Slashdot Mirror
Publisher Wiley's Books Pulled from Apple Stores
getling writes "Looks like Steve Jobs is almost as unhappy about personal details being publicized as he is with Mac secrets. The book publisher Wiley, who is releasing a new unauthorized biography of Jobs has had its entire line of books banned from Apple stores as a result of their unhappiness with the content of the book. Wiley, publisher of the popular Dummies series of books, as well as the Bible series, is quite surprised, due to the fact that they view the book to show Jobs in a largely positive light ..."
That Amazon link looks like it contains a referrer - it has "ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14". That returns over 6000 hits on google, so either it's part of Amazon's system, or whoever provided it is making a lot of money off it. Here is a ref-free sanitized link: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0471 720836
"That's all he ever wanted out of life... was love. That's the tragedy of Charles Foster Kane. You see, he just didn't have any to give."
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
So isn't Apple/Steve sort of making the 'mercurial' and 'hot-tempered' point for the author? While the Woz has said that Jobs never treated him badly, he admitted that many people said they'd never work for Jobs again because of alleged mistreatment by Jobs (check out the mp3 of the HOPE keynote from 2004, in the Q&A, where an audience member asks about Jobs' behavior).
....He should step away from it....
Personally I'd be damn annoyed if people started publicising my illnesses, my past and my private life as well. For the second time no less! There's this myth that if you're a public figure you're not entitled to a private life. Bollocks.
Speech is (and IMHO ought to be!) free, and the publishers are well within their rights to go against a man's wishes about his biography. Steve is also well within his rights to tell the publishers that they'll not sell a damn thing in his bookstores from now on.
My sympathies are with the man whose life they're laying bare (irrespective of how they cast it) rather than the money-grabbing publishing house. "Quite surprised" is a laugh as well - they sent the proofs to Apple for approval and were asked to withhold publishing. WTF did they expect ?
One of the things that seems to have been lost along the route to our western democracy is that actions have consequences. I'm made up that the act of publishing this book will cause them financial pain - perhaps it'll be as annoying to them as it obviously is to Steve that they've gone ahead and published. Perhaps it'll make them think twice about doing the same thing again...
Before anyone gets on their high horse about the 'public's right to know', again, Bollocks. The public has a right to know if a public figure abuses his/her position - completely agree with that. On the other hand, this rather distasteful desire to simply nose into other peoples lives is a sad fact of the human condition today.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Book of Job? .. Oops.
Publicity. Stunt.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
While interesting,
:-(
- Apple is not the government (therefore, any ridiculous cries of censorship are just a wee tad bit overboard)
- Apple can do what it wants with its own corporate stores
- Yes, this may result in more copies of the book being sold, but consider that this is not an effort to "suppress" the book; it's merely a retaliatory move. Apple is under no obligation whatsover, implied or otherwise, to carry any publisher's books.
In short, business as usual and a BIG yawner:
"It's certainly not unprecedented for a company to protest publication of a book or article it finds unflattering.
IBM, for instance, staged a six-year advertising boycott of Fortune magazine after then-Chief Executive Louis V. Gerstner took exception to a 1997 cover story.
More recently, General Motors withdrew its ads from the Los Angeles Times in protest of an April 6 review of its Pontiac G6."
(From the Mercury News story)
Think what you want, but businesses shouldn't be forced to support other businesses they disagree with.
Further, it looks like there's a referrer in the submitter's amazon link.
I agree that these guys have a right to some privacy. Most interesting to me is that the comments here on /. are generally supportive so far. What a different thread it would be if this had been Bill Gates and Microsoft instead of Steve Jobs and Apple.
Did Wiley want to sell it in Apple stores (even that would have been, at most, a bit weird) ? With all respect to Apple's hardware and software products, such an action as banning the entire publishing house from stores sound absurdly inappropriate.
Check for yourself the sample chapter at least, to see whether it's such an outrageous book or not.
They'd have all their books banned from the Library of Congress.
I wonder if that's what Sen. Trist meant by "Nuclear Option"?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Mr. Murphy, meet the Apple Legal Department. They know a thing or two about interpreting the law to my advantage.
