OSNews

And, in one instance, by dying. The lengths some people go to ... "

Huh, I guess that would make Jobs the Jim Savile of tech CEOs.

So this industry is sick, and so are all others. Not helpful.

I wonder if there's a saner method of treating this sickness (across all industries and other branches of power) than by guillotine.

It's not likely to ever get solved, but you can realize that this is how the world works and don't waste energy being surprised, angry or disappointed when another story arrises.

Perhaps we should send only nice people to Mars and start over there.

Then again, look up how much we, the world, spend on weapons to kill each other and how much we spend on science. Should we have spend it all on science we would have a clean world with green energy and a couple of moon and Mars bases.

There is no reason to be surprised when Steve Jobs' name is right there in the title. That guy was a grade-A dick, didn't give a damn about right and wrong. One down, ...many more to go. Problem is, more will just pop up in their places, so as you said... it will not likely end. That's just human nature. This kind of crooked behavior might as well just be expected.

It's funny how more and more of his dark sides appear after death. A wonder what Apple fans are thinking of their god now... they probably have to change their interpretations of the sacred words contained in their Fruity Bible.

Edited 2013-01-23 19:55 UTC

I don't think Steve has godlike status amongst Apple fans, save for the insane ones. He was the personification of Apple and its biggest salesman. He hyped a crowd that wanted to be hyped.

But that happened maybe twice a year. The other 363 days Apple users use Apple stuff, that's what they want and they can still do that even now Steve is gone.

Whatever dark secrets of Steve are revealed, I don't think anyone would care that much. Considering that he could be unpleasant on a consistant basis I'm sure their are plenty of stories about him that aren't flattering.

In the end because of him there is Apple stuff and that's what most people really care about.

I was thinking more of not saying via email you don't want a paper trail AND indicate you know it's probably not legal what you are planning.

The words of an oracle. Just look below.

Then you misunderstand. It was both no-poaching and no-hiring. Check the linked articles and sources, and even the quotes (which mention hiring and poaching):

"Your [Jobs'] proposal that we agree that neither company will hire the other's employees, regardless of the individual's desires, is not only wrong, it is likely illegal."

Edited 2013-01-23 17:29 UTC

You are right but based on a cursory skim through the documents it seems that the practice of blocking individual applicants (rather than blocking poaching) was uneven, not all companies did this. Murky business.

Sorry. It's downright evil.

I've actually had this agreement used against me and a few friends...

You're missing part of the sentence there.

"They paint a pretty grim picture of Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt engaging in mafia practices, threatening smaller companies with patent litigation if they didn't agree to the no-poaching agreements, or demanding to handle matters verbally as to not leave a paper trail."

Don't mix up everything in the same sentence, you know full well this is on a completely different "evil" scale.

What about "Steve and Thom are criminals, accused of murder and rape, and suspected on lying to an Attorney" ? This is just horrible to mix up so different level of criminal activities, one is beyond any scale, and the other is almost minor. Yet, the sentence is built to make them look they are both the same.

Edited 2013-01-23 17:59 UTC

Eric and Steve both went over the line regarding restricting the freedom of their employees. Steve made threats, that he didn't execute when Palm refused. It's a step worse, but nothing of the "scale". It's not like they murdered people.

The sad thing is that Palm went down, while Apple and Google continued to grow.

Nice people don't get rewarded often, certainly not in business.

I think to be at the top of it all you need to be mean sometimes (or often perhaps), even go beyond moral and even law. It's not fair when we hear or read about it, but sadly that's how life is.

Big corporations can get away it more easy than smaller ones. They settle or just pay up. And really, doesn't the government and justice department prefer that than a big economic force go bust? They give work to people, create jobs at other companies, make money go round, pay taxes. You want them to play fair, but don't kill them if they don't. So they can get away with breaking a law once in a while.

"Evil will always triumph because Good is dumb"

- Dark Helmet

Apparently, according to researchers, people who cheat in school and at exams are more successful in life than those who don't.

Cheaters bend the rules or break them to achieve goals.

So in a way you and Dark Helmet are right.

MOS6510,

"Apparently, according to researchers, people who cheat in school and at exams are more successful in life than those who don't."


That would be a very interesting read, can you provide a link?

A quick search didn't find anything. It may have been a podcast, but I'll do some mors searching later or tomorrow on a bigger screen.

Sadly I can't find it, but you have to trust me on this.

The gist of it was that people who cheat in school or are more likely to break rules to get to their goals tend to be more successful (not necessarily happier) in live.

Microsoft is a nice example (even though it's not a person, but run by persons). They did some nasty things, got punished a few times, but in the end they are a multi billion company. If they played it fair and moral they'd probably be a computer shop in Seattle selling no-brand PCs.

Steve, Bill, Mark, they all did "unfair" things, all got their fingers burned or have been frowned upon, but they're at the top (well, one is at the bottom, but he was right up there). Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, they all cross the line sometimes, but the rewards are higher than the fines or settlements.

Us fair people don't think that's fair, but being nice and fair doesn't get you that far in this world. Now I don't want to turn to the Dark Side, but I do think it's good to realize that this is just how it is. We can be surprised and upset each time a story comes out, but there is a lot more and everybody is doing it. From beggars to presidents, from family homes to governments. Even the church does it!

