Spreading confusion over the internet since 1994
I was sitting on my porch, soaking up the sunlight, drinking my morning coffee, and this error message shut down my iPad:
[click to embiggen]
Umm, not good. Seems ok now, but seeing as the temperature in Chicago right now is only 51º F, hope this isn’t a problem with the iPad itself. I did have the black Apple iPad case, perhaps the color contributed?
Dropbox app brings iPad support, fantastic external editing: “The Dropbox team updated the Dropbox app today with full iPad compatibility and the option to choose which app will open a document. It’s a very welcome refresh “
I’ve been using DropBox for a few months now, even though I have my own network, because sometimes certain files are handy to have access to, no matter where I am. An iPad version is welcome news.
Also am testing MarsEdit 3.0, because ecto1 will never again be updated.
Footnotes:By now you’ve probably heard that police served a warrant on Jason Chen, the editor of the technology blog Gizmodo, which is owned by Gawker Media, and seized several computers and storage devices looking for evidence about a blog post discussing the forthcoming iPhone 4g1. I’ve been too busy to obsessively read all the news coverage, but what I have read has been interesting.
Such as:
However…
The search warrant is ambiguous about the specific reason the police gave for the search and seizure. Specifically, it’s possible—likely, even—that the police believe Gawker Media committed the felony by acquiring the iPhone (“buying stolen property”).
If that’s the “probable cause” the police used to obtain the warrant, the journalist shield law may not apply.
The police got the warrant by arguing their belief that property at Jason Chen’s house met the following criteria :
* It was used as the means of committing a felony
* It tends to show that a felony has been committed or that a particular person committed a felony
So now the question is… Was the suspected “felony” the THEFT of the iPhone (in which case police want to find out the identity of the thief)? Or was it BUYING STOLEN PROPERTY (in which case Gawker Media and/or Jason Chen may soon be accused of felonies?)[Click to continue reading GIZMODO SEARCH WARRANT AMBIGUOUS: Police May Allege That GIZMODO Committed The Felony]
Or the NYT
In contrast to Mr. Zimmerman’s views, David Sugden, a California lawyer who specializes in intellectual property litigation, said the state shield law might not apply, if stolen property were involved.
“They could be in a tough spot,” said Mr. Sugden, referring to Gizmodo. “They are trying to turn this case into an issue of protection for online journalists, whereas the other side is going to make it look like someone committed a crime.”
Mr. Sugden cited an example with celebrity images that are often bought by gossip sites like TMZ.com or Us Weekly. He said, “When TMZ takes photos of a celebrity, it’s in plain view, which is legal,” but cautioned, “TMZ would be in trouble if the reporters were breaking into houses to take those photos of people.”
Mr. Sugden said Gizmodo’s best defense would be to argue that it didn’t know the phone was Apple’s property when it was shown to them. “If someone is accused of buying stolen property, it’s not just an issue of whether the property was stolen, it’s a matter of if they knew it was stolen or not,” he said. “The circumstances of the transaction play a large role.”
[Click to continue reading Can Gizmodo Win the iPhone Legal Battle? – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com]
BoingBoing
Police seized Gizmodo editor Jason Chen’s computers. Understandable, given that Gizmodo bought a prototype cellphone which may have been stolen! The obvious assumption is that they believe Chen may have been party to a crime, but it’s also true that the police’s priorities are not those of Apple. The raid could be aimed mostly at learning the identity of the original thief. Stepping beyond the particulars here, however skeevy they may be, this could spell trouble in blogland: a source can’t know what a journalist might do that authorities could
If you read comments at news sites, so many are laughably erroneous, seizing upon the opportunity to bash Apple for perceived crimes against humanity. Many of these foam-at-the-mouth Apple haters claim that Apple’s jack-booted thugs have something to do with the District Attorney’s office actions. While it is true that a District Attorney will probably take a phone call from the corporate counsel of a prominent business located in the district, especially a corporation that contributes much tax revenue to the county’s budget, there aren’t many DAs who would act unless there was a potential actionable crime to investigate. It isn’t like Steve Jobs can order the San Mateo Country District Attorney to break the door of just any blogger without cause.
