California Declares Today "Steve Jobs Day"

First time accepted submitter onezeta writes "California Gov. Jerry Brown, in an announcement via a Twitter post, has declared it 'Steve Jobs Day.' The Apple co-founder's life as a technology trailblazer will be marked Sunday by his company's home state at a private memorial service and in a television documentary airing tonight at 8 pm EST on Discovery."

Comments

Another holiday:

[Hartree]

I want a Dennis Ritchie day!

Re:Another holiday:

[Anonymous Coward]

I can understand someone who was actually important getting their own day, such as Washington's Birthday/President's Day, but this is ridiculous. If they want to give Steve Jobs a day, then it should be a shared day with other technology giants.

Re:Another holiday:

[cognoscentus]

Sure they do... My condolences to his son Lionel, by the way.

Re:Another holiday:

[eexaa]

He didn't look nor act like a magician, he probably had nothing to do with recent computers...

Actually this whole thing is pretty sad.

Re:Another holiday:

[NotSoHeavyD3]

It's like they're creating a big holiday for a guy who happened to build a bunch of builds because they were really nice while at the same time ignoring the death of the guy who invented the concrete that is the basis for the construction that everybody uses, including that first guy.(Go ahead everybody, come up with your own analogy, it's fun.)

Re:Another holiday:

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I want Fake Steve Jobs day!

Re:Another holiday:

[NotSoHeavyD3]

Err, bunch of buildings.

Re:Another holiday:

[hedwards]

If only Steve Jobs had had that sort of foresight, we might actually get to own the computers we purchase.

Re:Another holiday:

[msobkow]

He wasn't a true American. He didn't earn millions or billions by offshoring his factories. He didn't profit by patenting his work. And he never sued anyone.

If you want a state memorial, you have to be a ruthless, immoral, no-holds-barred capitalist.

Re:Another holiday:

[Broolucks]

I don't really like these analogies because they are comparing apples and oranges. Inventing concrete is nice and all, but people do need nice buildings, and the inventor of concrete might be completely incapable to build anything but large cubes of concrete, much like someone who designs nice buildings might be clueless about materials. Most programmers are godawful at design, whereas most designers are godawful at programming, so in my book they are all equally deserving. We need all of these people.

This being said, Steve Jobs is getting clearly disproportionate attention. I think Ritchie is getting just as much attention and celebration as I think he should, but Steve Jobs is getting way, way, WAY more than he deserves, it's getting embarrassing at this point. I mean, a headline I can understand, but this is ridiculous.

Re:Another holiday:

[tqk]

He didn't look nor act like a magician ...

That was the best part of his act.

Just think, what, forty years ago he designed a programming language in order to port an operating system that would eventually run on everything from PDP-11's through cell phones, so they could play a computer game on (then) new hardware.

Who but dmr comes up with !@#$ like that? That was a class act.

I still haven't seen any mention of his passing in my newspaper. He's like a ghost in the machine, just as he always intended. Awesome.

Re:Another holiday:

[Broolucks]

When you create something, normally, you fill a niche. Dennis Ritchie did something useful and did it well, but if his stuff took off, that's because there was a need for it in some way. If he didn't exist, then somebody else would have filled that need a short while later, with something that might have been better or worse, there is no way to tell. Without Ritchie you would have no UNIX, but then somebody else would have made something similar. To say that Steve Jobs would be nothing without Ritchie is disingenuous, because without Ritchie he would have based his work on something else that would have been roughly equivalent. Jobs is a designer, he would base his design on whatever technologies are available, no matter who made them, and he would have success no matter what.

For the most part, technology (much like science) progresses at its own rhythm. At any point in time, the current state of science and technology allows for a certain number of incremental improvements, and hundreds if not thousands of people have the technical capability to make these improvements. These improvements will happen no matter what, by one or more people with the technical capability, within a limited time window. Individuals really don't matter all that much.

Re:Another holiday:

[msobkow]

By the way, I do think Jobs was a great business man who did a tremendous job of leading Apple to where they are today.

But I am disappointed to see that the fanboism has infected society to the degree that a state would declare a memorial day for a business man who did little if anything for society itself. Shipping shiny toys may be profitable, but it does not change the world in the same way as philanthropy and political activism do.

Re:Another holiday:

[tqk]

It's like they're creating a big holiday for a guy who happened to build a bunch of [buildings] because they were really nice while at the same time ignoring the death of the guy who invented the concrete that is the basis for the construction that everybody uses, including that first guy.(Go ahead everybody, come up with your own analogy, it's fun.)

Huh. I saw pretty much the same analogy posted in comments on ArsTechnica the other day. Paraphrasing, "Steve was like a gifted architect who oversaw the creation of buildings that many appreciated. dmr invented glass, concrete, and steel."

I love that analogy. It gives them both their due in equivalent proportions. Apple hardware and software is pretty, robust, and sells ridiculously well. dmr's stuff just fscking works, elegantly and quietly, as he intended.

Re:Another holiday:

[wisnoskij]

Everyone should know who that is, at the very very least he is as important at Jobs and many people would say much more.

Re:Another holiday:

[geekmux]

It's like they're creating a big holiday for a guy who happened to build a bunch of builds because they were really nice while at the same time ignoring the death of the guy who invented the concrete that is the basis for the construction that everybody uses, including that first guy.(Go ahead everybody, come up with your own analogy, it's fun.)

What, no talk of a car in your analogy?!? You must be new here.

Re:Another holiday:

[SvnLyrBrto]

Yeah... but do you see the incessant whining... like is all over slashdot, ars, and the like, right now over Jobs vs. Ritchie... about the fact that everybody knows who Frank Lloyd Wright is, but no one can remember who invented glass, concrete, or steel?

Re:Another holiday:

[tqk]

I have no doubt that there would be much less chatter about Dennis Ritchie's death were Steve Jobs still alive.

If you'd grown up with him (dmr) like some of us did, you wouldn't be spouting BS like that.

Re:Another holiday:

[Anonymous Coward]

IMO C doesn't "just work" and it sure isn't elegant.

It "kinda works".

There are probably only very small number of people in the world who can write nontrivial C programs properly - e.g. they can put USD(2 ^ number of exploitable[1] bugs)-1 bounties on their C programs and not go bankrupt.

[1] e.g. attacker can execute arbitrary code of the attacker's choice.

Re:Another holiday:

[slasho81]

Get a PR firm.

Re:Another holiday:

[Runaway1956]

"I think Ritchie is getting just as much attention and celebration as I think he should, "

That's a little bit funny, when you consider that Mr. Ritchie doesn't seem to have made any headlines at all. Only after reading OP above, did I do a google search, to learn that Mr. Ritchie is, indeed, just as dead as Steve Jobs.

Rest in Peace, Dennis Ritchie, and thank you!

Re:Another holiday:

[gman003]

I suggest you find a copy of "Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing". Jobs was not a good manager, and was a downright terrible businessman. He was a good leader, very inspirational, but independently he was a failure at making a product people would buy. I believe he was successful at Apple (the second time) mainly because he was managed well, because he had people in charge who would say "no, you can't do that, that's too expensive" or "no, you don't need to do that, nobody cares about that".

Re:Another holiday:

[Phat_Tony]

I'm sure you're upset because you knew Dennis, but what the parent post said is objectively true, and it is not a slight on Dennis Ritchie. Did you even stop to think, you're calling his post BS in a discussion on a Steve Jobs article, in which most of the posts above this are about Dennis Ritchie? Every discussion forum about Steve these days has a bunch of posts about Dennis - if Steve hadn't died, these posts about Dennis wouldn't be here. I'm not getting the hate for his post.

Re:Another holiday:

[msobkow]

I'm genuinely confused by NeXT's failures. Their APIs were clean, they had a system well in advance of what was available from other companies at the time, and proprietary hardware was still the norm when they were around.

NeXT lives on in OS/X GUI, heavily adapted and updated, so at least the best of NeXT's technology was salvaged.

But you're right -- Jobs had a whole team assisting him with Apple. I'm not sure he was forced to take advice from a team at NeXT.

Re:Another holiday:

[msobkow]

Gotta pick up a new keyboard here, too. Sticky keys make it look like I can't spell sometimes. *LOL*

Danged things only last 6 months to a year. Having learned to type in the days of manual typewriters, I'm pretty hard on them.

