Divx and MP3s with free software from the Web. (The video player software that came with it was some annoying proprietary thing. The MP3 player was fine, but the free media player I got plays OGGs too.) Battery life can be a problem with long movies, but not for episodes of The Venture Brothers, well if only there were some way to get episodes of that show in DiVX format, I mean. (Oh, The Simpsons, The Tick, GitS: SAC , Paranoia Agent Futurama whatever turns you on... live action TV too, an hour is no problem.)

* Great gaming capabilities: I mean it has a touch screen and an analogue stick... but unfortunately not so much commercial software. Stuntcar Extreme which came with it, is great for showing off it's 3D graphics, rumble feature, and smooth controls using the analogue stick and buttons. For a game that uses the touch screen, the Warfare Inc. demo is kind of fun, and it comes with a version of Solitaire. Homebrew has been sort of hit or miss for me. I like Beats of Rage, but most of the other stuff I tried to install required a memory wipe.

* All the note taking, life organizing, alarm clock type features you would want. Oh, and I downloaded a Tone Dialer for it that works but you have to get the speaker of the Zodiac really close to the reciever.

Annoyingly, the Tapwave Zodiac failed marketwise, I'm not sure why. I'm guessing they had too much debt and needed to hit it big right away. Or perhaps it was simply to beautiful for this world.

Anyway, buy a Tapwave Zodiac! It will make your life better! Chicks dig them... well, ok not all... maybe not even most, but I'm sure some do. Besides it's cheaper than a porsche!

Here, read the book that my dad wrote on the subject..

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0780334493/ref=ed _oe_h/002-2916674-4777608?_encoding=UTF8

He's been in this field for 25+ years, he tells me all the time about how it's not ready for prime time yet..

Corporate speak is basically the same type of "Rah-Rah" speech you here at Amway/Mary Kay/etc conventions. It's just for pumping up peoples emotions rather than conveying useful information.

I'm not a big fan of corporatespeak or rah-rah bullshit, but a lot of company problems aren't problems of lack of information. A lot of human communication isn't about facts; it's about moods, motivation, and primate dominance dynamics. The book Chimpanzee Politics is a great way for geeks to understand what managers seem to spend a disproportionate amount of their time on.

Inside "Report from IRON MOUNTAIN ON THE POSSIBILITY AND DESIRABILITY OF PEACE" the world as we know it is divided up into 10 separate regions, see pictures of that here : 10-regions-1.png and 10-regions-2.png The world maps are from the COR, Club of Rome, and introduced in 1973. So this dividing up of the world is a Global Governance thing carried out by the CFR (Council on Foreign Relations), TC (Trilateral Commission), Bilderberg, Committee of 300 you name it. In a recent update of this map, Mexico was moved from region 6 to region 1. I really wonder now if DVD's officialy purchased in Mexico have their region codes moved from 6 to 1 also.

If you want to know more see :

Iron Mountain 1
Iron Mountain 2
Iron Mountain 3

Allthough all OFFICIAL media outlets and payed for stooges declare(d) "Iron Mountain" to be a Hoax, go find out for yourselves if its true. After seeing the Global Agenda being laid out for us day by day, I say its NOT a Hoax.

Robert M. Stockmann

I remember this quote (with "shotgun" not "machine gun") from Cardinal of the Kremlin by Tom Clancy.

Shall we ban the book along with the video game?

Perhaps the movie should be first?

Shall we ban the book along with the video game?

Perhaps the movie should be first?

Shall we ban the book along with the video game?

Perhaps the movie should be first?

You Mac Boys tend to be light on your feet so these should be right up your alley (pun intended)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00002S8OA/ref=cm _lm_fullview_prod_3/103-9330228-0652658?_encoding= UTF8&v=glance&n=229534

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005KG63/ref=cm _lm_fullview_prod_17/103-9330228-0652658?_encoding =UTF8&v=glance&n=229534

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 068VBF/ref=cm_lm_fullview_prod_4/103-9330228-06526 58?_encoding=UTF8&v=glance

You Mac Boys tend to be light on your feet so these should be right up your alley (pun intended)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00002S8OA/ref=cm _lm_fullview_prod_3/103-9330228-0652658?_encoding= UTF8&v=glance&n=229534

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005KG63/ref=cm _lm_fullview_prod_17/103-9330228-0652658?_encoding =UTF8&v=glance&n=229534

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 068VBF/ref=cm_lm_fullview_prod_4/103-9330228-06526 58?_encoding=UTF8&v=glance

You Mac Boys tend to be light on your feet so these should be right up your alley (pun intended)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00002S8OA/ref=cm _lm_fullview_prod_3/103-9330228-0652658?_encoding= UTF8&v=glance&n=229534

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005KG63/ref=cm _lm_fullview_prod_17/103-9330228-0652658?_encoding =UTF8&v=glance&n=229534

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 068VBF/ref=cm_lm_fullview_prod_4/103-9330228-06526 58?_encoding=UTF8&v=glance

What the replies here (and I think the presentation to some extent) have missed is that SMM isn't ring 0, it's ring -1. In SMM you can do things that the processor hardware normally prevents, like creating invalid/illogical page table entries. Since SMM bypasses any hardware-enforced checks, you can set the processor up to do... surprising things. This security risk was AFAIK first discussed in http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0387953876/sr=8-1 /qid=1144813279/ref=sr_1_1/102-2091912-1657751?_en coding=UTF8

Law 4
Always Say Less than Necessary

Law 9
Win through your Actions, Never through Argument

More laws and their details can be found here and here. .