Apple spent many thousands of dollars creating a prototype, some estimates on the cost range from $15,000 to $20,000, of course they have a vested interest in retrieving their property. Even ignoring Apple’s normal media frenzy practices, and ignoring intellectual property concerns2, that’s significant enough value reported stolen to be of interest of law enforcement. It isn’t the same as you losing your cellphone on the bus, it just isn’t.
Engadget, owned by Time Warner, was advised by its lawyers not to purchase the iPhone 4G, publishing photos of it were sufficient. They are not in the cross-hairs of the DA Office either. Gizmodo and Gawker have been reckless, treating the whole incident as a lark, publishing details about criminal acts they probably wish they hadn’t, and still don’t seem to grasp the seriousness of the matter.
The Apple engineer supposedly left his phone on a bar stool, but the only public statement about the details of how the iPhone ended up in a stranger’s possession was issued by Gawker Media. What if the Apple engineer went to the bathroom3 and when he came back his phone was gone? The finder launched the phone, launched the Apple engineer’s Facebook app, figured out his name, but couldn’t figure out how to return the phone to the engineer? Once the Apple engineer figured out his phone was really missing, he remotely wiped it, but before that happened, the finder conveniently didn’t bother to contact the owner of the phone, or even leave the phone with the bartender. In other words, the “finder” had no intention of returning the phone without getting paid first.
A red herring often discussed is whether the police did anything wrong seizing the computers of Gizmodo blogger Jason Chen. Thieves are usually not accorded special consideration, even if they are bloggers, or journalists. I can’t see that it matters if bloggers are journalists, or journalists are bloggers, or whatever. Stolen property is not the same as evidence of weapons of mass destruction, for instance. A stolen car is a stolen car even if the thief, or the person that purchases the stolen car, has a blog. From my perspective, the iPhone 4G was stolen goods, and should be treated as such. And from my perfunctory reading of relevant California law, the authorities agree.
Randy B. Singer commented on a Tidbits email list:
Footnotes:California law differs from some other states with regard to finding something and not returning it. In California there is the concept of ‘larceny by conversion.” (Actually it is called that in the common law, not in California’s statutory law. But the concept is the same.) This occurs when you come into possession of something that belongs to another, by non-nefarious means, and then you assert dominion or control over that possession in a manner contrary to the rights of the owner.
Selling something that you find that belongs to another would be one way to commit a “theft” under this law. Another way would be to offer it to someone else to dissect and photograph for the public, especially if it is obvious that it is a device that the owner means to keep secret.
Another point is that reporter shield laws in the U.S. (including California) generally protect reporters from searches for privileged information or from revealing anonymous sources. But they usually don’t apply in criminal cases, and I have never heard of one applying in a case where the reporter is accused of a crime that is the essence of the case
Democratic with a small d, as in the sense of Thomas Jefferson’s small farmers who are now one or two person mobile computer application programming businesses:
The App Store must rank among the most carefully policed software platforms in history. Every single application has to be approved by Apple before it can be offered to consumers, and all software purchases are routed through Apple’s cash register. Most of the development tools are created inside Apple, in conditions of C.I.A.-level secrecy. Next to the iPhone platform, Microsoft’s Windows platform looks like a Berkeley commune from the late 60s.
And yet, by just about any measure, the iPhone software platform has been, out of the gate, the most innovative in the history of computing. More than 150,000 applications have been created for it in less than two years, transforming the iPhone into an e-book reader, a flight control deck, a musical instrument, a physician’s companion, a dictation device and countless other things that were impossible just 24 months ago.
Perhaps more impressively, the iPhone has been a boon for small developers. As of now, more than half the top-grossing iPad apps were created by small shops.
Those of us who have championed open platforms cannot ignore these facts
[Click to continue reading Everybody’s Business – How Apple Has Rethought a Gospel of the Web – NYTimes.com]
Don’t forget a digital Lomo camera, like Hipstamatic, or even a virtual darkroom – SwankoLab1
As far as I know2 there has been zero instances of malware or other malicious applications released on the Apple iPhone store. Not a few, zero. Every single app has been vetted by some Apple employee, sometimes causing great gnashing of teeth on the part of the developer, but for an end user, that isn’t really as important as remaining assured that the app you are about download is safe.
