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Wozniak's Comments on "Pirates"
webslacker wrote in
to tell us that Steve Wozniak has posted his commnts on
the TNT Movie, Pirates of the Silicon Valley. He notes several things and
clarifies other things. As many of you noted, the movie made
him out to be one of the coolest guys ever to live. I'd say
thats very deserved. And I'm not saying that just
because we had an Apple ][ (on a cart wheeled from class
to class!) in my elementary school.
I also had an Apple II on a cart wheeled around ;D I still scorn that :/ But ooooh, the memories...
from classroom to classroom. Even then, I was
ahead of my classmates.
evil woman for never answering my question about
what it meant by "BROKEN BY A SOFT SECTOR" on the
LOGO bootup menu.
I fear what kids must have to work with today.
There was a certain innocence attached to the
Apple II and it's kin...:~(
I hope you guys didn't miss, there's a second page with comments that were way more interesting
http://www.woz.org/woz/commets.html
http://www.woz.org/woz/commets1.html
Cool is ok praise.
Calling him ethical is nice.
But, the best praise I can think of:
Woz is a wizard.
(for you youngins, wizards are hardware AND software gurus. The height of the profession.)
what the industry would look like if Woz had managed to keep the hardware open.
I was a student at Berkeley in 1987 when Woz graduated with a degree in electrical engineering/computer science. He was the class valedictorian, not surprisingly.
I don't remember the assumed name he used, but *NO ONE*, at least no one I knew, had any idea who he really was.
At the graduation ceremony, he gave a nice speach and then casually tossed of at the end that he really was not who he had claimed to be, his real name was Steve Wozniak.
You could have heard the jaws dropping a mile away. It was a great day, and not one soon forgotten.
...but being on the right side politically earns you a "score:1" while the sensible AC you responded to got zilch.
People don't "deserve their money" for "working harder". They are given money in exchange for something that someone else considers to be of even greater value. If you can provide something of value (say, a good haircut, for example) to somebody, he'll give you somewhat less money than he thinks the haircut is worth TO HIM. How hard you work, what it's worth to you, and all other such considerations are irrelevant to the person who pays you. If he thinks that he'd rather have the money than the haircut, you won't get the money. Simple as that.
If you provide the same haircut to two people, you'll get twice the money. That's because you've created twice the value, not because you've worked twice as hard. How hard you worked to do it isn't what gets them to pay you. It's solely the sum value you have provided to those two people, IN THEIR OWN OPINION.
Now, if you can figure out a way to snap your fingers and provide the same haircut to a million people, you'll get a million times the money. Not because you worked a million times as hard, but because you have created a million times the value, as judged by the people who owned the money that was given you. Nobody else's opinion matters, because it was THEIR money. They presumably valued their own money, but they demonstrably valued the haircut even more.
Huge wealth, unless it is taken by force, is evidence of a lot of people having received a lot of value, in their own opinion. How hard YOU judge the wealthy to have worked couldn't be more irrelevant.
There. Now the moderators can give me my score:-1 for my politcal shortcomings and we'll be done with it.
SimonK wrote many things I agree with, but he also wrote:
Give it a few years and you'll be joining the libertarian party, reading Ayn Rand and being beseiged by the FBI in some compound in Montana.
Hey, painting the stroke of Libertarianism a little broad are we. While many Libertarians admire and agree with Ayn Rand, she does not speak for all Libertarians. Many do not follow her Objectivist philosophy.
Secondly, those people who form anti-government anti-conspiracy militias have nothing to do with Libertarians. Libertarians generally feel that there is a place for government, it just should be a much smaller place than the one we have now occupies.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
I have mad respect for the guy for all that he did, and put up with, etc. But he has no shortage of ego. Maybe it's just me, but I would find him a lot more charming if he let his accomplishments speak for themselves (which they do, hell, they SCREAM for themselves!). He's a cool guy, but certainly not quite as humble as the show seemed to portray him.
Alright, now I get flamed. Wooooohooooo.
C
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Acutally, The Woz didn't design the drive, he used an off-the-shelf drive...but custom circuits and controller was his. And the IWM is actually know as the "Infernal Wozniak Machine"
He also used a "unique" way to get the drive to find track 0 to read the boot code...since they had 33 tracks, they backed up the stepper motor 33 times to make sure it was a track 0, no matter where the drive head was! That is what what gave the Apple ]['s their distinctive sound upon booting.
ttyl
Farrell
(Long time Apple ][ Hacker, LOGO Teacher and GraForth fan)
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
I'd have to agree, Woz rocks. It seems he was into Open Hardware way back in the 70s, giving out free schematics =)
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Atheists For Jesus, for those who like Jesus but not the "belief in God" or religious fundamentalism stuff =)
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
But we all know ESR is the only person in the world capable of giving speeches in favor of Open Source.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I got that impression too. Wozniak reminds me of RMS, only less dogmatic. They both have (or at least had) beards too, and look/looked like hippies.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Well he did suffer mild brain damage (amnesia) in that plane accident. However, he seems like an intelligent person today (albeit not doing much technically-related anymore).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Hmm, if you go look through that site, the list of Presidents who are Idealists says "There are None!"
Perhaps that's part of our problem.
FWIW I'm INTP/INFP, depending on my mood.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Hmm, when i retake that test thinking of what I'm like online, I get ENTP. The same, except the I (introverted) switches to E (extroverted). Interesting.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Good ole' Gerald Holmes. You must admit that he's a mildly talented satirist (grin).
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Posted by The Incredible Mr. Limpett:
AFAIK,
The Altair had the metal switches and the brushed metal front.
The IMSAI 8080, an Altair clone, had the red and blue plastic buttons and looked much nicer (It was shown in the movie War Games.)
BTW this is way before my time, my first computer was a TI99/4A in the early/mid 80's.
Posted by 2B||!2B:
I totally agree. If only it were possible! But it's probably about 5 years too late. At Phase5 in Germany (www.phase5.de) they used to have lots of info on their A\\Box project, which is a modern (and just as leading-edge for its time) version of the Amiga they planned on creating. But the info has gone away, which means it probably won't happen. Gateway makes a bunch of promises about reviving the Amiga, but I'll believe it when I see it. My guess is at best they'll do a faster (PPC) version of the 4000.
Hrm... I suppose that would be why you must take the Windows Applications course to graduate from my high school. Microsoft influence at the highest levels of my school!
Once you take that, you never have to use the PCs again and the other classes (no programming, just graphics) use the mac labs. Not that they're any better or more stable, I think I'm just spoiled since I use linux at home.
F0 07 C7 C8
Anyone else here remember the US Festivals in 1982 and 1983? Woz made thos happen. I got to work at the 1982 US Festival. 10 bands a day for three days. Wanna guess how much the tickets were? $10.00 (ten dollars) per day. That's a dollar an act. And these were not second string acts, they were headliners; The Police, The Kinks, The Grateful Dead, Jerry Jeff Walker, Fleetwood Mac, and amny more I can't remember.
If you got bored with the music there were exposition tents with all kinds of fun computer and technology goodies in them.
It still amazes me that there were 250,000 people at that show.
My understanding is that the low ticket prices meant that Woz lost (if you want to use that term) a lot of money on the US Festivals.
ObComputerComments: I always liked and respected the Apple II but I hated the Mac on sight.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
You should appreciate the scale of their wealth. This is not like making $20,000 a year vs. $100,000. The wealth is astronomical.
A very well paid person could make $100/hour. If they work hard -- an average of 16 hours a day every day -- they can reach Bill Gates' wealth within a mere 150 millenia. I'm not sure how much Larry Ellison is worth, but that same honest person would still have to work several millenia to match his wealth.
Now, did either of these men really work that hard? Is it even possible for one person to work that hard?
Any sane person would say no. Any reasonable person would say their wealth is beyond justification. Even Wozniak, though he has the soul of a hacker, did not earn his wealth.
(and don't give me any of that "risk" bull either -- I've yet to see one destitute executive)
I'm not myself a Christian, but things like that which make it somewhat seductive. Would that there were any Real Christians left, or at least that fundamentalists would concern themselves with social issues outside of homosexuality and abortion. But that's another issue entirely...Sure, some executives have a certain amount of risk. And some businesses fail. But that doesn't leave the execs destitute. When it goes really bad they have to live the middle-class lifestyle, instead of the upper-class lifestyle they were used to or aspired to. Oh, despair.
But I'm not sure about calling a small-time entrepreneur an executive is quite right. Anyway...
It's the last bit of wealth that counts most. The drop from upper-class to middle-class is hardly traumatic. It's not hard to regain your position. All you are really losing is a bit of comfort and a bit of ego. It's not that big a risk.
With the rampant spread of the cult of personality in the 'puter biz and other areas, it sure is nice to see someone as level-headed as Mr. Woz. He actually did something good for folks, made a good chunk of change, and opted out for a real life. Now that's something I'd like to do. I don't know that much about the man, other than what I've read here and anecdotes from time-to-time. But he sure seems to be a nicer fella than that Gates boy or Jobs or Larry E.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
Give me the Commodore, X, and the Amiga any day. The Apple II was very overpriced at the time, as are most of Apple's products. NeXT was a very bad (read: incompatible, shoddy standard tools) UNIX.
:) and costs more than an equivalent real computer, then putting in a network card instead doesn't make it "the first viable step towards a network computer". I think the vt100 did that better than the iMac ever will, and for graphics, X Servers did even better. I don't think desktop machines with network cards are anything new, and if Apple does it, that doesn't suddenly make it a 'network computer' any more than all the other ones were.
...and any of your examples are better than the iMac. If you sell a computer that's integrated with the monitor, isn't upgradeable, (we haven't gone far since the Apple II) doesn't have a floppy drive (that was at least standard with the Apple II...
Jobs does try to make sure that ideas and people are exploited, and he is ruthless. If Apple were on top, he would be basically a hipper version of Bill Gates. There have been many stories here of Jobs's ruthless exploitation, of Woz in particular. He may have popularized some ideas that caught on, and we might have him to thank for that, but past that, please don't give Jobs any more credit than you absolutely have to... Proprietary software is bad, but proprietary hardware is worse. If you can't release your source code, at least get it to run on more than one platform...
