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Elect Steve Jobs President of the United States
Will Foster writes "There is a groundswell of support for electing Steve Jobs President of the United States." I'll vote for him if I can write in my vote -- with a Newton stylus!
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I don't know why people are so eager to jump in bed with one monopolist when they clearly hate another.. Is it because Apple somehow redeemed itself? Apple still sells software for its own systems that it refuses to port to other systems. They refuse to open their architecture.
//e manual. This will probably change soon, but it's too early to declare Jobs a savior yet.
/.ers getting their hopes up only to have them dashed when we can no longer buy computers that are beige.
I also see a lack of any real content on the page, or at least a lack of content I couldn't find in my apple
Not that I think this is a bad thing, I just don't want to see
The previous has been a secret message to my comrades.
"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"
"No", said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd", said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did", said Ford. "It is."
"So", said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't the people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them", said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes", said Ford with a shrug, "of course".
"But", said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"
"What?"
"I said", said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, "have you got any gin?"
"I'll look. Tell me about the lizards."
Ford shrugged again.
"Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happened to them." he said. "They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it." - Douglas Adams, So long, and thanks for all the fish, chapter 36, 1984
Kent: Senator Dole, why should people vote for you instead of President Clinton?
...
Kang: It makes no difference which one of us you vote for. Either way, your planet is doomed. DOOMED!
Kent: Well, a refreshingly frank response there from senator Bob Dole.
Kodos: It's true, we are aliens. But what are you going to do about it? It's a two-party system; you have to vote for one of us. [murmurs]
Man1: He's right, this is a two-party system.
Man2: Well, I believe I'll vote for a third-party candidate.
Kang: Go ahead, throw your vote away. [Kang and Kodos laugh out loud] - The Simpsons, 4F02
"It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it." - Eugene Debs
...is that it's getting harder and harder to tell what's a put-on. More and more things I thought were parody at first turn out to be real.
Anyway, say what you will about Jobs, but he certainly got a LOT more done in his 20's and 30's than our current President, and by all accounts wasn't that much more of a jerk.
And Jobs's rescue of Apple certainly shows that he has an extraordinary ability to balance short and long term needs. Given what they've had to work with, technically, from Motorola for the last few years, can you believe that Apple is not only extant, but profitable?
Anyway, I'd probably vote for him over a fair number of other politicians. While we know a lot of his youthful indiscretions, I think that's just because he's been famous for so long. I imagine our previous two presidents were just as wild in their youth. The real question is how good a job who he is now could do, and I'd say the evidence is promising, or at least intriguing.
For all the "Jobs is a visionary" rhetoric, running a company on a knifes-edge like Apple has been for the last half decade implies a good ability to roll with the punches, and be flexible when appropriate.
My video compression blog
well, the mac community is probably larger than the perot community. ;)
If Jobs got to be the president of the USA, that would not be the first time that Perot got burned by Jobs. Perot was one of the largest investors in a little venture which was at one time known as NeXT.
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
Liberate your mind in two clicks or less.
Actually, if Steve Jobs ran Ellison would definitely run. Apparently SJ is his idol, not BG. He's got a movie star appeal whereas BG is ultra-rich turbo nerd. Ellison has the money, he wants the fame. I believe I read this in Insanely Great...
Random is the New Order.
Why should I vote for him? Did he invented Internet?
No, but the internet browser was invented on one of his machines (NeXT workstation)
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I thought this was a troll at first, but it appears not to be.
Is it right to elect the CEO of a major corporation as president? Corporations have more than enough political power in America as it is. Something like this blatantly caters to vested interests. I suppose this isn't much worse wrt vested interests than electing Bush as president in light of his interests in the oil business, but that doesn't legitimize doing it again. I would regard a major industry leader running for president with deep suspicion. Even if he/she ostensibly broke off all ties with his/her company and the industry, I am doubtful they would be able to eliminate any and all bias.
Now, Stallman, on the other hand...;p
Steve wouldn't want the job unless he could be president number 0.
For those of you that don't know, when Apple got round to issuing employee numbers, Steve Jobs was pretty peeved that he couldn't be employee number 1 as Steve Wozniak had already nabbed that priviledge for himself. Unable to convince Wozniak to change, Jobs took employee number 0 rather than be stuck behind Wozniak with the employee number 2 tag.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
With Jobs as President, can you imagine the State of the Union? :)
Somehow I find it interesting that the site is running Linux! No offense, but I would think it'd be running OS X 10.2.4 on a 17 inch PB G4 :-)
>>Apache/1.3.27 (Unix) ApacheJServ/1.1.2 FrontPage/5.0.2.2510 on Linux.
Jobs as President is a stupid idea. WTF is the parent offtopic?
Wozniak might be a good idea, but I guess form over substance is the American Way.
Don't believe the nonsense, unless you hear it from me directly.
What I mean is.. Suppose Bill Gates really did buy an election. Would he need to pay anyone back for the campaign expense? Or would he be free to act on his own will?
