I don't really understand how a fractured OS market would have served people better in the long run. People would have had more choices, but ultimately less choices in terms of applications available to their chosen OS.
There's a thing called.. portability, it's a side benefit of well written code.
I mean would os/2 have been a worthy competitor?
Considering Windows NT was os/2 to start with... yes, windows 3.1 more or less sealed it's fate though.
Depends on the type of two-stroke, some actually have a sump etc and aren't like the oil chewing ones most people associate with two stroke, even though they are a rarity
But mainly, ever heard of preventative maintenance? I know lots of car drivers drive around until something breaks, but really preventative maintenance tends to stop that from happening
Actually, as of recently the Flash spec is available without restrictions, and there's gnash, a GNU implementation.
If you've read anything about gnash development, the stuff adobe has released as specs is useless, and gnash had already implemented the stuff that was in the docs they released anyway
crappy docs that don't cover everything to the point a completely compatible implementation can be made don't count. Good that they are at least half trying though.
As to the gpu and cpu on the same die I do think you will see it very soon. Just as the FPU has moved on die so will the GPU.
FPU's only became integrated when it became a comparatively small portion of the die, I have no doubts that things like intel's gma line would be possible on die, but to say that everyone would be content with that is just silly.
Eye candy means maths, more maths capability means more eye candy, people want things shinier so they want a computer that can do maths faster, which in gpu's case means more parallelism and more transistors.
On die gpu's are for people who don't care about shiny, fps or resolution... people may be out there like that, but those people aren't buying graphics cards anyway, instead using the integrated stuff on the motherboard.
3. Intel would have to shut down all of their operations to let nVidia claim the workstation market. Like it or not, Intel still makes pretty hefty CPUs, owns the workstation market, and has more disposable cash, and a bigger engineering staff than any other chip maker.
By workstation he likely meant professional scientific data/visualisation, which nvidia currently owns basically with cuda, yes the main cpu is intel chips, but we're talking gpu's here.. when was the last time you saw an intel gpu being used for massively parallel vector math or someone that cared a lot about their visualisatoin?
Also, as the article pointed out, integrated CPU/GPU has several obvious advantages over discrete CPU + discrete GPU.
except that whole.. ability to upgrade gpu business, while integration yields many advantages on the low/medium end, integration can restrict flexibility with the hardware though.
On the high end side the very idea of having the gpu on the same die as the cpu is ludicrous, modern gpu's already have transistor counts way surpassing that of cpu's
A POW status would state how you may and may not treat them.
as does the protected civilian status, there are rules, and human rights
I agree that we (USA) should not treat non-POWs without basic human rights and without dignity.
Good, and those things are meant to be ensured by the fourth geneva convention, which the US blindly ignores by claiming to invent their own new status.
But what really pisses me off is how our new administration wishes to grant these terrorists with the same constitutional protections they (Al-Qaeda) wish we never had.
But if you were to not treat them fairly according to your laws, would that not speak volumes about the US as a country, violating your own principles is a lot worse than anything al-qaeda could do to you, you become the monster.
In my opinion the terrorists succeeded, but only because of the US government terrifying it's own people for it's own ends.
Hell they could have had osama back in 2001 if they had just stopped bombing the crap out of afghanistan.
"I ask America not to kill us," pleaded Hussain Khan, who said he had lost four children in the raid.
To which bush simply said, no negotiations, we're doing it anyway. If you can actually support that kind of crap, you are more callous than I.
The number of innocent civilians killed by bush's wars is insane, makes 911 look like a drop in the bucket. But nobody cares, because it isn't them.
who says they need prisoner of war status? All I said was that they either are prisoners of war, or they are civilian protected persons. There is no "lets just do what we want" status.
"on the Fourth Geneva Convention: Every person in enemy hands must be either a prisoner of war and, as such, be covered by the Third Convention; or a civilian covered by the Fourth Convention. Furthermore, There is no intermediate status; nobody in enemy hands can be outside the law," relevant judgement on this can be found here.The fourth geneva convention was specifically made to stop the kind of bullshit the US government is doing.