Re:Another holiday:

[rsmith]

I want a Dennis Ritchie day!

Second that. Dennis Ritchie's legacy is way more important.

Re:Another holiday:

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't really like these analogies because they are comparing apples and oranges.

More like comparing Apple to Unix, if you ask me.

Re:Another holiday:

[Phat_Tony]

To follow up, both men were extremely influential on the history of technology, and in very different ways, so the proximity of their deaths has caused a lot of comparison. More attention has been brought to both of them due them being in the same industry and the timing coincidence. Steve was a celebrity and already getting a lot of attention in the population at large, Dennis was mostly known within the industry. Bringing Dennis up to compare with Steve is introducing his legacy to some people who didn't know about it. It's a good thing, and the fact it is happening is not some kind of slight on Dennis.

Re:Another holiday:

[Anonymous Coward]

Steve Jobs is getting clearly disproportionate attention ... way, way, WAY more than he deserves, it's getting embarrassing at this point. I mean, a headline I can understand, but this is ridiculous.

The difference is that Jobs was a celebrity. We worship celebrities, take an interest in their lives, cheer for their successes and mourn them when they die.

Whether you like it or not, that's the truth. It's the world we live in, so better get used to it!

Re:Another holiday:

[gman003]

Jobs was an over-perfectionist. He commissioned a logo from Paul Rand for $100,000, and then sent memos to every retail store specifying the exact colors to use and that the logo absolutely must be tilted at precisely 22 degrees. He mandated that the NeXT Cube be a perfect cube - most manufactured cubes have a shallow draft of half a degree or so so it can be removed from the mold; at the time there was only one foundry in the country capable of forming absolute perfect cubes. His market research showed that universities (his main target demographic) wanted a powerful computer for ~$6,500; the first NeXT computer was $9,999 because of all the perfectionist things Jobs demanded be added. He bought $10,000 sofas for the office and had a full-time art curator.

If any of those things sound like bad business decisions for a company that never employed more than 600 people and never had significant sales, congratulations, you're a better businessman than Steve Jobs.

Re:Another holiday:

[Martin Blank]

Glass, concrete, and steel were all invented thousands of years ago. There's a good chance that in two or three thousand years, no one will remember who Steve Jobs or Dennis Ritchie were, either. That doesn't change the immediate impact of the men to our time.

Re:Another holiday:

[Zontar The Mindless]

I can see you must be a really big hit at parties.

Re:Another holiday:

[thetoadwarrior]

Turok the dinosaur hunter got its own street in a city. Anyone can do it if you want to throw some money their way. Apple obviously rakes in a lot of money for California so of course California is going to give him a day.

Re:Another holiday:

[mwvdlee]

Whether you like it or not, that's the truth. It's the world we live in, so better get used to it!

Or alternatively, if you're not an obedient sheep, speak up and try to change it.

Re:Another holiday:

[thetoadwarrior]

So you're saying Bill Gates will get a whole year to celebrate him when he dies?

Re:Another holiday:

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh and Ritchie didn't take advantage of a loophole in organ donation laws that allowed him to use his extreme wealth to put himself at the front of the queue in almost every state instead of just the one where he actually lived.

Jobs was nothing short of a self-centered asshole, just like almost every Mac user I have ever met.

Re:Another holiday:

[hackertourist]

No, Ricthie is a guy who invented one specific type of concrete that just happens to be really popular. If Ritchie hadn't invented C, pretty much the same things would have been done in another language.

Steve Jobs' contribution isn't about white plastic, it's bringing the GUI to the masses when the guys who invented it were content to let it moulder in a lab.

Ritchie is important, but he didn't change the world.

Re:Another holiday:

[jgrahn]

When you create something, normally, you fill a niche. Dennis Ritchie did something useful and did it well, but if his stuff took off, that's because there was a need for it in some way. If he didn't exist, then somebody else would have filled that need a short while later, with something that might have been better or worse, there is no way to tell. Without Ritchie you would have no UNIX, but then somebody else would have made something similar.

I'm not sure about that. People kept inventing really sucky OSes like MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 for decades after Unix was created, and people who used them thought they were the best. Computing isn't the kind of place where everything quickly converges towards the best possible solution.

Also consider that there were few places like Bell Labs.

Re:Another holiday:

[arth1]

At least he's giving back, being a philanthropist, unlike Steve Jobs, whose first action when regaining the rudder of Apple in 1997 was to cut Apples charitable initiatives, It stayed that way until early this fall - after Jobs had mostly stepped down and Apple had been publicly criticized, they added a company matching of employee contribution.

That doesn't mean I like Bill Gates, but at least he's human. Jobs was just an asshole with a smile. People buy that.

Re:Another holiday:

[LucidBeast]

How about Alan Turing day!

Of course Steve Jobs day is decided by bunch of n00bs.

Re:Another holiday:

[ScrewMaster]

I love that analogy. It gives them both their due in equivalent proportions.

Yeah... but do you see the incessant whining... like is all over slashdot, ars, and the like, right now over Jobs vs. Ritchie... about the fact that everybody knows who Frank Lloyd Wright is, but no one can remember who invented glass, concrete, or steel?

The whining about Dennis Ritchie's comparative historical footnote is infinitely preferable to the fawning over Steve Jobs and the global outpouring of tears over his death. Tears! And mind you, those aren't tears for Steve Jobs: very few people knew him well enough to legitimately cry over his loss. I was an Apple ][ user back in the seventies (still have it, low serial number) so I have a long history with Apple, and probably am more aware of Apple's effect on the industry than most. But I don't know the man, never met him nor anyone that did. Rather, I believe that those who are losing it are terrified that they won't be receiving on schedule the toys that they so much desire. That's what scares them: millions of customers are thoroughly addicted to Apple products, and now they're suffering a sort of pre-withdrawal syndrome. Weird, actually. Doesn't say much for their opinion of Apple, Inc without Jobs at the helm: time will tell if Mr. Cook is up to the task. For the sake of rehab centers around the world, I hope he is.

Furthermore, the reason that no-one remembers who invented the things that we all depend upon is this: our education system has failed. I was around back in America's heydey as an industrial concern, and when I was in school, you better damn well believe we were taught who invented things, and why, and how those inventions impacted our own lives. We were taken on field trips to manufacturing plants and laboratories, so that we would know where the stuff comes from. That was considered important at the time. It's not anymore. Ignorance is bliss I suppose.

There are a lot of people here who are not only capable of respecting Dennis Ritchie for his contribution, but are actually able to recognize the significance of that contribution. Hell, the Internet as we know it was founded upon C and Unix, let alone the fact that the operating system underlying all of Apple's current Mac and iPhone products is Unix (sorry, Apple fans ... no innovation there, just good engineering and good business sense.) That proved to be a very wise decision on Jobs' part, and much of his ultimate success can be traced to the key decision not to try and continue Apple's proprietary approach to operating systems. A custom GUI layer with a solid underpinning of BSD Unix proved to be a winning combination.

Remember also that personal computers and smartphones are only a teeny-tiny part of the world of computing. There are billions of lines of C running on every production line on the planet, millions of Web servers running one Unix variant or another serving trillions of Web pages, to name but a few applications of Ritchie's brainchild. Yes, Mr. Ritchie's (and Ken Thompson's!) contribution was certainly relevant, and on a global scale far outweighs what Mr. Jobs has done. It is largely invisible to the average person, but no less noteworthy for that.

So yes. I think a little whining is in order, even if the man himself would have preferred the anonymity.

Re:Another holiday:

[gnasher719]

No, Ricthie is a guy who invented one specific type of concrete that just happens to be really popular. If Ritchie hadn't invented C, pretty much the same things would have been done in another language.

We would be programming in Pascal, Increment (Pascal), Pascal-Hash, or Papua & New Guinea.

Re:Another holiday:

[betterunixthanunix]

it's bringing the GUI to the masses when the guys who invented it were content to let it moulder in a lab.

"The masses" must refer to people who had the money to spend on a Lisa or a Macintosh. Most people did not see a GUI until Windows 95.