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
But I try to judge people by what they do less than what they say. And he seems to have done good things in the past and continues to, so I'll choose to attribute his puffiness to
1) the fact that he really did do some amazing things
2) that he didn't realize how it sounded
The movie showed the distinct difference between a company which split its resources between building hardware and writing the software for it and a company which specialized only in software. The company which split its resources drove its employees 50 hours at a time, and virtually drove itself out of business for less than 5% of the PC market. Apple's biggest problem is that they kill themselves building the hardware and software themselves.
We can only assume Steve really interrupted interviews, put his feet on the table, and asked candidates if they had sex before tearing them apart. It's a perfect explanation for the "think different" campaign. One can only wonder if the intensely competitive computer industry just demands that nihilistic personality of any entrepreneur.
I had an Apple II+, my friend won an Apple IIe in a contest from Computerland. We were 14 years old, always dialing in to pirate bulletin boards, downloading programs, which took forever, and 4 out of five times, didn't work right. My dad introduced me to software piracy and the online world several years before that, with a TRS-80 Model 1 and a CompuServe account. At that point, piracy wasn't even illegal!
The Apple IIe was definitely the coolest computer, until the Amiga came out. I had a Commodore 64 & a 128 for a while, but I could never afford an Amiga. I remember when my friends dad got one of the original IBM XT computers for work (he was an accountant) & we thought it was such crap, no graphics, no good games. It was years before the IBM compats were anything but a joke.
Anyway, all that early piracy led to a sincere interest in how computers worked, hardware & software, a degree, and some nice, high paying jobs. And it all started with a little software pirates club and a Trash 80 [sniff]
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I mean dropping out of HARVARD with a 1600 on the SAT's, nobody drops out of the best school for an idea that might never work.
I did. Well not Harvard per se, but I did skip going to Univeristy of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier for computer science, engineering and Hons. Computing and Computer Electronics, respectively. Everyone told me I was stupid but at 23 I'm married, have a little one on the way and make a tidy little salary doing what I love without having to go through all the bullshit and propaganda that University shoves down your throat.
Sure I could have had a great education and a fun time, and in the end have learned a little and spent a lot. Instead I skipped that, am obtaining a great practical education, having tons of fun and getting paid to do it. Not many people my age own a couple cars and a home, nor do many people my age have a career they love.
No, I'm not comparing myself to Wozinak, there are people far smarter than I, but saying nobody does it is just plain false.
Do most modern American women HAVE recipies anymore? I'd imagine that the listing would be something like this:
:-)
1. Order out.
2. Microwave something.
my wife cooks wonderful delicious meals that I wouldn't have clue how to make. Mind you I make some pretty decent meals that she can't fathom, either.
actually something I've done before that is unfarkingbelieveable:
:-)
- skinless boneless chicken breasts (3 or 4)
- 1 can of cranberries (whole berries is much better than just jelly, but either works)
- calorie-wise french dressing
- 1 package onion soup mix
get a casserole dish and dump the cranberries in. take the can and pour the salad dressing about 7/8 or so (damn near full) into the can and then dump that into the dish. (the dressing should be almost gone)
dump the onion powder into the mix.
At about this point you'll be wondering what you've let me talk you in to. you gotta mix it all up (wooden spoon works great) to get this orangey mess with little lumps of cranberry jelly and mushy cranberries and little crunchy bits from the onion soup mix... when it's all consistent it'll look like someone's got a REALLY bad ulcer problem.
Dump the chicken into this and cover the chicken with the sauce. throw it in the fridge for 30 minutes, flipping once.
then put it in your oven at like 275-350 (whatever everything else goes in at) for 45 minutes. flip 'em and put in for another 45 minutes.
when you go to flip them you'll notice the smell... it will REALLY get you hungry (this part is not sarcasm) -- by the time the second 45 minutes goes 'round you'll be aching to eat this. it doesn't look so good to prepare but GAWD if it doesn't taste awesome! Goes well with beer and if you reheat it the next day it's even better!
Serve over rice or noodles. My wife couldn't believe what I was doing when I went to make it, but she sure pigged out!
What the hell happened to this guy? DAMN!
If any of you weenie hacker wannabies ever read any of his code, you would see the clear, cool mind of a fscking GENIUS!
MAN his stuff was elegant! You could sit, pass it around, and just ADMIRE it!
He got nuked by something. Something REALLY BAD happened to him.
I went to his site, and his comments don't have any continuity. He keeps repeating how he was the originator of the apple architecture (which is true). If he was as serene as he says he is, he would not complain. I think he's somewhat (justifiably) bitter about the dismissal of his role in mainstreaming computing.
He does not now seem to remember the warrior he was. That is sad.
Pete.
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
After reading some of his comments I got a feeling of arrogance from him... Maybe he's just honest.. its hard to tell sometimes with really smart people if they're arogant a$$es or just being honest...
-- "I feel a strong disturbance in the for.."\*Segmentation Fault*\ (core dumped)
The "MS investment/QT settlement" thing happened at about the same time. The lawsuit was going on for some time before that, but a "smoking gun" turned up in the QT trial, and Microsoft was going to lose bigtime (eventually). But it was in the Bad Days at Apple, so Apple gave MS another option... keep selling Office for Mac, and invest $150 million in non-voting stock, along with licensing the QuickTime code for Windows.
The QT licensing is the largest part of it overall, and a big reason that Apple keeps making about $50 million more profit per quarter than everyone expects.
Same thing with homelessless and poverty.
An Anonymous Coward wrote:
People don't "deserve their money" for "working harder". They are given money in exchange for something that someone else considers to be of even greater value. If you can provide something of value (say, a good haircut, for example) to somebody, he'll give you somewhat less money than he thinks the haircut is worth TO HIM. How hard you work, what it's worth to you, and all other such considerations are irrelevant to the person who pays you. If he thinks that he'd rather have the money than the haircut, you won't get the money. Simple as that.
In a world where hair stylist are plenty, hair grows on (most) every head, and it's the norm for folks in the workforce to tailor their image through hair style, you're certainly right. Given this there's implicit demand for hair styling, there's many small shops providing a popular service among the community, and in this situation a free market works quite well.
But your analogy here in comparison to Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, and the many other would be technological Robber Barons of the late twentieth falls quite short.
If you provide the same haircut to two people, you'll get twice the money. That's because you've created twice the value, not because you've worked twice as hard. How hard you worked to do it isn't what gets them to pay you. It's solely the sum value you have provided to those two people, IN THEIR OWN OPINION.
In a free market, where many barbers provide similar services, one gets competition by price and quality of service. I'm all for this, and find this model of many small shops competing on product and service value quite appealing. By no means do I support government management of production either in the Fascist or Communist model. But by that very token, neither do I support single corporate producers either. This is no different from a single air carrier like Delta monopolizing the Cincinnati airport, locking flyers in to their pricing scheme.
In this example those wishing to fly into Cincinnati airport don't choose which air carrier based on some imaginary quotient of "value", but simply based on who can sell them the ticket. That is, one air carrier, Delta, who gets to choose the ticket price based on their local monopoly. Where have we seen this kind of behavior in the software industry? Don't you find it relevant to note that Office2000 will be sold at over $800 per license when it's released?
That's value for you.
Now, if you can figure out a way to snap your fingers and provide the same haircut to a million people, you'll get a million times the money. Not because you worked a million times as hard, but because you have created a million times the value, as judged by the people who owned the money that was given you. Nobody else's opinion matters, because it was THEIR money. They presumably valued their own money, but they demonstrably valued the haircut even more.
Ironically, as far as software distribution goes this is exactly the case! It costs almost no more money to distribute 1000 copies as it costs to distribute 1 copy... especially if we're talking about Internet distribution. By arguing that buyers have the economic power to refuse the sale you're simply blinding yourself to the obvious power a proprietary standard can impose upon a whole society, thus forcing us into economic bondage.
This is no different from how speculative investments ravage our world economy by moving capital without productivity gains across local economies to exploit minor price differentiations. Bill Gates is betting you, the buyer, would rather pay an exorbitant fee in order to stay up to date with his ever changing document format standard, rather than attempt single handedly to overthrow his standards control... but do you honestly think Gates is providing real value to the economy as a whole by these means? I sure don't.
MIT economist Lestor Thurow discussed a similar issue in last months Atlantic Monthly, where he published a long article on the "New Economy", and how it relates to the monopoly economies of the late nineteenth/early twentieth century. It's a well written and informative article, I encourage others to go to the library and check it out. Anyway, the point I'm pulling from this article is that there's a huge difference between someone who creates a new thing which generates real economic value in the traditional sense, and those who use differences in market evaluations of any arbitrary good across markets in order to generate a false profit through speculation.
Of course, you're also under the false pretension that people act as rational buyers, which one look at a all the junk for sale at most supermarket checkout counters should dissuade you of such silly ideas.
Huge wealth, unless it is taken by force, is evidence of a lot of people having received a lot of value, in their own opinion. How hard YOU judge the wealthy to have worked couldn't be more irrelevant.
Or evidence that those buyers had no choice but to buy from a single source. In that event the monopoly holder must use a form of economic coercion to force buyers and choke out potential competition. This is a form of either gambling or graft and corruption, because such a situation cannot last forever in an economy which favors equilibrium through competition.
Now, how does this relate to open competition, Free Software, and Steve Wozniack? There are plenty who have argued that the Free Software and Open Source model support competition through meritocracy. While this isn't the same as competition by price and service, it is a foundation for competition among the developers which creates a fitness function allowing for an evolutionary model of development. And how different is this from a traditional economic model, except that what's exchanged is not monetary tokens, but the value of peer support and recognition.
And Woz most certainly deserves the recognition of his peers for having created many useful things, and also for having behaved responsibly in our community. His support of schools and children stands head and shoulders above anything of "value" the like of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs may have ever created over the course of their lives.
