back to article How Jobs bent reality with LSD, Apple hype

Out today on iTunes and Amazon, the highly anticipated Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson has had a level of hype normal for a new Apple product. OK, there was no keynote speech and we already knew the specifications - £25*, hardback, 656 pages - but the media, amateur and mainstream, has been going bonkers over Steve …

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  1. Yag
    Joke

    So iPhones are laced with LSD...

    This explains a lot!

    1. ian 22

      The iPad is hippy technology? Hardly fits my preconceived notions of 'hippy'.

  2. Wyrdness

    656 pages? Surely he could have written an extra 10?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @ Wyrdness

      The Apple I was priced at $666.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        I think it was ...

        $666.66 to be precise.

      2. Oolons
        Devil

        And 66 cents

        So $666.66 is obviously nothing to do with the number of the beast, unless the 666 is more of a rounding error and was always meant to be 667.

        1. dubno
          Devil

          667

          667 is actualy the NEIGHBOR of the beast

          1. Preacher
            Devil

            667

            664 and 668 are the neighbours of the beast, 667 lives on the other side of the street.

    2. John H Woods Silver badge

      <pedantmode>

      40 fewer?

      </pedantmode>

  3. Blofeld's Cat
    Trollface

    Technical hitch...

    I tried getting it from Amazon and reading it with "Kindle for Android", but there's a distracting rumbling and revolving noise in the background. Seems to be coming from deep underground.

  4. jake Silver badge

    Dead men tell no tales.

    "His ability to convince himself and others to believe almost anything, to bend any fact to suit his purpose. "

    Speaking as a friend of Steve's for over a third of a century, may I point out that he knew damn well when he was pulling the wool over people's eyes? I know it's politically incorrect to TheSectOfJobs, but trust me ... he never believed a word of his own marketing bullshit. Neither did I ... which is why I'm not a single-digit badge number Apple employee. More fool me, perhaps, but at least I held onto my ideals & scruples ;-)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Steve's hyperbole, bending of the truth and outright lies never bothered me too much, I've always regarded him as the P.T. Barnum of the tech industry, but lacking in Barnum's good qualities. What really bothered me though was the fact that so many people actually believed him. That just shows the high levels of gullibility and/or stupidity among the masses.

      1. Craigness

        Bending facts

        Did anyone else think of the distorted Galaxy Tab submission when they read that bit?

      2. ElReg!comments!Pierre

        :s/masses/classes

        According to Tramiel, at least.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @ Jake

      "Speaking as a friend of Steve's for over a third of a century, may I point out that he knew damn well when he was pulling the wool over people's eyes?"

      No you may not.

      If what you say was true then he'd have had no reason to bitch about Android stealing ideas from Apple when he's openly said in the past stealing ideas is a good thing.

      It would be a logical fallacy for both Jobs to have said this (which he did) and for him to not believe his own bullshit, thus, he must have believed his own bullshit.

      1. jake Silver badge

        @AC11:57

        Do you honestly not see where your comment backs up my statement?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Facepalm

      he never believed a word of his own marketing bullshit

      And that is supposed to be good?

      1. jake Silver badge

        @Thad

        "And that is supposed to be good?"

        Nope. But good or bad, Jobs built a company on it. Twice. Thrice, if you include NeXT.

        Marketards are professional liars, nearly as bad as politicians, and somewhat worse than lawyers. Steve was the best marketard I ever knew.

  5. Mme.Mynkoff
    Facepalm

    Diet cures cancer. WTF?

    The most interesting thing I've learned is that for a year Steve Jobs tried to treat his pancreatic cancer with diets, fruit juice and acupuncture, and refused surgery.

    This is much more revealing than the fact he didn't wash when he was an 18 year old? Very few do. But I suppose we can't have people thinking The Deity was a bit of a dingbat Jehovah's Witness.

    1. I Like Heckling Silver badge

      "Diet cures cancer. WTF? → #"

      macrobiotic foods have been used to battle cancers for a long long time, they can help reduce the spread of certain types and prolong the life of sufferers.

      A cousin of mine is currently using a combination of macrobiotic foods and chemo to deal with an inoperable brain tumour. For some one who was given 4-6 months... 28 months later she's still fighting it.

