Steve Jobs Shocker: Bill Gates Should Have Dropped Acid

Reuters via Foxnews ^ | October 24, 2011 | Reuters

[elpadre]

“.”He’d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once ...”

he fact is that acid is best known for scrambling many brains and the ruining of lives. - lest we forget!!!

[Shamrock-DW]

Thank God for IBM DOS.
In the early 80s I was forced to use program language to rewrite documents in basic language for several different languages. I couldn’t have done this with a “MAC”. MACs were developed for those with minds that were already burned out by drugs and had to have a graphical user inteface to even undersand an computer. I fought to the last inch against Windows. I could do anything I wanted using keypad commands until the time came that the programs I wanted weren’t written in DOS. Jobs and his generation were shortcut artist that couldn’t/wouldn’t ever understand computer language. MIcrosoft made the transition that MAC users could never follow.

[Shamrock-DW]

Thank God for IBM DOS.
In the early 80s I was forced to use program language to rewrite documents in basic language for several different languages. I couldn’t have done this with a “MAC”. MACs were developed for those with minds that were already burned out by drugs and had to have a graphical user inteface to even undersand an computer. I fought to the last inch against Windows. I could do anything I wanted using keypad commands until the time came that the programs I wanted weren’t written in DOS. Jobs and his generation were shortcut artist that couldn’t/wouldn’t ever understand computer language. MIcrosoft made the transition that MAC users could never follow.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

O.K. I didn’t expand before, because I didn’t want to go too far off the track of this thread.

I first considered writing “popular opinion”, or “received wisdom” — and that was certainly the case, in Columbus’ time. Amongst the masses, probably only navigators had an opinion grounded in empirical evidence. The overwhelming majority (if they thought of it at all) believed in a flat earth. I was using “scientific consensus” in much the same way as Gorebots talk about “global warming”. (Only I thought I was being clever and ironic. Unlike Gorebots, I know that science is not based on consensus.) An overwhelming majority of people, in 1492, would have told you the world was flat. If they used the language of today’s warmist masses, they’d say that the “scientific consensus” said the world was flat.

My point remains: however many people “knew” the earth was round; however many people “discovered” that fact before Columbus; it was Columbus that finally did something with the knowledge. That’s why there’s a Columbus Day; and that’s why Steve Jobs deserves credit for introducing the GUI to the great unwashed masses.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Apple compensated Xerox $1M for their visits.

Better than that. They gave them a million dollars worth of pre-IPO Apple stock, then valued at $7 a share. That stake, if Xerox had held onto it, would be worth billions today.

[Jeff Chandler]

An overwhelming majority of people, in 1492, would have told you the world was flat.

Any man with an education knew that the earth is round. They figured it out in ancient Greece and by 1492 it was common knowledge. The misconception that Columbus's journey had any connection whatsoever with a belief in a flat earth is a modern fabrication. This error can still be found in some textbooks so it is not surprising that you would have read it somewhere.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

Not many had the education 5 centuries ago. The knowledge from the ancient Greeks was lost to western civilization during the “Dark Ages”. It took a long time afterward to spread the knowledge to the masses.

[RJS1950]

Absolutely. Touchpad technology predates the iPad and touch phones.

[RJS1950]

Absolutely. Touchpad technology predates the iPad and touch phones.

[Jeff Chandler]

The knowledge from the ancient Greeks was lost to western civilization during the “Dark Ages”.

The entire concept of the "Dark Ages" is part of the myth. The seedlings which would grow to be the trees of the industrial revolution were planted in ancient times and were being nutured in Medieval Europe. They experienced slow but steady intellectual and industrial development, and although universal education had to wait for Gutenberg's invention, the myth of general belief in a Flat Earth is a modern creation.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

Again, we're on a side-channel. My original point remains: Jobs, like Columbus, was a pioneer that acted on knowledge that other may have had (or, later on, professed to have had). For that, he deserves credit for bringing the GUI to market, and for making computers "for the rest of us".

You seem to be conflating the "Middle Ages" with the "Dark Ages". As for the term "Dark Ages" -- yes, that's probably too "black and white". Perhaps they should be called the "Quite Dim Ages", or the "Less Bright Ages". Regardless, the fact remains that the vast majority of people were not exposed to the philosophies of the Greek classical period. If they thought about such matters at all, they just accepted what "everyone knows", or what their "betters" told them. If they didn't believe in a flat Earth, they were just as likely to believe in a hollow earth (perhaps even more likely -- but, I don't want to open up another diversionary channel).

It shouldn't surprise anyone that the masses believed in such myths as flat or hollow earths. Even today, in the most advanced civilizations the world has known -- civilizations with universal educational systems, and limitless mass communications -- even today, thousands of people are camped in public parks to demand an economic system based on economic theories that have been proven to make less sense than flat or hollow earths. Then there's global warming.

[Jeff Chandler]

Okay, you’ve walked that back far enough, LOL! We’re good.