In NYC we sort of have that situation with "Mayor Mike" Bloomberg. Paid for his campign out of his own pocket, won in a relative landslide (after outspending his opponent somthing like 2:1) and is now bascially doing whatever he thinks is the right thing to do.
As a f'rinstance, since he didn't get any help in his election from the NYC Teacher's Union (the UFT), he can just announce (as he did the other day) that he's implementing a crackpot new, across the board, elementary education curriculum that he and his school superintendent (who's not an educator by training or avocation) dreamed up, without running it by the actual teachers first.
He actually said the other day that he's not trying to get re-elected, he's just trying to do what he thinks is right.
Make of this what you will but I think it does sort of answer the question. No, he wouldn't be beholden to anyone and could do whatever he thought was right. Be careful though...he wouldn't have to do what you (or "the voters") thought was right, just what HE thought was right.
Caveat votor.
BFL
There's one thing computing teaches you, and that's that there's no point to remembering everything.
--Doug Copland
it probably won't, because the media is probably being puppeted to the same "other interests" as the "figurehead" is.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
You guys must be kidding! Insightful? The guy thinks Dubya is up there doing "leadership"?
No doubt we're going to invade Iraq to free their people and bring them democracy, right? And clamping the international price of petroleum forever has nothing to do with it, right? And funneling several hundred billion dollars through the defense industry while ignoring the growing crowds of unemployed has nothing to do with it, right? And giving the top 5% income bracket lots of new tax breaks and only giving the rest of us a few hundred bucks has nothing to do with it, right? And imposing the Christian version of the Taliban on us has nothing to do with it, right? And suspending our rights to privacy and due process so we don't get in their way has nothing to do with it, right? And, and...
Dude, pass me the fucking pipe!
Hovering around 50% for many years actually -- for the Presidential elections only -- and there are several factors in the way the statistic is calculated that tend to make it underestimate voter participation. The percentage is based on the number of votes cast for the principal office on the ballot divided by the VAP (Voting Age Population). The first number may be a bit low because, according to the FEC, about 2% of voters "fail" to vote for the highest office (I know of a couple of people who did this in the last election because they were disgusted with the choices, but did vote in other races), and the VAP is concededly larger than the number of people truly eligible to vote (millions of noncitizens, illegal aliens, ex-felons, and so on, are indeed "voting age"). Of that number, a somewhat smaller percentage is registered. So, if a 50% turnout is reported based on VAP, the turnout of registered voters may be more like 70%.
Turnout for primaries and local elections can fall *really* low.
I'm describing this because election theory is a personal interest, and because election stats are often misused to try to prove political arguments. The VAP problem shows how little the press knows what they're talking about. But I suppose Election 2000 cleared up the press's competence clearly enough. (Have you heard of VNS? Another wellspring of disaster. Groan.)
ANYWAY, the relevant point is that there's no obvious reason to assume that Mac users vary from the population at large. Many are too young or have other disabilities preventing voting. Some don't show up to vote. Also, I have no idea what Apple's 5% of computer sales translates into as a percentage of individuals. Nor are we users complete slaves: only some of us would vote for Jobs. It's thus a very long shot that Mac users would come anywhere near the 19% of turnout that went for Perot. Perhaps, joined by enough others, they could form the nucleus of a significant bloc. (I wonder what kind of candidate Jobs would make? I'm sure it would be interesting, but I'd rather he stay with Apple.)
Ok, obviously, this whole issue is moot if Jobs isn't actually trying to run for President in the first place.... but just for the sake of argument:
1. This is the guy who believed America would buy the $10,000 Lisa computer in droves. When that failed miserably, he ended up having the remaining inventory bulldozed into a Utah landfill. (So much for his ex-hippie, eco-friendly image, eh?)
2. This is the guy who, after that major mishap, went on to create another of the world's largest computer failures with the NeXT systems. (Granted, these were cool machines - but he burnt through something like 50 million in investors' money, again making the mistakes that doomed the Lisa. Namely, charging far too much money for a system that didn't have the software/applications behind it to sell it. In fact, I believe he blew about 15 million of Ross Perot's own investment money on NeXT.)
3. This is now the guy who, despite putting on a good show and illustrating good public speaking skills, enjoys keeping secrets from the public (used the "Keynote" software for a year before telling anyone the product existed, for example). I don't think America really wants a leader who keeps things completely secret from the people.
4. This is also a guy who seems to have a constant problem with exaggeration. Most of his "insanely great!" new things are more what I'd just call "good ideas". His bragging about the new Safari web browser being 2x to 3x faster than IE on the Mac is another exaggeration. I've timed it on several different Mac systems, and it's *maybe* 1.4x as fast as IE on *some* pages. Other times, it's actually slower or right about equal speed.
Somehow though I find it easier to blame GW for his foreign policy, than to blame Jimmy Carter for his national policy. Maybe if I were more hawkish I would rationalize the other way though -- we could have started bombing OPEC members for example, until they agreed to lower their oil prices.
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