He's not wrong. Hitler had a big faith in that he would get yet another fantastic super weapon that would turn the tide of war. Now, this didn't happen... at least not in time. I recommend you to read Germany's Secret Weapons in World War II . It gives you an insight into the mindset of Hitler and you also get to see all the fantastic weapons the Germans developed (many of which the allies developed further after the war with the help of captured German scientists). Germany and the allies had two different approaches to building weapons... Germany went for quality, the allies went for quantity.

JAVA TECHNOLOGY IS NOT FAULT TOLERANT AND IS NOT DESIGNED, MANUFACTURED, OR INTENDED FOR USE OR RESALE AS ON-LINE CONTROL EQUIPMENT IN HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS REQUIRING FAIL-SAFE PERFORMANCE, SUCH AS IN THE OPERATION OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES, AIRCRAFT NAVIGATION OR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL, DIRECT LIFE SUPPORT MACHINES, OR WEAPONS SYSTEMS, IN WHICH THE FAILURE OF JAVA TECHNOLOGY COULD LEAD DIRECTLY TO DEATH, PERSONAL INJURY, OR SEVERE PHYSICAL OR ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE.

Next time you're in the aisles of your favorite bookstore, take a peek at some of the fiction aimed towards women. You know the type I'm talking about.

Now take a look at a book aimed more at a male audience.

Which one of these has the lurid sex scenes, do ya figure?

I loaned LoTR to my wife. After reading part of it, she stopped. Why? No sex. If she can't read a classic with a little sex in it, she'd just as soon read something cheesy with a lot of sex in it.

Or compare the typical cheesy male-targeted TV series' content to something that draws a lot more women.

If you want more women, you need more romance. And by "romance," I mean "sex."

This whole "no sex in entertainment" thing is really a male chauvinist guy thing.

Next time you're in the aisles of your favorite bookstore, take a peek at some of the fiction aimed towards women. You know the type I'm talking about.

Now take a look at a book aimed more at a male audience.

Which one of these has the lurid sex scenes, do ya figure?

I loaned LoTR to my wife. After reading part of it, she stopped. Why? No sex. If she can't read a classic with a little sex in it, she'd just as soon read something cheesy with a lot of sex in it.

Or compare the typical cheesy male-targeted TV series' content to something that draws a lot more women.

If you want more women, you need more romance. And by "romance," I mean "sex."

This whole "no sex in entertainment" thing is really a male chauvinist guy thing.

OK, if we're going to post bits of text from other sites, lets post the whole thing.

It is possible that between Woz, Jobs, and Bushnell, somebody isn't remembering it right. It was decades ago, after all.

Even if Jobs screwed over Woz, they were kids. I remember when I was that age, I did a few things that I am ashamed of today, some of them having to do with money. And, what I did back then has nothing to do with the kind of person I am today or have been for the past 15 years.

In other words, as you grow old you do in fact realize that people change. People can and do change.

Woz's Response To Jobs Question:

Q From e-mail:
I was in Barnes & Noble last night and stumbled onto a book by Gil Amelio which detailed his "500 days at Apple." I think his book was called "On the Firing Line." Anyway, given my interest in reading your comments in the wake of "Pirates," I looked up references to you. In one, he recounts your explanation of the Woz/Jobs friendship rift. He asserts that you told him that way back in the 70s, before the Apple I, you were working on something for Atari with Jobs. You did all of the work, and you and Jobs were supposed to get $1000. When you produced the product, Jobs gave it to Atari and came back to you with $300, saying all he got from them was $600. You didn't find out until the mid-eighties that Jobs actually did get $1000, and he ripped you off. Can you confirm this story?

WOZ:
I don't like to stir up old things that carry a negative note, but Steve was actually paid more like $3000 or $5000 or something. Nolan Bushnell, who paid him, gave the amount in a recent book, "Silicon Valley Guys." I was actually sort of thankful that Gil got it wrong, because it didn't sound as attrocious as it really was.

To clarify, this happened before Apple, when Steve and I were best friends with little to our names. Steve said we'd split it 50/50. If he'd just said that I could have $50 for doing it I would have done it anyway for the fun and honor of designing an arcade game.

You can see why I cried deeply when I found out the truth. I get hurt and cry very easily when people don't treat others well, or when the "right" thing isn't happening. Also, Steve doesn't remember the incident this way, so consider another possibility: that those saying the payment was large could be remembering it incorrectly. This is old stuff, and it's best not to use it as an indicator of Steve today.