As for Ritchie, his most important contribution was not C, but rather his work on UNIX. You know about Unix (as it is now capitalized), right? That's the operating system on which the World Wide Web was originally built, the operating system that popularized the "everything is a file" abstraction, and yes, the operating system that Mac OS X is based on. Steve Jobs' contribution was in identifying things that could marketed, but it was men like Dennis Ritchie, Steve Wozniak, and Lee Felsenstein, and many other unknown engineers and researchers, who provided Jobs with something to identify in the first place.

Sure, all these things would have "eventually" been created by someone else, but guess what? The GUI, tablet computers, etc. would have also been "eventually" marketed by someone else. We care about Steve Jobs because he brought things to market before other people did, and that is why we care about C, Unix, and Ritchie.

Re:Another holiday:

[Anonymous Coward]

No, dieing from a curable disease is the universe's way of punishing hubris. The form of cancer he had isn't usually fatal with proper treatment.

http://gawker.com/5849543/harvard-cancer-expert-steve-jobs-probably-doomed-himself-with-alternative-medicine

Re:Another holiday:

[Anonymous Coward]

you can thank alternative therapy, meditation and a vegan diet and for his death. He could have been cured years ago. Instead he chose wrong. It didn't just work! A glorious day for mankind, another charlatan bites the dust.

Re:Another holiday:

[ScrewMaster]

I can understand someone who was actually important getting their own day, such as Washington's Birthday/President's Day, but this is ridiculous. If they want to give Steve Jobs a day, then it should be a shared day with other technology giants.

On the other hand, generally you are supposed to be dead before you can get a holiday named after you, so by that measure Steve qualifies. It would have been nice if they'd waited for a while though. That's what irritates me the most: not so much that they're trying to honor Steve Jobs, but that it's so obviously an attempt to garner some political capital.

Re:Another holiday:

[ScrewMaster]

I'm sure you're upset because you knew Dennis, but what the parent post said is objectively true, and it is not a slight on Dennis Ritchie. Did you even stop to think, you're calling his post BS in a discussion on a Steve Jobs article, in which most of the posts above this are about Dennis Ritchie? Every discussion forum about Steve these days has a bunch of posts about Dennis - if Steve hadn't died, these posts about Dennis wouldn't be here. I'm not getting the hate for his post.

That's very true, but then again, timing is everything. People that respected Ritchie (like me) are bothered by the fact that someone who created one of the major pillars of the computing world, the Internet, and the personal computer revolution goes largely unknown, while Steve Jobs (with all his warts) gets credit as one of the greatest "innovators" of all time, right up there with Edison, Tesla and Einstein. Not that the public at large could give a damn, but among the self-absorbed tech-elite that populate Slashdot, it's especially annoying. We should know better.

On the other hand, from what I do know of Dennis Ritchie, that's exactly how he would have wanted it.

Re:Another holiday:

[sosume]

This is Slashdot, car analogies are always superior. Jobs is like Enzo Ferrari, Gates is like Henry Ford and Ritchie is like the guy who invented the automobile. Whoever that may have been. And how sad this may seem, it still stands.

Re:Another holiday:

[ScrewMaster]

I'm genuinely confused by NeXT's failures.

I'm not. The problem I think they had was that of many startups with a great product: they expected customers to flock to them because they were, in fact, good. The reality is that even great ideas and products need marketing. Bad ideas and products even more so. The "if you build it they will come" mentality rarely works out in practice. At the very least, you have to let people know you have a product, and that requires sales and marketing.

Re:Another holiday:

[ScrewMaster]

"A thing comes into being because it is its time". That's true enough, I suppose.

Re:Another holiday:

[sosume]

GP was about dmr, not jobs ...

Re:Another holiday:

[supersloshy]

I don't know if you are being sarcastic or just don't know Mr Job's dark side.

That's exactly what he implied. Read the comment he was replying to:

I want a Dennis Ritchie day!

The person you replied to, who replied to the person I just quoted, was talking about how Steve was a much "worse" person than Dennis Ritchie, and therefore deserved higher praise apparently because the world, to him, is totally twisted. He made a few logical fallacies, though, so I don't agree with him. The fact that people never mention the bad things Steve did are proof enough that we don't praise him for that; we praise him for his contribution to society by making consumer electronics a much more competitive industry, resulting in more innovation. Of course he threw the obligatory "capitalism is evil" bit at the end of his comment which I don't even need to respond to because it's so generalized and stereotypical of a notion that nothing I say can change that.

Anyway... I hope I cleared that up for you.

Re:Another holiday:

[TheLink]

We were taken on field trips to manufacturing plants and laboratories, so that we would know where the stuff comes from. That was considered important at the time. It's not anymore. Ignorance is bliss I suppose.

Heh milk comes from a carton, bacon and eggs from the supermarket, honey from a jar. Many people don't like the truth. Ignorance is bliss for them.

Re:Another holiday:

[supersloshy]

That's exactly what he implied.

Err, what I meant to say was that he was sarcastic. He wasn't implying that he didn't know of his dark side. Just to make that clear to anybody that didn't understand my comment.

Re:Another holiday:

[supersloshy]

That's exactly what he implied.

Err, what I meant to say was that he was sarcastic. He wasn't implying that he didn't know of his dark side. Just to make that clear to anybody that didn't understand my comment.

Ah crap, I messed up again. What I MEANT to say was that he was talking about someone else entirely. Geez, what is wrong with my sentence-writing skills today...

Re:Another holiday:

[Broolucks]

I agree that we rarely converge on the best possible solution (after all, even Unix killed its own successor, Plan 9 - if the best possible solution always won, Unix would be dead). I am just saying that Unix does fill some roles (open source fosters research and development, many systems require multi-task and multi-user, etc.), and that its existence made the development of alternatives less likely and their success less probable, so that it is difficult to tell what would have happened if it did not exist. Unix is not the only open source multi-task multi-user system ever made, and they are not all inspired from Unix. It makes sense to think that one of them would have filled Unix's role in its absence.

Re:Another holiday:

[Rizimar]

It's too late. Bill Gates died in 1999 and all he got was a website devoted to the fact.

Re:Another holiday:

[TheLink]

By the way all the praises here and elsewhere about C and UNIX are ironically a bit overdone too. UNIX is better than Windows. But it isn't that wonderful. C might be preferable to Pascal, but it isn't that great either.

1) C and UNIX are the "Worse is Better" approach: http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better

2) There was already a "unix" before UNIX. It was called Multics, and it was better in many areas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics and after UNIX there was Plan9: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs .

So a world without C and UNIX might not necessarily be worse. Maybe stuff would only start happening 10 years later but we might have a lot fewer stupid "buffer overflows" and "exploits".

Re:Another holiday:

[yosephi]

http://gly.ath.cx/

Re:Another holiday:

[Broolucks]

Well, there are tens of thousands of people who have had a great, lasting impact on society, may that be contributing greatly to practical computer science, to theoretical computer science, to the enjoyment of electronic devices, to the understanding of the universe, to peace, to curing diseases, and whatever else it is that matters. If everybody of Ritchie's caliber made headlines, you would have a headline every goddamn day.

If attention was given on pro-rata of achievement, given the understandably limited attention span we all have, the death of someone should never make headlines. A headline is appropriate to notify people of something they might care about, or to draw their attention to something. For this reason, it is understandable that the death of a celebrity gets a headline, or the death of somebody unknown but whose actions are inspiring for a lot of people. Jobs' death can be in the newspaper, because everybody knows who he is. Ritchie's can be on Slashdot, because people here are likely to care, but in the big picture, nobody cares. That might seem unfair, but keep in mind that it is that or nothing: nobody has the attention span to honor everybody who is deserving, other than within their respective specialties, or acquaintances.

Re:Another holiday:

[Broolucks]

Of course! But then I realized that when I didn't go to parties, somebody else was a really big hit instead. Since that role could be filled without me, I decided to go on a quest to find something that I could do where I could not be replaced. Since then I have set a turd shop; my only client was an old man who is since deceased and a kid or two for pranks, but so far I have not seen any competition, and when I tried closing the shop for a couple months, nothing filled the void. I now feel irreplaceable and am quite confident that I have found my way.

Re:Another holiday:

[LetterRip]

Steve Jobs' contribution isn't about white plastic, it's bringing the GUI to the masses when the guys who invented it were content to let it moulder in a lab.

