My thoughts and prayers go out to his family.

RIP Mr.Jobs.

Haven't read any full length bios of Jobs. Obviously a brilliant visionary and businessman. Just out of curiosity, compared to Bill Gates, how were his computer nerd chops?

How strong were Gates's? From what I have read, he purchased MS-DOS from another company, and was not himself much of an engineer at all.

Gates was a programmer and an entrepreneur, he had an original version of Basic and some others programs I recalled. They have some traffic control applications when they had the previous company in Texas before moving to Seattle
DOS was bought but it does means nothing, the challenge was to sell it to IBM, not where or who wrote it.

Jobs was more an entrepreneur and visionary, the engineer was Wozniak, but as Wozniak says, he wanted a computer for him, to play with it, Jobs was the one realizing the potential to sell the computer to people not to geeks. In 1977 this was a big proposition.

Also remember that the Windows we have today is because MS needed to emulate the graphic interface that Apple had, if no we would still with the black screen and c:\dir

Ass is not censored. Not sure about assassinate. In seriousness, I've decided that those Westboro d-bags are unkillable. They'd only become martyrs to a Hiltoned up cause.

Eh.. doubt it. The preachers daughter had her first baby out of wedlock.
They are hypocritical bigots and I would be willing to test your martyr theory.

Randi

I don't know that hypocrisy ever stopped it from happening. The Foursquare gospel is my grandparents' whole life and the woman who founded that organization had multiple affairs (among other things.) Not criticising the religion, just the woman.

Gates was asked by IBM for the operating system and he sent them to a now dead fellow in Monterey California. That guy was out golfing and had told his wife to not interfere with his business so in a snit she told IBM she couldn't help 'em. They called Gates back who told them to give him a bit of time and he went down the road and purchased the basic operating system for $50k from the company that owned it and then sold it to IBM. The real credit for most of what you see these days originates with Xerox labs. Jobs was more of an idea guy and marketing guy, he was never refered to much as an engineering anything. Woz was and is considered the Apple engineering mind. Interestingly Woz is easily found at electronic and hardware stores in the bay area.

James Noyce rocked! Why protest Jobs? Seems odd to me.

Because protesting Jobs is controversial. WBC isn't about spreading their message. Their congregation is composead almost entirely of family members. The reason they protest is to generate ill will in hopes of being able to sue. Who? Whoever- the city who restricts their right to protest*, people who harass them, people who damage their vewhicles, and vehicle repair shops who refuse service to them. The whole clan is composed of lawyers- that's how they make their money.


* - The ACLU has actually come to the defense of WBC on at least one occasion.

Magic Santa you are right about Xerox, I forgot about them ...

Jobs was a very cool guy, but he seems to me to be much more akin to Vince the ShamWow guy than to Thomas Edison.

John

He was more fun when Scully ran Apple. That was when Jobs opened the Mac facility and banned both ties and Scully.I think it was good Jobs was not an engineering type. He came up with ideas for what he would use himself rather than just technical crap. Companies have to hire people to take what the engineers come up with and make them people friendly.

I post this with my I-Phone. He will be missed.