As a previous poster has observed, Jobs was probably a better computer technician in the pure "here's a bucket of ICs and a board and a soldering iron, build a computer" sense than most people here. It's just that his partner was Steve Wozniak, who took that shit to a whole different level.
I've got two kids (shock horror! Slashdot poster has had sex!), a boy and a girl, and they've each had the most balanced upbringing I could give them because I'm AWARE of all this shit. I have specifically avoided, to the best of my ability, putting either of them in a gender box.
Boy: wants to play with toy trains, Super Mario Galaxy, and kick a ball around outside. Comes in scraped and bloody from some injury that he didn't think was worth telling me about. Wants to know why the motor on the little circuit board runs faster with two batteries connected. Draws for me diagrams of what look like complicated Rube Goldberg machines, until I realise he's sketching out imaginary Angry Birds Space levels.
Girl: wants to play dress-up, have some variation on a "Princess" fairy story read to her, and dance. Preferably with multiple wardrobe and shoe changes. Is by far the best nonverbal communicator, with facial expressions, gestures, and a sense of vocal inflection that her older brother still hasn't mastered.
Governments, particularly that of the United States, do not give a shit if you black out your website or put a passive-aggressive post-it note at the top of each page. SOPA got killed because a bunch of multinational megacorps that spend millions on lobbying collectively had a quiet word with their "clients".
Just kidding, it was probably that thing on petitiononline.com, no, really it was.
P.S. This is why I have such high hopes for Google. They do tend to be quite open with their products, arguably too open in some respects. Still, if they get to the level of design expertise, polish, and outright raw power in small form factors that Apple has gotten to, all the while keeping their thriving corporate culture intact, there's no telling how much it can achieve, changing the industry in ways we (or they, for that matter) haven't even dreamed of yet.
Google is an advertising company that derives almost all of its income from showing advertisements to users of desktop computers.
a) is that a market with a future, and
b) is that the sort of company you admire? An ADVERTISING COMPANY?
Microsoft has never understood, or even cared about, the consumer. Microsoft's target has always been the CIO or IT Manager. It's corporate deployments of Office and Windows that keep Microsoft afloat, not anything that a consumer buys.
Nope. They did exactly the same thing in Sydney in (IIRC) 1994. The organisers made a deal with the city to ensure that wherever the visiting Olympic committee went, the lights would be green the whole way.
Whenever I see an unskippable copyright warning on a DVD I legitimately own, the movie industry owes me another movie for free. I can't help it if the MPAA just keeps on breaching my policy.
Ronnie didn't beat the commies, they just fell apart. Fuel prices fucked their economy, they got tied down in a series of costly pointless overseas wars, and the government became too bloated, corrupt, and bureaucratically frozen to function.
Fortunately that combination of influences will never ever happen to anyone ever again, ever.
Given current fighter jet tempo, we can expect the F-22 to still be flying in 2040+.
Possible, but then again it's also possible that those little independent states collectively known as "the former United States of America" will have sold their F-22s off or bartered them in exchange for stuff that's actually useful.
Google has not reached monopoly status anywhere significant
Google has 67% of the US search market and in other Western countries it has up to 94% of the market. If it walks like a monopoly and quacks like a monopoly...
"Us ancient folk who remember the 1990s" might recall a tactic that Microsoft employed at one point. It acquired the rights to a piece of technology developed elsewhere, a piece of technology that looked like it would be particularly useful in the exploding market known as "the World-Wide Web", and then gave it away for free to get people using it. It was able to do this because it had a monopoly in one industry, and it wanted to use that domaince to ensure that it would have a headstart in another.
For a more recent example of this tactic, see Android.
Woz has a sense of humor and people skills. When I picture Google, I picture a bunch of superbright guys with the social dexterity - and empathy - of an Aspergers support group.
Google has one approach to everything now: get superbright guys to code up a technically nifty solution to a problem that no-one has, with the aim of collecting info in order to sell advertising, and launch the product without considering for a second how real people in the real world will use it and what those people might actually want. Later, rinse, repeat.
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As a previous poster has observed, Jobs was probably a better computer technician in the pure "here's a bucket of ICs and a board and a soldering iron, build a computer" sense than most people here. It's just that his partner was Steve Wozniak, who took that shit to a whole different level.
I think you mean he COULDN'T have cared less.
I've got two kids (shock horror! Slashdot poster has had sex!), a boy and a girl, and they've each had the most balanced upbringing I could give them because I'm AWARE of all this shit. I have specifically avoided, to the best of my ability, putting either of them in a gender box.