It seems to me that he never lost power. Pixar and NeXT anyone? Not only did Jobs then return to Apple, but his previous company (NeXT) went from near failure to completely taking over Apple.
He may be an asshole, but his persistence pays off. And while a lot of people complained about working for him (and even demonized him in "Pirates of Silicon Valley), the real engineer's accounts seem to simply say that he didn't suffer fools gladly. The Mac team seemed to genuinely like him.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
...that this incident will probably give Apple and Steve Jobs more bad publicity than the book alone ever would have.
It even showed up on CNN's main page.
I think he's great. He pulled Apple out of the shitter. I'd rather work for steve than Bill. He is innovative and clever.
It's much.... snappier.
everyone seems to have missed one vital piece of information.. the title of the book is iCon.
nuff said.
The reason girls and Windows users don't understand UNIX is because all the documentation is in Man files.
So does the title "iCon" supposed be a stylish version of the word icon or does it represent a certain attitude: "I conned you into buying a nice OS on some very expensive hardware to make me a happy SOB"? For some reason, I keep thinking "iCon" might be a better title for a Martha Stewart book.
I think it would bother me a lot more if this meant that nobody got to see it. But Apple's economic power isn't that high. It still bothers me a little though.
I believe firmly in the freedom of individuals to engage in whatever contracts they find mutually beneficial. But, I'm not so sure about a big, powerful public corporation. I think as organizations get larger and more powerful, they become more government-like. You die just as surely whether you starve because nobody will sell you food or someone shoots you.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Pissing off Major IT Corporations for Dummies. Character Assassination for Dummies. Making Bad Business Decisions for Dummies.
http://jesus.everdense.com/
According to this, Steve Jobs owns 10.1 million shares (that figure may be pre-split) of Apple, or 1.2% of those outstanding. 10 million of those are restricted shares granted to him by Apple. Mr. Jobs had sold off all but one of his shares he received from the Next merger soon after it happened.
So he's nowhere near a "majority" owner, and is only the second largest individual shareholder; at least 10 institutions control a bigger stake than Leader, aka Steve Jobs.
There will be no issue of lawsuit against the author or Wiley, unless somehow there were libel statements made in the book. The truth can't be libel, by definition. Remember once you're a public figure, you have a more limited right to privacy than otherwise is the case (It's may not seem fair, but those who wish to have the spotlight shined upon them, will sometimes have to accept the spotlight when it's not welcome).
-Mark
"The bass, the rock, the mic, the treble. I like my coffee black, just like my metal" - Mindless Self Indulgence
This is _not_ a troll. It is a very sincere post questioning the readers of slashdot - it makes me wonder about the level of slashdot criticism.
If this were a MS story of Bill Gates doing the same, there would be the usual crazy outbreak of 'MS evil empire' type banter. However, because its Apple , the response is a mild - 'oh its ok, hes the Apple man hes allowed to'. Where is the balance? I think somewhere in between to be honest - Jobs and Gates are simply very ruthless business persons, and yet here at Slashdot there is a decided overflow towards Apple.
Is it the OSX thing - its not a free OS.. its not Open, so why the fanaticism, is it because its most Linux like? Windows has cygwin.. and I know a large number of IT specialists whom use it, but Windows is always rated as poor and irrevlevant (by the slashdot community), yet it is the most used desktop, by a rediculous majority? So where is the balance? Where is the even levelled intelligent arguments for both sides, that usually make for a great discussion?
The more I visit here the more I see very common attitudes:
- Apple and OSX rules, and every other platform/OS sux.
- MS are evil and Windows sux.. but Xbox rules (this one has always been a bit of a conundrum - this must imply MS are less evil than Sony?)..
- Sony are evil and PS2 is crap..
- Linux and all Unix's are above all the best OS's and everything else is crap..
- Any programming language that isnt C++ like or OO is crap..