An Anonymous Coward wrote:
People don't "deserve their money" for "working harder". They are given money in exchange for something that someone else considers to be of even greater value. If you can provide something of value (say, a good haircut, for example) to somebody, he'll give you somewhat less money than he thinks the haircut is worth TO HIM. How hard you work, what it's worth to you, and all other such considerations are irrelevant to the person who pays you. If he thinks that he'd rather have the money than the haircut, you won't get the money. Simple as that.
In a world where hair stylist are plenty, hair grows on (most) every head, and it's the norm for folks in the workforce to tailor their image through hair style, you're certainly right. Given this there's implicit demand for hair styling, there's many small shops providing a popular service among the community, and in this situation a free market works quite well.
But your analogy here in comparison to Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, and the many other would be technological Robber Barons of the late twentieth falls quite short.
If you provide the same haircut to two people, you'll get twice the money. That's because you've created twice the value, not because you've worked twice as hard. How hard you worked to do it isn't what gets them to pay you. It's solely the sum value you have provided to those two people, IN THEIR OWN OPINION.
In a free market, where many barbers provide similar services, one gets competition by price and quality of service. I'm all for this, and find this model of many small shops competing on product and service value quite appealing. By no means do I support government management of production either in the Fascist or Communist model. But by that very token, neither do I support single corporate producers either. This is no different from a single air carrier like Delta monopolizing the Cincinnati airport, locking flyers in to their pricing scheme.
In this example those wishing to fly into Cincinnati airport don't choose which air carrier based on some imaginary quotient of "value", but simply based on who can sell them the ticket. That is, one air carrier, Delta, who gets to choose the ticket price based on their local monopoly. Where have we seen this kind of behavior in the software industry? Don't you find it relevant to note that Office2000 will be sold at over $800 per license when it's released?
That's value for you.
Now, if you can figure out a way to snap your fingers and provide the same haircut to a million people, you'll get a million times the money. Not because you worked a million times as hard, but because you have created a million times the value, as judged by the people who owned the money that was given you. Nobody else's opinion matters, because it was THEIR money. They presumably valued their own money, but they demonstrably valued the haircut even more.
Ironically, as far as software distribution goes this is exactly the case! It costs almost no more money to distribute 1000 copies as it costs to distribute 1 copy... especially if we're talking about Internet distribution. By arguing that buyers have the economic power to refuse the sale you're simply blinding yourself to the obvious power a proprietary standard can impose upon a whole society, thus forcing us into economic bondage.
This is no different from how speculative investments ravage our world economy by moving capital without productivity gains across local economies to exploit minor price differentiations. Bill Gates is betting you, the buyer, would rather pay an exorbitant fee in order to stay up to date with his ever changing document format standard, rather than attempt single handedly to overthrow his standards control... but do you honestly think Gates is providing real value to the economy as a whole by these means? I sure don't.
MIT economist Lestor Thurow discussed a similar issue in last months Atlantic Monthly, where he published a long article on the "New Economy", and how it relates to the monopoly economies of the late nineteenth/early twentieth century. It's a well written and informative article, I encourage others to go to the library and check it out. Anyway, the point I'm pulling from this article is that there's a huge difference between someone who creates a new thing which generates real economic value in the traditional sense, and those who use differences in market evaluations of any arbitrary good across markets in order to generate a false profit through speculation.
Of course, you're also under the false pretension that people act as rational buyers, which one look at a all the junk for sale at most supermarket checkout counters should dissuade you of such silly ideas.
Huge wealth, unless it is taken by force, is evidence of a lot of people having received a lot of value, in their own opinion. How hard YOU judge the wealthy to have worked couldn't be more irrelevant.
Or evidence that those buyers had no choice but to buy from a single source. In that event the monopoly holder must use a form of economic coercion to force buyers and choke out potential competition. This is a form of either gambling or graft and corruption, because such a situation cannot last forever in an economy which favors equilibrium through competition.
Now, how does this relate to open competition, Free Software, and Steve Wozniack? There are plenty who have argued that the Free Software and Open Source model support competition through meritocracy. While this isn't the same as competition by price and service, it is a foundation for competition among the developers which creates a fitness function allowing for an evolutionary model of development. And how different is this from a traditional economic model, except that what's exchanged is not monetary tokens, but the value of peer support and recognition.
And Woz most certainly deserves the recognition of his peers for having created many useful things, and also for having behaved responsibly in our community. His support of schools and children stands head and shoulders above anything of "value" the like of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs may have ever created over the course of their lives.
Just as Woz says:
I designed the computers just to do it and show the world that it could be done and help them happen. Later Steve Jobs suggested starting a company to make money from it. I'd been giving out schematics for free at the Homebrew Computer Club. That's what I believed in. It was hard for me to even start the company when it looked like there might be real money in it.
He is the proverbial compassionate hacker. He was perfectly happy to just give out the schematics, and found ethical dilemma in building a business which might turn into a serious money maker. This is no different from the likes of rms, Linus, Eric Raymond, Larry Wall, and the now very large number of people out creating such wonderful things as gnome and KDE, GIMP, Python, Apache, and the list just goes on.
Doesn't it just blow your mind that this guy is out teaching high school instead of finding new ways to make himself richer? Don't you wish you could have been lucky enough tp have taken classes from this guy? He does these things because he enjoys the labor, and wants to help others enjoy the success of creating new things! What better lesson would you want your children to learn?
That he made enough money to comfortably live in ease for the rest of his life may be blind luck -- but don't you think he deserves it more than Gates, Jobs, Ellison, and all the other blowhards who probably haven't written a line of code in 20 years?
Woz is a man I can respect.
Anyhow, in sections 3.4 and 3.5 the story of Breakout is related. According to the author, Jobs was a technical moron; he could learn things rapidly if he needed to, but had only gotten the job with Atari by using the Woz's resume, more or less. The only reason he didn't lose his job was probably due to force of personality. And in designing Breakout, he puttered around during the day, then had the Woz come in at night (note that the Woz had a day job as well at this time!), fix Jobs' mistakes and then work on getting the board made.
Eventually the Woz finished, and Jobs (who was thought by his bosses at Atari to have done the work single-handed) got a $7000 bonus. He told the Woz that it was only a $700 bonus, which they then split 50-50. The Woz ultimately got on $350 out of his rightful $3500 (or more).
Where the book shines though, is in connecting this event to the creation of the Apple I. He says that the Intel 8080 was the microprocessor of choice at that time, especially after having been used in the Altair. Well, they were fairly pricey, and the Woz was somewhat familiar with the Motorola 6800, which was a little cheaper and perhaps easier to work with. But the 6502 was a knock-off version of the 6800 that sold for $20. The Woz went straight for it.
So, one can imagine that if the Woz had had a few extra grand, he might have splurged on the Intel chip. And while I don't want to get into a debate over the relative merits of different chip families, it probably would have helped out Apple to have worked extensively with the Intel cpus, given that IBM started using them not too far down the line with their first desktop. Sure, no one could have forseen it, but still, it would probably have helped out Apple quite a bit.
Anyway, it's a good book, and I heartily suggest it to people. But maybe get Where Wizards Stay Up Late to counter the depressing effect of Infinite Loop
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Speaking of which, a pal back at work showed me a bit of a component library for VB. IMHO the concept was way cool. Now *nix is all about components laying around like legos in kids' rooms, but if we'd be able to provide a consistent visual interface for combining events, that would provide the end users with something useful
Your describing GNOME :). take a look at it sometime! theres the control stuff, and some people are programming a kind of control-panel-ish type thing for system stuff.
-- dieman - Scott Dier
I'm not myself a Christian, but things like that which make it somewhat seductive.
Trust me, there's plenty there to turn you off.. How about the Crusades? The Spanish Inquisition? The history of corruption and greed?
I'd say stick with the ideals but don't let them draw you into the Organization or the Dogma..
Had "S JOBS" at its head, afaik. . . I think both Steves wrote the monitor, tho...
I had to suffice with the "What's Where" book.
I'd love to have a copy of _What's Where in the Apple_ again... very nice reference.
Lack of inner workings for the "PC" class of computers turned me off to hacking on it, as I was used to scraping the bare metal. Only now am I getting into programming again (Thank You, Linux!).
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Me spell chucker work grate. Need grandma chicken.
Printed a character via CSWL.CSWH (an indirect JMP to wherever $36.$37 pointed to, in fact, usually $FDF0)
Disassembled, it's "JSR $FDED"
2.What routine was at $FCA8?
Waited an amount of time based on what was in the Accumulator. Forgot the quadratic equation for the wait time, but. . .
3.What were the RESET interrupt vectors?
$3F2.$3F3 is the actual place jumped to when CTRL-RESET is pressed. $3F4 is a checksum (EORd with $A5) of $3F3 that makes CTRL-RESET reboot if it's wrong.
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Me spell chucker work grate. Need grandma chicken.
I would wager Woz is an INFP ... a rare type of person. He seems very cool, perhaps even uninterested in things unless he can give it an ethical purpose. I just kind of pick that up from him; the way he was uninterested in the business, and the fact that he teaches children now.
.. what do you think? INFJ? INTJ? INTP?
I wonder what his take on OSS is.
Stallman
support gun control: take guns from cops
The story goes that for the Apple ][, Woz wanted a floppy drive to go with it, instead of using cassette tapes. He was strongly discouraged, since everyone knew that floppy drives and controllers were really expensive, and would cost several times the cost of the Apple ][ sold for.
He didn't listen and completely designed the first 5 1/4 floppy disk drive and controllers for personal computers . The reason he gave for his design, which was much faster and cheaper than anything previously available, was that he didn't know how to build a floppy drive, and didn't know that what he was doing was 'impossible'.
I always think of this when I start any project. The way everyone else has always done it is not necessarily the best way.
Note: I remember reading this in an A+ magazine some years ago. The only actual "proof" that I have is that the floppy chip in the Apple ][gs and most pre PowerPC Macs is called the IWM, or "Incredible Woz Machine", which he also designed.
jf
Coolest ever is a matter of opinion :)
Bring back the Amiga.
daniel
The teacher thought I was amazing. I told her that I had learned how to type coding on my dad's old Atari 800 (later 800XL) at home.
