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!
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
This is a stupid idea. Why not form some of your own political views and act on them?
Well, that would give you reasonable odds of voting in Albert Gore.
I wouldn't vote for Steve Jobs for president, but I would definately vote for the "Woz". Something tells me that Jobs would actually make a better figurehead president than Woz though.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
Elect Steve Jobs President of the United States
;)
well, the mac community is probably larger than the perot community.
<:
Thats one of the ugliest websites i've ever seen. I thought Apple-monkies were supposed to be kings of visual stuff.
Why should I vote for him? Did he invented Internet?
He'll run the country without having any idea of how it actually works, fire anyone who doesn't follow his vision, steal ideas from other countries...
By God, he might be the best president yet!
Microsoft offers their market leading CEO Steve Balmer. When asked about the news, Balmer replied by leaping around screaming "Voters! Voters! Voters!".
Rumors that Bill Gates will be a Cheyney style puppetmas^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H vice-president have not been confirmed.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
"I hereby declare that The White House will no longer be boring "beige", it shall be painted "Lickable Blueberry".
The Apple hoardes debate among themselves whether the country is now just "insanely" better, or "miraculously" better.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Not to be confused with http://www.jobsforTHEpresident.org/, as I'd really like to see him get a new one.
/>
<rimshot
Money I owe, money-iy-ay
Best wishes,
Mike.
With Steve as president we might be some insanely great leadership, as opposed to the normal insane leadership we have now.
If he gets in, won't his first act be to demolish all the important buildings and replace them with curvy, translucent, pastel-coloured plastic contraptions?
Carrying handles would be useful though. Threat of Al-Qaeda? Just move Washington to the praries, they'll never find them there!
-Mark
It's not like anyone will be able to beat Sharpton anyway.
An Apple a day keeps the IRS away.
Jobs for everyone.
iAmerica.
Lets all take acid.
"Smokey, this isn't Nam, there are rules." -Walter
I am not sure it would be possible for him to change out of that blank turtlneck and bluejeans... but I can already see the slogans.
When you vote for Steve, you vote for Jobs.
Steve Jobs, the iPresident!
Brennan Stehling - http://brennan.offwhite.net/blog/
That's the impression given by the Pirates of Silicon Valley movie. Not to mention the fact he's an all around asshole to his employees.
After all, who could resist attacking another country to show off our nice Blueberry bombers, using our new Raspberry radar technology, and firing off our arsenal of iNuke X 10.2 ICBMs (with leopard print warheads). Military tech has been stuck in the same putrid earthy shades of green and brown for far too long!
Just gotta wonder how well those translucent plastic helmets will protect the heads of our soldiers....
NO CARRIER
Due to the seperation of church and state.
Steve cannot be both God and President without violating some part of the constitution.
Of course, given recent events, that 'problem' can probably be remiedied.
Two years after becoming President, Steve Jobs becomes fed up with the bueracracy and leaves suddenly to start up his own country in his Palo Alto Garage.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
..a government official who'll break down the tough choices so that the American public will vote on which color they like better.
*hoping that comment's poke at the iMac isn't too obscure.*
"Derp de derp."
It's mostly images, no wonder it went so fast. Here's the text on the front page:
...
Draft Committee to the 'Elect Steve Jobs President of the United States
We all want a world that is prosperous and sustainable. We have the technology and resources to create such a world. What is lacking are leaders with vision and will. I encourage you to be such a leader and welcome your participation in our campaign.
It is time that we base our decision-making on the time tested native American idea that all decisions should be made with our seventh generation of descendants in mind and in consultation with our elders. It is time to acknowledge that the earth is our mother and that we must take care of her. It is time to eliminate all weapons of mass destruction from the earth. It is time to insure that all people have access to affordable health care and education.
It is time for American leaders to work with the Moslem world, China, India, Africa, Russia, Latin America, the European Union and all people's around the world to create the world we want. It is our destiny to play a leadership role in creating a new world.
We believe Steve Jobs is the man to help us achieve these goals. If you agree, join us, and together we can get it done!
A Biography of Steve Jobs
Editorials: 01/19/03 at 17:59:27 PST by aztc
Editorials Steve Paul Jobs
Born 1955 Los Altos CA; Evangelic bad boy who, with Steve Wozniak, co-founded Apple Computer Corporation and became a multimillionaire before the age of
Printerfriendly version - A Biography of Steve Jobs Send an e-mail to (26 reads) [ More ] [ 0 comments ]
Newsletters are archived under News
News: 01/18/03 at 18:24:03 PST by Admin
News Newsletters can only be sent by the top level admin. Please submit your plain text newsletter to webmaster@jobsforpresident.org
Money I owe, money-iy-ay
Jobs probably is probably miles ahead of the other candidates when it comes to foreign policy, particularly the Iraq issue. The Jobs solution? Simple: Oust Saddam, set up a puppet government, rename the country "iRaq", and insist that cartographers color it "lickable raspberry" on all their maps. Not to mention replacing militant Islam with a hip, edgy new "switch" campaign.