And although I have not done any iPhone programming myself3, this rings true as well:
Footnotes:The fact that the iPhone platform runs exclusively on Apple hardware helps developers innovate, because it means they have a finite number of hardware configurations to surmount. Developers building apps for, say, Windows Mobile have to create programs that work on hundreds of different devices, each with its own set of hardware features. But a developer who wants to build a game that uses an accelerometer for control, for example, knows that every iPhone OS device in the world contains an accelerometer.
The maniacal attention to detail and usability in Apple’s consumer products also applies to its software development platforms. However much developers might complain about the torturous app approval process or the sharing of revenue, most will tell you that the iPhone development tools are a delight.
Apple took a lot of heat waiting a year after the introduction of the first-generation iPhone to open the App Store. At the time, it contended that it wanted to ensure that the development tools it shipped met its standards. The success of the App Store suggests that this patience was well worth it.
Sitting on the couch playing with an Ipad. Fun. Screen is gorgeous, but non-native apps (those from the iPhone ) look pretty much like crap. I am sure that either the apps have been updated or their functionality can be replaced by a similar app. Or the app’s developer is furiously coding an update I suppose.
More thoughts later.
Dan Frakes reports on the recent Apple, Inc. shareholder meeting:
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Apple’s environmental record and policies occupied a good chunk of the Q&A discussion. Apple took advantage of several shareholder questions to tout the company’s recent report on supplier sustainability (available on the Apple Website). Jobs claimed that Apple is the first company to work directly with suppliers on issues such as environmental impact and worker education and protection. Taking a jab at other companies, as well as organizations such as Greenpeace, he noted that “other companies just make promises” and attend conferences and events to “schmooze with [environmental groups], but the work ain’t getting done,” whereas Apple is actually taking steps to improve the company’s real-world green credentials and treatment of workers. Tim Cook added that Apple audited more than 100 suppliers in 2009, and more than half of those reported that they’d never been audited by a company other than Apple.
Similarly, in response to a comment that being green is also good for business, Jobs agreed, noting that by decreasing the size of product boxes, Apple has reduced the number of 747 cargo flights needed each year by the hundreds. “It’s the right thing to do from an environmental point of view; it’s the right thing to do from a business point of view.” Jobs also claimed that Apple is the leader in its industry when it comes to recycling, reducing toxins, smaller packaging, and workers’ rights.
(One shareholder, who had previously in the meeting spoken out against the two shareholder proposals, made the claim that global warming isn’t a serious issue and asked why Apple resigned its membership in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over green policies. Jobs replied, “I guess we have a difference of opinion.”)
[Click to continue reading Apple focuses on green at shareholder meeting | Mac | Macworld]
Good for Apple, really. And Jobs is correct, there are a lot of corporations that play up their “green” credentials, but aren’t really very environmentally conscious.
bonus for grins:
As usual, there were also a number of off-beat comments and questions, ranging from suggestions that Apple invest in Tesla Motors (Jobs: “We were thinking of a toga party, actually”)
…
Perhaps the most thoughtful response of the day came when a woman wondered about the biggest challenges the company sees going forward, asking Jobs, “What keeps you up at night?”
“Shareholder meetings,” Jobs quickly quipped, before giving the meeting a cold splash of reality.
“Apple requires stability in the world. People aren’t going to worry about which laptop to buy if they can’t afford dinner, can’t afford to send their kids to school, can’t afford textbooks. There are things much bigger than us that are out of our control. So we try to just do the best we can.”
Hello, I’m (downloading) Johnny Cash1
The lucky recipient of a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card (and a whole lot of press) is 71-year-old Louie Sulcer of Woodstock, Georgia —a retired real estate agent, onetime Navy radar operator, and grandfather of nine who just wanted Johnny Cash’s 1958 single “Guess Things Happen That Way” for his new Nano, a birthday gift from his children. And he bought it on a PC: “I do not own a Mac, no,” he chuckles. “I knew somebody was going to ask me that question.”
Sulcer has spent the last day fielding calls from, among others, Apple head Steve Jobs (“I thought it was my son, he’s always a joker. I kept saying, ‘Come on, Kevin, I know it’s you!”) and Cash’s daughter Rosanne (“she had her husband, who is her guitarist, play the song to me over the phone. That was real nice.”).