If you really want more info I could sort through the actual convention, but I think that's probably enough.
In the end what the US has done to people are war crimes, but nobody would ever hold the US responsible, why stand up to a bully when he can pound your ass into the ground just as easily?
take the angle of a content creator, after all if you are making your own content and putting it online, competitors could easily take you out just by merely claiming you stole their work even if you didn't.
Also good to point out unfairness to ISP's and third parties etc
Here is where you can find information regarding sending people your problems with it. email and snail mail options provided, recommend snail mail for best results.
"Your soldiers" are gullible suckers who sacrifice their lives for no good reason.
When it comes down to it, most soldiers join the army to serve the nation, even when they politically disagree they go not for the government, but to look after their mates and not let them down.
Comradeship is something a lot of people overlook on the military side of things, but then again it's one of the few jobs where true loyalty comes into it, your life is in your friends hands, and yours in theirs.
Oh really? Cool. Then they are not given the same rights under Geneva convention.
Either way they are covered by the geneva convention, only thing it would change is whether they come under the military section or civilian section.
It's at times like this where I wish slashdot let you view more of your comment history, I could link to a former post of mine with citations from the relevant parts of the conventions.
Unlike what the US government would have you believe, there is no magical 'they have no rights, we can fuck with them as much as we want' status. It's just that no country has the balls to call them on it.
just a quick point I left out on the other post though, what that article does not describe is the average level of payment, for instance, I was getting well under half what that site has listed for youth allowance.
more information would be needed to discern typical payments, as opposed to maximum, but that is irrelevant simply by the fact that having them on a different system is already flawed.
Fair enough, I concede I should have looked up the numbers beforehand, one would assume that if there is an entire section dedicated to them, that there would be enough discrepancy to justify that departments existence. Never underestimate government overhead I guess.
Still, if the difference is so little, then why NOT do as said above and put them on the same line as everyone else?
can you please explain your definition of racist.
Someone who wants different treatment depending on race
Basically, opposing affirmative action (giving certain people special preference in certain things) was what got her labelled racist the most, specifically because those groups that are receiving benefits have something to lose. While I was never a supporter of hers because she was an idiot, I don't see how wanting people to be treated equally equates to being racist.
If you can put forward a pro affirmative action argument that is completely fair and unprejudiced to all parties, go ahead.
"I just don't get it." - Yes, I figured that one out from your first post.
the ridiculous amount of asians comment was specifically because I find it strange to be in your home town having everyone around you talk in chinese. Could just be I consider it slightly rude, but it makes you feel as if you are out of place, even though most of them can speak english.
As someone else mentioned, Sony should have no say in controllers because their controller is a piece of junk. It was a terrible design in 1994, it is still terrible.
Well, the original ps1 controller was essentially a snes pad with l2 and r2 buttons also. the shapes instead of letters is probably to avoid lawsuits from nintendo.
Same with the xbox360 controller, it has x/y a/b but the colours and positions of the letters are different in order to be lawsuit friendly
But I must say that even the best gamepads are not good enough. No console comes with a truly good controller; in fact, only one console ever did: SNK's almighty, eternal, venerable, insanely expensive NEO FUCKIN' GEO!
neo geo controller was a lovely piece of kit, finest you could straight up buy, but I highly recommend fabricating your own with arcade parts, all of the non usb/bluetooth controllers work basically identically, a parallel to serial converter (exceptions: mega drive, master system, c64, neogeo) which you can implement with any microcontroller easily these days, attach a few different connector endings and have switches attached to the micro for selection of what controller standard to use.
I made a jamma to snes connector because I was tired of wiring 14+ wires all the way just for a single controller, serial cuts that to five. (and I can now use custom arcade controller on snes)
As you probably know there is a minority racist element in our population who idolise people such as Pauline Hanson.
