This guy mattered more than Jobs the Toymaker

otter wrote:
On Oct 15, 7:57 pm, Rich wrote:
The underpinning of our computer world rides on this fellow's and his
colleague's efforts, not Apple adult toys.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/14/tech/i...hie-obit-bell-
labs/index.html

As much as I respect Dennis Ritchie and invention of the C programming
language, it was really just one thing, and not without warts.

Steve Jobs and Woz brought us the first useful personal computer, the
Apple II. And then they stole some ideas and gave us the Mac, which

I don't think the Woz had much (if anything) to do with the Mac, though
apparently the Apple II was almost entirely his creation.

The Mac, as I recall, was originally intended to be just an economy version
of the $10,000 Lisa -- which was a flop.

led to Windows, and the windowing guis in the unix/linux world. Then

I think the first version of Windows appeared at about the same time as the
Mac, though that Windows was unworkable for practical purposes and pretty
much remained so for a few years, until 3.0.

But at least Windows had color from the beginning, unlike the early Macs
with their funky little blue monochrome screens.

add on the "toys" at Apple, and a few other things to get a true idea
of the scope of Steve Jobs' accomplishments.

No reason to put down either man, or even compare them.

On 2011-10-17 12:35:39 -0700, RichA said:

On Oct 16, 4:48*am, Eric Stevens wrote:
On Sat, 15 Oct 2011 19:57:16 -0500, Rich wrote:
The underpinning of our computer world rides on this fellow's and his
colleague's efforts, not Apple adult toys.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/14/tech/i...tchie-obit-bel...

I've unwrapped the URL. Apart from that, I agree with you.

There is also Farmwald and Horowitz who with their co-workers are
responsible for inventions without which no modern computers would
exist.

Regards,

Eric Stevens

And Theodore Maiman, who invented the first laser, without which none
of our current non-memory data recording mediums would be possible.

....and that brings on all the concept developer/inventor/claimed
discoverer arguments regarding Bell vs Gray vs Edison vs Reis for the
telephone;
Marconi vs Edison vs Tesla vs Popov for radio;
Baird vs Farnsworth for television.

--
Regards,

Savageduck

On 2011-10-17 12:56:39 -0700, "Neil Harrington" said:

Savageduck wrote:
On 2011-10-17 02:30:04 -0700, Whisky-dave
said:

I;'d heard that the reason WWII came about was because Hitlers mother
was going to have an abortion
but her doctor talked her out of it, so is that doctor responsible
for WWII .


It would be just as reasonable to say the only reason Hitler came to
power, and subsequently WWII came about, was because the Central
powers lost WWI, and Germany was gutted by the Western Allies in 1919
with the Treaty of Versailles.

Quite.

Also, you could say the Central Powers lost the war unconditionally because
the U.S. entered it in 1917, with great quantities of fresh troops,
munitions and food. The European forces by then were pretty much exhausted
on both sides, and probably would have had to settle the whole thing
eventually with something much less drastic and punitive than the Versailles
treaty.

True the US entrance prevented the stalemate. However the French were
bent on revenge and always had the intent to cripple Germany totally.
Versailles was selected by the French as a return to the site of their
humiliation at the end of the Franco-Prussian War.


Also, if Chamberlain, humiliated after Munich, had not out of pique made
those foolish guarantees to Poland, the Poles probably would have been
reasonable about negotiating with Hitler over the matter of returning Danzig
to Germany -- which most British, even the bellicose Churchill, thought
should have been done anyway. Danzig was ethnically 95% German and wanted to
be returned to Germany just as much as Hitler wanted it returned. There
might have been a war anyway, but it wouldn't have been another world war.
Hitler certainly never wanted war with Britain or any other part of the
west.

Again this leads back to Versailles and the effective dismantling of
the Prussian Empire, Danzig being in the pre-Versailles East-Prussia.
Then there was Czechoslovakia, being carved from the Austro-Hungarian
Empire, with one big chunk coming out of Germany, isolating another
group of ethnic germans. All providing fuel for Mr. H and WWII.