The iRaqis would find themselves embraced by the developed world!
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
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?
He could theoretically run on issues and voters could predict his behavior by what he says, rather than who is funding him.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
You know, he might not be a bad president...
a) he's someone who made something of himself, and wasn't just from a wealthy, powerful family
b) he's someone that has Vision and can seek it out (even if we might not agree with his Vision, he's definitely got it!)
c) he's arguably of above-average intelligence... try and say THAT of any of the other candidates!
If Nader wasn't running, I'd vote for Jobs just because I know that if Jobs won, he would make a decent go of it and maybe even get something real done.
-ZOD-
We've gotta shush this now before it's too late. If Bill Gates hears about it he'll spend billions to run just so he can keep up.
Apple is a monopolist? What do they have a monopoly on? Translucent plastic cases? Selling a system with a closed architecture is different than being a monopolist. A monopoly exists when you control all of (or almost all of) a particular market, not just a product.
"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
Vote Linus!
...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
I would say I probably agree with Jobs moral and political views more than our current leader's (he's liberal, and he's a vegetarian (which speaks highly of morality issues)). But let's think about this for one little second... he has absolutely NO EXPERIANCE in politics. None. Don't throw your votes away on this, find a real canidate and support he/she when they run.
He would probably tell other countries that they would have to wait until the next Presidential Expo to get all of his foreign policy regulations, and not disclose to the public any information until said expos. Bah!
I would vote for him if he would be willing to accept a yearly sallery of $1; infact, he'd have to demand it. It's not like he doesn't already have enough going on, with Apple and Pixar as it is.
Pete
... the US is already run by big companies as it is, lets just go ahead & finish the job....
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Apple has a monopoly on Apple computers. Just like those bastards at Ford who have a monopoly on Ford brand cars.
Weren't you around when monopoly was downgraded from 'Near complete control of a market' to 'Makes a product that isn't free'?
Do we really have to keep going over this? I seem to write this post about one a month, but I guess it's not redundant until everyone gets it...
Monopolies are NOT illegal.
Abusing the power that a monopoly position gives you IS illegal.
Microsoft illegally abused their monopoly, Apple didn't.
Got it now?
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
The White House will remain white, but all the plaster will be replaced with translucent white plastic.
The capitol dome will be redone in anodized aluminum. It will also have firewire.
Your mind is squeezed by a blast of pain!
I correspond with a prisoner in Texas. Right after W "won" for president, my friend wrote me, "Sorry about the Bush thing, but we HAD to get him out of here. He wanted to kill ALL of us!"
The PowerPC platform is very open. Apple, however, doesn't let people use their "Apple" trademark to sell "Apple-compatible" computers. It's a harsh marketing tactic, and well within the intent of Trademark law. It's difficult to sell PowerPC computers when you can't claim that they're Apple-compatible.
The platform, however, is beautifully open. IBM makes a PowerPC proccessor call the Power4, and (today) has revealed a reference model PDA based on the PowerPC architecture.
Apple is extremely strict with their trademark rights, but they rarely overstep the intent, let alone the letter, of the law.
Jobs has my vote just for his insight that DRM will fail, and his strong resolution to never integrate it into MacOS.
I'm as mimsy as the next borogove but your mome raths are completely outgrabe.
Coming soon to the US Army: iTanks in blueberry!
Karma: Excellent (Mainly due to Bill & Ted's Karma Adventure)
We could elect Richard Stallman provided that we decided to rename the country GNUnited States of America.
It would be a interesting twist. In most cases, being elected president increases one's power and influence in the world. In Mr. Gate's case, it would be a demotion.
Steve Jobs. Insanely Great.
Steve Jobs. Vote Different.
Barbara Walters: So, Mr. Jobs, why do you want to be President?
Steve Jobs: I don't want to sell sugared computers for the rest of my life. I want to change the world!
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
PS: profit
XML causes global warming.
Heck this has been going on longer than post-irony set in. I remember my amusement when I first heard ronald reagan was a presidential candidate. Well he'll never win I thought, what a joke. After he won I was in disbelief, and realized I was not the only one when I saw a bathroom grafitii "reagan...without a cause", an obvious riff on the james dean movie title.
Later after watching "back to the future" there is a scene where marty tries to prove he's fromt he future. The professor asks "okay future boy, whos president." MArty answeres "ronald reagan" thus assuring the professor he's a lunatic: "Oh and who's the treasury secratary 'jack benny?'.