The above is a mere sample of generalisations and these are the usual source of flame wars. But the important thing about these topics, is that taking an opposing stance usually means getting flamed, chastised, or ridiculed.. It is even more interesting that moderators dont try to keep the discussion balanced, Im sure it would result in much better (more interesting) discussions, and a lot less ' is crap, or it sux'.
This leads me to one fairly basic conclusion. Most of the people posting on Slashdot these days are young, easily impressionable males, that have little sense or understanding of two sides of a discussion and generally are very one-eyed about subjects with little or no flexibilty to gauge information as valid or relevant.
Does *this* look positive to you?
** A Sketch a Week **
http://www.sketchplease.com
This is completely understandable, the cover of the book is pretty much saying I, Con Artist. No wonder Apple doesnt want a book on its shelves more or less calling its CEO a con man. I doubt the average passerby is going to get a positive impression from that sitting on the shelves while they're contemplating buying a $2,000 laptop from a company run by a "con."
Whatever "savvy" marketers decided to go with that title should be feeling the brunt of this decision. Last I checked Apple was a private company with no obligation to carry anything. If I told Microsoft press I was writing a bio of Gates and later told them it was going to be called "Convicted Monopolist" then I wouldnt be surprised if they dropped me.
At the end of the day Apple is a company just like any other. They'll act in a predictable fashion when it comes to protecting their property and image. Look at what one con artist has recently done to Wendy's restaurant. Bad image and rumors hurt business.
Stabbed???? Pah, geez. SHANKED!
Actually, Jobs is widely viewed (read: by shareholders) - whether or not it's actually true - as the driving force behind Apple's recent successes. Therefore a smear/expose on Jobs that could tarnish his reputation could seem to Apple to be a threat to the corporation itself. In that respect, Jobs 'is' Apple.
In the same vein, Apple could be pandering to its golden boy to keep him happy, having weighed Jobs' ego as more important than allegations of bullying or censorship.
I don't know about you, but if someone wrote a book about me and titled it "iCon" I would be pretty offended. All those people going into the Apple store are immediately going to see Jobs' picture on the front and think he's a con artist. Doesn't exactly mesh with the honest Apple brand no matter what the pages say.
... would have been for Jobs to have a ghost-writer crank out "Why Wiley's Book Is Stupid" and sell it next to the book he hates.
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
This may help out a little bit.
Summary: iPhoto generates 240 pixel wide thumbnails for each photo in the library; if the album view is set so that the thumbnails are wider than 240 pixels, iPhoto will load the photo and shrink it to the necessary size instead of using the premade thumbnail. Obviously, this leads to massive processor usage. I don't know how the iPhoto team could have missed something like this when they were developing the software, but I'd like some of what they were smoking.
No, Apple doesn't have to sell the book. But pulling the entire line is childish. And counter-productive. By going nuclear, Jobs has helped to give the title some buzz--the silver lining in every act of censorship. :-)
Damn, Apple's been getting somewhat evil lately.
a) iPods with built-in obsolescence
b) a fairly crappy recycling track record
c) suing 15 year old kids for blogging information their own employees or partners leaked.
d) Promoting Censorship within it's stores.
Whatever happened to Steve's Birkenstocks?
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Stop it. Seriously. Stop with the "it's bad, but it's Apple, so everyone thinks it's okay" BS. It was old years ago, and is even older today. To reiterate, to those who keep bringing this up:
No.
Again: no.
Contrary to what some people seem to believe, your average high-karma Slashdot poster is not an idiot. Frankly, this is getting downright irritating. Bad things involving Apple keep occurring, so you people have to come out of the woodworks and say that people are only supporting Apple because they're Apple, when really, the vast majority of these 'Apple supporters' are just looking at the situation with circumspection. Got that? Just in case that was unclear, that means they're reading TFA, thinking about it, considering the situation and its angles, then replying, rather than giving a knee-jerk reaction like the 'If it were Microsoft...' people. It typically has nothing to do with the fact that it's Apple--we're dead serious when we say we'd support Microsoft/Gates if it were them instead of Apple/Jobs--and everything to do with the facts surrounding the situation.
Fact: Wiley was asked not to publish the book.
