Steve Jobs is dead...

The term stealing is overused by fanboys (and even Jobs). Every human invention is inspired by another get over it.
 
I'm totally getting the biography, hell, I'm debating getting it in physical form because it's such a pivotal look into his life. All-access, rumors say.
 
I would just hope the internet would stop spoiling so much of it everyday... I'd like to not know everything that's inside it until the day I have the book in my hands...
 
I've pre-ordered it on the Kindle store. It'll be pushed to my iPad on the launch day. :)
 
The term stealing is overused by fanboys (and even Jobs). Every human invention is inspired by another get over it.
I think the only original invention was the wheel :) It's true though many things that are going mainstream these days came out decades ago if for no other reason than tech availability.
 
I think the only original invention was the wheel :) .

Are there any actual inventions, or only discoveries? "the wheel" has been used by nature for millenia before man "invented it"
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Steve Jobs is an asshole. But an influential one at that.

RIP and condolences to his family. Pancreatic cancer sucks; too bad he delayed proper treatment by doing basically BS. My mother is an MD in China and practices traditional Chinese medicine, knows Chinese herbs, and does acupuncture but she does not claim to be able to cure cancer and fully understands that Western medicine has its role in treating diseases, including great surgical treatment options.
 
Steve Jobs is an asshole. But an influential one at that.

RIP and condolences to his family. Pancreatic cancer sucks; too bad he delayed proper treatment by doing basically BS. My mother is an MD in China and practices traditional Chinese medicine, knows Chinese herbs, and does acupuncture but she does not claim to be able to cure cancer and fully understands that Western medicine has its role in treating diseases, including great surgical treatment options.

Well said, thanks for framing it well in perspective.
 
Thank you for Macintosh, which made computer with GUI available to working class.
Thank you for iPhone, which made smartphone understandable and easy-to-use for housewives as well as IT pros.
Thank you for App Store, which (very like Steam) made app purchasing as easy as two clicks.
 
It's amazing he fought this cancer as long as he did.

It's really sad but, everyone dies which is unfortunate.

Fuck you cancer.

I've only become interested in his illness since his death and from what I've read about the diagnosis/treatment time line he seems to have died a rich man's death.

When you become ill, the most dangerous thing you can do is consider you are worthy of extra special treatment.

Steve Jobs died from a malignant insulinoma (tumour of the insulin secreting cells of the pancreas). Most insulin secreting tumours are benign and those few that are malignant do not spread rapidly. The diagnosis was apparently made on CT scan in 2003. At this point the accepted treatment is surgery (which has a 90% success rate), Mr Jobs elected to try alternative "therapies" instead. He didn't come to surgery for almost 10 months (giving the malignant cancer plenty of time to spread to his liver).

Four years later (2009), he underwent a liver transplant to remove his tumour ridden liver. This is ridiculous treatment. The man had a malignant cancer (that is, there will have been many tiny pockets of the tumour spread throughout his body) and now (to prevent rejection of the transplanted liver) he will need to placed on powerful immunosuppressive therapy. The problem here is that immunosuppressive treatment accelerates the growth of cancer. Only a lunatic quack would seriously submit a patient in Jobs' condition to this. A lunatic, or perhaps someone swayed by the patients' fame and wealth.

The tragedy of Steve Jobs' death is not that it was preventable, but that it was certainly hastened by very poor and ill advised decisions and treatment.

His death is not dissimilar to that of Michael Jackson, who hired a personal physician and then brow beat him into administering an unmonitored anaesthetic to him to help him sleep.

It also reminds me of the case a Ariel Sharon (the former Israeli Prime Minister) who suffered a stoke at his home in 2006. Instead of waiting to get him to hospital and perform a CT scan of his brain (to determine if the stoke was due to a haemorrhage or a blocked artery), which is what any normal person would have done to them, the doctor in attendance gave Sharon a thrombolytic drug (excellent treatment if the stroke is due to a blocked artery or the absolutely worst thing you can possibly do if the stroke is due to a haemorrhage). Needless to say, Sharon's stroke was due to a haemorrhage and he is still dependent on life support 5 years later.

The rich and famous are still just flesh and blood, and the treatment of their illnesses should be guided by the latter and not the former.
 