Strangely enough, the Balkan states came out of Versailles as
independent nations and enjoyed relative peace through the 1920's &
30's. Stalin put an end to that with Tito's help. When that ruthless
dictator died so did Yugoslavia creating the return to the ethnic and
religious wars of an earlier time. Those states now exist prety much as
they had been draw at Versailles.


Also, if a certain butterfly had not fluttered by in quite that way at just
the right moment in Indonesia, of course everything might have been
different. ;-)

....and there it is.


--
Regards,

Savageduck

On Mon, 17 Oct 2011 14:04:38 -0700, Savageduck
wrote:

On 2011-10-17 12:35:39 -0700, RichA said:

On Oct 16, 4:48*am, Eric Stevens wrote:
On Sat, 15 Oct 2011 19:57:16 -0500, Rich wrote:
The underpinning of our computer world rides on this fellow's and his
colleague's efforts, not Apple adult toys.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/14/tech/i...tchie-obit-bel...

I've unwrapped the URL. Apart from that, I agree with you.

There is also Farmwald and Horowitz who with their co-workers are
responsible for inventions without which no modern computers would
exist.

Regards,

Eric Stevens

And Theodore Maiman, who invented the first laser, without which none
of our current non-memory data recording mediums would be possible.

...and that brings on all the concept developer/inventor/claimed
discoverer arguments regarding Bell vs Gray vs Edison vs Reis for the
telephone;
Marconi vs Edison vs Tesla vs Popov for radio;

You should add Rutherford to that list. At one stage he was leading
the pack.

Baird vs Farnsworth for television.

I previously mentioned Farmwald and Horowitz, whose invention lead to
the formation of Rambus. I don't know of one computing device
(including cameras) which doesn't make use of Rambus inventions.
Without Rambus we likely would be stuck in the era of EDO memory.

Regards,

Eric Stevens

On 2011-10-17 13:12:45 -0700, "Neil Harrington" said:

otter wrote:
On Oct 15, 7:57 pm, Rich wrote:
The underpinning of our computer world rides on this fellow's and his
colleague's efforts, not Apple adult toys.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/14/tech/i...hie-obit-bell-
labs/index.html

As much as I respect Dennis Ritchie and invention of the C programming
language, it was really just one thing, and not without warts.

Steve Jobs and Woz brought us the first useful personal computer, the
Apple II. And then they stole some ideas and gave us the Mac, which

I don't think the Woz had much (if anything) to do with the Mac, though
apparently the Apple II was almost entirely his creation.

Correct. However Woz returned to Apple's development team in 1983 after
recovering from his aircrash injuries and completing his degree at UC
Berkeley, and had a hand in a fair part of "de-Lisa-ing" the Lisa.


The Mac, as I recall, was originally intended to be just an economy version
of the $10,000 Lisa -- which was a flop.

Correct again. It became obvious the Lisa was not going to succeed
against the DOS machines and Jobs had divorced himself from refining it
further, but still needed to make an impact within the corporate
hierarchy. So he had the Lisa concept simplified and invented "Steve
Jobs" the promotional guru (his one true invention) leading to the
"1984" ad.
Remember the target of that ad was IBM, not MS.


led to Windows, and the windowing guis in the unix/linux world. Then

I think the first version of Windows appeared at about the same time as the
Mac, though that Windows was unworkable for practical purposes and pretty
much remained so for a few years, until 3.0.

Both Jobs/Wozniak and the weasel Gates lifted the GUI concept from Xerox PARC.


But at least Windows had color from the beginning, unlike the early Macs
with their funky little blue monochrome screens.

add on the "toys" at Apple, and a few other things to get a true idea
of the scope of Steve Jobs' accomplishments.

No reason to put down either man, or even compare them.

Agreed.

Also, many folks forget that Edison's practice after his initial
successes, was to throw concepts at his Menlo Park team of researchers
for them to come up with the products and "inventions" for which he
held patents. That practice certainly makes the comparison between
Edison and Jobs valid.


--
Regards,

Savageduck

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

Staying on topic .....