Fact: The biography was unauthorized, which is legal, but not really that morally okay, especially when the biography is about someone who's still alive.
Fact: Jobs could not have made Apple stop selling Wiley's products without support from a majority of the Board.
Fact: Apple is not preventing the publishing of the book, they are expressing objection to it by not selling the publisher's materials in their stores.
Fact: A corporation has the right to choose what it wants to sell, and whom to obtain their products from.
Fact: Again, you can walk into Borders or Barnes and Noble or whatever, or search Amazon.com, and still get Wiley's books, including the unauthorized biography of Jobs.
Was it perhaps rash of Apple to do this? Yeah, I think so. Was it a horrible, evil thing for Apple to do? Not really, no. I can understand Jobs and Apple's unhappiness with an unauthorized biography about Jobs. I'd not like someone writing about me and including intimate details without my permission, regardless of what kind of light I'd be put in. I couldn't stop them from doing it, but would it really be wrong of me to object to my fullest ability?
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
Steve Jobs is an unbelievable asshole. Seriously, you think you know assholes? Steve Jobs makes them all look like girl scouts. He's the biggest asshole I've ever encountered, ever.
He's also a hands-down, certifiable genius.
The fact that he's an asshole really pales in comparison to what he's capable of doing. The man is like some kind of magic crap detector. He can smell crap from ten miles away. And when he sees it, he can tell you exactly why it's crap, and exactly what needs to change to eliminate its crappiness.
Steve Jobs is the most arrogant man I know, but he's also the man most deserving of open, unapologetic arrogance I know.
At least for me, it's possible to personally dislike somebody and admire him at the same time.
Riiight. It was your anger at Steve Jobs' ego that made you go through the hassle installing Debian on your Powerbook? After all, since you don't like the CEO of Apple, you can't trust the OS, right?
Slashdot psuedo activism here... How do you know ol' Steve-o hasn't installed a hardware solution to monitor your ethernet/wireless traffic on your Powerbook since you can't trust him?
Personally I think you're insane not to build your laptop by hand since you can't trust anybody! Who's to say your drive manufacturer's CEO is trustworthy?!
This guy is way out there
Practically everything in Mac OS X can be compiled for Intel hardware with little or no modification. There are some huge exceptions, of course; all the vectorization would have to be pulled out, and there's an assload of that now. But while it's a lot of code, it's not a big fraction of the OS.
Hell, our core operating system, Darwin, has been available for Intel for some years now.
But from two messages up, the "Apple is switching to Intel" stuff is complete bullshit. The performance we're getting out of 2.5 GHz G5s on the shelves today is spectacular. It's still, even a year later, top-shelf performance.
Yes, IBM has had massive problems going to 90 nm fabrication. But so has everybody else. We would have been real happy if IBM could have been at 5 GHz now like they'd projected back in 2002-2003. Going on-stage at WWDC in the summer of '03 and saying "3 GHz in a year!" left us looking really stupid. But shit happens, you know? It's not like IBM is totally dropping the ball on us (yes, I'm talking about you, Motorola).
I can't give you details because I just don't have 'em, but there's going to be a pretty big rewrite of iPhoto hitting the street real soon now.
This is one of the dirty little secrets of Tiger: iPhoto is totally, 100% incompatible with Spotlight. We're gonna fix that, obviously, but it's a big job.
See, Spotlight calls for metadata to be stored inside files. That's why we changed the way Mail works, creating a new mail message file format (emlx) that's basically an mbox-style mail message concatenated with an XML property list. That way we can store a message and all relevant metadata in one file, making it trivial for Spotlight to index it.
iPhoto doesn't work like that. iPhoto stores all its metadata in a database, and generates a buttload of ancillary files for thumbnails and albums. That's very much not Spotlight-friendly. Plus, as you point out, it's got a big scaling problem.
So we're gonna be releasing a new version, referred to internally as 5.1 but that may not be the actual number, real soon now. When? Dunno. What specific features will it have? Dunno. But it's coming.