Come to think of it, that actually IS how I ended up learning to type . . .
Woz wrote Integer BASIC.
Applesoft BASIC was written by Microsoft. Part of Apple's deal w/ MS was to rename the Microsoft basic to Applesoft. Dunno if they had to pay extra for that, but considering that most of the machines of the day had MS basic but few proclaimed "Microsoft" directly, this makes some amount of sense.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
I meant, of course, the infernal Apple ][ display memory map, which was interleaved 3 or 4 different ways depending on which mode you were in.
(And, there were 8-byte holes every 120 bytes that you could use for program variables. How nice.)
Bonus Apple ][ command sequence trivia: What does THIS do? (Hint: Either Language Card or both sets of BASIC ROMs required.)
] INT> CALL -151
* F666G
!
Or this?
] CALL -151* FAA6G
--Joe
--
Program Intellivision!
It'd be cool if he were INFP. Then we'd have something cool in common (aside from a love for hacking, that is).
I'm INFP/INTP ... depending on mood or situation. More INTP in work matters, INFP in daily life.
The confused can go to www.keirsey.com to be suitably enlightened. (Or, if you're into the more traditional Meyers-Briggs (sp?) tests, you can find out there too. I think there's a x-based version called xmbti, but I don't remember for sure.)
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
It'd be cool if Woz were INFP. Then we'd have something cool in common (aside from a love for hacking, that is).
I'm INFP/INTP ... depending on mood or situation. More INTP in work matters, INFP in daily life.
The confused can go to www.keirsey.com to be suitably enlightened. (Or, if you're into the more traditional Meyers-Briggs (sp?) tests, you can find out there too. I think there's a x-based version called xmbti, but I don't remember for sure.)
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
F666G, w/ Integer BASIC enabled: Mini Assembler. You are correct.
FAA6G. You weren't sure whether I was in Integer or Applesoft BASIC. The prompt was an Applesoft BASIC prompt, although it doesn't matter. FAA6G reboots the Apple.
And now some 6502 trivia... What does the hex sequence 2C 30 C0 assemble to, and what does that instruction do on an Apple ][?
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
I thought SWIM was the version that was in the Mac, and IWM was the version in the Apple ][GS.
Or am I smokin' clovers?
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
I have a friend (a family friend) who is very important at Mac World. He regularly gets yelled at by steve jobs when MW publishes i'll towards apple. I have heard from friends of lisa (she grew up with some of my friends from school...) that he can be a jerk (although all kids think their parents can be jerks.) From every romur/story I have heard steve jobs is a jerk and woz is a hacker in the MIT sence of the word.
"There is no spoon" - Neo, The Matrix
"SPOOOOOOOOON!" - The Tick, The Tick
i remember in the very early eighties when the only online community i participated in was 'the source' and people were using this apple II program called locksmith to un-copyprotect apps and trade them - he wrote in to some journal about how he favored such practice, as it led to people learning about decryption and whatnot. these days (as back then) i purchase apps that are used for mission critical purpose that have have a license that dictate that this is the Only Legal Way, but increasingly i find this isn't the case. the mission critical apps are more and more open. beer and a shot for everyone!
There is a difference between economics the sort-of-science and the normative interpretation of capitalism you are relying on to disparage people.
Economics says nothing about whether people deserve their wealth or whether they have any control over other people's. It is a science, and therefore makes no value judgements. It is not a very good science either, and therefore does not seem like a good basis for your morality.
Nice to see you've got a good persecution complex going there as well. Your post is a +1, insightful, which I have to say is not where I would have put it, since it has no relevance. Give it a few years and you'll be joining the libertarian party, reading Ayn Rand and being beseiged by the FBI in some compound in Montana.
To get back to the subject in hand, Economics says nothing about whether people 'deserve' their wealth. It most certainly does not say that people's wealth corresponds to 'how much value they've provided' (which incidentally is pretty close to being as daft as saying it corresponds to how hard they've worked). Thats a conclusion you can only reach by assuming all markets are perfect, which they domonstrably are not, and that people judge value correctly, which the do not.
The economic system, and most especially the stock market by means of which most fabulously rich people get that way, is a human construct, and as such we can change it. If we want to change so people are rewarded for working hard, so be it. Personally I don't, but I can see the appeal of the idea.
His hose is seemingly full of us by now :I
Shall we give it a rest?
Shame, I was hoping to find out what he's up to now except for the teaching and stuff. Would he like to do something for free software movement for instance?
Speaking of which, a pal back at work showed me a bit of a component library for VB. IMHO the concept was way cool. Now *nix is all about components laying around like legos in kids' rooms, but if we'd be able to provide a consistent visual interface for combining events, that would provide the end users with something useful.
I got the idea from the festival speech synthesizer I installed today. If there was an easy way for lusers to combine such events as arriving email with noisy notifications, that'd wake up some stir about what *nix can do for you on the desktop.
Required would be a linuxconf-style centralized event control panel with interfaces to such things as procmailrc, crontab, irc client, write (yes, the command), widget sets (add a visual widget builder), A/V players and speech synthesizers. Let people connect signals to responses with drag&drop. Add a, say, XML RPC service for remote connections and you'd get something a perl kiddie can build any day, just finally available for the average luser.
Gosh. Maybe I'll just sign in for KDE one of these nights...
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
Woz's comments are very good! I agree, Woz seems to be one of the coolest people, and he is shown well in the movie. It's good to see him get some recognition.
:-) Of course I submitted this last night... no hard feelings. Just want my 2p. :-)
We must form a "WozClub"
I love my computer -- You make me feel alright (Bad Religion)
I recall reading on Slashdot maybe a year back that the 150 million deal was an under-the-table type agreement having to do with a Quicktime-related lawsuit Apple was going to file (or had filed).
If I remember right, it had to do with either quicktime code appearing in microsoft products, or maybe something about microsoft making it so that quicktime movies wouldn't play well in Windows...
Anyone know the exact deal?
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Like remember six months ago when Microsoft was puffing itself up over that "font smoothing" technology it "invented" called (I think) ClearText...
I haven't heard anything about it since it was pointed out on SlashDot that "prior art" existed using the same technique years earlier on the Apple II...
And let's see... who invented it first?
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Of course! Shoulda been on my list...
That thing could copy ANYTHING... and fast!
Now who remembers Caztle Smurfenstein?
Or Dung Beetles? ("We Gotcha!")
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Haven't seen _Pirates_ yet, but just wanna reminisce just 1 sec about the late 70s/early 80s, being about 10 years old, using my friend's Apple II, and knowing my life would never be the same. I'd later get a Franklin Ace 1000 (Apple II clone w/lower case & 64k!!) and that was it, I was hooked. Jobs may have been running the business, but to us kids "Woz" WAS Apple.
Woz had an attitude which, I can't fully say how, sublimated itself into my young conciousness. He was a cool, almost fatherly role model who set an example of what it meant to do the "Right Thing"... A crazy, bearded silicon Jedi Knight, a Wizard...I'll never forget going to the computer store to check out the IIgs "Woz" limited edition and seeing his handwriting...thinking "how cool!"
Oh, and YES, who can forget (in no particular order) Locksmith, Dalton's Disk Disintigrator, The Beagle Bros., H-Wings in Sneakers, The Novation Apple Cat, Castle Wolfenstein, 80-column cards, GBBS, Ruski Duck, Cat-Fur, G-files, Space Eggs, The Wizard and the Princess, peeks & pokes, "cracked by" splash screens, Ascii Express, Lemonade Stand in lo-res, call -151, 300/202/212, tape drives... ah, those were the days.
Thanks Woz!
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I think, more importantly, that Jobs made the PC accessable to people who couldn't build their own my his "crass commercialism." If it just remained Woz handing out schematics for free to his buddies in the homebrew computer club, how many PC would have been made? Very few. Only the hardcore EE nerds would have built them. By selling them, Jobs actually spread Woz's vision of a PC to the masses. I think many people who got into computers in the late 70's and early 80's, and later went on to get jobs in the industry, have to thank Jobs as well as Woz. Well, OK, we'll thank Woz a whole lot more than Jobs ;)
The same can't be said of Gates. Granted, Microsoft did create an early monitor system for one of the first PC's, but that didn't really trigger the PC revolution. By the time he scored his major coup, tricking IBM into buying his non-existant DOS, the PC revolution was set to happen anyway. Whether he or someone else (such as Gary Kildall) supplied the DOS was irrelevant.
Wow, this whole thing makes me want to go out and buy either an iMac or one of those nifty new B&C G3s (alas I don't have that kind of money). 'Course I almost feel bad having this Mac SE in the corner. If only Woz (or anyone for that matter) was charitable enough to donate some RAM, a mouse, and a floppy drive...
As much as everyone but Woz and Balmer were portrayed as jerks, at least Jobs was a jerk with flair (and Balmer a thick necked moron with a sticky stack of Playboys).
The revolution will be mocked
Engineers get the big picture. Some of them are just too honest and moral to do what needs to be done to make it happen. Jobs obviously does not suffer from these imparing traits and the world is a better place for it in my opinion. I don't know if he's a hero or a demon.... a hero as long as you don't actually get to know him maybe?
Davo -- Free speech, free software, AND free beer.
Pretty good Linux advocacy parody!
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Microsoft Multiplan for the TI 99/4A on cartridge.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Microsoft also made a 8080 card for the Apple II that allowed you to run CP/M. That and the old Bus Mouse adaptor card is the only internal MS hardware I know of.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Yes,
:-|
:-)
history in the making: Slashdot users crash Steve Wosniak site..
Maybe rob will be the pirate in the sequal..
(can anyone mirror the thing, or post it as a comment?)
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( my music)
the kissinger story is true, and that friend was the other steve. I don't know the story about the spreadsheet. But I remember reading that he actualy wrote a version of visicalc that run faster then the original.. Maybe that's what you refare too.
As for why he was worring about getting fired from apple.. Hmmm.. look what happened to that other founder.