He has been a devoted Johnny Cash fan for most of his life, he says: “I went to Georgia Tech on a football scholarship, broke just about every bone in my body. All those boys on the team, we just loved country music… My whole life, I had never understood why people go see movies twice, but I’ve seen [Cash biopic] Walk the Line four times. My kids finally bought me the DVD. And I was pretty sure I had all of his music, but I was just checking iTunes, listening to those little 20 or 30 second clips, and I found this one. It has some good pickin’ in it!”
[Click to continue reading EW talks to the Georgia grandfather who bought the 10 billionth song on itunes: ‘I’ve never won anything!’ | EW.com]
A sweet story, really. The song itself is pretty typical for a Sun Records Johnny Cash song; also there’s a version floating around the intertubes that is a duet with Bob Dylan, circa Nashville Skyline.
from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jobs congratulated him, thanked him for using Apple products and chatted a bit.
“He was real nice,” Sulcer said. “I told him I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed iTunes and the iPod. I really enjoy country music.
“He asked me if I played the guitar, and I said, ‘Oh my goodness. That is my lifelong frustration.’ “
Sulcer has been trying to learn the picking style of Luther Perkins, Cash’s guitarist, but he has not had much luck.
“[Jobs] said he had been messing around a little with [the guitar], too,” Sulcer said.
…
Later Thursday, after his doctor appointment, Sulcer was expecting calls from near and far. Apple public relations people have been calling him to ask whether he would consent to an interview with Rolling Stone, the rock magazine, and other publications.
“I said, ‘Rolling Stone is going to be so disappointed with this old man.’ “
He did get a call he found a little more special. “Rosanne Cash also called this morning to thank me for listening to Johnny Cash,” Sulcer said. She told Sulcer her father would have turned 78 on Friday. Then she had one more surprise for him: Her husband, musician John Leventhal, played the song he bought over the phone for him.
[Click to continue reading Woodstock man wins $10,000 iTunes contest | ajc.com]
Too funny
Footnotes:Some additional reading January 28th from 18:37 to 21:45:
A few interesting links collected January 26th through January 27th:
Tell CBS that this is no time to feed the anger and hatred of anti-abortion extremists.
CBS has a stated policy to reject all ads it deems controversial, including ads from MoveOn.org, PETA, and even the United Church of Christ, which dared to suggest that their church would model tolerance (“Jesus Didn’t Turn People Away. Neither Do We”).
In fact, CBS execs told the United Church of Christ that CBS rejects any ad that “touches on and/or takes a position on one side of a current issue
Condé Nast is preparing a number of iPad ezine subscriptions, including GQ, Wired and Vanity Fair, sources tell wired.com. In an interview before the iPad announcement one senior executive said that while the company it was still very enthusiastic about the iPhone platform — whose downloads already count towards ad-rate-setting circulation guarantees — but was poised to take full advantage of the iPad and was “eager to see what kind of additional functionality they have they baked in.”
Read More http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/01/can-apples-ipad-save-the-media-after-all#ixzz0dr25Jr9C
Pippy is (internet) famous, again!
I’ve been having entirely too much fun with the Hipstamatic iPhone application1. I’ve taken over two hundred snapshots in the first 48 hours2: a pace that probably won’t last, but for now, I’m enthusiastically exploring the capabilities of the camera.
Turns out there was an actual plastic 35 mm camera called the Hipstamatic, with an interesting back story. The inventors are unfortunately deceased3, but their older brother has created a blog to tell their story, and the story of the iPhone app.
Founders: Bruce and Winston Dorbowski
Founded: November 1982 (Unofficially, as in no lawyers)
Location: Merrill, Wisconsin, USAThe Idea: Bring people a camera that cost less than the film. Bruce had a Russian plastic camera that our father gave him as a Christmas gift in 1972. The camera had since broke and was no longer being made or sold, at least anywhere he could find it. So Bruce and Winston came up with a plan to recreate something similar. Winston had fallen in love with his Kodak Instamatic and that was the start of the Hipstamatic.