Very few people would disagree that the way she handled politics wasn't very smart, or politically correct. However I believe racist would greatly depend on your definition.
Example, you would know of austudy and abstudy, these are centrelink payments you get as a student. Now, in an equal society, why are these two different systems needed, why can't aboriginal students be treated the same as white students?
They receive more money and more benefits than any white man could hope for in the same situation. Call me crazy, but that is racist, against the majority. But the very moment any of this is brought up, it's considered politically incorrect and you are called racist, I just don't get it.
Is it racist to want equal treatment for people? instead of giving certain subsections extreme benefits compared to others?
wikipedia Australia, look at the map, wikipedia Asia, look at the map. They are different continents
We may have a ridiculous amount of asian immigrants that still speak chinese/japanese after they get here, but that still does not make us a part of asia.
being caught a few times in college of dealing marijuana wouldn't bother me near so much as the "Anonymous" vandalism.
I find it interesting that you would place smoking/dealing pot as less worthy of your suspicion than political activism, because substance abuse is never a sign people are unstable is it?
You still speak of anonymous as if you had no idea about them before or after the scientology business, it has always been just a bunch of random people that jump on bandwagons they consider worth the cause. Originating at 4chan, they pretty much just post pictures and have discussions on topics, but every now and then something big comes up where enough people don't like the actions of a group or person to do something about it.
There was no vandalism as such, the site was not compromised, it was just a bunch of people furiously reloading their pages to create a demand they weren't expecting.
You're making a mountain out of a molehill, more or less.
There are very little istances of cars which are more than 10 years old and still good for everyday use
Depends on the type of car and how well it has been treated, modern cars (especially large engined ones) tend to start rusting etc because the paint is the first thing to go, if you keep it garaged all the time when not in use, and do general maintenance, you can easily get 20 years. (disclaimer: my last car was only 14 years old, but still in extremely good condition)
The point remains, you would judge someone decades on from something they did that was silly as a teenager. Even though I have no convictions or even charges and hold some hard to get clearances I would not work for an employer such as yourself out of principle.
Effectively you are punishing someone for misdirected pashion.
I own an iPhone because it is far and away the very best smart phone on the market.
Depends what market you're in I guess, the N95 was a better phone and came out a full year earlier, completely open development, integrated voip, wifi, tethering, webkit based browser, you name it. Actual tactile feedback with *gasp* buttons too so it's still useful as a regular phone, hardware accelerated 3d, even sd resolution tv out so you can watch movies with it (with hardware accelerated h264 support). Fm tuner, etc etc.
If you feel the need for touch there's the n97, and as a bonus you get a qwerty keyboard.
Apple do not have the best phones, but they do easily have the best marketing
To top it off for something more recent, highly recommend checking out the n900, after friends getting one I now conclude that will be my next phone.
With that said, the news was not that they were going to make the nvidia driver fail, but that they would include the nouveau driver.
fedora has had nouveau for at least two release cycles now (over a year) don't think you get just how bleeding edge it is (always works for me though at least), the news is that they are enabling 3d support as opposed to just 2d in the driver.
as a fedora user since the redhat days, I can honestly say one of the only retarded things they've done is replace pidgin with empathy, empathy is nowhere near as mature and feature complete and it was only even suggested because of the lack of webcam in pidgin which has now been resolved anyway.
If you think "anonymous" is a cracker group, you really have no idea.
He used his personal computer in a stupid way to protest against an organisation he considered evil. Not the smartest thing to do but it's a far cry from that to "you have proven you were too self-righteous and vindictive to be trusted with my equipment." especially decades on when the activism of peoples youth fades.
Most public companies go astray when the founders leave the company.
which in my opinion happened when wozniak left the company, wozniak designed all the hardware and software for the product that built the company - the apple II, jobs was and always has been, just a very good business man with dreams of being artistic. There is no doubt that the direction jobs took apple was completely different than that which the company started as.