This is bad news for Apple, its customers (i.e. me and everyone else using a Mac or an iPod), and its shareholders.
No one likes an arrogant arsehole, and people like arrogant arseholes even less who act like mini dictators. It's not like Apple has a 90% marketshare in the computer market to play with, and investors shy away from erratic, irrational CEOs. I can understand him withdrawing the book on his life from the Apple store shelves, as he has the power to do that, but the Dumies series is extremely popular and it could make an enemy of extremely influential people like David Pogue, whose NYTimes tech articles get read by millions.
What worries me most about this is that it reminds me of the bat shit megalomanic attitude that Jobs had before he was canned from Apple the first time in 1985, trying to push others around.
Steve, if you or one of your slaves is reading this, take these words of advice: You, as a celebrity and CEO of a very trendy company, give away a certain amount of privacy as part of your status. You, like me and everyone else, are not an island. You depend on literally millions of other people for your success, from customers, to shareholders, to employees, to reviewers, to the press. Think about that before you fly into a rage like a spoilt five year old brat the next time.
When I pay a buck for a 24 oz. Coke in a cup at the local convenience store I know their cost was about three cents, and two of those were for the cup.
I also know it's still a good enough deal for me, because a 16 oz. Coke in a bottle is going to cost me more.I'll pay the buck.
It's good business all around, even though I'm paying more than I theoretically need to for the Coke.
If, however, I own and operate a convenience store, drink Cokes at three cents a pop out of the business profits, but charge my financial partner a buck a Coke when he comes into the store and stick 97 cents of it in my own pocket, that isn't "good business." That's being a scum sucking bastard.
KFG
Apple is not refusing to sell just this book; it is refusing to sell any of the large number of Mac books put out by this publisher. The decision will cost the shareholders money, as the Apple stores profited on each book sold, and they sold quite a few.
Now, it's not horrible and evil, so I'll agree with you there. It's merely massively stupid, and the press that this move has gotten will improve the book sales.
"Fact: The biography was unauthorized, which is legal, but not really that morally okay, especially when the biography is about someone who's still alive."
Curious logic there... so a biography has to be authorised, huh? Like, say, a newspaper story about someone has to be authorised? Or an encyclopedia entry? Do you realise that you'll just end up with self-serving crap if you do that, don't you?
How about this for a correction:
Fact: Jobs is a public figure, and his decisions affect large numbers of people. He is also charismatic and famous. An unauthorised biography of Jobs is therefore is a fair and reasonable thing, provided the content of the biography is obtained legally and without deception.
When I pay a buck for a 24 oz. Coke in a cup at the local convenience store I know their cost was about three cents, and two of those were for the cup.
That's right. Most store owners don't bother paying Monsanto, even though that company put the effort into genetically engineering the trees that stores, land and electricity grow on.
Those scum... anyway, some people would say they were stupid to risk something illegal like that when money has grown on trees since biblical times.
Unfortunately, the only money that grows on trees is the North Korean Peso, and you need three barrowfuls of them for your cup of Coke.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
the only question would be whether they gained more than they lost by pissing off Apple.
Apple only has about 100 stores, and they don't sell primarily books. As far as retailers of Dummies books go, I'd bet Apple stores are a drop in the bucket. The only reason Apple has the books is to sell more computers. Dummies books being absent from Apple stores will hurt Apple more than it ever would hurt Wiley.
AccountKiller
I find it hillarious and sad at the same time that the nation most proud of their "freedoms" has no fucking clue what those freedom mean. I've seen "freedom of press", "freedom of speech" or "democracy" used for every possible bullshit (e.g., as some "right" to troll a site or cheat in an online game) _except_ the cases they actually cover.
Here's some free clue: "Freedom of Speech" and "Freedom of Press":
1. Are _only_ applicable to your dealing with the _government_. Not with private persons, not with corporations, not with anyone else.
I.e., pay attention, lemming: it means that the government can't ban you from saying that Kerry was a better candidate than Bush, or viceversa. It doesn't however mean that Bush, as a private citizen, can't sue your pants off if you publish libel about him. E.g., if you were to start writing that Bush rapes small babies, he could very well sue your pants off, and "freedom of speech" would have nothing to do with it.