Except that is the opposite of history - Jobs kept trying to kill the project at Apple that brought the GUI to the masses. Raskin and his team had already incorporated most of the Xerox PARC technology in the Macintosh project, and Steve wanted it killed, so Raskin went over his head. Steve still kept trying to kill the project so Raskin organized a field trip to Xerox PARC so that Jobs could get a clearer idea of why the ideas were important and would hopefully stop trying to kill the project. After this instead of trying to kill the Mac, Jobs forced Raskin out to take his project.

So we have the GUI in SPITE of Steve Jobs, not because of him.

http://www-sul.stanford.edu/mac/parc.html

Re:Another holiday:

[jklovanc]

Now I understand. It was a late night

Re:Another holiday:

[Trolan]

So suggest it to the state of New York and/or New Jersey, as Mr. Ritchie was born and died there, respectively. NJ may be more amenable to it as Bell Labs was there as well, where much of his work was done. This sort of '____ Day' isn't unusual since it costs the state nothing more than printing a proclamation and it lets them toot their horn for doing nothing more than being where the person so honored lived/died.

Re:Another holiday:

[chromas]

Yeah, a vertical smile.

Re:Another holiday:

[Hijacked Public]

Or, if you're not an insurrerable dickhead control freak, stop giving a shit about what other people do with their time when it has no impact on you apart from your inability to prevent yourself from paying attention to it.

Re:Another holiday:

[thetoadwarrior]

Yes he's a charitable person whose scholarship program is racist and who invests in companies that are damaging the nations they claim to help because all they're concerned about, imo, is profit to fix their narrow set of causes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundation#Investments

The foundation invests the assets that it has not yet distributed, with the exclusive goal of maximizing the return on investment. As a result, its investments include companies that have been criticized for worsening poverty in the same developing countries where the Foundation is attempting to relieve poverty.[55] These include companies that pollute heavily and pharmaceutical companies that do not sell into the developing world.[56] In response to press criticism, the foundation announced in 2007 a review of its investments to assess social responsibility.[57] It subsequently cancelled the review and stood by its policy of investing for maximum return, while using voting rights to influence company practices.[58]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,6827615.story

The Gates Foundation has poured $218 million into polio and measles immunization and research worldwide, including in the Niger Delta. At the same time that the foundation is funding inoculations to protect health, The Times found, it has invested $423 million in Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Total of France — the companies responsible for most of the flares blanketing the delta with pollution, beyond anything permitted in the United States or Europe.

What good is curing Malaria for those people when in order to get there you help turn their environment into a complete mess? Also while Apple did certainly cut back on charity they didn't give it up completely and had with charities like Red.

http://www.apple.com/uk/ipod/red/

http://www.joinred.com/red/

The (RED) team would like to express condolences to Steve Jobs' family, friends and colleagues today. Mr. Jobs led Apple into its partnership with (RED) in 2006 and that partnership has helped to save the lives of millions of people with HIV in Africa. We are forever grateful for his leadership.

Re:Another holiday:

[Ferzerp]

Jobs would be more like John Delorean. All flash, no more substance than anything else available at the time, and much worse in many ways.

Re:Another holiday:

[DerekLyons]

"I think Ritchie is getting just as much attention and celebration as I think he should, "
 
That's a little bit funny, when you consider that Mr. Ritchie doesn't seem to have made any headlines at all.

He hit the headlines on Slashdot and CNN, which sounds about right. Which is the OP's point.
 

Only after reading OP above, did I do a google search, to learn that Mr. Ritchie is, indeed, just as dead as Steve Jobs.

That you were unaware of Ritchie's death says more about you than it does about the media coverage.

Re:Another holiday:

[AchilleTalon]

I want a Dennis Ritchie week!

Re:Another holiday:

[polymeris]

Continue... Would Linus be like Wankel? Creator of a never too popular alternative, only used in niche markets, if at all?
Turing? Post? Wirth? Aiken? Goldberg? Gosling?

Re:Another holiday:

[ThorGod]

Whether you like it or not, that's the truth. It's the world we live in, so better get used to it!

Or alternatively, if you're not an obedient sheep, speak up and try to change it.

Or, realize that although outgoing people want to be publicly acclaimed and recognized, not all people do. (Not all introverts want to be ignored, but certainly some do.)

Want to honor the memory of Dennis Ritchie? Open up "The C Programming Language" and work out one of it's programming problems. My complete guess is that would have made Ritchie proud.

Re:Another holiday:

[ThorGod]

Or, if you're not an insurrerable dickhead control freak, stop giving a shit about what other people do with their time when it has no impact on you apart from your inability to prevent yourself from paying attention to it.

Yeah, and don't call people sheep...the simple label simply stops further thought on why people are the way they are.

Re:Another holiday:

[Anonymous Coward]

You think people would celebrate the life of the guy who invented concrete rather than, say, Frank Lloyd Wright? What you're saying is true and it's how things are. Celebrity is only loosely related to achievement. History is written by the winners and money's all that you can score. Fame is stupid - another vacuous religion to add meaning to (and take it away from) our infinitely complex and mysterious lives. Remember the root of the word "holiday."

Is Dennis Ritchie better than Steve Jobs or anyone else? It's a stupid question. Do a bunch of people want to make a fuss about Steve Jobs' death? Is there money/political capital to be made from that? Would it be good to encourage widespread understanding of the inner workings of the technology that defines this age? Will whinging about the deification of Steve Jobs achieve that?

Re:Another holiday:

[Belial6]

No. Linux would be John Deere.

Re:Another holiday:

[chuckymonkey]

Man, get a model M. They're nigh on indestructible.

Re:Another holiday:

[grouchomarxist]

Probably better to get one of the more up to date books, 'The Second Coming of Steve Jobs' or 'iCon: Steve Jobs'. The truth is that Steve Jobs had many successes and failures. It is probably his failures at NeXT which helped shaped his success the second time at Apple.

I don't think anyone managed Steve, although I'm sure he responded to feedback. He was both CEO and chairman of the board. Apparently when the semi-transparent iMac was proposed, many hardware engineers objected, but he pushed the project through.

Re:Another holiday:

[sootman]

> If any of those things sound like bad business
> decisions for a company that never employed
> more than 600 people and never had significant
> sales, congratulations, you're a better
> businessman than Steve Jobs.

Way to cherry-pick your facts. Did you co-found what is, at the moment, the most valuable company in the world? Did you form another company (NeXT) for a few tens of millions of dollars and sell it for $429 million a few years later? Did you buy an animation studio for $10 million and sell it $7.4 BILLION twenty years later? (Bonus question: did you run both of those companies at the same time?) Ever create any products that sell in the tens or hundreds of millions? And not just paperclips or address labels or something like that, but nice, multi-hundred-dollar items? No? Well, congratulations, you're a worse businessman than Steve Jobs.

His time at NeXT was his time to try various things, find out who he was (he was only 30 at the time), try MORE things, FAIL a little, and learn. You make it sound like that's a bad thing.

And the part about "sent memos to every retail store specifying the exact colors to use and that the logo absolutely must be tilted at precisely 22 degrees"? EVERYONE does that. That's totally standard in the design world. Ever wonder why you don't see the Ford logo in purple, the Coke logo in green, or the Nike swoosh at a crazy angle? DESIGN GUIDELINES, that's why. EVERY company has them. Fucking foursquare has an intricate collection of design guidelines.

Re:Another holiday:

[Culture20]

I want a Dennis Ritchie day!

No one know who that is!

Sure they do... My condolences to his son Lionel, by the way.

Who the hell is that? Nicole Ritchie's dad?

Re:Another holiday:

[BasilBrush]

It's like they're creating a big holiday for a guy who happened to build a bunch of builds because they were really nice while at the same time ignoring the death of the guy who invented the concrete that is the basis for the construction that everybody uses, including that first guy.(Go ahead everybody, come up with your own analogy, it's fun.)

Ah, I get your analogy. You mean like how Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, but he built it with a NeXT development system, So we have SJ to thank for the Internet too.

Re:Another holiday:

[syousef]

I want a Dennis Ritchie week!

I want people to stop mentioning Dennis Ritchie in the same sentence as that glorified marketing muppet.