Back when apple was first being put out to the public, certain employees had been promised shares in the company from jobs for various things, in the end they got naught and woz had to give them some of his share. It's that kind of ruthlessness that can make a businessman excel, but I don't consider it very moral.
Jobs did the 180 for Apple (and it didn't happen overnight) by pruning Apple down to its original core market and bringing Apple back into the high-end (or boutique) computer market.
I do believe in a single year (1997) gil amelio took the company from billion dollar losses to an actual profit... to say that things weren't already on the upturn (and considering the products that came out after jobs became ceo were already in the pipeline) is a bit strange.
amelio cleaned the fat from the company (1/3rd the workforce and a bunch of hardware lines), made it profitable while having couple higher quality products in the line, if that isn't improving the company for the long haul as opposed to short term, I don't know what is.
I also think that Jobs being a control-freak is what keeps Apple from being a generic commodity computer. I see that quality as leadership and the insistence to make a product that he wants to associate with Apple.
To an extent, but the main problem is when people go, 'you know what, your product is almost there, but we want to do x instead of y' they are met with more or less 'no, you must do it our way' no tinkering allowed more or less, except where it would be extremely cost prohibitive to allow tinkering. (i.e. more cost to reinvent their own bsd than to just use it)
Luckily for Apple, he regained his seat on the board and the rest is history....
The ceo before him towards the end was responsible for the majority of the things that went right with apple after his immediate return, these things take time and companies don't do a 180 overnight it takes planning etc.
So there goes your theory of Job's "extremely controlled experience".
You make it sound like I was implying it was a bad thing? I sure don't like it but the apple fans love the level of control apple puts on it's products, it has always been beauty (with jobs defining what that is) over function.
As for how controlling he can be, here are a few examples
I don't know about you, I consider crap like that to be rather controlling, plenty more stories where those came from on folklore.org, the more you read the more you'll see about jobs' personality
Slashdot Mirror
I don't really understand how a fractured OS market would have served people better in the long run. People would have had more choices, but ultimately less choices in terms of applications available to their chosen OS.
There's a thing called.. portability, it's a side benefit of well written code.
I mean would os/2 have been a worthy competitor?
Considering Windows NT was os/2 to start with... yes, windows 3.1 more or less sealed it's fate though.
Two-stroke engines are notoriously unreliable.
Depends on the type of two-stroke, some actually have a sump etc and aren't like the oil chewing ones most people associate with two stroke, even though they are a rarity
But mainly, ever heard of preventative maintenance? I know lots of car drivers drive around until something breaks, but really preventative maintenance tends to stop that from happening
Actually, as of recently the Flash spec is available without restrictions, and there's gnash, a GNU implementation.
If you've read anything about gnash development, the stuff adobe has released as specs is useless, and gnash had already implemented the stuff that was in the docs they released anyway
crappy docs that don't cover everything to the point a completely compatible implementation can be made don't count. Good that they are at least half trying though.
As to the gpu and cpu on the same die I do think you will see it very soon. Just as the FPU has moved on die so will the GPU.
FPU's only became integrated when it became a comparatively small portion of the die, I have no doubts that things like intel's gma line would be possible on die, but to say that everyone would be content with that is just silly.
Eye candy means maths, more maths capability means more eye candy, people want things shinier so they want a computer that can do maths faster, which in gpu's case means more parallelism and more transistors.
On die gpu's are for people who don't care about shiny, fps or resolution... people may be out there like that, but those people aren't buying graphics cards anyway, instead using the integrated stuff on the motherboard.
3. Intel would have to shut down all of their operations to let nVidia claim the workstation market. Like it or not, Intel still makes pretty hefty CPUs, owns the workstation market, and has more disposable cash, and a bigger engineering staff than any other chip maker.
By workstation he likely meant professional scientific data/visualisation, which nvidia currently owns basically with cuda, yes the main cpu is intel chips, but we're talking gpu's here.. when was the last time you saw an intel gpu being used for massively parallel vector math or someone that cared a lot about their visualisatoin?