2. It never said that anyone has to print, broadcast or help sell your bullshit. If anyone, _including_ the government, doesn't want to publish your speech, sell your book, or pay for public access to your blog, they _are_ entirely within their legal righst.
E.g., "freedom of press" does _not_ mean you can go to NYT and have them publish whatever you want published in their newspaper. As they say, "freedom of press" only applies to whoever owns the press.
E.g., if Apple doesn't want to sell another company's books, "free press" and "democracy" have exactly _nothing_ to do with it.
E.g., if an ISP (even a state owned one) decided to unilaterally block all porn sites, or even all opposition sites, they _are_ within their legal rights to do so. Bad PR move? Yes. Violating your sacred "freedom of speech" or "democracy"? Nope.
3. Additionally "democracy" _only_ means you get to vote for your government. Period. Nothing more. It doesn't mean you get a vote in what books Apple should sell. It does _not_ mean you should get a vote even in what your CEO or CIO decides.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"Does that mean installing 10.4 over 10.3 will mean Mail 2 cannot read Mail 1 mbox files or will they be converted?"
Mail 2.0 comes with an easy-to-use, stable even in the early alphas, automatic converter.
I am not aware of any current backwards conversion, however. The emlx format should be trivial enough for people to disassemble and write tools for, though.
AFAIK, Apple (and also Steve Jobs) is the biggest IP terrorist there is. They just don't want anyone else earning anything through something that even remotely relates to them or don't want anyone to have it for free. So when Wiley, a big computer related books publisher, publishes a book about Jobs, Apple see a few dollars going to someone else and they want it for themselves instead so they ban *all* books of that publisher from their stores. It surprises me how noone else gets this point. What doesn't surprise me, though, is the fact that Apple zealots are now going to mod me down as troll.
Thanks mister "Insightful!" Your comments probably just got Slashdot banned from all of Apple's computer networks.
Today Steven Jobs has filed a temporary restraining order against his mother. The TRO claims that Jobs' mother kept talking about her son to friends and family, showed embarrassing pictures of him as a kid, and praised him for his success.
A spokesperson for Apple was quoted as saying, "Jobs' mom was always prone to talk about how proud she is of her son, but when she showed the friends in her knitting circle a picture of Steve when he was two years old using the toilet for the first time, her actions went from merely annoying to criminal."
This current action from Jobs has affected others in his family too. His wife of 14 years, Laurene Powell, has had her voice box surgically removed to avoid any chance of her offending her husband. Furthermore, his two children have been killed for talking about their dad in class.
More news on this story as it develops.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
If that is indeed the case, how come Apple didn't ban all the Apple and Mac related "Dummies" books from their stores before this? The simple fact is that Jobs is an egomaniacal control freak and the biography pissed him off. Your assertion is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Supply some evidence or take off the tinfoil hat. And of course, you were careful enough to inoculate yourself against challenges by stating that people who disagree with you are "Apple zealots". FYI, not all Mac users are enamored of Jobs. I'm a diehard Mac user, and I love Apple's products, but that doesn't mean that I love Apple, or blindly approve of Apple's actions. They are a public corporation after all, not a charitable organization, and they should be subject to the same scrutiny as any other public company. I admire and respect Jobs' vision and leadership, but I wouldn't piss in his mouth if his teeth were on fire. I honestly have never liked the guy.
to sound like another certain software company that everyone accuses of abusing their monopoly power..
And Apple IS a monopoly (given that x86-based PCs are considered to be their own market, according to Judge Jackson.. we can assume PPC-based PCs would also..)
They don't need to sell the Steve Jobs biography if they don't want to.. but to completely ban the publisher?
Add this tot he fact that Apple doesn't consider bloggers to be a part of the legitimate press.. and we get a pretty bad impression of them, wrt free speech..
I am the maverick of Slashdot
Good ole Apple, the paragon of intellectual freedom, creativity, openness. They have mastered the style but their substance is limits, conformity, and closed systems.