Re:Another holiday:

[macs4all]

Bill Gates did do a hell of a lot more for personal computing than Steve Jobs ever did.

Yes, and most of the corporate world and a good portion of the private one, is STILL suffering for what Gates did...

Re:Another holiday:

[macs4all]

Chances are there wouldn't have been an Apple if not for Ritchie.

Hmmm. I think not.

I don't think that C (even Objective-C) was used by Apple until later on in the Mac days. The Apple 1 through /// were all 6502 Assembler-based. "BIOS" (Monitor ROM), DOS (all versions) and all applications were either 6502 Assembler or BASIC (neither of which BASICs were C-based).

Then along came the Lisa, which was a combination of 68k Assembler and Pascal, with bits and pieces of SmallTalk and even Apple's Dylan thrown in. But no C. Same with the 68k Macs.

Later, C began to be used instead of Pascal, perhaps when the PPC Macs began to appear in the early 1990s. I would imagine that Apple's first Unix, A/UX, was C-based as well. But that wasn't until 1988, long after Apple was well-established as a company.

Objective-C at Apple didn't come along until much later, as the language in which NeXTStep was written.

So, no, I really don't think that Mr. Ritchie had all that much to do with the success of Apple, sorry.

BTW, that is in no way intended as a slight against the achievements of the late, great Dennis Ritchie. Most of us who call ourselves "developers" wouldn't have careers if it weren't for his part in computing history...

Re:Another holiday:

[arth1]

If Bill Gates was such a "citizen of the world" to want to see the best for everyone then he wouldn't have over charged for Microsoft's products (aka demanded high profits).

You talk as if Bill Gates was in a position to decide this. Do you think Ballmer, Allen and the others would have agreed to this?
From what I can tell, Bill Gates welcomed the wealth, but has also done his share to use much of it for the benefit of others, and to provide a stable work environment where money was fed back into the company instead of being paid out to shareholders.

Ballmer, on the other hand, is more like Jobs was, in more than one way - greedy, ill-tempered, arrogant, and with a vision of a locked in customer base.

Re:Another holiday:

[rtb61]

Don't you get it, this is not about Steve Jobs, this is California, this is about reminding the majority, that "You Are Nothing, You Are Nobody, You Are Meaningless", unless of course your are a "CELEBRITY".

All pretty lame but would do you expect when they routinely elect those no-nothing celebrities to government, deface public structures with names, images, footprints and,worship them all day every day.

This act is pretty much wholly appropriate for California, no region in the world is so tightly locked down to celebrity worship than California (except perhaps North Korea but at least they limit their numbers).

It is becoming really lame in an internet connected world, where the majority directly connect with the majority and mass media is being squeezed out, to constantly still push celebrity bullshit and the majority are worthless nobodies. The reality is those celebrities are nothing more than manufactured PR=B$ (public relations lies for profit).

Re:Another holiday:

[Daniel Phillips]

I'm genuinely confused by NeXT's failures.

In a word: optical disk. Crippled it. Made it useless.

Otherwise, it was a workmanlike workstation. Not really great. OS/2 was way better for multiple reasons.

Re:Another holiday:

[munk3h]

Damn skippy!

Re:Another holiday:

[msobkow]

Trademarks actually require that you be that specific about the colouration and such of your logo. For example, there is a "Pepsi Blue" colour coordinate that specifies precisely what shade of blue is used by the Pepsi logos. That's why they don't use the same shape/glyph with different colours for their different products.

Re:Another holiday:

[JasterBobaMereel]

Ritchie was more like a cross between Carl Benz and Henry Ford

Gates is like VW - Massively popular, but not the cutting edge

Jobs was like Luca di Montezemolo - Boss of Ferrari - Knows his stuff, good at PR and marketing and knows what will sell ...Not Enzo

Re:Another holiday:

[JasterBobaMereel]

NeXT designed and built by people Jobs knew from his time at Apple ... some of them poached from Apple directly

He again was the boss, and the face of a product, which was the brainchild of other people ...

The internet started in 1969 .... you meant the Wolrd Wide Web ....

Re:Another holiday:

[JasterBobaMereel]

It was not far enough ahead of the competition to warrant the high price tag ...

Tim Berners-Lee had one because CERN recognised a good system, that allowed him to build his system quickly, we should thank Jean-Marie Hullot who designed the NeXT's Interface builder ...

Re:Another holiday:

[BasilBrush]

Whoosh!

Re:Another holiday:

[TheLink]

For the same quality of programmer writing a network server/service it is a lot harder to have "remote attacker can execute arbitrary code of the attacker's choice" with Java than it is with C.

You may not like the truth, but it is the truth. Just go look at the number of remote vulnerabilities in services/servers written in C. When there's a "execute arbitrary machine code" bug in a Java program, it is usually a bug in Java and not a bug in the program. You have to intentionally write it in.

Yes you can have sql injection if the programmer is really crap, but with C you'd have sql injection as well as exploitable buffer overflows etc.

Re:Another holiday:

[MareLooke]

In that respect I guess it would be appropriate to state that he invented concrete (C) and then went and used it to build something (UNIX). And apparently the design didn't suck as it's still used widely as a basis for other OSs (this goes for both C and UNIX, of course ;-) ).

Re:Another holiday:

[dunkelfalke]

Sounds good to me.

Re:Another holiday:

[TheLink]

Just go look at the number of remote vulnerabilities in services/servers written in C.

And it takes an idiot to allow this to happen.

And the world you are living in has very few idiots who would allow this to happen? Lucky you, nice of you to visit, perhaps you should return to your world soon - it's not safe here.

You are talking about programmers who should never be allowed to program anything in the first place, therefore all your points are invalid.

How's that invalid? I said:

Yes you can have sql injection IF the programmer is really crap, but with C you'd have sql injection as well as exploitable buffer overflows etc.

So I'm saying with the same level of programmer and one who is not really crap, you won't have SQL injections with Java (you used Java as an example), but you will still have remote exploits with a C program doing the same thing.

If you are saying the only programmers who should be be allowed to program will never have remote arbitrary execution exploits when writing stuff like webservers, SSH servers, DNS servers, DHCP servers, mail servers using C then there must be very few people in the world who can write programs in C.

Which is kind of my point.

If the same programmers used a safer language they would not have such problems. There is an entire of class of problems that would just not exist if they didn't program in C.

Using C is like driving a manual car without a clutch. It can be done if you are careful and skilled. But only a few people in the world can do it and keep doing it without making mistakes.

Whereas the rest of the programmers should only drive autos. They will make different mistakes and probably stupider mistakes, but they are far less likely to destroy their car transmission in 5 minutes. Nowadays with the latest technology the auto transmission is actually even faster and better than humans in changing gears at the right time, and does it far more consistently.

Re:Another holiday:

[drinkypoo]

MacOS began to use C instead of Pascal because the tools wouldn't scale. Without C, what would they have done? Tried to improve the pascal tools?

Re:Another holiday:

[drinkypoo]

Jobs failed at making computers in the middle Macintosh era because it's not an industry where you can just do any old thing you like. Oh, it was at the beginning, when the Apple I came along, because the barrier to entry was low — there was no entrenched competition in the particular space into which they sold. But Apple clearly lost its way after the Macintosh II. The Quadra era was a downright insulting time to be a Mac user, and it's when they lost me. You want me to pay WHAT for a machine a third as powerful as a PC? Uhhhhhh no.

The NeXT is the same story, unfortunately. The fastest processor ever available was a 68040, and it was one of the most expensive workstations around. Thou shalt pay what I think it's worth? Fuck you, Steve.

So putting everything he wanted in the box didn't work, and NeXT limped along selling the OS for PCs until it became part of the deal to get Steve Jobs, rather than the BeOS which I personally think would have been a far superior choice when compared to NeXTStep, Steve Jobs aside. I do think that Jobs is a better boss than Gassee... NeXT could have worked if he hadn't botched it, but Be was doomed to fail from the beginning because they didn't offer enough. Yeah, it's fast, but next year I'll be able to buy twice as much computer for the same money, so why do I care? And ultimately, even though OSX is about as responsive to the user on a modern machine as NeXTStep is on an antique, people still use it happily.