Also, as the article pointed out, integrated CPU/GPU has several obvious advantages over discrete CPU + discrete GPU.
except that whole.. ability to upgrade gpu business, while integration yields many advantages on the low/medium end, integration can restrict flexibility with the hardware though.
On the high end side the very idea of having the gpu on the same die as the cpu is ludicrous, modern gpu's already have transistor counts way surpassing that of cpu's
A POW status would state how you may and may not treat them.
as does the protected civilian status, there are rules, and human rights
I agree that we (USA) should not treat non-POWs without basic human rights and without dignity.
Good, and those things are meant to be ensured by the fourth geneva convention, which the US blindly ignores by claiming to invent their own new status.
But what really pisses me off is how our new administration wishes to grant these terrorists with the same constitutional protections they (Al-Qaeda) wish we never had.
But if you were to not treat them fairly according to your laws, would that not speak volumes about the US as a country, violating your own principles is a lot worse than anything al-qaeda could do to you, you become the monster.
In my opinion the terrorists succeeded, but only because of the US government terrifying it's own people for it's own ends.
Hell they could have had osama back in 2001 if they had just stopped bombing the crap out of afghanistan.
"I ask America not to kill us," pleaded Hussain Khan, who said he had lost four children in the raid.
To which bush simply said, no negotiations, we're doing it anyway. If you can actually support that kind of crap, you are more callous than I.
The number of innocent civilians killed by bush's wars is insane, makes 911 look like a drop in the bucket. But nobody cares, because it isn't them.
who says they need prisoner of war status? All I said was that they either are prisoners of war, or they are civilian protected persons. There is no "lets just do what we want" status.
"on the Fourth Geneva Convention: Every person in enemy hands must be either a prisoner of war and, as such, be covered by the Third Convention; or a civilian covered by the Fourth Convention. Furthermore, There is no intermediate status; nobody in enemy hands can be outside the law," relevant judgement on this can be found here.The fourth geneva convention was specifically made to stop the kind of bullshit the US government is doing.
If you really want more info I could sort through the actual convention, but I think that's probably enough.
In the end what the US has done to people are war crimes, but nobody would ever hold the US responsible, why stand up to a bully when he can pound your ass into the ground just as easily?
take the angle of a content creator, after all if you are making your own content and putting it online, competitors could easily take you out just by merely claiming you stole their work even if you didn't.
Also good to point out unfairness to ISP's and third parties etc
Here is where you can find information regarding sending people your problems with it. email and snail mail options provided, recommend snail mail for best results.
"Your soldiers" are gullible suckers who sacrifice their lives for no good reason.
When it comes down to it, most soldiers join the army to serve the nation, even when they politically disagree they go not for the government, but to look after their mates and not let them down.
Comradeship is something a lot of people overlook on the military side of things, but then again it's one of the few jobs where true loyalty comes into it, your life is in your friends hands, and yours in theirs.
Oh really? Cool. Then they are not given the same rights under Geneva convention.
Either way they are covered by the geneva convention, only thing it would change is whether they come under the military section or civilian section.
It's at times like this where I wish slashdot let you view more of your comment history, I could link to a former post of mine with citations from the relevant parts of the conventions.
Unlike what the US government would have you believe, there is no magical 'they have no rights, we can fuck with them as much as we want' status. It's just that no country has the balls to call them on it.
just a quick point I left out on the other post though, what that article does not describe is the average level of payment, for instance, I was getting well under half what that site has listed for youth allowance.
more information would be needed to discern typical payments, as opposed to maximum, but that is irrelevant simply by the fact that having them on a different system is already flawed.
Fair enough, I concede I should have looked up the numbers beforehand, one would assume that if there is an entire section dedicated to them, that there would be enough discrepancy to justify that departments existence. Never underestimate government overhead I guess.
