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Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, gives an insight to Spencer Kelly of the BBC’s programme >Click about the differences in opinion in the way things are currently being run at Apple.

One interesting insight is the fact that Woz still considers himself as an engineer and supports the open-source cause, by mentionning that he supports hackers who try to create new and innovative software for the iPhone.

Have a look and feel free to leave some comments

F

The reader comes to the realisation that the accomplishments of young genius Bill Gates were no coïncidence. Coming from a comfortable middle class background, Gates attended one of the most prestigious private schools in the state of Washington, Lakeside School, whilst his dad was an important Seattle lawyer and his mother sat on the board of directors of the First Interstate Bank. The relationships forged through the school and Bill’s parents will turn out to be highly valuable in the development of the future billion-dollar corporation.

As usual, instead of wiriting a long (and boring) summary of the book, I’ll provide with a list of the key and interesting facts I came across in the book. Here it goes:

- In 1972, Gates went to D.C. to work as a page in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he bought 5,000 McGovern-Eagleton buttons for a nickel each ($250 on total). When McGovern dropped Thomas Eagleton from the preseidential ticket, Gates sold the scarce buttons as collector’s items for $25 each, makeing several thousan dollars in profit. He was 17.

- Bill can fall asleep instantaneously. When he flies, it is said he can sleep through the whole flight by putting a blanket over his head.

- Scott Drill recalled of Bill when he went to Harvard: “My perception of Bill’s lifestyle, and it was a lot of people’s perception, was that he spent his time either playing poker or in the computer room.” (p62 in the book).

- Steve Ballmer, who would become Microsoft’s 24th employee in 1980 and first business manager for Bill Gates, lived down the hall from Bill at Currier house in Harvard. He would go on to become the Chief Executive Officer of the Microsoft Corporation in 2000. His wealth is valued at $15 billion.

- Gates’ first attempt to counteract software theft happened in 1976 with an open letter to computer hobbyists in the Altair newsletter entitled Computer Notes. In this letter he would for the first time state his position on piracy, by explaining how difficult (at the time) it was to make a living out of making software.
Letter here

- Ed Roberts, founder of MITS, who commisionned Gates and Paul Allen to write the BASIC for the 8080, lost the deal of the century when he accepted to give away all the rights to the BASIC to Microsoft instead of Pertec, who was acquiring MITS at the time. If Pertec had prevailed, there might not have been a Microsoft today, as BASIC was one of the first successful products Microsoft managed to license out.

- By 1977 Microsoft was established in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In the office employees wore jeans and sport shirts. Free Coca-cola was supplied by the company and still is to this day, for tens of thousands of employees Worldwide.

- Gates got his first Porsche in 1977, a Porsche 911, which had a stick gear shift. Gates and Allen having only driven automatic transmissions, they learned to drive manual gear shift in a parking lot. Shortly after buying his first Porsche, Gates went back to the dealer to complain it would only do 125 Mph.

- QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) was developed by Seattle Computer in 1980 to compete with Microsoft’s BASIC Operating System. In 1981, Microsoft paid Seattle Computers $25,000 total for licensing QDOS and its source code. The contract stipulated that nothing in this licensing agreement shall require Microsoft to identify its customer to Seattle Computer Products”. The mystery customer Microsoft already had to sublicense QDOS was no less than IBM, with revenues at the time approaching nearly $30 billion. The licensing of QDOS would be the best move so far from Bill Gates.

- Later, Gates bought all rights to QDOS from Seattle Computer Products for $50,000. It was the bargain of the century. IBM also agreed to leave copyright on the operating system to Microsoft, which would make Microsoft a major player in the industry.

- In early 1980s, Gates predicted to a group of software developers that Microsoft expected half its revenues to come from the sale of software for the new Apple II computer. Gates was being nosy at Apple, to the extent that Steve Jobs had to tell his employees to shut up and not reveal Apple’s secrets such as the mouse that would come out soon onto the market. Jobs wanted Gates to know as little as possible about GUIs.

- When Microsoft brought Windows 3.0 out in 1990, they took a bit of the Apple. This wasn’t to the enjoyment of Apple computers, whom, in a statement by Marketing Director Jim Davis, said at the time: “Windows is simply and endorsement of what we’ve been doing all along. [...] Using Windows on a PC is like putting a Rolls Royce front on a Volkswagen Bug – a pretty face, but still a bug…”.

That’s it! Enjoy…

Any other interesting facts of the Microsoft Corporation? Don’t hesitate to share below

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Paramount Pictures is to become the first major studio to make clips from thousands of its movies available for use on the Internet.

The unit of Viacom Inc. is teaming with Los Angeles-based developer FanRocket to launch the VooZoo application Monday on Facebook.