OK, if we're going to post bits of text from other sites, lets post the whole thing.

It is possible that between Woz, Jobs, and Bushnell, somebody isn't remembering it right. It was decades ago, after all.

Even if Jobs screwed over Woz, they were kids. I remember when I was that age, I did a few things that I am ashamed of today, some of them having to do with money. And, what I did back then has nothing to do with the kind of person I am today or have been for the past 15 years.

In other words, as you grow old you do in fact realize that people change. People can and do change.

Woz's Response To Jobs Question:

Q From e-mail:
I was in Barnes & Noble last night and stumbled onto a book by Gil Amelio which detailed his "500 days at Apple." I think his book was called "On the Firing Line." Anyway, given my interest in reading your comments in the wake of "Pirates," I looked up references to you. In one, he recounts your explanation of the Woz/Jobs friendship rift. He asserts that you told him that way back in the 70s, before the Apple I, you were working on something for Atari with Jobs. You did all of the work, and you and Jobs were supposed to get $1000. When you produced the product, Jobs gave it to Atari and came back to you with $300, saying all he got from them was $600. You didn't find out until the mid-eighties that Jobs actually did get $1000, and he ripped you off. Can you confirm this story?

WOZ:
I don't like to stir up old things that carry a negative note, but Steve was actually paid more like $3000 or $5000 or something. Nolan Bushnell, who paid him, gave the amount in a recent book, "Silicon Valley Guys." I was actually sort of thankful that Gil got it wrong, because it didn't sound as attrocious as it really was.

To clarify, this happened before Apple, when Steve and I were best friends with little to our names. Steve said we'd split it 50/50. If he'd just said that I could have $50 for doing it I would have done it anyway for the fun and honor of designing an arcade game.

You can see why I cried deeply when I found out the truth. I get hurt and cry very easily when people don't treat others well, or when the "right" thing isn't happening. Also, Steve doesn't remember the incident this way, so consider another possibility: that those saying the payment was large could be remembering it incorrectly. This is old stuff, and it's best not to use it as an indicator of Steve today.

OK, if we're going to post bits of text from other sites, lets post the whole thing.

It is possible that between Woz, Jobs, and Bushnell, somebody isn't remembering it right. It was decades ago, after all.

Even if Jobs screwed over Woz, they were kids. I remember when I was that age, I did a few things that I am ashamed of today, some of them having to do with money. And, what I did back then has nothing to do with the kind of person I am today or have been for the past 15 years.

In other words, as you grow old you do in fact realize that people change. People can and do change.

Woz's Response To Jobs Question:

Q From e-mail:
I was in Barnes & Noble last night and stumbled onto a book by Gil Amelio which detailed his "500 days at Apple." I think his book was called "On the Firing Line." Anyway, given my interest in reading your comments in the wake of "Pirates," I looked up references to you. In one, he recounts your explanation of the Woz/Jobs friendship rift. He asserts that you told him that way back in the 70s, before the Apple I, you were working on something for Atari with Jobs. You did all of the work, and you and Jobs were supposed to get $1000. When you produced the product, Jobs gave it to Atari and came back to you with $300, saying all he got from them was $600. You didn't find out until the mid-eighties that Jobs actually did get $1000, and he ripped you off. Can you confirm this story?

WOZ:
I don't like to stir up old things that carry a negative note, but Steve was actually paid more like $3000 or $5000 or something. Nolan Bushnell, who paid him, gave the amount in a recent book, "Silicon Valley Guys." I was actually sort of thankful that Gil got it wrong, because it didn't sound as attrocious as it really was.

To clarify, this happened before Apple, when Steve and I were best friends with little to our names. Steve said we'd split it 50/50. If he'd just said that I could have $50 for doing it I would have done it anyway for the fun and honor of designing an arcade game.

You can see why I cried deeply when I found out the truth. I get hurt and cry very easily when people don't treat others well, or when the "right" thing isn't happening. Also, Steve doesn't remember the incident this way, so consider another possibility: that those saying the payment was large could be remembering it incorrectly. This is old stuff, and it's best not to use it as an indicator of Steve today.

Unfortunately, companies don't make the rules here. Consumers do. And customers in most of provincial America are drawn to Wal-Mart for its cheap prices and wide selection, so they through their own buying preferences have made Wal-Mart the force it is. The problems of Wal-Mart are well-known, see Fishman's The Wal-Mart Effect (Penguin, 2006), and any man on the street has seen news reports about how Wal-Mart hurts traditional business, ultimately limits choice in spite of the large amount of crap inside their stores, and pays their workers slave wages. Yet, consumers keep buying from them, with seemingly no slowdown.

These quality companies you mention can't effect any change until they manage to penetrate the heart of America and get the average joe to wake up.

Walmart is destroying America. They affect everything in our life, but don't you dare complain about them... they are very litigious. Plus, they have most of the American population eating from their hand. Oh well, come on everyone, it's a race to the bottom!