Also kind of related it has shown that doing well in school depends more on motivation than I.Q. So if you wondered why some seemingly dumb people do have a higher degree than you, now you know.

Yep, that's right. This is Google is Evil, Apple is Evil, Intel is Evil, the company X is evil... and more importantly Schmidt is evil, Jobs was evil and Ottelini is evil.

And that Palm wasn't evil.

There is no evidence that Eric Schmidt did the same, and certainly this was not in the culture of Google back in the time

Google apologizers are the worse, no doubt.

Any person emotionally vested in a corporation, who they have no direct link with other than as consumers, displays ill adjustment to the whole endeavor of being a human being. Regardless of the corporation...

You obviously decided to concentrate on the unimportant part of the message. This is a classic way to produce noise, in a deliberate attempt to obfuscate the main message.

One is taken "hand in the bag" bullying a smaller competitor with written threat beyond acceptable level. The other is mailing to a collaborator that he prefers not to write about non-recruitment agreement (and by saying so, he leaves a trace).
In what way is this "comparable" to the point of deliberately mixing the two to make them look like equal ?

Oh i see, since we don't know what the second did, it must have been as terrible as one can imagine certainly ! No proof, so no limit to imagination.

I believe Google has done less wrong

I wrong is a wrong, period, there is no such thing as "less wrong", I find amazing how Google apologizers distord reality to have Google not look to bad.

I find it amazing that you think I'm a Google apologizer.

Get a grip.

I find it amazing that you think that I think you are Google apologizer.

I've never heard the word "amazing" so much since Steve's last presentation.

Did he threaten to sue you with Apple's patent infringement to say that?

No, but he did give me some Apple stickers.

I never know what to do with them, so I have a box full now. Clearing the attic recently I even found a number of retro ones (with the colors).

Those stickers are like the Black Spot...

Then I think you confusingly replied to my comment. I forgive you.

Yes, there is such a thing. That's why there are very different penalties for, say, graffiti vandals and murderers or kidnappers.

Free markets do apply to big corporations. That's how they get so big in the first place. Growing big is a common outcome of natural selection and possibly the easiest defence to evolve against nature and competitors.

There is no, and there has never been, such thing as a "free market."

Drawing equivalences between evolutionary processes and human economics is also not a good idea. Especially when using language like "evolve against nature..."

Like it or not, the equivalence is there.

Language like "evolve against nature" is just a convenient shorthand for processes that would take longer to describe in non-anthropomorphic terms and should not be any problem in a discussion without a creationist or eugenicist.

But that is what I am trying to let you know: the equivalence is not there. You're simply propagating a set of misconceptions about what natural evolution is and how it works. A principal misconception being the assumption that evolution is about the "survival" of the individual organism. BTW, that is how we ended with the concepts like Social Darwinism, which are directly attributable to economists misunderstanding of evolution (the concept of "fitness" in particular), interestingly enough.


For example, given how most of life in the biosphere is (and has been) in the form of microorganisms, single celled in particular, and with the very large multicellular organisms being far rarer in number than the very small (e.g. there are very few blue whales but a shit load of amoebas). And how the smaller organisms have always being able to weather mass extinctions better than their larger brethren. I could turn part of your argument upside down and make a case about how small companies are a natural consequence of evolution, since obviously evolution seems to "favor" the small companies over the very large corporate giants.


It would be flawed of me to make that case. Just as it is flawed for anybody else to misrepresent evolution in order to comply with a narrative from an unrelated field.

Except none of that is present in any of my comments.



No, the concept that the weak should die was around longer than Darwinism. Namely feudalism, the divine right of kings, the aristocracy and the church deserving to be where they were because they were "better".

None of Nazi Germany's or the US's eugenics programs were based even on a misunderstanding of Darwinism, but on Mendelian genetics and the decidedly religious fixation on purity and perfection, and possibly Lamarckism. Darwin's works were banned in Germany, USSR and were/are not well received in the US either.



First, I didn't say growing big is the only solution. I'm saying it is historically prevalent. You can't deny the fact.

Second, I didn't say growing in size is the only way to grow big.

Third, I didn't say growing big is the best solution. I'm saying it obviously works, from an evolutionary point of view. When I say "from an evolutionary point of view", that OBVIOUSLY implies the fact that evolution is short sighted. It works in the short term, even though as you say they don't weather mass extinctions that well.

Fourth, I'm not saying we SHOULD organize our economies in a Darwinian way. I'm saying it is INESCAPABLE that a large free system with independent players ultimately behave in a Darwinian way and become non-free.

Fifth, you can't say that I'm spreading a misconception that evolution works on individual survival, when your own example would spread the misconception that evolution works on group survival.

Sixth, you can talk about Evolutionarily Stable Strategies outside of the context of biology. The keyphrase there is "Stable Strategies". Strategies are not bound by biology. Stable Strategies certainly isn't. Strategies that are Stable by being able to weather change are thus Evolutionarily Stable and need not imply anything about organisms or memes. The only thing that matters is whether a strategy weathers most kinds of change - if it does, it's an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy.

The main point is, to the original comment I replied to, that the free market won't solve anything because it is subject to Darwinian progression leading to the non-free market state we see now.



No, you're reading things into my comments that aren't there.

It's just a marketing thing.

And it's been very effective. A lot of people see Google as the good guys mainly because of that slogan.