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( my music)
ahh the memories come back too me..
the peeks and pokes the one line BASIC programs.. ahhh.
Anyone know who exactly were the Beagle Bros, btw?
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( my music)
I guess we'll all know who's a MacBigot now...
Quoting from my copy of "The Mac Bathroom Reader" (now renamed "Apple Confidential" by Owen Linzmayer:
"I was on a plane going to a user group club in Fort Lauderdale to promote the Mac, along with some other members of the Mac team," recalls Wozniak. "Andy Hertzfield had just read Zap, a book about Atari which said that Steve Jobs designed Breakout. I explained to him that we both worked on it and got paid $700. Andy corrected me, 'No, it says here it was $5,000.' When I read in the book how Nolan Bushnell actually paid Steve $5,000, I just cried."
I don't doubt this story for an instant, but still, it's apocryphal at best. The fact that it has been butchered so many times in so many ways says a lot. It's like all of those quotes that have been attributed to Bill Gates ( e.g. "No one will ever need more than 640k" ).
What kind of authority is Zap! anyway?
I just noticed something wierd, comments was mispelled "commnts" and the name of the file its linked to is spelled commets. Something weird there, or am I being paranoid. Anyway, do I get brownie points for pointing out this oddity, or just flamed?
Your Momma's so fat she makes emacs look like nano!
It looks like woz.org is down this morning... hmmm... did we /. the woz himself?
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
MOO;IANAL.
There used to be a picture linked here.
Thats not ture for(most) Pennsylvania residents! Nope, good ol' Microsoft paid off the state 20 million dollars so public schools can be filled with wintels! We use an advanced NT network that is always stable for us pupils!(sarcasm but got the facts straight note).
Slartibartfast:"Is that your robot?"
Marvin:"No, I'm mine."
Ahhh, good old MECC software. Would you belive that when I was a young one I got paid to dupe MECC software? It was all on the up and up. My mom used to work for a place called The Learning Exchange, and we would make copies of the MECC software for local schools, helping to keep costs down for MECC and the schools. He he, I had an Apple IIe with 11 disk drives on it. One drive for the master, 10 drives for the 10 disks on a box of floppies. I'm amazed it didn't catch on fire or something. It could only write to one drive at a time, of course. But by having 10 drives, I could be opening a new box of blank floppies, feeding them into the drives, pulling the copies out, putting labels on them, putting them back in the box, and labeling the box, while the program was making copies on other disks. Those were the days.
If Wozniak and RMS would get along well. Both are brilliant, and both have made incredible contributions to the field of computer technology. Both dislike suits that are in it for greed. But Woz is like a more docile, fun loving version or RMS.
RMS: "ALL SOFTWARE MUST BE FREE FOR EVERYBODY OR I WILL BE (am) ONE VERY UNHAPPY CAMPER. IF YOU'RE NOT WITH US, YOU'RE AGAINST US!!!"
Woz: "Wow! This is cool! What would happen if i tried doing this? Neat! Heay, come check this out! What would be a cool practical joke I could pull off using this?..."
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Haw haw, you're joking, right? You're not serious about loving Microsoft, are you?
Steve Jobs got an assignment from Atari to design the circuitry for the sequel to Pong, which would be called Breakout. After a while, Jobs decided he was in over his head, so he asked his friend Woz to help him finish. Jobs told Woz that if they could design it with less than 50 chips, they'd get $700, and if they could design it with less than 40 chips, they'd get $1000. After four days of work, they got it down to 42 and decided sleep was more important than the 300 extra bucks they would've gotten. Jobs turned in Breakout, and wrote Woz a check for his half of the $700.
It wasn't until 1984 that someone showed Woz a chapter in Zap! (a book about Atari) where Steve Jobs got credited for making Breakout. Woz explained to the guy that he and Jobs worked on it together and they got paid $700. The guy says no, it says right here in the book that it was for $5000.
The quicktime lawsuit was settled beforehand for an undisclosed sum. People estimate it at $400 million, but that's just speculation.
Suck.com
AFAIK, the commitment was that for 5 years, Microsoft would publish Office for Mac on parity with Office for Windows. Since the commitment was made in 1997, it follows that it'll expire in 2002. And yeah, I also wonder what'll happen after that...
This is the one thing that really seems to be coming out of PSV that is completely untrue. When Steve Jobs and Bill Gates announced, two years ago, that Microsoft would be investing $150 million in Apple it wasn't a "buy out". It's only an investment. A deal signed by the two companies for mutual gain.
;=)
Apple got a commitment from Microsoft for developement of their products (mainly Office)for the Mac platform. Since then, Microsoft has created a completely seperate division especially for development of Mac products (which is why the Office release dates between Mac/Win are not simultaneous). They also got the monetary boost of Microsoft investing $150 million in their stock... remember, Apple Computer has Billions in the bank, so it's not like MS bought up half the company.
In turn Microsoft got the assurance from Apple that they would not sue MS (for millions) for infringment on any patents (GUI or whatever). It was very much a mutually benefinial contract, some say (including myself) that it was a MUST for Apple to get but I think that MS is still better for it as well.
That contract expires in 2000 or 2001 I believe so it should be interesting to see what happens then.
Pheww... just thought I'd clear that up as best I could
Wow... for someone who had such a big part in personal-computer history, he sure looks like a pretty down-to-earth guy.
:-) I, for one, can attest to having encountered a great many hamsters named after him.
Of course, with a name like Woz, you just can't help but be lovable
P.S.: Sharp-looking site, too!
iSKUNK!
Of course, Microsoft DOES own a part of Apple, so it would at least be wise for them to make SOME effort in keeping it alive. (Especially since it's the only reason MS hasn't been dismantled by the FTC.)
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
What? Lynx not good enuf for ya? ;)
--
Aron Burrell - ronnie@cflug.geeksanon.ab.ca
The SWIM chip is a version of the IWM that can handle 1.44meg 3.5" disks, which the IWM couldn't do. IIRC.
No you're not. But he seems to be considerably less full of himself than Gates or Jobs. At least he seems to be honest. Wouldn't you also say something similar if he was completely humble? It's probably a good compromise between being humble and egotistical.
Do you mean invent BASIC for the Apple? BASIC was invented at Dartmouth by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz.
-----BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH-----
Blah.
rooooar
I find it sad that Woz acknowledges that Jobs really is that much of an asshole. I had just chalked it up to Hollywood exaggeration.
He was such a jerk that my girlfriend, when the movie was finished, said "I'm never going to buy another Mac again!" I laughed and said, "What do you mean another Mac?", to which she replied, "Well, I'm glad I just threw that one out!" (referring to the old Mac Classic she trashed last week).
-----BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH-----
Blah.
rooooar
Here is one source. Search for basic.
http://www.irn.pdx.edu/~ke rlinb/myresearch/timeline.html
Like I said before, if I am misunderstanding you, I apologize.
-----BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH-----
Blah.
rooooar
You're misremembering.
:-)
The MITS Altair (the original) had the metal toggle switches. The one with the red and blue plastic switches (which I thought looked cooler, because they looked like the switches on the front of a PDP-8 or PDP-11) was the Imsai, a different company. (And perhaps the first microcomputer "clone", being essentially the same as the Altair behind the front panel.)
(And having toggled my share of PDP-8 and PDP-11 programs in through the front panel, I'd guess that the Imsai was easier to program -- less wear and tear on the fingertips than those metal toggle switches!
-- Alastair
Let me offer you a hint: How old do you think Engelbart is now? Wozniak? Vint Cerf? Dennis Ritchie?
Explosive growth in computing began more than 20 years ago. Many of the people telling war stories here are over 30, over 40, and, yes, over 50. We may not be a majority of our generations, but we damned well exist.
Random Old Fart question: There's a content-free Microsoft-underwritten travelling "history of video games" exhibition, currently at the Charlotte Discover Place museum. My husband and I wandered down memory lane, checking out the Osbornes, Apples, and Ataris. The Altair 8080 brought me up short because the toggle switches on the front were metal. I remember my father's 8080 having red and blue plastic switches -- the owner got to choose whether to assemble them in octal or hexadecimal groups. Am I misremembering, or did we have an Altair 8080 Mark II or something like that? (Long gone, alas.)
Totally. I couldn't stop laughing, and it wasn't really because the comics were funny (well, not in the way you expect comics to be funny...)
Actually, Suck is considered to be one of the better examples of web design ever. And why would reading it give you a headache? Maybe you need coffee.
win NT approx 300$ which is > 100$ :-} )
;-}
(unless you know how to buy it--then you can get it for 40$
anyway, in todays world you generally hear that the most expensive single component of the comp. is win. remember, computer's are cheap now
Slackware: old school feel, new school gear.
Actually, the thing that's been available for windows for a long time is a technique called anti-aliasing, which is just bluring the edges of something to make it look smoother. The technique M$ is now taking credit for is a sub-pixel technique. It's too complicated to go into detail about, but if you had read the website that was listed, you would already understand. Please thing before posting next time...
"I remember a quote from one of the head Intel guys saying the only use they could think of for a personal computer was for a woman to store her recipes on."
Isn't that about all most people do with their computers anyway?
I am not an idiot. Please use my name to email me.
"That's right, I'm quoting myself."
-Upsilon
I see the woz.org has been slashdotted. So I've posted a mirror at
http://www.discover.net/~still/
No images, just the important stuff. I expect woz.org to be back up soon.
Jonathan
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The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is the day they start making vacuum cleaners.
Just in case it was driving anyone else crazy trying to figure out who that actor was (it was hard to tell with the glasses, beard, and makeup), I finally figured out it was the character Sam from "The Single Guy," the sitcom of a couple years ago.
well, I certanly plan to be using a computer untill I die, (I don't know if I'd *want* to live without one :). I think the first poster was talking about babie boomers. They didn't grow up with them, and they don't relize how cool they really are.(although they are getting on the web more, I think 40% of AOL users use there computers for nothing but )
These are the same people who want to cencor the internet, unfortunetly....
_
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Well, that sounds a lot better then ames highschool (the same place neil stephonson went, btw) and our ~300 node Multiuser network based on Mac0s. yep, mac clients, mac servers. it was hell.