Camera Specs
Model: 100
Material: Plastic Body, Plastic Lens
Produced: 1982-84
Type: View finder camera
Lens: Hipsta A1
Film: 35mm
Picture Size: 28mm x 28mm
Original Cost: $8.25
Focus: Automatic
Aperture: 2.8
Flash: hot shoe[Click to continue reading The Great Hipstamatic 100]
I never owned my own Hipstamatic, but the iPhone app seems like a pretty good simulacrum, even going so far as to force you to use a tiny little viewfinder to frame your shot.
the camera takes a second to warm up (well, at least it pretends to be warming up the transistors), also ‘turning on the flash’ takes a few moments. Can’t take rapid-fire photos, in other words. I’ve missed a few shots because of this, but I suppose it’s part of the game, yo. And since there is no flash on an iPhone, I’m guessing turning on the flash just adds a bit of randomly controlled coloration to the image.
changing lens, film, flash is as easy as a swipe of the finger…
My other complaint about the application is that the cost doesn’t include some extras like this film, for instance. The application could have been priced a couple of dollars more and included. Not that big of a deal really, mostly annoyed me because my iPhone password is fairly robust and includes a lot of typing, numbers, capital letters, etc. I bet the $1.99 initial price spurs sales though.
Once your image has been “developed”, you can either email it, or upload it to Facebook. I’m happy with these options, as I usually upload iPhone snapshots to Flickr via the email-to-Twitter option. Alternatively, the image is saved in your iPhone photo library for you to sync to your computer or whatever else you normally would do. I chose to email via the Hipstamatic application interface as Hipstamatic then records what lens, film, flash is used4
I have bought a few other iPhone camera apps5, none have been nearly as much fun to use as The Great Hipstamatic.
Footnotes:A few interesting links collected December 9th through December 10th:
As for the names in your Contacts: they’re sent to Nuance so that the app will recognize the names when you dictate them. No other information (phone numbers, e-mail, addresses, etc.) is transmitted.
What I don’t understand is: Why don’t these same people worry that Verizon or AT&T is listening in to their cellphone calls every single day? Why don’t they worry that MasterCard is peeking into their buying habits? How do they know Microsoft and Apple aren’t slurping down private documents off the hard drive and laughing their heads off?
I mean, if you’re gonna be paranoid, at least be rational about it.
That option has disappeared, and now apps can get all of your “publicly available information” whenever a friend of yours adds an app.
Facebook defends this change by arguing that very few users actually ever selected that option — in the same breath that they talk about how complicated and hard to find the previous privacy settings were. Rather than eliminating the option, Facebook should have made it more prominent and done a better job of publicizing it. Instead, the company has sent a clear message: if you don’t want to share your personal data with hundreds or even thousands of nameless, faceless Facebook app developers — some of whom are obviously far from honest — then you shouldn’t use Facebook.
Seems like my MacBook Pro hard drive has given up the ghost. Disk errors and the like. Three years of moderate use, but death can strike at any time to anyone, or any thing. Now I have to ascertain if there is any unbacked-up data on the drive that is worth the hassle of retrieving.
I am pretty good about keeping backups current, but I was out of town, and had family camping out in my office so there is a potential gap there of a couple weeks. Maybe.
Half the battle of repairing computers is simply having the patience to be methodical and logical, and waiting for processes to finish.
I know I shouldn’t take machine failure personally, but I do. This laptop was a birthday present a few years ago, and it has travelled with me all over the place.
Speaking of Heathkits, Steve Jobs had them as well…
I got to know this man, whose name was Larry Lang [of Hewlett-Packard], and he taught me a lot of electronics. He was great. He used to build Heathkits. Heathkits were really great. Heathkits were these products that you would buy in kit form. You actually paid more money for them than if you just went and bought the finished product if it was available. These Heathkits would come with these detailed manuals about how to put this thing together and all the parts would be laid out in a certain way and color coded. You’d actually build this thing yourself. I would say that this gave one several things. It gave one a understanding of what was inside a finished product and how it worked because it would include a theory of operation but maybe even more importantly it gave one the sense that one could build the things that one saw around oneself in the universe. These things were not mysteries anymore. I mean you looked at a television set you would think that “I haven’t built one of those but I could. There’s one of those in the Heathkit catalog and I’ve built two other Heathkits so I could build that.” Things became much more clear that they were the results of human creation not these magical things that just appeared in one’s environment that one had no knowledge of their interiors. It gave a tremendous level of self-confidence, that through exploration and learning one could understand seemingly very complex things in one’s environment. My childhood was very fortunate in that way.