On 10/17/11 12:42 PM, in article
, "GMAN"
wrote:

In article , Mike Benveniste
wrote:
On 10/16/2011 10:11 PM, otter wrote:

As much as I respect Dennis Ritchie and invention of the C programming
language, it was really just one thing, and not without warts.

He is also justifiably called a co-creator of Unix, and those two
technologies set the stage for the vast majority of computing today.

Under Mr. Jobs leadership, on the other hand, Apple produced and
brought to market _four_ product that created permanent cultural
change. None of those products were "wart free" either.


What? the MP3 player? already out long before the iPod , Pad computing? I had
a HP laptop/PAD PC years before the ipad came out etc... etc...


The only cultural change i see is the millions of duchebag teens and adults
who feel the constant need to update their stupid facebook pages with stuff
like "eating lunch now" , "Taking **** now" etc.....


Get a life, bitch.

On 10/17/11 12:38 PM, in article
, "GMAN"
wrote:

In article
, otter
wrote:
On Oct 15, 7:57=A0pm, Rich wrote:
The underpinning of our computer world rides on this fellow's and his
colleague's efforts, not Apple adult toys.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/14/tech/i...hie-obit-bell-
labs/index.html

As much as I respect Dennis Ritchie and invention of the C programming
language, it was really just one thing, and not without warts.

Steve Jobs and Woz brought us the first useful personal computer, the
Apple II. And then they stole some ideas and gave us the Mac, which
led to Windows, and the windowing guis in the unix/linux world. Then
add on the "toys" at Apple, and a few other things to get a true idea
of the scope of Steve Jobs' accomplishments.

No reason to put down either man, or even compare them.
You are seriously disrepecting what Atari and Commodre brought to the table.
When the mac came out , it was black and white, and a year later the Atari ST
and commodore amiga blew out of the water what apple and the current PC world
at the time had to offer. Add a few apple roms to a discovery cart on your ST
and you were running mac apps fater that a real mac at the time

Commodore should have been more appropriately named for what it was:
"Commode Door"

Savageduck wrote:
On 2011-10-17 12:56:39 -0700, "Neil Harrington" said:

Savageduck wrote:
On 2011-10-17 02:30:04 -0700, Whisky-dave
said:

I;'d heard that the reason WWII came about was because Hitlers
mother was going to have an abortion
but her doctor talked her out of it, so is that doctor responsible
for WWII .


It would be just as reasonable to say the only reason Hitler came to
power, and subsequently WWII came about, was because the Central
powers lost WWI, and Germany was gutted by the Western Allies in
1919 with the Treaty of Versailles.

Quite.

Also, you could say the Central Powers lost the war unconditionally
because the U.S. entered it in 1917, with great quantities of fresh
troops, munitions and food. The European forces by then were pretty
much exhausted on both sides, and probably would have had to settle
the whole thing eventually with something much less drastic and
punitive than the Versailles treaty.

True the US entrance prevented the stalemate. However the French were
bent on revenge and always had the intent to cripple Germany totally.
Versailles was selected by the French as a return to the site of their
humiliation at the end of the Franco-Prussian War.

Yes. Actually the French had considerable reason to be more ****ed off than
anyone else about the whole 1914-18 war, since (in the European theater at
least) the war was fought almost entirely on French soil, with enormous
destruction to the country -- while no comparable destruction occurred in
Germany. That this was the direct result of alliances the French themselves
had chosen to make could not have made them feel any better about it.



Also, if Chamberlain, humiliated after Munich, had not out of pique
made those foolish guarantees to Poland, the Poles probably would
have been reasonable about negotiating with Hitler over the matter
of returning Danzig to Germany -- which most British, even the
bellicose Churchill, thought should have been done anyway. Danzig
was ethnically 95% German and wanted to be returned to Germany just
as much as Hitler wanted it returned. There might have been a war
anyway, but it wouldn't have been another world war. Hitler
certainly never wanted war with Britain or any other part of the
west.