Still, if the difference is so little, then why NOT do as said above and put them on the same line as everyone else?
can you please explain your definition of racist.
Someone who wants different treatment depending on race
Basically, opposing affirmative action (giving certain people special preference in certain things) was what got her labelled racist the most, specifically because those groups that are receiving benefits have something to lose. While I was never a supporter of hers because she was an idiot, I don't see how wanting people to be treated equally equates to being racist.
If you can put forward a pro affirmative action argument that is completely fair and unprejudiced to all parties, go ahead.
"I just don't get it." - Yes, I figured that one out from your first post.
the ridiculous amount of asians comment was specifically because I find it strange to be in your home town having everyone around you talk in chinese. Could just be I consider it slightly rude, but it makes you feel as if you are out of place, even though most of them can speak english.
As someone else mentioned, Sony should have no say in controllers because their controller is a piece of junk. It was a terrible design in 1994, it is still terrible.
Well, the original ps1 controller was essentially a snes pad with l2 and r2 buttons also. the shapes instead of letters is probably to avoid lawsuits from nintendo.
Same with the xbox360 controller, it has x/y a/b but the colours and positions of the letters are different in order to be lawsuit friendly
But I must say that even the best gamepads are not good enough. No console comes with a truly good controller; in fact, only one console ever did: SNK's almighty, eternal, venerable, insanely expensive NEO FUCKIN' GEO!
neo geo controller was a lovely piece of kit, finest you could straight up buy, but I highly recommend fabricating your own with arcade parts, all of the non usb/bluetooth controllers work basically identically, a parallel to serial converter (exceptions: mega drive, master system, c64, neogeo) which you can implement with any microcontroller easily these days, attach a few different connector endings and have switches attached to the micro for selection of what controller standard to use.
I made a jamma to snes connector because I was tired of wiring 14+ wires all the way just for a single controller, serial cuts that to five. (and I can now use custom arcade controller on snes)
As you probably know there is a minority racist element in our population who idolise people such as Pauline Hanson.
Very few people would disagree that the way she handled politics wasn't very smart, or politically correct. However I believe racist would greatly depend on your definition.
Example, you would know of austudy and abstudy, these are centrelink payments you get as a student. Now, in an equal society, why are these two different systems needed, why can't aboriginal students be treated the same as white students?
They receive more money and more benefits than any white man could hope for in the same situation. Call me crazy, but that is racist, against the majority. But the very moment any of this is brought up, it's considered politically incorrect and you are called racist, I just don't get it.
Is it racist to want equal treatment for people? instead of giving certain subsections extreme benefits compared to others?
wikipedia Australia, look at the map, wikipedia Asia, look at the map. They are different continents
We may have a ridiculous amount of asian immigrants that still speak chinese/japanese after they get here, but that still does not make us a part of asia.
being caught a few times in college of dealing marijuana wouldn't bother me near so much as the "Anonymous" vandalism.
I find it interesting that you would place smoking/dealing pot as less worthy of your suspicion than political activism, because substance abuse is never a sign people are unstable is it?
You still speak of anonymous as if you had no idea about them before or after the scientology business, it has always been just a bunch of random people that jump on bandwagons they consider worth the cause. Originating at 4chan, they pretty much just post pictures and have discussions on topics, but every now and then something big comes up where enough people don't like the actions of a group or person to do something about it.
There was no vandalism as such, the site was not compromised, it was just a bunch of people furiously reloading their pages to create a demand they weren't expecting.
You're making a mountain out of a molehill, more or less.
There are very little istances of cars which are more than 10 years old and still good for everyday use
Depends on the type of car and how well it has been treated, modern cars (especially large engined ones) tend to start rusting etc because the paint is the first thing to go, if you keep it garaged all the time when not in use, and do general maintenance, you can easily get 20 years. (disclaimer: my last car was only 14 years old, but still in extremely good condition)
at first I thought people were talking about mechwarrior 2, hate it when acronyms get re-used for something completely different.