Later in the same movie, the professor is amazed by the video camera "a portable movie production studio....Great scott! no wonder your politicians have to be actors!". A banal observation unless you think of in the context of it dawning on a person from the 1950's.
So will we all be thinkng "great scott, no wonder all your presidents have to be CEO's of consumer products" when a visitor from the future comes back and tells us about president Jobs?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It turns out that the best leaders are those who do not want it. Steve Jobs probably doesn't fall into this category, being the grab-asstic wannabe he is, but Linus Torvalds, for example, would probably be the best president we've had for half a century. This goes for any number of do-good low-key individuals not only in the Open Source movement, but in human rights movements, etc.
I think that at this point, our government is so corrupt and broken, that appointing government officials by lottery would yield something better.
fifth sigma, inc.
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
"Vote Different (to who you thought you voted for)" (c) Bushco
My other OS is also FreeBSD
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
-braxton
"i cant go out and buy [insert computer part] for a mac that isn't made by mac."
odd then that Macs contain
1) processors made by IBM or Motorola (which you could probably source if you knew where to look.)
2) standard 184 or 168 (or 144) pin DDR/SDR/SO- dimms containing the ram
3) standard ATA harddisks
etc.
There's plenty of third party parts for apple machines.
...Instead, he got kindof serious, and said, "Well, no, he (Al Gore) didn't create the internet, and I think he's been quoted out of context, but he was absolutely responsible for creating the legislative environment that allowed that type of research to be done, and lead to the creation of the internet."
Yes, I would agree that Gore's supposed statement that he "Invented the Internet" was taken out of context. Despite being so seemingly uncomfortable in his own skin in public speaches, I would tend to credit the man with enough intelligence to *NOT* have made that claim.
What I supposed that Gore could have been referring to was his support of the Boucher Bill which was solely (AFAIK) responsible for opening up the internet to general use by the public. Up until the point of this bill being signed, the internet was supposed to be used solely for "official" government use. Of course, by this time many private citizens were already using it to buy and sell things to one another, proposition one another, display ASCII Art and whatnot. But this bill was the official nod that the internet wasn't just for breakfast anymore and was ripe for the picking to anyone interested. Of course, this was roughly contemperaneous with Tim Berners Lee's development of the WWW so both factors probably worked together towards making the 'net what it is in this day and age.
So, while Gore of course was not "responsible for the invention of the internet", he can with a straight face lay claim to being a key supporter of the bill that brought it to the masses.
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
Uh, that's his Trim Jeans jogging sweats. (Too many moon pies, methinks.)
The Independent: Reverend Spooner Arrested in Friar Tuck Incident - ISIHAC, Historical Headlines
With Jobs as President, can you imagine the State of the Union? :)
Have you ever opened up a mac? You may not be able to swap a whole motherboard but it you can absolutlely use third party parts. In mine I have a sumsung cd burner, random ass ram, seagate ide drives, ati pci graphics cards (upgraded from a voodoo), a scsi card, and any number of firewire and usb add-ons.
Why do people think that Apple welds its machines shut before it ships them?
And I'm sorry but you can't say that a minor player in a large market has a monopoly just because it is slightly different than the rest of the market. What force could Apple exert over the rest of the players in the pc industry? MS could destroy a company as large as intel if it wanted to. That is a monopoly.
-m
... does that automatically make Ellen Feiss the drug czar?
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
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.
Frankly, I'd rather see him take the position of president.
Speaking as a respectibly left wing Democrat, I'd vote for Jobs over Nader in a heartbeat. Nader has simply shown zero ability for that kind of a job. When he says there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans, he's either lying, or an idiot. Who is president MATTERS, no matter what he says.
Leadership requires the right mix of idealism and pragmatism, and Nader badly fails that test. If he actually WON the presidency, he'd be disasterous at it. And since even he knows that he isn't going to win, running mainly makes him just the Perot-of-the-left, working as a spoiler to get Bush reelected.
My video compression blog
So, I was having these negotiations with North Korea over their Nukes, and then all of a sudden, they were like boom boom boom boom boom and then South Korea was gone. North Korea, ate South Korea.
It was kinda.....a bummer.
Karma: Not Particularly Funny.
They make really good computers, cant we just stop there? Isn't that good enough? Do we need to build a tranluscent plastic alter?
So what you are saying is that Gore supported a bill on the back end that gave the nod to what was completely obvious.
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.)
The economy is in the shitter and techies have spoken, what they said was "We want more *jobs*!"
four-oh-four
So what you are saying is that Gore supported a bill on the back end that gave the nod to what was completely obvious.