PIXAR is an example where the Steve Jobs method works, because as it turns out, letting the creatives run with their creativity is what makes things that people want to see. You do need some who are tapped into society and not off in their own little world, but you need some of those people too. But it didn't work for NeXT, which is too bad, because it's still a pretty nice OS today, and for its day it was astounding.

Re:Another holiday:

[drinkypoo]

It was slow, just like macs were slow. When workstations were going RISC and PCs were getting clock-multiplied 486s the NeXT and the Apple machines were still dorking around with 68k, and they didn't even go to the 68060! Surely Apple had the clout to get Motorola to make a reasonably-priced, pin-compatible version of the '060 (at the time, for example, they were ordering 68040s without MMUs to save money, so most Quadras are shitty Unix machines) and could have gone that way as a stopgap but instead they shat upon their customer base. NeXT saw the writing on the wall, I guess, since they developed an x86 version, but it retained the outrageous cost and meanwhile simply threw away any benefit they had gained by producing their own workstation. IOW, NeXT was doomed to failure from day one, and it had nothing whatsoever to do with the optical drive.

Re:Another holiday:

[drinkypoo]

By the time clock-multiplied 486s appeared, Apple was already gearing up for PowerPC. They saw the writing on the wall for CISC designs, but I agree they should have hedged their bets by developing a '060-based Mac.

Yes, but remember, PowerPC didn't even exist yet. And PowerPC macs ALSO lagged in performance for real work (although they benchmarked very fast) until Altivec, and yet the PPC macs still cost more than PCs which were notably faster than they were. It wasn't until the G3 that you could even take Apple seriously, not until the G4 that they had a processor that was actually competitive... and then the G5 was heinously overpriced. Almost like Apple learned nothing from the beginning of PPC, or for that matter, from the 68k era. At least the 6800 series was cheap.

When you add to this insult the fact that they could have done little more than update the CPU and the ROM to support the '060 it makes the gap between 68k and PPC utterly inexplicable, but only if you don't account for arrogance.

Re:Another holiday:

[sqldr]

.Go ahead everybody, come up with your own analogy, it's fun.

erm.. how about "Richie provided the food, and Jobs ate it and did the poop"?

Re:Another holiday:

[Wingfat]

I agree fully! he inpacted way more people than this Jerk Jobs ever could have hopped for.

Re:Another holiday:

[macs4all]

MacOS began to use C instead of Pascal because the tools wouldn't scale. Without C, what would they have done? Tried to improve the pascal tools?

That wasn't the point. The GP postulated that "Without Ritchie, there would be no Apple."

I pointed out that Apple was already well-established before the first line of C code was used in their product development cycles.

If C hadn't come along, yes, they probably would have "extended" Pascal, or used one of the other 10 ^ 100 languages that eventually fell by the wayside because of C's popularity.

And, as I said before, this is by no way a slight on the contribution of C or the late Mr. Ritchie. I use C every single day in my embedded development work. However, to postulate that "There would be no Apple without Dennis Ritchie" is patently ridiculous.

Now, if you want to say that there would be no NeXTStep/OS X without Dennis Ritchie's contribution of C, you might have a small (although utterly speculative) point. But as far as Apple, per se, no way.

Re:Another holiday:

[drinkypoo]

No Apple Computer Inc., no way. No Apple of today? Maybe, because of no NeXT.

Re:Another holiday:

[hazah]

Opinions are like assholes...

Re:Another holiday:

[wideBlueSkies]

Planning to get a couple of guys together in Warren NJ (just a few miles down the road from Murray Hill) to do just that. A long lunch talking about work and the current state of things, and how we really owe most of it to Dennis and Ken and the rest of the guys.

Re:Another holiday:

[Stewie241]

Gates is like VW - Massively popular, but not the cutting edge

I think what people so often miss is that time can really change one's perspective. Had Bill Gates died ten years ago the computing world's perspective of him would have been massively different. I remember waiting with baited breath for the upgrade to Windows 3.1 because I had to have the next best thing. I remember trying to read everything I could get my hands on about 'Chicago' - the code name for Windows 95. Had Bill passed away in the midst of Microsoft's heyday he would have been revered with the same awe that Steve is today.

If you want to talk about legacy, Steve could not have passed away at a better time. He brought Apple back from extinction and was at the helm at a time when the company released products that has captured the hearts and minds of many (love it or hate it). Chances are that won't last forever. Nothing lasts forever.

There are two outcomes for Apple now: they continue their reign under new leadership. In this case Steve Jobs comes off as brilliant because he managed to create an empire and pass along his genius to a new generation. The alternative is that Apple goes down the tubes. In this case, it becomes evident that Steve Jobs truly was the genius of Apple and they couldn't have succeeded without him.

Bill Gates had the misfortune of having to quit after his glory had faded.

Re:Another holiday:

[drinkypoo]

By the time the 68060 shipped Apple was already selling PowerMacs

That's not true at all, because you could get an '060 accelerator for your Amiga before the PPC was on the market in anything.

Yet more cluelessness! NeXT never sold its own x86 hardware.

Why don't you try reading the comment before you reply to it? Then you can avoid saying anything this stupid again. I never said they did make x86 HW. They made x86 SW. The fact you don't know this proves you are unqualified to comment on my comment. Guess that's why you didn't log in.

Re:Another holiday:

[TheLink]

So are you saying that people like Theo de Raadt and John Carmack shouldn't be allowed to program? After all opensshd and at least one quake server version have had "attacker can run arbitrary code" exploits.

If even the "John Carmack" programmers can't program in C, then as I said: "a world without C and UNIX might not necessarily be worse".

Re:Another holiday:

[drinkypoo]

Your memory is faulty. Apple shipped its first Power Macs in March 1994, but the first '060 accelerator, the Cyberstorm, was announced at World of Amiga in December 1994. Prove me wrong.

Hmm, seems like you're right, one for you, one for me.

I saw an ad for an 060 accel before I saw a PPC mac, so perhaps that is the source of my confusion.

Upon reflection, if Motorola was busy putting out the PPC, that would explain the sizable delay in the '060... and that would be Apple's fault.

Re:Another holiday:

[PipsqueakOnAP133]

Uh... that's not what your link says at all.

The link says that while the Macintosh had been considered for cancellation, it doesn't say Jobs was trying to cancel it.
It also doesn't say that Jobs forced Raskin out.

Reading first hand accounts at http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=The_Father_of_The_Macintosh.txt ,
Jef left because he was becoming alienated because he wanted the Mac to NOT have a mouse, be dependent on meta keys, and use an dead end processor.

Re:Another holiday:

[mfnickster]

It's funny, Raskin said that even Lisa wouldn't have been graphical if he hadn't specified it for the Macintosh beforehand!

"The Lisa was very Star-like; the Lisa stole things from Star right and left—it stole people, it stole ideas, even stole the font names, exactly."

http://library.stanford.edu/mac/primary/interviews/raskin/parc.html

Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously?

NO

[Killer Instinct]

iSorry but I declare it Dennis Ritchie Day!

Re:NO

[Anonymous Coward]

iSorry but I declare it Dennis Ritchie Day!

I agree. How about we honor a few more true creative minds too. Steve Jobs day? Might as well declare a Nelson Rockefeller day, or a British Petroleum day. The fact that it's California doing this makes it suspect from the beginning, so I would suggest the following as more rational substitutes (feel free to add more):

Ken Thompson Day (yeah, Apple, where would you be without C and Unix?)

James Clerk Maxwell Day

Max Planck Day

Nikola Tesla Day

Einstein Day

Marie & Pierre Curie Day

Darwin Day

Jonas Salk Day

Galileo Galilei Day

Copernicus Day

Van Leeuwenhoek Day

I left Edison off the list because he was a bit too much like Jobs for my taste.

Re:NO

[arth1]

Yebbut, how many of those were Californians?
You don't expect California to declare a day for out-of-staters, do you?

And besides, many of the people on your list have had national days for them declared by the president - that kind of trumps California, no?

Re:NO

[Sulphur]

How about Albert Sabin Day. He fought the bureaucracy and won.

Re:NO

[Relayman]

Include my favorite: Charles Proteus Steinmetz, the first person to figure out how to make AC motors work.

Re:NO

[Intropy]

Al Davis was Californian.

Re:NO

[Amorymeltzer]

Everyone is too busy celebrating National Corndog Day.