The system loaded all your files the first time you logged on. it was great unless you had more then a couple hundred k of stuff, I was in a Media Art Class, and I had 24 megs of video stuff to load each time, it took 7 minutes...
The people running it were amazingly stupid. at the begning of the year they had a 3 gigs of storage... for 1700 students. it overflowed in about a week, and it didn't do it gracefully ether (it randomly deleted files)
One time, near the end of the first semester, the program that loaded all my files from the server crashed on me, and created an empty directory where My files should have been ('User Work') when I loged out, it resored *that* so I lost all my files.
they wern't doing backups
at least NT has *some* multiuser features, but really you can't try and do it without using a true multi user OS... it just shouldn't be done...
_
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Actualy, he teaches Elemetary school, out of his garage, and pays for the employment of a few teachers with the little money that he does have(well, I wouldn't call it *little*, at least not for me...)
:)
he does teach on Macs and AOL, though.
he also is one of the best tetris players in the world, Nintendo Power had to stop taking his name, after he consistanly trounced the compition...
They had a pretty big artical about him in a recent issue of wired. He was, and still is, the man
_
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
/\/\IcRoSoFt Rul3s d00dz!!
_
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I think what your refering to was a deal for a circut board for Atari.
:)
Atari told Jobs that he would get $4000, $7000 if he used less then 40 chips.
Jobs told woz that he would get $500 (or somthing like that, the $ amouts I'm not sure of, but there was about an order of magnintude diffrence) if the board was less then 36 chips, $700. Woz spent night after night optimizing the board, but he could only get it to somthing like 38 chips.
Woz got $250, jobs got $6750
Atari could not figure out how the f*sk the board worked, and had to design another one
_
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
he dosn't actualy teach a whole elementary school, its a summer program with the local school district, or somthing
he volenteres at the school, and pays for a few other teachers out of his own pockets. he pays for all of this
he's not exactly a poor guy...
_
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Jobs didn't do anything with parc other then steal there ideas (although the GUI idea came from douglass egalbart(sp?), who wanted it to be widely used anyway...)
_
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
um, Its just some font smoothing, dosn't look *that* cool, and I think its been out for quite a while... actualy it's been availible for windows for a long time (and it looks really cool)
_
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I was a little surprized to read that as well (woz's comments). Althought not prevelent in american culture as much in others, Humblness is still common. Most people let other talk about how great they are, but don't mention it themselves... but nothing he says is inacurete, Its all true, and he *is* the man : )
_
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
(and don't give me any of that "risk" bull either -- I've yet to see one destitute executive)
./ in a long time. You don't see destitute executives because they GOT FIRED AND ARE NO LONGER EXECUTIVES! I don't see anyone that got killed from smoking, because they are dead, and thus I can't see them. Executives make alot of money, true. Is it justified? Who knows. But they do run a high risk. Most have thier personal wealth tied up in thier company, and for every golden parachute you read about, there's probably 1 or two execs that lost everything. Get a clue.
Sorry to flame you like this, but this is one of the more retarded statements I've seen on
This is not the greatest sig in the world, this is just a tribute.
Do you really think Bill Gates is in it for the money? Sure, he started MS to make money, but if he was in it for the money, he would have gotten out after a few billion. There isnt much you can do with 90 that you couldn't do with 50 billion. I think his aim is to influence and improve the world in the way he sees fit (whether he is accomplishing this is another discussion). From what I read, he is frighteningly normal (for a geek). He doesnt use his money to run for office, he doesn't run around with a Michael Jackson style entourage. He runs a software company like thousands of other people out there. He just happens to run the largest one. This applies to many of the top billionaire execs (possibly excepting egomaniac Ellison). If I had Gates' wealth, I don't think I would do much different than he does.
This is not the greatest sig in the world, this is just a tribute.
--
--
apple II run linux??? imagine a beowulf cluster!!!
:)
...
drool
sorry, couldn't resist it
I really really miss that show. Those guys are great.
-------------------------------------
One of my favorite memories from my Nintendo Power days was from looking at the high score list for GameBoy Tetris. One month, the highest score was from a Steve Wozniak....
- AlanH
I'm afraid to tell you school systems (at least Virginia schools) still do use Apple II's... Yes, wheeled around on a cart. You wouldn't expect the school system to keep on top of technology, would you?
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts." -- Cecil Adams
Illogical. Jesus claimed to be God. If God does not exist, Jesus is either a liar or nuts.
No sig.
People who make their own fortunes do work extremely hard. They eat, drink, breathe, and sleep their business. They work 24/7 and take naps in their rented offices. It is a specific personality type.
There is a reason why Bill Gates stays constantly busy running Microsoft, even though most of us, with his money, would buy a gigantic compound outside of a major city, have it networked with 1000-or-so top-of-the-line workstations, and hold a non-stop LAN party for the rest of eternity (well, at least, that's what I would do). It's not because he wants to get richer. It's because doing work, building businesses, etc. is what people with a personality like Gates' live for.
I'm not justifying his riches, just explaining how you get to be worth $50B
No sig.
That's it, I'm sending a resume to Micorsoft.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
do YOU see the diffrents?
nmarshall
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
nmarshall
The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
--Colonel Burr 1783
Commodore's BASIC was a Microsoft product.
Did anyone see this? This was buried a little more deeply on his page, and refers to the auction of the first Apple I.
WOZ: I wanted to give the first Apple I, on a PC board, to Liza LO*OP of the LO*OP Center in Cotati, California. I took Steve [Jobs] up there and she showed us how she rolled a PDP-11 around to elementary schools and told the students how a computer was just a collection of programs written by people and didn't have a mind of it's own. 4th through 6th graders. I admired this and wanted to give her the first one. Jobs actually made me buy it, if you can believe that, for $300. I did and gave it to Liza. The one being advertised must be number 2.
This is very interesting. I wonder if the auction house realizes that it isn't selling the original Apple I like they claim? Supposedly, Jobs had identified it as being authentic, so I guess Woz disagrees. Hmmmm...
Bachelor pasta:
Cheese, Pasta you made last night **and remembered to put in the refrigerator**, soy sauce, olive oil or butter or margarine.
Put some olive oil in a pan and heat it up a little bit. Plunk the pasta in the pan and stir it occaisonally. Make sure to let some parts get nice and crispy. Add more olive oil as needed to keep it from drying out. When all the pasta is hot enough to kill anything that might have grown in it since you made it, start grating cheese directly onto the pasta in the pan, turn off the heat, then continue adding cheese. If it's a non-stick pan you can stir it up to melt the cheese faster. Finally, add the soy sauce, but not too much.
I have no idea why I wrote that. I think that's the "recipe" that stunned my wife when she first tasted it. Of course, her Masala Dosa completely blew me off my feet. She's American and she does use recipes, luckily.
--
"I got it running, grabbed a rocket launcher, and fired down a hallway." --John Carmack
Cris E
St Paul, MN
I have never been a mac person, so while knowing who woz was, I never knew much more about the man. After seeing the movie (I've not seen any mention of notable innacuracies with regards to Woz.) I am rather impressed. I'm only posting out of respect but *gratitude* as well. Wow!
We have here a guy who actually had in hand 'all the money'. Someone who had in fact 'made it'. What did he do? Distributed it among the deserving by sharing his stock with those original employees who had no stocks at all. Wether or not he said it, the line from the movie 'I don't think rich' impressed me. And, wether it was said or not, Woz walked the talk.
I think to myself, if woz had made an amount like what bill has made, I would have no problem with it. I would feel good about contributing to a fortune founded on integrity. That is what our economy is supposed to be about. Value, inginuity, integrity.
To woz himself, I would say, "Thank you, and well done. Your work has put all of us in a place farther along than we would have otherwise been. Kudos.
The full story was published in Next Generation magazine a few months back. Jobs was working for Atari at the time, and the company was designing the mainboard for the Breakout arcade game. Breakout was a pre-microprocessor machine, built with discrete logic, so it was to Atari's advantage to optimize the design to use as few chips as possible. Jobs took the problem to Woz, who did a phenomenal job of optimizing the board in exchange for half of Jobs' bonus. Jobs told Woz that he got $500 out of it and paid him accordingly... but Jobs really got $5000! Woz literally cried when he found out, several years later, what his friend had done.
The punchline (if you can call it that) was that Woz's changes worked, but were totally incomprehensible to the engineers at Atari, so his design never went into production. Sad but true.
--
Boy, as an ex-6502 programmer (Atari 8-bit, for fun only:), I think it would be pretty damned difficult to port a multiprogramming OS to the 6502.
1. 64K maximum address space (apple ][ had up to 128K, paged I assume--Atari had Fredie).
2. 1 8-bit general purpose register
3. 2 8-bit index registers
4. A 256 byte stack fixed at locations 256-511
5. No memory paging (only external paging).
6. No indirect addressing (only indirect+index)
7. A bug that if a jump address was on a 256 byte boundary, that the first byte and second byte were taken from the same page (can't remember which jump, though).
8. 1MHz
9. One interrupt level
10. One 8-bit IO port
Now, imagine trying to port Linux to that!
Given that the earliest book of the New Testament was written fifty years after his death, I think a misquote is pretty darned likely. :-)
Woz has box seats there (i believe he was one of the early investors in the Amphitheater, maybe back in the days of the US Festivals?). [They're mostly owned by Valley companies. The placard on his box just says "Woz". Too cool. :-} ( Box Seat #17 if you care to look.)]
Anyhoo, a co-worker said that she had often seen him there at Lilith Fair, and that during the slow moments in the show, he would be playing Tetris with a friend of his, the two Gameboys linked together.
A few months later, at the Bridge School Benefit, he actually was down in the seats near us to get a closer look at/listen to Fastball, and then the Barenaked Ladies. Of course i had to have my friend pass Pilot to him and got him to autograph it.
--Darryl
Bill Gates has said that he's going to give away most of his fortune. $90 billion is a pretty good chunk of change and should be able to affect some change for the better in our world (NOT stuff like giving away Wintels to libraries; more like his donations to those immunization efforts).