The point remains, you would judge someone decades on from something they did that was silly as a teenager. Even though I have no convictions or even charges and hold some hard to get clearances I would not work for an employer such as yourself out of principle.
Effectively you are punishing someone for misdirected pashion.
I own an iPhone because it is far and away the very best smart phone on the market.
Depends what market you're in I guess, the N95 was a better phone and came out a full year earlier, completely open development, integrated voip, wifi, tethering, webkit based browser, you name it. Actual tactile feedback with *gasp* buttons too so it's still useful as a regular phone, hardware accelerated 3d, even sd resolution tv out so you can watch movies with it (with hardware accelerated h264 support). Fm tuner, etc etc.
If you feel the need for touch there's the n97, and as a bonus you get a qwerty keyboard.
Apple do not have the best phones, but they do easily have the best marketing
To top it off for something more recent, highly recommend checking out the n900, after friends getting one I now conclude that will be my next phone.
With that said, the news was not that they were going to make the nvidia driver fail, but that they would include the nouveau driver.
fedora has had nouveau for at least two release cycles now (over a year) don't think you get just how bleeding edge it is (always works for me though at least), the news is that they are enabling 3d support as opposed to just 2d in the driver.
as a fedora user since the redhat days, I can honestly say one of the only retarded things they've done is replace pidgin with empathy, empathy is nowhere near as mature and feature complete and it was only even suggested because of the lack of webcam in pidgin which has now been resolved anyway.
If you think "anonymous" is a cracker group, you really have no idea.
He used his personal computer in a stupid way to protest against an organisation he considered evil. Not the smartest thing to do but it's a far cry from that to "you have proven you were too self-righteous and vindictive to be trusted with my equipment." especially decades on when the activism of peoples youth fades.
Most public companies go astray when the founders leave the company.
which in my opinion happened when wozniak left the company, wozniak designed all the hardware and software for the product that built the company - the apple II, jobs was and always has been, just a very good business man with dreams of being artistic. There is no doubt that the direction jobs took apple was completely different than that which the company started as.
Back when apple was first being put out to the public, certain employees had been promised shares in the company from jobs for various things, in the end they got naught and woz had to give them some of his share. It's that kind of ruthlessness that can make a businessman excel, but I don't consider it very moral.
Jobs did the 180 for Apple (and it didn't happen overnight) by pruning Apple down to its original core market and bringing Apple back into the high-end (or boutique) computer market.
I do believe in a single year (1997) gil amelio took the company from billion dollar losses to an actual profit... to say that things weren't already on the upturn (and considering the products that came out after jobs became ceo were already in the pipeline) is a bit strange.
amelio cleaned the fat from the company (1/3rd the workforce and a bunch of hardware lines), made it profitable while having couple higher quality products in the line, if that isn't improving the company for the long haul as opposed to short term, I don't know what is.
I also think that Jobs being a control-freak is what keeps Apple from being a generic commodity computer. I see that quality as leadership and the insistence to make a product that he wants to associate with Apple.
To an extent, but the main problem is when people go, 'you know what, your product is almost there, but we want to do x instead of y' they are met with more or less 'no, you must do it our way' no tinkering allowed more or less, except where it would be extremely cost prohibitive to allow tinkering. (i.e. more cost to reinvent their own bsd than to just use it)
Luckily for Apple, he regained his seat on the board and the rest is history....
The ceo before him towards the end was responsible for the majority of the things that went right with apple after his immediate return, these things take time and companies don't do a 180 overnight it takes planning etc.
So there goes your theory of Job's "extremely controlled experience".
You make it sound like I was implying it was a bad thing? I sure don't like it but the apple fans love the level of control apple puts on it's products, it has always been beauty (with jobs defining what that is) over function.
As for how controlling he can be, here are a few examples
I don't know about you, I consider crap like that to be rather controlling, plenty more stories where those came from on folklore.org, the more you read the more you'll see about jobs' personality