Oh, and for the record, Darwin Day exists, and was a big deal a couple of years back as 2009 was his 200th and Origin's 150th.

Re:NO

[quenda]

I left Edison off the list because he was a bit too much like Jobs for my taste.

You might argue that Ritchie and Edison changed the world far more than those other people.
Most of them are famous for discoveries of important things. Rightly so, but they were there at the right time and place.
If Einstein had not discovered relativity, someone else would have.
If Bell Labs had not provided Unix, we might by running Classic MacOS with co-operative multitasking and NetBIOS. The internet would be called Compuserve/AOL.
and you could buy shares in it.

Re:NO

[Hartree]

Gotta agree with you there. Steinmetz was pretty amazing. A little odd, but downright normal compared to Tesla.

Re:NO

[JasterBobaMereel]

Edison, was very good at getting a team of people together to come up with ideas ... and very good at marketing them

Very like Steve Jobs

Re:NO

[Reservoir Penguin]

We just need something like a Parade Day Parade .

greetings

[knappe duivel]

happy Steve Jobs Day everybody!

Long story short...

[Anonymous Coward]

His brain-care specialist said, "Vell, he's just zis guy, you know?"

Re:Long story short...

[BatGnat]

Steve did not have two heads

But its a Sunday

[rossdee]

They should Mondayize it, like Columbus Day, Presidents Day, and MLK Day.

Whats the point of a Holiday if nobody has the day off?

For that matter why are Halloween and Valentines Day called holidays - nobody has them off...

Re:But its a Sunday

[PenquinCoder]

Same reason all other 'holidays' where created... to part you with your hard earned cash!

Re:But its a Sunday

[Sulphur]

On Valentines Day /. readers have nothing to celebrate anyway.

Was there another massacre?

Re:But its a Sunday

[archen]

Even if no one remembers this exists after today, for California to recognize a holiday invents more bureaucracy that they have to keep track of, so it is indeed wasting their money. Must be nice for a state to have so much money that they can invent more ways to waste it ...

I first read this as "Tehnology Tribalizer"

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

And there were lulz.

Until he died, I wasn't sure if Jobs and Brown were actually different people. Only Linda Ronstadt knows for sure...

Re:I first read this as "Tehnology Tribalizer"

[styrotech]

Knock-knock at your front door
It's the black turtleneck secret police
They have come for your uncool niece

Misspelling?

[Anonymous Coward]

CORRECTION: Today is blow jobs day!

Oh god please no. Really?

[flimflammer]

n/t

Persona

[jones_supa]

I think Steve was okay, but it's worth noting that along being a computer innovator, one of his qualities was simply being a charismatic person, for partly which he will be remembered so well.

Re:Persona

[jones_supa]

I didn't mean that as a celebration but to just point out that he didn't achieve his fame through technological merits only.

They can have one day a year

[esocid]

As long as the other 364.25 days are Steve Jobs free days.

Since when?

[theolein]

Since when did working for a living make one have to like rich capitalists to whom you are worth less than the ascii used to print these words?

Re:On 15 October, Goebbels attempted suicide...

[Hazel Bergeron]

So all marketers are Nazis?

No. I was just arguing that Jobs was one of the best marketers (in the West) since Goebbels.

Would you say that he wasn't as good as Goebbels?

Heh.

[poofmeisterp]

So this is a day that all companies in California must hire someone named Steve on every year?
Too soon?

Hmmm

[AmberBlackCat]

Maybe they can celebrate by adding a $300 tax to the cost of all computers and mp3 players once a year.

Re:Jobs Wept

[mccalli]

Yeah, it's missing Jack Tramiel and Commodore - the company which built the best selling single model of all time?

Cheers,
Ian

Whats the occasion?

[Osgeld]

In celebration of Steve's death (which is a little late), or in celebration of off-shoring all those California jobs to china?

Will the doc be made by Apple Fanboys ...

[wisnoskij]

Or will the world finally realize that he is not as fantastic a person as everyone is claiming he was.

Re:California lol

[geekmux]

I'm waiting for "balanced budget" day.

It's right on the calendar man...it's a holiday in fact.

See, says right here, "Balanced Budget day is usually celebrated the day after 'Cold Day in Hell'."

Re:Jobs Wept

[rossdee]

"Notice anything unusual about the above list?"

Yes, its wrong. The Bill Gates Era didn't start til 1995 and you left out Jay Miner. (You also left out Clive Sinclair, but you probably never heard of him in the USA (or of Dick Smith for that matter.)

(I bought my firdt computer in 1979 - my 3rd computer was an Apple ][ the 5th was a Mac, and I havn't bought an Apple product since then

Written in C

[SgtChaireBourne]

Just think, what, forty years ago he designed a programming language in order to port an operating system that would eventually run on everything from PDP-11's through cell phones, so they could play a computer game on (then) new hardware.

It's not just that C is the second most common programming language: Most of the other languages are actually written in C. That includes Perl, Python, and PHP.

Re:Written in C

[ScrewMaster]

Just think, what, forty years ago he designed a programming language in order to port an operating system that would eventually run on everything from PDP-11's through cell phones, so they could play a computer game on (then) new hardware.

It's not just that C is the second most common programming language: Most of the other languages are actually written in C. That includes Perl, Python, and PHP.

Not only that, but realistically you have to count embedded systems, not just personal computing devices. By that measure, C is still by far the most popular programming language on the planet.

Re:Written in C

[tqk]

Just think, what, forty years ago he designed a programming language in order to port an operating system that would eventually run on everything from PDP-11's through cell phones, so they could play a computer game on (then) new hardware.

It's not just that C is the second most common programming language: Most of the other languages are actually written in C. That includes Perl, Python, and PHP.

Not only that, but realistically you have to count embedded systems, not just personal computing devices. By that measure, C is still by far the most popular programming language on the planet.

Add SCADA. That controls the most powerful systems our civilization depends on.

Re:Written in C

[ScrewMaster]

Just think, what, forty years ago he designed a programming language in order to port an operating system that would eventually run on everything from PDP-11's through cell phones, so they could play a computer game on (then) new hardware.

It's not just that C is the second most common programming language: Most of the other languages are actually written in C. That includes Perl, Python, and PHP.

Not only that, but realistically you have to count embedded systems, not just personal computing devices. By that measure, C is still by far the most popular programming language on the planet.

Add SCADA. That controls the most powerful systems our civilization depends on.

No argument. SCADA devices are programmed in a variety of high-level languages ... but under the hood you'll find plenty of C and assembler. Actually, as CPU power has increased and optimizing compilers have improved, the use of hand-tuned assembler isn't so common anymore.

Re:Jobs Wept

[mikael]

You don't understand the history of Silicon Valley. The whole company was founded in his parent's garage. One half for marketing, the other half for engineering. Most startups fold within 18 months. They were the ones that not just made it but issued stock and survived through three decades (1980's - home computers, 1990's - GUI based workstations, 2000's - consumer 3D/ downloadable music, 2010's - mobile devices).

so....

[atarione]

just checking does this mean I can park my Mercedes in the Handicapped spots today?

Interesting trivia

[BlueParrot]

October 16th is also the day that several major
Nazis were executed following the Nuremberg trials.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_trial

What about Newton?

[colinrichardday]

Just because Apple named a PDA after him doesn't mean you have to ignore him.

Re:Too soon?

[msobkow]

"stylish dresser"?

You mean wearing black turtlenecks for umpteen years in a row? I think it was Einstein who suggested buying a closet full of identical suits so you wouldn't have to waste time deciding what to wear, but I do think Jobs took that to an extreme.

Thanks for the best laugh I've had today.

Re:Jobs Wept

[Osgeld]

yea cause IBM and MS-DOS totally didnt dominate the market forcing most companies to go bankrupt pre 1995

Hey, I like my apple stuff...

[Quiet_Desperation]

...but if this is the silliest thing the California government does for the rest of the year, we Californians will consider ourselves fortunate.

Hard to feel any antipathy towards Jobs when our statehouse is basically a giant, impacted colon full of human shit.

Re:Hey, I like my apple stuff...

[drinkypoo]

Jerry Brown: Searching your cellphone on a whim is OK, and by the way, all hail Steve Jobs!