Boy: wants to play with toy trains, Super Mario Galaxy, and kick a ball around outside. Comes in scraped and bloody from some injury that he didn't think was worth telling me about. Wants to know why the motor on the little circuit board runs faster with two batteries connected. Draws for me diagrams of what look like complicated Rube Goldberg machines, until I realise he's sketching out imaginary Angry Birds Space levels.
Girl: wants to play dress-up, have some variation on a "Princess" fairy story read to her, and dance. Preferably with multiple wardrobe and shoe changes. Is by far the best nonverbal communicator, with facial expressions, gestures, and a sense of vocal inflection that her older brother still hasn't mastered.
Governments, particularly that of the United States, do not give a shit if you black out your website or put a passive-aggressive post-it note at the top of each page. SOPA got killed because a bunch of multinational megacorps that spend millions on lobbying collectively had a quiet word with their "clients".
Just kidding, it was probably that thing on petitiononline.com, no, really it was.
Someone post a chart showing the world's oil consumption by country.
Armstrong and Aldrin's footprints should be left undisturbed until the end of fuckin time. Just sayin.
Apple has almost 100% of the market that counts: people who spend money.
P.S. This is why I have such high hopes for Google. They do tend to be quite open with their products, arguably too open in some respects. Still, if they get to the level of design expertise, polish, and outright raw power in small form factors that Apple has gotten to, all the while keeping their thriving corporate culture intact, there's no telling how much it can achieve, changing the industry in ways we (or they, for that matter) haven't even dreamed of yet.
Google is an advertising company that derives almost all of its income from showing advertisements to users of desktop computers.
a) is that a market with a future, and
b) is that the sort of company you admire? An ADVERTISING COMPANY?
And I'm well within my rights to point, laugh, and observe that religious people are f*cking crazy.
plus whatever bluetooth keyboard you want.
Microsoft has never understood, or even cared about, the consumer. Microsoft's target has always been the CIO or IT Manager. It's corporate deployments of Office and Windows that keep Microsoft afloat, not anything that a consumer buys.
Venture capitalists' ability to make billions of dollars for no effort is being threatened!!11
Yeah man, the most valuable public company in the world sure fucked up good.
Always fighting the last war.
It's become politically vogue to be a blithering moron.
This has been an aspect of American life for... well, ever.
Thanks for keeping me abreast of this News for Nerds, this Stuff that Matters, Slashdot!
Nope. They did exactly the same thing in Sydney in (IIRC) 1994. The organisers made a deal with the city to ensure that wherever the visiting Olympic committee went, the lights would be green the whole way.
Every Olympic bid since Sydney's bid for the 2000 games has done the same. This isn't anything new.
Whenever I see an unskippable copyright warning on a DVD I legitimately own, the movie industry owes me another movie for free. I can't help it if the MPAA just keeps on breaching my policy.
Ronnie didn't beat the commies, they just fell apart. Fuel prices fucked their economy, they got tied down in a series of costly pointless overseas wars, and the government became too bloated, corrupt, and bureaucratically frozen to function.
Fortunately that combination of influences will never ever happen to anyone ever again, ever.
Given current fighter jet tempo, we can expect the F-22 to still be flying in 2040+.
Possible, but then again it's also possible that those little independent states collectively known as "the former United States of America" will have sold their F-22s off or bartered them in exchange for stuff that's actually useful.
Google has not reached monopoly status anywhere significant
Google has 67% of the US search market and in other Western countries it has up to 94% of the market. If it walks like a monopoly and quacks like a monopoly...
"Us ancient folk who remember the 1990s" might recall a tactic that Microsoft employed at one point. It acquired the rights to a piece of technology developed elsewhere, a piece of technology that looked like it would be particularly useful in the exploding market known as "the World-Wide Web", and then gave it away for free to get people using it. It was able to do this because it had a monopoly in one industry, and it wanted to use that domaince to ensure that it would have a headstart in another.
For a more recent example of this tactic, see Android.
Woz has a sense of humor and people skills. When I picture Google, I picture a bunch of superbright guys with the social dexterity - and empathy - of an Aspergers support group.
Google has one approach to everything now: get superbright guys to code up a technically nifty solution to a problem that no-one has, with the aim of collecting info in order to sell advertising, and launch the product without considering for a second how real people in the real world will use it and what those people might actually want. Later, rinse, repeat.
stuff that matters!
Eliminate them? Hell, jump across from the neighbours' place and STEAL THEM.