Yes, it was completely obvious as you have so perspicaciously pointed out. However, it is useful to note how small the technology community was in the early 90's vs. the size it is today. Did you read Slashdot back in '93? Why, of course not! It didn't bloody well exist yet, genius!
Add to that how technologically clueless most politicians are even in this day and age, let alone way back then, I believe that Gore does indeed deserve credit for his vote on this issue.By the way, how have your elected officials voted on the DMCA?
To reiterate, it was completely obvious at that point, but only to a select few. It was a day when the internet (nee, arpanet!) was in use only by UNIX die-hards and nary a Windows user (unless she was already a Unix user).
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
I can just vision the Steve Jobs version of the White House
Jobs: Required no help building computers that nobody bought.
Bush: Who needs books!
Jobs: Who needs gigahertz!
Bush: Thinks that, somewhere up there, John Wayne is smiling down on him.
Jobs: Feels pretty sure that Einstein, Amelia Earhardt, Gandhi and Lennon all want to come back from the dead to buy Macs from him.
Bush: Proved that it's possible to be a drunken slacker, then marry Laura Ingalls Wilder, and suddenly be considered "presidential material."
Jobs: Proved that it's possible to make blueberry computers and not be considered gay.
Bush: Thanks his lucky stars every day that the "war on terrorism" saved his ass.
Jobs: Thanks his lucky stars every time Apple issues its quarterly report knowing that, somewhere out there, Steve Ballmer is working on a new dance routine.
OK, just for the sake of rebuttal:
Re 1: Actually, this shows an ability to say "I was wrong" and closing the chapter. And the Lisa wasn't entirely landfilled, as it came back as the deluxe "big brother" to the Macintosh (Macintosh XL, IIRC).
Re 2: You make is sound as if the Lisa was the reason Jobs left Apple, instead of the failed coup against John Sculley. That incident has left him with a lot of experience. As for NeXT, it let him develop the technologies that would let him "reconquor" Apple. His more recent history shows that he does learn from mistakes, despite what people say.
Re 3: This is different from the current administration how? Fleischer, Rove, Ashcroft and Rumsfeld are all great lovers of secret dealings. I think a President Jobs would deliver his State of the Union address in a black mock turtleneck with "Just one more thing"...
Re 4: No matter what you call it, it's effective marketing, and no different than what goes on in Washington almost every day. That, and your example is easily rebutted: how fast was the connection? How many bottlenects did you experience? Did you test loading loacal files to check the rendering engine speeds? You get my drift.
Still, I don't think Jobs is right for the job--at least not yet. I don't subscribe to the PHB philosophy that a good manager can manage everything. Managing a public office is a lot different from managing a company. If Steve really were interested, he'd run for a governor's post first.
. . . is to give the voting system a much-needed tweak. I think most people would agree that if Nader hadn't run, Gore would be president. There was a similar problematic election in France recently. The problem arises from the system of plurality voting, which can easily lead to the paradoxical result of a lesser desired candidate winning. While there are no perfect voting systems, there are much less imperfect ones, such as the Borda count, that would allow a candidate like Jobs to run without voters having to fear that their votes for him would have no chance of counting, or would only skew the election results insofar as they had any effect. Voting can be much more democratic than it currently is.
Here's a quote from an article I came across not too long ago on voting theory:
In some elections, any candidate can win, depending on which voting system is used, says Donald Saari of the University of California, Irvine. Consider 15 people deciding what beverage to serve at a party. Six prefer milk first, wine second, and beer third; five prefer beer first, wine second, and milk third; and four prefer wine first, beer second, and milk third. In a plurality vote, milk is the clear winner. But if the group decides instead to hold a runoff election between the two top contenders--milk and beer--then beer wins, since nine people prefer it over milk. And if the group awards two points to a drink each time a voter ranks it first and one point each time a voter ranks it second, suddenly wine is the winner. Although this is a concocted example, it's not an anomaly, Saari insists.
You can get the whole article, which gives a fair overview of various voting systems, at Science News, or if you prefer: http://www.sciencenews.org/20021102/bob8.asp
Vote as an individual; lemmings end up falling off cliffs. Camaraderie is no substitute for common sense, and being your own man will make you sleep better.
--Pierre S. du Pont
Legalize it maaaaannnn.
Marijuana that is.. You know Jobs will try..
Zoot!
I can't wait to hear the "Oh, and one more thing". What could it be? iVote? Cuba has been "aquired"? The justice department is suddenly a lot more interested in putting the screws to Microsoft? That last one is my guess.
Angleyne: You can't bend that girder - it's unbendable! Bender: Well I don't know anything about lifting, so that ju