Not only was the liver transplant ill advised, but he totally took advantage of his wealth to scam the system...

http://www.slate.com/articles/healt...2011/01/how_did_steve_jobs_get_his_liver.html

He essentially found the place in the US that is most likely to get him the transplant and shoved his way in. He may have been an innovator and such, but was certainly an egotistical sociopath too. I think that is the big difference between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is huge and Gates has been a huge part of not only funding it, but also acting as a personal advocate for it even before he made it his full time job. Jobs on the other hand was never a philanthropist and only put things towards himself. He sure asked a lot in return for not giving back much. In some of the articles I have read, Jobs came under so much fire that Apple as a company had to step up their own philanthropic donations to make up for the bad PR it was garnering. It was definitely the one area where Jobs was not the leader at Apple, but that goes unsaid because he "changed the face of mobile technology".

Other then a failed foundation that only advocated for "Nutrition and Vegetarianism" in the 80's that he couldn't be bothered to support beyond putting his name on it, most of the philanthropic ventures he is attached to had Apple's name on it and not his own. Almost every time he was asked about giving to charities, he replied with "Making Apple better is more important".

To say the least, he had a very different view of the world, and in my opinion not in a good way.
 
He essentially found the place in the US that is most likely to get him the transplant and shoved his way in. [...]
... I?m not a fan of Steve Job, nor am I saying that he was a nice guy and good person ... but ... put someone in a life&death situation and they will try to live. It?s called self preservation ... it?s an instinct, we all have it. It might not be what we call heroic ... but it?s human nature. Hardly anything you can hold against Steve Jobs, or as a matter of fact anyone faced with death ... IMHO.
 
How does one who destroyed his liver 'intentionally' (by holding back on a proper treatment) qualify for a transplant, when there are thousands of people who need a liver too?

... I?m not a fan of Steve Job, nor am I saying that he was a nice guy and good person ... but ... put someone in a life&death situation and they will try to live. It?s called self preservation ... it?s an instinct, we all have it. It might not be what we call heroic ... but it?s human nature. Hardly anything you can hold against Steve Jobs, or as a matter of fact anyone faced with death ... IMHO.

You're right. But obviously he wasn't in the self preservation mode when he was diagnosed. He took a big risk there. Well.... you can try going to the lottery after the numbers are released and try to tell them, that these were the numbers you intended to choose but somehow different ones ended up on your receipt.
 
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... I?m not a fan of Steve Job, nor am I saying that he was a nice guy and good person ... but ... put someone in a life&death situation and they will try to live. It?s called self preservation ... it?s an instinct, we all have it. It might not be what we call heroic ... but it?s human nature. Hardly anything you can hold against Steve Jobs, or as a matter of fact anyone faced with death ... IMHO.

Not to mention that others are gaming the system in the exact same way. We may be doing something like that for my mom in the not too distant future. And believe me, we don't have anything approaching the money of Steve Jobs.

It's also not "scamming" the system per se. Organs don't travel well, and some areas have 'surpluses' at times and no persons to transplant them into. It's simply figuring out where one can go to get service, and it doesn't actually take a lot of money. It is no different, philosophically, than observing that the specific location of a chain restaurant that you wish to dine at is full to overflowing with customers and deciding to go to a less busy location instead.

I would also point out that we still don't know if he gave money or didn't. There are many wealthy people of my acquaintance who you would think are totally stingy and selfish asshats, but they donate large sums of money and support worthy causes. They do so anonymously.

Which is more worthy - setting up a giant foundation and 'doing good' with the press in attendance to get publicity and an ego boost? Or quietly helping out where needed and not being an attention whore about it?

How does one who destroyed his liver 'intentionally' (by holding back on a proper treatment) qualify for a transplant, when there are thousands of people who need a liver too?

Easy. Move to an area where there are many donors, but few recipients. I would also point out that the therapy that he received (dietary and otherwise) is sadly recognized as 'valid alternative treatment' by the CA medical authorities and is justifiable in that sense. To the transplant organization, he would be no more at fault and equally as valid a recipient as someone who had their liver fail due to chemotherapy.

Edit: This and other reasons are why I am very frustrated at my mom's decision to stay in CA for this round of treatment (which has gone pretty damn badly). The CA medical establishment has got some head-deskingly bad ideas as to appropriate treatments and medications.

This isn't me bitching about CA specifically, just pointing out that it might not have only been Jobs getting a wild hippie hair up his ass regarding treatment. Mom's idiot oncologist suggested something similar.
 
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I would also point out that the therapy that he received (dietary and otherwise) is sadly recognized as 'valid alternative treatment' by the CA medical authorities and is justifiable in that sense

From his biography it is noted Steve ignored dietary advice and continued his own bizarre diet. He would go weeks only eating fruit, spend several days fasting, spend a week only eating carrots, then onto another vegy binge.
 
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