Still... It's hard to think of a high profile person who embodies the word "charitable" more than Woz. He's like the Giving Tree.
Also, some people kind of pooh-pooh his technical innovations. Well, last year Microsoft unveiled an imaging technology that was supposed to increase the readability of text on LCD screens dramatically. Believe it or not, Woz invented the same technique just a few years before them. Read it and you will understand why Woz is a genuine wizard.
http://grc.com/cleartype.htm
Jon
Yes, the story is true, although I think you got it mixed up a bit. The deal is that Jobs sold his VW minibus and Woz sold his HP calculator and they used the money to start Apple. Jobs sold Woz's calculator, lied about how much he got for it, and pocketed the difference. I read an interview with Woz last year somewhere on the web where he confirmed this story.
I think that Steve Jobs is a brilliant visionary who honestly wants to create cool stuff (as opposed to Bill Gates who just wants to be rich), but I lost quite a bit of respect for Jobs as a person when I heard about this story.
Jon
Actually, that kind of annoyed me a little, too. Still, it's mind-boggling when you think of everything he's done, and he's mostly written off. And although the movie made him out to be a good guy, they didn't really say much of anything about his technical innovations. I think that maybe peeved him a little. Credit's due where credit's due.
Jon
Really? I coulda' sworn it was over the HP calculator. But you've got a paper source and a direct quote and I can't remember where I saw the interview, so I'll trust you over my cobwebbed brain. Dankesch:on.
Jon
Couple things about NeXT (from what I understand about them):
1. Their Unix is pretty much just NetBSD without X-windows.
2. Their software was/is highly portable. So, to a certain extent, one could argue that Jobs maybe understands that hardware dependence is a bad thing. Still, don't expect Apple to move towards "open" hardware anytime soon (why is x86 hardware more "open"? Just because there are more parts available? It's something I've never understood); Rome wasn't built in a day.
3. While everyone else talked about how high level OOP libraries would change the world, NeXT built 'em. NeXT didn't exactly set the world on fire, but NeXT's customers (eg. USPS) seem satisfied, and most seem like tough customers to please.
The iMac - So you want a workstation. Great. I do, too. I want to be able to put on a bigger monitor and play around with the motherboard and other such things. But most people don't. Most people != Slashdot computer geeks. And if you've ever been a computer lab monitor at a school, you'll know that floppies are a scourge sent from Satan... The iMac makes you start thinking in terms of data centralization, always a good thing.
Jobs is ruthless, yes. Jobs is probably not someone I would want to go mountain climbing with. And Jobs is a visionary. He comes pretty close to being a Romantic Hero (like Young Werther), and no one ever said that's a great thing in and of itself.
Jon
How ya' like that mutton there?
Better make sure you're in your cave by dawn. Wouldn't want ya' to turn to stone, you TROLL!
Ruthless exploiter and brilliant visionary are not necessarily mutually exclusive. I'm not arguing that Jobs was more than a mediocre techie (although, he was hireable by Atari...). But consider:
Apple - graphics, keyboard, and BASIC
PARC - limited GUI, mouse, computing by metaphor
NeXT - microkernel, advanced OOP libraries
Pixar - digital media done well
Apple - iMac - the first viable step towards a network computer
Jobs seems to have a pretty good knack for seeing something cool and then imagining how it could be even cooler, and exploited more fully. He's tried to articulate his ideas and sell people on them. That's what a visionary does, and it's hard to think of anyone else in the computer industry who does it better than Jobs. Contrast Jobs' ventures with Microsoft, which has shown itself to be a purely reactive, paranoid corporation.
To a certain extent, Jobs reminds me of Miles Davis. He's restless, demanding, smart, and temperamental. I love Davis' music but I'm not sure it'd've been easy to be friends with him.
Btw, he's only come of his business skills of late. He's learned those the hard way and I think he's still probably learning. And if he cared so much about business, he'd be worth a lot more than he is now (ie. he gets paid $1/yr. by Apple and he dumped off all but one of his shares of Apple stock long before they rebounded; not that he isn't a billionaire...).
So, y'know, don't want this to be a stereotypical "Macs suck!" thread or anything; this is just how I see things.
Jon
You gotta respect a guy who single-handedly did so much to start the microcomputer industry. He made the computer *and* wrote the BASIC...
Still, to me, the most amazing story from Woz history is that HP wasn't interested in his computer design -- reportedly because he wasn't an engineer. I guess Apple's early success says a great deal about Woz and HP.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
While most of the posts here have been positive, I noticed a few ppl here upset that he seems to be talking himself up on his web site. I agree, he does seem to be harping on how he singlehandedly did a whole bunch of stuff, but think about it a little....
First off, the fact is that he *did* do everything he said.
Second, how would you feel after years of seeing people taking credit for achievements that never would have been possible without your work? It takes an incredible person to just let it go all the time. I've read several things about him as well as interviews & this is the first time I've heard him "talking himself up". My guess is that he was taken advantage of (as most generous people are), got fed up with other people taking credit for everything and giving him absolutely zilch and decided it was time to set the record straight.
You can only be humble & swallow your pride for so long. More power to him.
Gassho!
The TRS-80 Color Computer BASIC (burned in ROM) was done by M$ - sad to say it...
I loved my CoCo(s) - had the 2 and 3. I never gave a second thought to what BASIC they had in them or who it was by, but I was shocked when I realized who made it after many years (fired up an emulator, and sure 'nuff, there's the good ole M$ copyright).
Makes me feel rotten.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
What I find amzing about stories of schools still using old Apples is the fact that the Apples are still running in some fashion. I remember using Apples back in High School for programming, and the disk drives were always dying. The r/w head positioning was done by some crappy plastic mechanism that kept failing in some manner. Other times, memory problems would crop up. Still, these machines were pretty damn rugged, after being pounded on by who knows how many students, etc. The fact that many are still running after 10-15 years (possibly longer) is a testament to this...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Yeah - this is true. The first company I worked for as a programmer was a "mom-and-pop" style operation dealing in insurance management software. Anyhow, the president/owner of this company went from having a huge office and a new corvette every six months (or so it seemed), to losing the company and being a lowly paid programmer again.
I feel sorry for the guy - he had a dream die in his face (and I know it was a dream for him, after sitting many times in his office chatting about certain things). I can't say that is something I would want to happen to me. He was also kind and generous with his money (at least toward his employees). I got around $6000 worth of loans for computer equipment, interest free. Paid off every dime - even after I was laid off (during the end days).
Yes, there are destitute execs - you just don't see them (though, every once in a while, look at some of the bums in your city carefully - you may see an executive amongst them)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
"better examples of web design" is probably the opinion of graphic designers who don't know a single thing about interactive design for websites.
That single page is hideous, and whoever decided that centered text down the middle of a column was a good way for users to read a long article, needs to read a text on typographic style.
"My God...It's full of ads!" -Fry, about the Internet, Futurama
Yes it's true. And it was teh famous game "Breakout". remember? Littl paddle on the bottom moving back and fourth bouncing a ball up to knock blocks away and every once in a whole it would get stuck up top and bouce really fast and make music like noises? Steve sold it to Atari or Colleco. I forget which, for 5000$ Steve said it was 1000$.
So steve gets 4500, Waz gets 500. Woz the brillent inventor, Steve who knows how much it's really worth.
Gil Amelio, ex-CEO of Apple, tells the story in his book On the Firing Line this way:
--------------------------------
Here's a guy [Woz] who still loves the company. He's thoughtful, and he cares. I knew at once that it would benefit the company if Woz would agree to server in a no-pay advisor capacity, as Steve Jobs already was.
I put that to him and he seemed willing to give it a try. But since it would mean he and Steve Jobs attending meetings together, he thought there was some background I needed to hear.
I may not be recalling a few of the details accurately, but as near as I can remember, the story went like this:
"Back when Steve Jobs and I were still just kids hanging out together, we were looking for ways to make some money. Before Mike Markkula, before the Apple in the garage, Steve managed to get an assignment from Nolan Bushnell of Atari to do som circuits for one of their electronic toys. I'd do the designs and build the circuit board, and we'd get $1,000. Nolan wanted it fast--it was on a real short deadline.
It tooks some all-night design sessions, but I got it done on time and gave it to Steve, who took it in to Atari. He came back and gave me $300. I said, 'I thought we were getting $1,000.' Steve told me, 'No, they talked us down to $600, and I figured, you know, it was better than nothing.' So I said 'Okay.'
Years later, I found out from a guy who had been at Atari that they had really paid Steve the full $1000. I did the work; he kept $700 for himself and gave me $300.
When Steve knew I'd found out, that sort of ended it. We've never been close since."
Woz admitted to a bad feeling in both directions, but he thought they could manage to serve together for the benefit of Apple, and agreed to give it a try.
I would come to build a true and lasting admiration for Steve Wozniak and to respect his integrity. I was glad he had told me the story; otherwise I would have always wondered why there seemed to be such animosity wheneve these Apple founders were together in the same room.
The adage says that tijme heals all wounds; the parody says that time wounds all heels. In this case, neither version seems to have worked.
--------------------------------
As a guy who has followed Apple and these folks for years (had an Apple ][, a Mac, and a NeXT), I found Gil Amelio's book fascinating.
Do you think Woz uses Linux?
I thought the show was pretty good. Does anyone remember the part where Jobs says "Ours is better." and Gates says "It doesn't matter."? Who wrote the script? (Bill keeps saying that to this day.)
Nature abhors a vacuum. So does my sister's dog.
I remember checking out every computer and book store for the source code for applesoft basic and was shocked to learn that they wouldn't just give it to you. In the back of the Apple ][ Reference
Manual, they published the source code for the
system monitor. I had to suffice with the "What's Where" book.
Bill Gates has been pissing me off for the last 20 years and I've just about HAD IT! Start releasing
your goddamn source code, M$!!!!
PS. Can anyone else think of a another M$-developed product that was burned into ROM?