[Click to continue reading Smithsonian Oral and Video Histories: Steve Jobs]
I skipped second grade, which I’m sure altered me in some ineffable manner. I’m happy with who I am, but of course, wonder what I would have been like if I hadn’t been younger than most kids in my grade up until I was in college. Apparently Steve Jobs skipped ahead too
SJ: School was pretty hard for me at the beginning. My mother taught me how to read before I got to school and so when I got there I really just wanted to do two things. I wanted to read books because I loved reading books and I wanted to go outside and chase butterflies. You know, do the things that five year olds like to do. I encountered authority of a different kind than I had ever encountered before, and I did not like it. And they really almost got me. They came close to really beating any curiosity out of me. By the time I was in third grade, I had a good buddy of mine, Rick Farentino, and the only way we had fun was to create mischief. I remember we traded everybody. There was a big bike rack where everybody put their bikes, maybe a hundred bikes in this rack, and we traded everybody our lock combinations for theirs on an individual basis and then went out one day and put everybody’s lock on everybody else’s bike and it took them until about ten o’clock that night to get all the bikes sorted out. We set off explosives in teacher’s desks. We got kicked out of school a lot.
In fourth grade I encountered one of the other saints of my life. They were going to put Rick Farentino and I into the same fourth grade class, and the principal said at the last minute “No, bad idea. Separate them.” So this teacher, Mrs. Hill, said “I’ll take one of them.” She taught the advanced fourth grade class and thank God I was the random one that got put in the class. She watched me for about two weeks and then approached me. She said “Steven, I’ll tell you what. I’ll make you a deal. I have this math workbook and if you take it home and finish on your own without any help and you bring it back to me, if you get it 80% right, I will give you five dollars and one of these really big suckers she bought and she held it out in front of me. One of these giant things. And I looked at her like “Are you crazy lady”? Nobody’s ever done this before and of course I did it. She basically bribed me back into learning with candy and money and what was really remarkable was before very long I had such a respect for her that it sort of re-ignited my desire to learn. She got me kits for making cameras. I ground my own lens and made a camera. It was really quite wonderful. I think I probably learned more academically in that one year than I learned in my life. It created problems though because when I got out of fourth grade they tested me and they decided to put me in high school and my parents said “No.”. Thank God. They said “He can skip one grade but that’s all.”
DM: But not to high school.
SJ: And I found skipping one grade to be very troublesome in many ways. That was plenty enough. It did create some problems.
Keep reading, it’s a fascinatingly wide-ranging article.
Ok, one more excerpt, one involving Pete Stark who is still in Congress, and Bob Dole, who, fortunately, is not
One of the things that built Apple II’s was schools buying Apple II’s; but even so there was about only 10% of the schools that even had one computer in them in 1979 I think it was. When I grew up I was lucky because I was in Silicon Valley. When I was ten or eleven I saw my first computer. It was down at NASA Ames (Research Center). I didn’t see the computer, I saw a terminal and it was theoretically a computer on the other end of the wire. I fell in love with it. I saw my first desktop computer at Hewlett-Packard which was called the 9100A. It was the first desktop in the world. It ran BASIC and APL I think. I fell in love with it. And I thought, looking at these statistics in 1979, I thought if there was just one computer in every school, some of the kids would find it. It will change their life.
We saw the rate at which this was happening and the rate at which the school bureaucracies were deciding to buy a computer for the school and it was real slow. We realized that a whole generation of kids was going to go through the school before they even got their first computer so we thought the kids can’t wait. We wanted to donate a computer to every school in America. It turns out that there are about a hundred thousand schools in America, about ten thousand high schools, about ninety thousand K through 8. We couldn’t afford that as a company. But we studied the law and it turned out that there was a law already on the books, a national law that said that if you donated a piece of scientific instrumentation or computer to a university for educational and research purposes you can take an extra tax deduction. That basically means you don’t make any money, you loose some but you don’t loose too much. You loose about ten percent. We thought that if we could apply that law, enhance it a little bit to extend it down to K through 8 and remove the research requirements so it was just educational, then we could give a hundred thousand computers away, one to each school in America and it would cost our company ten million dollars which was a lot of money to us at that time but it was less than a hundred million dollars if we didn’t have that. We decided that we were willing to do that.