The service will grant Facebook users access to footage from thousands of movies, ranging from “The Ten Commandments” to “Forrest Gump,” Enabling users to send their favorite clips to each other accross the social network.

“The short clips for a movie that you’ve already seen before helps you relive the moment,” Paramount senior vice president of entertainment Derek Broes said.

The clips last from a few seconds to several minutes and cover the gamut from Eddie Murphy’s guffaw in “Beverly Hills Cop” to Audrey Hepburn’s pleas over her “no-name slob” cat in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

The studio will market DVDs of the movies through a button that appears after each clip is played. It eventually wants to use the application to virally market upcoming releases.

For example, VooZoo is withholding clips from the “Indiana Jones” series until it works out a way to market the May 22 release of the latest installment, “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.”

Paramount said it has not set revenue goals for the new venture.

“My benchmark for success is that people are joining and sending,” Broes said.

—

On the Net:

VooZoo: http://apps.facebook.com/voo-zoo

This topic brings out a much larger concern : what is the Internet used for nowadays? We know that it can be used by individuals for unethical means such as terrorism, child pornography and political rumour-spreading. However, how is it used by our own Governments?

In an article posted by the BBC this week, it seems that the US Government will start using virtual worlds such as Second Life to spot terrorists – or potential terrorists. “We can see groups emerging in cyber spaces and virtual communities that would be wholly virtual,” said a spokesman from the US Counterterrorism Foundation. “They would organise and radicalise in virtual worlds and attack using cyber methods without becoming a real world presence in any real way.”. This issue is taken very seriously by the US Government, who believe they will be able to spot emerging patterns in Internet Social Networking websites that will eventually enable them to carry investigations on certain users.

In today’s world, one might wonder what sort of impact these campaigns will have on Society. As our actions are being increasingly observed on the Internet, if such campaigns are to spot critical blogs or forums, they might mistake freedom of speech for pro-terrorism speech. One just can’t be careful enough on what they do over the net these days, may it be joking around on facebook, discussing political issues over msn or posting compromising footage on youtube.

We’ve all heard of the Wikileaks scandal, where people have been allowed to released classified information about targeted companies in the US and Europe. The debate has been turning around freedom of speech and digital rights on the Internet. The sentence is still to be heard. After all, if the internet becomes a real watchdog of information and a bigbrother of interaction, how will it survive in the next few years? Aren’t those concepts the ones that make the Internet what it is: a source of information from the people for the people, where opinions differ and excentricity exists? If that definition is altered through policing, then the essence of the Internet might be jeopardised.

A must-read for all those Apple fans out there!

There have been so many rumours out there about what actually happened with Apple over the years. How it started well, how it went downslope, how it got better, etc, etc. In his book, Steve Wozniak sets the record straight on all those stories and exposes the undeniable truth about the story of Apple : how it went from a couple of real smart guys building computers from their garage to a big corporation where money governs decisions on all aspects of the company.The book gives a very good overview of Steve’s personal parcour through life and the establishment of Apple Computers. It gives good insight on how Steve Jobs (current CEO of Apple) and himself decided to form the company, and what kind of help they got from friends and family during the process. It also describes very well Steve’s character, one of a unique man who combined talent, simplicity and humour with stubbornness and failure in some of his most important relationships.

Overall, discovering the fact that Steve Wozniak considers himself as any other person with ongoing dreams provides a reassuring feeling to the reader. In other words, using one’s talent bring great accomplishments in one’s life, include self-fulfillment and recognition from others.Steve displays himself as a quiet and shy person. He mentions a few times in the book how he was always the engineer behind the inventions he made (Apple I, Apple II, the Universal Remote Control, etc.) He shows that he had to take difficult choices (e.g. leaving Apple Computers) to follow his own path and fulfill his personal engineering career. He tries to give a lesson of life: one should not be governed by others but rather should follow his own dreams, even if it means missing out on other luxuries (fame, money, etc.) which really aren’t that important.

It is not until the end of the book that he finally talks about his current feelings of Apple and the success the company has had since 2000. Even if he does criticize some versions of the Ibook, he does confirm that he believes Apple has come back to being a company which provides products and services for the people, which was his initial vision as co-founder of Apple. He congratulates Steve Jobs for his success but doesn’t show any regrets to leaving Apple and experimenting other things.Overall, a very nicely written book which sometimes sounds as if Steve was telling you his story directly.

Some sections might be a bit too technical for some readers, but the vast majority is essential to one’s understanding of Apple’s successes and failures. An indispensable lesson of life for all IT professionals and anyone who wonders how the Personal Revolution was perceived from one of its major inventors.