I give a shit about Jobs, whatever. But Jerry Brown is the leading asshole in the state.

By Design

[andersh]

They were designed by his friend Issey Miyake after Steve decided a corporate image and uniform would help his company. I believe he was impressed by the workers' uniforms at Sony.

Found a source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/fash-track/steve-jobs-issey-miyake-black-turtlenecks-246808

The unions

[amightywind]

Will the unions take a paid holiday?

Not as much attention

[SuperKendall]

I was astounded that on the day Ritchie died, and the day AFTER, there was no posted story on Slashdot. I assumed someone was waiting for a good retrospective summary, but even so that's a long time and it was newsworthy enough to post right away...

I'm not sure if Jobs is getting more attention than he deserved, but Ritchie is definitely being short-changed.

Re:Not as much attention

[Broolucks]

I thought there would have been a Slashdot comment, but I didn't pay attention. I agree that it would have been appropriate, so maybe Ritchie was indeed short-changed here.

Re:Not as much attention

[Broolucks]

Slashdot story, I mean. I'm sure comments are a-plenty :)

Re:Not as much attention

[jez9999]

I thought there would have been a Slashdot comment, but I didn't pay attention. I agree that it would have been appropriate, so maybe Ritchie was indeed short-changed here.

Like this?

It's a few days after Ritchie died, but he died a few days before it became public knowledge. That story seems to be dated roughly when it became public knowledge.

Re:Shut the fuck up

[Hartree]

Except I wasn't angry when I wrote that.

Of all things, I was taking a walk down memory lane on a Sunday morning, listening to Henry Mancini's version of Brian's Song and feeling a bit wistful.

Dennis was a sort that I like. He made great tools for the sake of making great tools and didn't make much fuss over himself.

That's why he wasn't so well known. I like that. But, YMMV. If it helps your day to tell me to STFU, what the hey. I'll just drink my coffee and listen to Brian's Song again.

Wow. get a load of that crap.

[unity100]

The creator of C, the language which enabled ALL of these shit - including EVERYthing steve jobs has done - have died, and california has the 'foresight' to declare a steve jobs day.

This shows how deep is the retardedness that is valuing form over substance in our society is. Few buttons to push and shiny metallic corners on an object is more important than any stuff that make those stuff actually run.

Re:Wow. get a load of that crap.

[unity100]

yes. all apple devices come from apple ii, and they use pascal underneath. even apple's clouds.

Re:Wow. get a load of that crap.

[jo_ham]

Not that I usually side with AC's, but he did just accurately refute your argument.

You said

EVERYthing steve jobs has done

(emphasis yours).

It's very funny watching anti-Apple trolls get all worked up over stuff like this.

Re:Wow. get a load of that crap.

[unity100]

yes. that totally invalidated what i said. i see now.

Re:Wow. get a load of that crap.

[jo_ham]

Glad that you are seeing reason, and that if you emphasise the "every" in everything, only to have one of the most successful early products that came out of Apple and the Woz/Jobs partnership pointed out to you excluded from that "every" that you really didn't think your trolling through very hard.

Still, 2/10 for showing up to mindlessly bash him.

Re:Wow. get a load of that crap.

[unity100]

yes, yes. i see the error of my ways now.

Re:Shut the fuck uphttp://apple.slashdot.org/comme

[cyber-vandal]

Tell that to the millions of people who fucking cried when a ruthless capitalist that they didn't even know died. That's far far more pathetic.

How about a real visionary and genius?

[mr_mischief]

Steve Jobs helped make Objective C, an offshoot of C, popular.
Dennis Ritchie made C.

Steve Jobs convinced his company to port an OS.
Dennis Ritchie helped create the very idea of a portable OS.

Steve Jobs eventually decided Unix would make a good basis for the OS on his hardware.
Dennis Ritchie helped Ken Thompson create Unix.

Steve Jobs and his company eventually decided that a similar OS and development stack across all the company's devices would be a useful idea.
Dennis Ritchie helped create an OS and development stack used on everything from phones to supercomputers.

Re:How about a real visionary and genius?

[drb226]

If I say "Steve Jobs", my entire immediate family, and most extended family, know who I'm talking about.
If I say "Dennis Ritchie", not a single relative knows who I'm talking about.

And my relatives are generally not Apple fanboys. A few cousins, maybe.

Re:Shut the fuck uphttp://apple.slashdot.org/comme

[thetoadwarrior]

I agree completely that there were a lot of fake people crying over Steve Jobs but that doesn't mean people should turn around take advantage of Dennis Richie's death to stick it to Steve Jobs. It's disrespectful to both men and I'd argue it's more disrespectful to Dennis Richie.

Two men have died. People should just let them rest in peace and not use either person's death to push an agenda.

Re:Shut the fuck up

[thetoadwarrior]

To be fair (and I probably should have made it more clear) I was talking about the general commentary about Dennis Ritchie. There are a lot of people now who want to be his greatest fan all of the sudden just to stick it to Steve Jobs.

It is disrespectful to both men and, imo, a lot of it belittles Dennis Richie's accomplishments and makes it out like the only reason we should care about his death is to use it against Steve Jobs.

Likewise the people that talk out their back side about Steve Jobs just because he died should shut up.

They're both dead and should be left to rest in peace. Whether people liked either of them or not their families didn't do anything wrong and I'm sure they would rather just get on with their lives rather than seeing their family members used for people's personal agendas.

Re:Jobs accomplished more than any 20 of you

[Anonymous Coward]

Jobs accomplished more in his time than any 20 of you put together

Not if we include Dennis Ritchie when we organize our group of 20.

INBD. My classmate has his day too!

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

What is the big deal? My college classmate got his own day in Neveda too.

Re:Jobs accomplished more than any 20 of you

[jo_ham]

Nor will you have legions of people jumping out of nowhere to trash you either...

Just sayin'

Re:On 15 October, Goebbels attempted suicide...

[quenda]

Where is the "+1 troll" button?

Re:hah

[jo_ham]

That's nothing. It's ReiserFS day tomorrow.

I've already started digging the hole.

Thanks Jerry Brown

[selex]

So you won't stop a bill which prevents police from invading the information on my iPhone, but you will give me a holiday to the guy who introduced the world to it. Why is "California Uber Alles" running through my head right now. Jello Biafra we need a new song now. Selex

I propose

[highwaytohell]

the day after be "Foxconn Day"

Unlike

[kriston]

Unlike.

Re:Jobs accomplished more than any 20 of you

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey idiot, almost NONE of that was invented or even defined by Jobs.

Re:Jobs accomplished more than any 20 of you

[Goose In Orbit]

And you, sir, have believed more hype than 20 of the rest of us put together...

I might, if I'm feeling generous, allow you some of the "redefine" part though... except that he was the frontman who saw talent in others and allowed them to redefine existing technology and give it the Apple shine

We Must Dissent

[SMACX guy]

"Will we next create false gods to rule over us? How proud we have become, and how blind." -- Sister Miriam Godwinson

Re:China's Steve Jobs Day

[wideBlueSkies]

please mod parent up. He's right.

Who we respect

[forkfail]

It's really sad to me that Dennis Richie doesn't get 1% of the attention at his passing than the man who made his work sexy does.

Commodore Amiga

[msobkow]

'nuff said.

Haters gonna hate...

[skinlayers]

Thanks for keeping my Apple stock soaring, /.

This kind of bile and arrogance from elitists is exactly what makes Apple products more popular than other *NIX flavors, these days.
This is exactly was repulses your everyday Joe from your platform, tools, and heroes of choice.
No one wants to hang out with a bitter nerd except for other nerds with the same bitterness.
So keep it up! My grandparent's and their Apple shares also thanks you!

I run Ubuntu on my server.
I run Ubuntu on my desktop for day to day usage (oh, except for when SMPlayer, VLC, Totem, or xine won't play my DVDs correctly, or when I'm sick of GDM crashing, or the nVidia drivers not working quite right, or I want to get more than 4 hours of life out of my laptop's battery).
I reboot into Windows for gaming (and no, WINE doesn't work for everything).
And I boot into OS X if I want to get audio production done (see line above).
Surprise! Mac OS X is better at somethings than Linux!
Surprise! iPhones is better at somethings than Android!

You may now all return to being armchair experts....