It was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever done. We found our local representative, Pete Stark over in East Bay and Pete and a few of us sat down an we wrote a bill. We literally drafted a bill to make these changes. We said “If this law changes we will donate a hundred thousand computers at a cost of ten million dollars to us.” We called it “the kids can’t wait bill”. Pete Stark introduced it in the House and Senator Danforth introduced it in the Senate and I refused to hire any lobbyists and I went back to Washington myself and I actually walked the halls of Congress for about two weeks, which was the most incredible thing. I met probably two-thirds of the House and over half of the Senate myself and sat down and talked with them.
It was very interesting. I found that the House Members are routinely less intelligent than the Senate and they were much more kneejerk to their constituencies–which I found initially quite offensive but came to understand later to be a really good idea. Maybe that’s what the framers wanted. They weren’t supposed to think too much, they were supposed to represent. The Senators are supposed to think a little more. The Bill passed the House with the largest favorable majority of any tax bill in the history of this country. What happened was it was in during Carter’s lame duck session and Bob Dole who was then Speaker of the House killed it. He would not bring it to the floor and we ran out of time. We would have had to have started the process over in the next year and I gave up.
However, fortunately something unique happened. California thought this was such a good idea they came to us and said “You don’t have to do a thing. We’re going to pass a bill that says ‘Since you operate in the State of California and pay California Tax, we’re going to pass this bill that says that if the federal bill doesn’t pass, then you get the tax break in California’. You can do it in California, which is ten thousand schools”. So we did. We gave away ten thousand computers in the State of California. We got a whole bunch of the software companies to give away software. We trained teachers for free and monitored this thing over the next few years. It was phenomenal. One of my great experiences and one of my biggest regrets was that really tried to do this on a national level and got so close. I don’t think Bob Dole even knew what he was doing but he really unfortunately screwed up here.
[Click to continue reading Smithsonian Oral and Video Histories: Steve Jobs]
Amazing.
A few interesting links collected October 5th through October 6th:
Teen-Age Dope Slaves
Am surprised that Apple, Inc. was even part of this neo-conservative organization, but kudos for publicly leaving eventually. Exelon set a good example I guess.
Apple has become the latest company to resign from the United States Chamber of Commerce over climate policy.
“We strongly object to the chamber’s recent comments opposing the E.P.A.’s effort to limit greenhouse gases,” wrote Catherine A. Novelli, the vice president of worldwide government affairs at Apple, in a letter dated today and addressed to Thomas J. Donohue, president and chief executive of the chamber. Click here to read the letter.
“Apple supports regulating greenhouse gas emissions, and it is frustrating to find the chamber at odds with us in this effort,” Ms. Novelli continued.
Apple’s resignation was effective immediately, the letter said.
[Click to continue reading Apple Resigns From Chamber Over Climate – Green Inc. Blog – NYTimes.com]
Now, if only the Congress would follow this example, and pass meaningful climate policy legislation!
From SourceWatch:
U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a powerful business lobbying group in the United States, “used to be a trade association that advocated in a bipartisan manner for narrowly tailored policies to benefit its members. Since 1997 or so, it has become a fully functional part of the partisan Republican machine,” with CEO and president Thomas J. Donohue “raising its budget to $150M a year from corporate chiefs satisfied with his ability to move policy through a Republican Congress,” Matt Stoller wrote December 13, 2006, at MyDD.
The Chamber claims on its website that its mission is to “advance human progress through an economic, political and social system based on individual freedom, incentive, initiative, opportunity, and responsibility.”[2] It describes itself as “the world’s largest business federation representing more than 3 million businesses and organizations of every size, sector, and region.”[3]
However, the Chamber is “dominated by oil companies, pharmaceutical giants, automakers and other polluting industries,” according to James Carter, executive director of the Green Chamber of Commerce.[4]
[Click to continue reading U.S. Chamber of Commerce – SourceWatch]