There has been a new trend in the past 10 years or so of the celebrity CEO.
Jobs
Gates
Michael Dell
Jack Welch - when he was there
Page and Brin
These people are the company.
They may not own it on paper, however without these charismatic people there is no company, or rather there is just a shell of a company.
This is part of a new shift in the economy that was primed by computers and automation. Busines is becoming less and less capital intensive so the purpose of the stock market is waning.
From 1840 - 1980's, business was based on capital. You had to have a lot of money to create the production capacity. The capital markets were need ed because it required $50 million to build a factory.
So the old way required floating paper as a means of funding the business.
Now, the stock market is being used as a means of making businesses Rich.
An example is Google.
Google was already profitable before they went public. Google could have easily grown by reinvesting their profits.
That's a slow process that definitely VC firms do not like. So they force companies to go public so the VC firm can recoop their investment.
However, this whole scheme is a house of cards.
Think about it...
What happens when Bill Gates and Balmer decide to retire?
What happens to Apple when Jobs retires?
You heard it here first.
Laugh at my ignorance while I learn Rails - a Real ne
Call 1 800 275 2273
Select nothing. Wait until the voice prompts, and then select 0 or say operator.
Tell the operator you want to leave feedback. If you want, you can even give them your name and phone number, which creates a ticket that the PR people are forced to deal with.
simple yet effective, especially if lots of people do it.
San Francisco Photographers
My big problem with iPhoto is the way it insists on moving all the JPEGs around and naming them according to its own whims.
... are you also one of those guys who complains that iTunes organizes your music for you? I ask because those guys are impossible for me to understand. We rolled out a product that was basically the holy grail of music management, and they complained that it managed their music for them. They insisted that they would rather name and sort each of 20,000 tiny files themselves, with all the obsessive focus of an autistic kid counting paper clips. It was freaky.
That's iPhoto's purpose in life. Your objection is like saying, "My big problem with Excel is the way it adds all the numbers together."
Just out of my own curiosity
I'd say whether or not its pointless depends on your morals.
For instance, I don't do business with Union Carbide or their customers because of how they treated the incident in Bhopal. They may not miss the little bit of money that didn't go their way but, I know that I'm giving them nothing.
I will buy Chinese goods. This is because the Americans being put out of work are the same ones who voted for Bush, and Bush supports big Chinese imports. So, I'm supporting the political position of those factory workers.
There are many people who will not buy fuel from Exon over the oil spill in Alaska. Does Exon miss their money, maybe not. Can those people sleep better at night? Absolutely.
Of course, if you don't give a **** then it doesn't matter. The issue is not about whether you $5 makes a change, its about where *you* chose to put that $5. Its about what you think is important. If you chose not to shop with a jerk, maybe he doesn't care. You'll know that *you* chose to do business with someone else.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
Assholes often get things done. This is not the same thing as saying that one must be an asshole to get things done.
Ferrari was an asshole and got things done. Bugatti was not an asshole, and got things done anyway. Usually better, because people would pull for him because his personality earned respect and loyalty, not adulation and fear.
Jobs can keep his personality. I don't want it. It only works on the cult minded anyway who have this incredible abiltiy to excuse any behavior of the personality only because they are a "personality," in part, I believe, because they adore what they fear.
And that's fucked up, dude.
KFG
Closer to ten cents, depending on how much ice and how stingy they are with the syrup dilution ratio control. Usually these drinks are about half ice (cost ~$0.01/cup in icemaker operation capital costs). Standard coke 5:1 syrup runs about $25ish for a 5 Gallon box (marginally cheaper for corporate bulk than non-chain restaurant purchase, made up for by my last purchase being four years of inflation ago), producing 3840 floz of soda, or 320 servings of 12floz to finish filling the cups, for a cost of about $0.08 per. Cups run about $0.02 each in 24 oz size. Total cost $0.11.
Still a heck of a markup for a $1.00 soda. "The perfect product costs a dime, sells for a dollar, and is both legal and addicting." Pretty durn close.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.