Again this leads back to Versailles and the effective dismantling of
the Prussian Empire, Danzig being in the pre-Versailles East-Prussia.
Then there was Czechoslovakia, being carved from the Austro-Hungarian
Empire, with one big chunk coming out of Germany, isolating another
group of ethnic germans. All providing fuel for Mr. H and WWII.

Absolutely.


Strangely enough, the Balkan states came out of Versailles as
independent nations and enjoyed relative peace through the 1920's &
30's. Stalin put an end to that with Tito's help. When that ruthless
dictator died so did Yugoslavia creating the return to the ethnic and
religious wars of an earlier time. Those states now exist prety much
as they had been draw at Versailles.

I'll take your word for it. I get pretty confused about the Balkan countries
over that and preceding periods.

Savageduck wrote:
On 2011-10-17 13:12:45 -0700, "Neil Harrington" said:

otter wrote:
On Oct 15, 7:57 pm, Rich wrote:
The underpinning of our computer world rides on this fellow's and
his colleague's efforts, not Apple adult toys.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/14/tech/i...hie-obit-bell-
labs/index.html

As much as I respect Dennis Ritchie and invention of the C
programming language, it was really just one thing, and not without
warts. Steve Jobs and Woz brought us the first useful personal computer,
the Apple II. And then they stole some ideas and gave us the Mac,
which

I don't think the Woz had much (if anything) to do with the Mac,
though apparently the Apple II was almost entirely his creation.

Correct. However Woz returned to Apple's development team in 1983
after recovering from his aircrash injuries and completing his degree
at UC Berkeley, and had a hand in a fair part of "de-Lisa-ing" the
Lisa.

Ah. That I didn't know.



The Mac, as I recall, was originally intended to be just an economy
version of the $10,000 Lisa -- which was a flop.

Correct again. It became obvious the Lisa was not going to succeed
against the DOS machines and Jobs had divorced himself from refining
it further, but still needed to make an impact within the corporate
hierarchy. So he had the Lisa concept simplified and invented "Steve
Jobs" the promotional guru (his one true invention)

Heh. I always thought Jobs was overrated (or over-self-promoted). His main
contributions to the Apple II, as I recall, were fanlessness (because he
thought the sound of a fan would make people think it too machine-like,
which might make them afraid of it) and the funky 52-key keyboard with no
provision for caps.

Both these ideas reflected Jobs's concern that above all, the computer must
be non-threatening to ordinary people. And both only served to limit the
computer in some way. Most other Apple II owners I knew promptly bought a
Kensington System Saver fan to put on it, since they didn't trust convection
cooling to do the job. The limited keyboard was more of a problem,
obviously. There was some sort of hardware modification that would enable
capitalizing, obviously a necessity when word processing software appeared
for it. But these were just dumb mistakes on Jobs's part. My own Apple was
the IIe which had a much more complete keyboard.

I've read that when Woz and the other guy (whose name I've long forgotten)
were rushing to get the Apple II prototype ready for a demonstration,
Wozniak asked Jobs to design the (then essential) tape recorder port. Jobs
simply replied, "That's analog. I don't do analog,."

leading to the
"1984" ad.
Remember the target of that ad was IBM, not MS.


led to Windows, and the windowing guis in the unix/linux world. Then

I think the first version of Windows appeared at about the same time
as the Mac, though that Windows was unworkable for practical
purposes and pretty much remained so for a few years, until 3.0.

Both Jobs/Wozniak and the weasel Gates lifted the GUI concept from
Xerox PARC.

And the mouse too, isn't that right? Or was that from somewhere else?



But at least Windows had color from the beginning, unlike the early
Macs with their funky little blue monochrome screens.

add on the "toys" at Apple, and a few other things to get a true
idea of the scope of Steve Jobs' accomplishments.

No reason to put down either man, or even compare them.

Agreed.

Also, many folks forget that Edison's practice after his initial
successes, was to throw concepts at his Menlo Park team of researchers
for them to come up with the products and "inventions" for which he
held patents. That practice certainly makes the comparison between
Edison and Jobs valid.

Interesting.