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That is why I am in MSCI, Management Science and Info Tech. I was CS for 3 years. I will probably finish the CS minor, since I am only 6 hours from it, but I really can't believe all the stuff I was missing out on in CS, wasting my time with math and programming. I am not bad at math, and got A's in calculus, and went all the way to multivariable calc, then I realized that the things that were important to me were not the things I was learning.

Now I am learning things that will matter, like accounting, advanced statistics, etc. I also work as an IS manager, at a medium sized company. (If we eliminate many more people through technology, we won't be medium sized anymore.)

The point is, do you want to be a Knuth, or a Bill Gates? I want to retire young, so you know what my answer is. (Can anyone say Woz? :)
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Linux supports every damn appliances on the market. You name it, if it has a processor, Linux runs on it. This is news only insofar as the first Itanium boxes MUST have Linux to run, but you know being the first to the market does NOT mean you will keep that market. Just ask Woz how powerful the company he co-founded became.

How ironic. Today Xerox was trading at 6 dollars all time low, and Xerox was forced to sell part of it to a Japanese company. Does this sound like "The Theives won the war?"

For the eighteen-bazillionth time, Apple didn't just come in and start stealing ideas from clueless Xerox, as "Pirates of Silicon Valley" depicts. Jobs gave Xerox a whole bunch of Apple stock, and more importantly, Xerox understood Apple's intent. They may have not known how popular this stuff would be, but they knew the deal. I believe Woz talks about this on his site.

- Scott
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Scott Stevenson

Steve Jobs made the case to Xerox PARC execs directly that they had great technology but that Apple knew how to make it affordable enough to change the world. This was very open. In the end, Xerox got a large block of Apple stock for sharing the technology. That's not stealing outright.

---http://woz.org/letters/pirates/12.html

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Wow, that's cool. I didn't know that Apple gave Xerox stock. I understood that Xerox (this was at the PARC center, I know it's redundant, it just sounds stupid otherwise) was letting pretty much anyone use what they made (this is comming from the biography on Steve Jobs, I forget which one)

You'll have to do a bit of searching, but if I remember correctly, Steve Wozniak discusses this at his site -- http://woz.org. He started getting a lot of emails when Pirates aired, and I believe he covered this topic in at least one email that was posted to the site.

- Scott

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Scott Stevenson

Woz has been one of my heros ever since I got hooked on the Apple back when the Apple II was new. I checked out his web page and saw a link to another one of my heros from that era. John Draper, aka Captain Crunch, worked with Woz off and on. John designed the first modem for the apple. He had to redo it because Woz thought there might be some legal problems with the blue box built into it. Woz hosts Capn' Crunch's web site here . The thing I think is really cool is another hero of mine is John's roommate, Richard Cheshire, aka Cheshire Catalyst, one of the early phone phreaks and editor of TAP magazine. Chesh. has his web page here .

If you want to see his comments on this, you can check it out on his website here.

Read the comments on his front page as he introduces MacSlash

That picture is most definitely NOT Woz. In fact, if you go to Woz's site you'll see that woz speaks about that drapery right on the main page. Turns out, that the photograph is actually someone else famous who just happens to look like Woz. Check out his site to find out who. Think differnt, like film directors, especially different film directors.
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Click here for the WozCam

To hell with Jim Clark, Marc Andreeson, McNealy and Pierre OmiDyar. Woz was and is the root of the biggest technology revolution since the industrial age.

And he's maintained the same friendly, geeky, let's talk-shop attitude the whole way. Go take a look at http://woz.org/ and tell me if you think Bill or Steve or any of the other big 'revolutionaries' would take such appreciation of their fans and users as The Woz.

Congratulations!
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icq:2057699
seumas.com

http://www.woz.org
treke

I remember reading on Steve Wozniak's page that Zerox got paid plenty by Apple to be able to use its GUI technology.

('Course Microsoft never paid anybody.)

See, the Macintosh team (at least one of them) had seen one of Xerox's systems at PARC back in the late 70s/early 80s. And had _blatantly_ ripped off the UI. In fact, if you look at the 2-color System 1-6 GUI, it's the same (and I mean _identical_) as what Xerox had put together.

Exactly none of that is true.

Apple hired engineers from Xerox PARC.