As someone who was held hostage by the government for the last week (in jail without arraignment or formal charges) for defending my property with deadly force, I will say that it should be a much smaller place.
And the worst part of the whole ordeal was... you can't get to /. from a jail cell...
"We're an apex predator with the fecundity of a base level herbivore... We're a virus with shoes..." RazorJAK
actually my school still uses the Apple ]['s that they bought in the 80's. The sad fact is, there is no budget in the public schools for good technology education
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Technically, the little bald boy said 'there is no spoon' before Neo did... :-) Picky? Yes. So?
Goddess help me seek the truth, but spare me the company of those who've found it.
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Points! Yes! I noticed it, too, but I am so used to the rampant ignorance of the SPELL CHECK button on the web that I just don't waste time bitching anymore. :-)
Goddess help me seek the truth, but spare me the company of those who've found it.
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Amazingly enough, some Quicktime code shows up in Microsoft's Video For Windows AVI stuff (wow, M$ couldn't pull something off themselves so they just stole it, imagine that. Fine tradition.) Which naturally resulted in a lawsuit, which was settled out of court like Microsoft always does.
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
couldn't he be putting it towards good purposes (you know, that whole "end world hunger" thing?
The last time I checked, teachers are paid very little for what they do, which may be one of the most important jobs on the planet. C'mon, give the man a break. He is trying to instill in our country's youth a love of computers. What greater good can their be than to try to train your successor, for lack of a better phrase? If I had to deal with Gates and Jobs, I wouldn't want to build computers anymore either. I'd imagine they ruined it for him.
-- Terry
Hey, if those are still out.. does that mean I can build my own Apple I?
I don't know this for sure, but I think the chips that the Apple I used are hard to come by anymore (Like memory chips, processors, etc.) I'd imagine that your best chance would be to partially redesign it to use modern-day, easily available parts. That might be something worth writing to Woz about.
Oh, wait a sec, it might violate US Supercomputer Export laws... Sorry, couldn't resist.
-- Terry
You should post the schematics for the ][ in a printable (high-res graphic) format for us. :)
Having that post moderated down is hardly the mindset desireable for OSS advocates, I agree. But don't you think your post would carry just a *little* more weight were it not posted AC?
:)
I also noticed that he seemed a tad full of himself, but the way I see it (from reading up on all of this) it's well deserved. If he were more blatant about it, or threw it in your face like "Ha ha asshole" then I'd have to write him off as some guy with too much ego, but the general feel of his writing wasn't like a brag. It evoked a bit of a feeling of awe for me actually, of the type "I wish I could do that so easily".
Look at it this way: If you had 90 BILLION Dollars would you worry about world hunger or about trying to keep your 90 BILL. And I am not sure that they are greedy remeber this : They took a serious chance, risks that some of use would never take, I mean dropping out of HARVARD with a 1600 on the SAT's, nobody drops out of the best school for an idea that might never work. These guys made out so well because they took the chance, but now it is just business, they have to keep the money that they worked for. And remember Goodness is Goodness no matter what, and do you help to end world hunger like you ask of him?
I do recognize my mistake, and I do apologize for that. I see your way, and that is the way that I was basically talking about. Taking the chance that many do not take, a risk where people call you crazy and stupid but in the end you come out a cut above the rest. You enjoy your job because you put so much into it, it is a part of you.
I never thought that Gates was in it for the money. I had my first computer when I was 7 I am now 17 years old and I have grown up with this company and many others. Of all people in the world he drives a lexus to work in stead of being chauffered back and forth in some starwars like limo. He is very down to earth and loves computers. And he has changed the computer world in so many ways. I dont think I could do much difference with the same amount of money
Do you remember that wall street executive a few years back that lost almost 25 billion dollars in the japanese market and went into seculusion because of it? It ruined him for ever because he took a chance.
The cost of the operating system is just a fraction of the total cost of having the machine on an employee's desk. The hardware costs, the network costs, the time-the-worker-spends-futzing-around costs, the help desk costs. All in all, the operating system itself is a tiny part of the cost of the machine. Particularly if averaged over a three or four year life of the machine.
The whole package costs thousands. The OS at most a hundred. Going to a 'free' OS, with retraining costs, etc., would be greater.
I first learned to program largely on the original Apple II (through SoftSide Magazine!) and I caught the Apple bug. Some 20 years later I finally got a Mac and returned to my roots.
I wrote a shareware program for the Mac (I won't plug it here, I promise!) and I was particularly inspired by Woz as I wrote it. His engineering skill, his devotion to educating children, and his fondness for his guitars (visible on certain days on the WozCam) motivated me to do a good elegant job.
My program has turned out good, but since it serves a niche market it hasn't received many registrations. But imagine my absolute glee when The Woz himself coughed up the $15 and became one of the precious few who registered!
Hey, the man pays his shareware fees! That's enough for me.
-- thinkyhead software and media
Just had to add these two trivial bits:
SoftSide Magazine
Poke 33,33
-- thinkyhead software and media
Maybe both stories are true?
L.
In an article (I think it was in Byte) there's a story about Woz going back to college to continue his academic education. Of course, by then Apple was a billion dollar company so he enrolled under a false name. During an economics class, the lecturer went on a rant about how companies only try to cheat and steal from customers with bad products, and Woz stood up to disagree, but was cut down by the teacher. He says something along the lines of - "Here I was, the founder of one of the most successful companies in history, and he was telling me I didn't know what I was talking about and I had to just sit there and listen." Cracked me up.
Another really good one - Woz hacked the phone to make free international calls, and as a prank, he and his buddies called up the Pope. The bishop who answered asked them who wanted to speak to him in the middle of the night.
Woz: "Henry Kissinger".
Bishop (now suspicious) : "You don't sound like Henry Kissinger".
There's another story he relates about writing a spreadsheet at Apple, and being the nice guy he is, he's nervous about the deadline and worried about being fired. Woz. Worried about being fired from Apple. Well, he had some Star Wars contacts call his boss and tantalize him with some rare memoribilia. I forget what exactly it was, but it was a pretty funny trick he played.
One more story I've read (and I don't know if this is true) is that during their early days together, Jobs told Woz they'd split a payment 50-50. But he lied about the amount and told Woz it was $500, when it was actually twice that, while pocketing the rest himself. Apparently Woz found this out, and things were never the same between them again. (Can somebody confirm if this is true?).
L.
For those of us who don't get TNT or missed it. I have the move in RA, on my web site.
http://kozmik.guelph.on.ca
Enjoy.
Oh boy if you wants to see a cartoon I mades for pirates of the siliconium valleys you should looks at http://www.fre eyellow.com/members7/geraldholmes/MScartoon1.html its pretty funny theres also other cartoons and some good stuff about how Bill Gates is the smartest man ever to live ever.
I run a small software company and one day I get an email from Woz - he likes one of my products and can he order 10 copies? No problem! I started programming on an Apple II and were it not for that computer, I'd probably be a lawyer now. :-) Of course I sent the software for free. We corresponded for a bit. It's a rare person who can achieve that level of wealth and fame and still be accessible and a really nice guy.
i actually own one of those IIgs limiteds with Woz's signature. Bought that for $3500 i think. Insane, huh?
I don't see why not, I have an original Apple II reference manual that has the schematics in the back, as well as some source code.
I've received a few e-mails about the recent movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley" and I thought I'd share some of my responses with you. Q From e-mail: I just had to laugh at the part in the movie where someone called Dial-A-Joke. I remember calling that number to hear the joke of the day. Was it really you who did this? WOZ: Experimenting with blue boxes to make calls anywhere in the world while at Berkely in 1971-1972, I encountered a few Dial-a-Jokes in the world. I never used the blue box to save money on phone calls, I was an ethical hacker. So while working as an engineer at Hewlett Packard, designing scientific calculators, I started the first Dial-a-Joke in the San Francisco Bay Area. This was before you could buy answering machines or even telephones. I had to rent a very expensive machine made for theaters, and eventually had to quit because I couldn't afford it. I got so many calls that I had to keep changing the number. Anyone with a similar number would get 100 calls a day. The best known numbers that I had were (408) 255-6666 and (408) 575-1625. I operated Dial-a-Joke out of my Cupertino apartment, where I did a lot of the Apple designing (I designed every bit and wrote all the code including BASIC myself). I used a thick Eastern accent, like Russian, and used the name Stanley Zebrezuskinitsky when I took live calls. Q From e-mail: Hi Mr. Woz, I just wanted to say that I just saw Pirates of Silicon Valley and was amazed at what went on way back when. I commend you for remaining the same person you've always been rather than turning into a money hungry, stuck up person like so many others do. It's so interesting to me that you made the computer that made Apple even possible, but it was Steve Job's that seemed to take all the credit. Was the scene with the man being interviewed really true? Did Steve Job's actually demean a potential employee?? I have to say, that they portrayed him as a real jerk who was very demeaning to his employees if they did not perform to his liking. And actually, Bill Gates was no better. They were and maybe still are hungry for the power. The other thing that I found interesting and didn't realize was that Microsoft now owns part of Apple. Steve Jobs is definitely a brilliant business man but after seeing what Bill Gates has done I'd have to say that he's even more savvy! Anyway, those were just a few thoughts I had. I was just really impressed with your character and how you've remained the same person that you were when you created that first computer. I hope you don't mind my two cents. : - ) WOZ: It's funny, but even with all the things that aren't said outright, a great number of people, like yourself, saw a lot of things in that movie that are totally true. The personalities were very accurately portrayed. I designed the computers just to do it and show the world that it could be done and help them happen. Later Steve Jobs suggested starting a company to make money from it. I'd been giving out schematics for free at the Homebrew Computer Club. That's what I believed in. It was hard for me to even start the company when it looked like there might be real money in it. I often wonder why I remained the person I always wanted to be, from late high school on. I wanted to be an engineer and then a 5th grade teacher and I wanted a computer someday and I wanted to be nice to people and I wanted to tell and make jokes and I wanted a family and home. It couldn't have come truer for me. Watch for more comments in the coming days. What exactly were some of my important contributions? Click here to find out. These are Woz's comments, not my own.