Apple's design team visited PARC and PARC's team showed them what they were doing. PARC was a research lab, and Steve Jobs pitched them the idea that Apple was the perfect company to implement their ideas and take them to the public. There was no misunderstanding on either side about this.

Apple signed an agreement with Xerox, giving them stock worth millions of dollars, to be able to use some ideas from PARC.

And Apple extended the desktop metaphor way beyond what Xerox had done. The PARC had some innovative ideas but the Macintosh was much more usable and brought the whole concept together.

If you'd like to learn more about this myth you're propagating, read MacKiDo or SteveWozniak on the subject. Or just read some thoughts of Jef Raskin:

My primary role in this matter was to create the Macintosh project. I named it for my favorite kind of eatin' apple...

My thesis in Computer Science, published in 1967, argued that computers should be all-graphic, that we should eliminate character generators and create characters graphically and in various fonts, that what you see on the screen should be what you get ...

By the way, the name of my thesis was the "Quick-Draw Graphics System", which became the name of (and part of the inspiration for) Atkinson's graphics package for the Mac.

Thus Horn is more correct than he knew when he wrote that the world has generally overestimated the influence of PARC on the Mac...

Jamie McCarthy

Do we need to go through this again? I can excuse this to an extent because it's common knowledge, but I always see a knee-jerk reaction whenever Apple does something not-so-nice: "They stole their GUI from Xerox PARC."

No, they didn't.

From http://www.woz.org/woz/presponses/ commets24.html And The Woz Spaketh:

Q from E-mail:

Woz, Did you feel wrong stealing outright from Xerox, and what did you think when Microsoft stole from Apple? Do you think Microsoft has a monopoly on the computer industry? Plan on going back to Apple? Also, can you point out more of the minor flaws in the movie? Thanks, David

WOZ:

Steve Jobs made the case to Xerox PARC execs directly that they had great technology but that Apple knew how to make it affordable enough to change the world. This was very open. In the end, Xerox got a large block of Apple stock for sharing the technology. That's not stealing outright.

Apple didn't get any stock from Microsoft. Nor was Apple dealt with openly in this area by Microsoft.

Usually when attempting to steal something, one neither enters negotions nor pays for it with stock that went through the roof shortly after the deal was completed.

I nominate Woz's (and to a much lesser degree, Jobs') Blue Box. The full account is detailed by Woz at his web site under the "Answers to letters" or something like that, but in a nutshell: Woz and Jobs managed to get into Stanford Linear Accelerator's library. While rummaging around, they found an AT&T technical manual about the phone system. Woz then took the info and made a digital device that could trick the telco's hardware into giving away free phone calls. As I understand it, they actually managed to get the circuit boards manufactured, they sold so many around college. The previous methods of phone hacking (phreaking) involved using ad hoc devices like whistles from Captain Crunch boxes.

The legend of Woz coming up with the floppy controller for the Apple II on a napkin, and implementing it in an insanely short amount of time is definitly a legendary hack.

Hell, for that matter, the Apple II entirely was a hack. Name another commercial PC which was designed by one person. And, I believe, he wrote the first OS for it, to boot.

Woz hasn't been at Apple for a long time.

-awc

Anyways, his basic take has been that while they certainly mixed up times and places, they did accurately portray the personalities. He even said that yes, he would skip the meal at those fancy shin digs and go to Dennys later. He didn't know how they knew that. It cracked me up when he said that in the movie, and I busted a gut when I found it it was actually true.

My $.02 on Cable service, @Home, and other stuff that came to mind when reading the summery:
Around here I hate the cable company. And I have a good reason why. Cable modems around here really stinks since Charter+ Earthlink caps the upload at 56 KBPS *AND* download rate at 256 KBPS unless you pay more. See the cable section on http://www.earthlink.net for more information on this or click here. Suddenly @Home doesn't look as bad. Well, I guess that's what you get when your cable system is owned by the cofounder of Micro$oft AKA Paul Allen. I wonder what the cable system would be like if it was run by the Woz. Well, that's my $.02. Thanks for listening!
-Luther Sloan (Mkennedy3@SPAMTRAP.aol.com)
P.S. Remove the SPAMTRAP from my address to E-Mail.

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