      1. handle

        Ah, but

        was the pancreatic cancer inoperable too?

        1. Euchrid

          re: Ah, but

          According to the interview that Isaacson did for 60 minutes (available on YouTube), doctors told Jobs that he had “one of these very slow-growing five percent of pancreatic cancers that can actually be cured.” Jobs delayed surgery for nine months, by which time the cancer had spread.

      2. Daniel B.
        Meh

        Slight difference...

        "A cousin of mine is currently using a combination of macrobiotic foods and chemo to deal with an inoperable brain tumour."

        Notice the "and chemo" part. That's why it works, it isn't replacing the other stuff and actually helps the chemo process. Jobs not only had an operable thing, he neglected everything for his diet stuff. Having already lost someone near to our family to "switch chemo for naturist solution", I know that anyone doing this switch is probably a Darwin Award nominee.

        Doing the naturist stuff + chemo does seem to work. But don't cut the treatment!!!

        1. DJV Silver badge
          Alert

          @Daniel B

          "Doing the naturist stuff + chemo does seem to work. But don't cut the treatment!!!"

          Wow, you mean running around nekkid also helps cure cancer? "No, officer, I wasn't flashing at the kiddies - it's just part of my treatment."

      3. DF118
        Thumb Up

        @I Like Heckling

        You post an argument backed up by a single unit of irrelevant anecdotal evidence HERE? Good luck to ya buddy.

      4. Big-nosed Pengie
        FAIL

        Except not.

  6. Eponymous Cowherd

    Reality Distortion Field

    Jobs goes on record in this biography, saying he felt so strongly about IP "theft" that he would be willing to, effectively, bankrupt Apple to destroy Android because they "stole" his ideas, while neatly forgetting that it was he, himself who is on record as saying "Good artists copy, great artists steal. We have been shameless about stealing great ideas."

    That is one *hell* of a big RDF

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Megaphone

      And this just goes to show...

      ...what a lying sack of poo this creep was.

      As long as what he stole benefitted HIS cause/company/pocketbook...that was OK. But if the tables were turned...all of a sudden he has his bowels in an uproar, and wants to sue as many people as he can find.

      1. Eponymous Cowherd

        He wasn't lying.....

        @AudiGuy:-

        He wasn't lying, that implies he either wasn't telling the truth when he said he believed that "stealing" was OK, or when he complained about it. What it shows is complete arrogance in his belief that stealing is great as long as its Apple doing the stealing.

        I would have thought the owner/driver of the premier Twatwagon could appreciate the concept of arrogance arrogance ;-D

        Apologies if you either don't drive an Audi, or are one of those rare Audi drivers that don't think they own the entire road.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          WTF?

          No I DON'T think I "own the entire road"...

          ...yes I do own an Audi. I also own 4 SAABs. So what?

          And I also DON'T put people into boxes predicated on the type of car they drive...or the type of ANYTHING they own.

          There are plenty of ignorant & arrogant ar$eholes who don't drive Audis. Take you for instance.

          1. Eponymous Cowherd
            FAIL

            I see....

            You have the usual Audi driver's sense of humour, too

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              And you are brain dead.

              How pathetic.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                @AudiGuy: <sarcasm>That last post was classy and totally disproved Eponymous Cowherd assertion about Audi Drivers</sarcasm>

                @Downvoters: Why the down votes for my post about Xerox not being whiter than white? Am I factually wrong (I'm more that happy to be corrected), or do you merely 'disagree', in which case you'll probably miss the irony of ignoring the facts as they are?

    2. vincent himpe

      Xerox alto and 'Mother of all Demo's' ( NLS system)

      'nough said...

      coat please ...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        I used the Alto as part of the development team on Xerox' Janus project that ultimately resulted in the 8000 series of products. The 8010 workstation incorporated a bit-mapped display, a mouse, Ethernet, WYSIWYG editor, etc. and was far ahead of anything on the market. But Xerox was focused on the Fortune 500 as its target market.

        When we learned that PARC had given Jobs the demo that resulted in the Macintosh we were stunned. And finally disgusted when management didn't sue Jobs and Apple for theft until 10 years after the Macintosh appeared. Xerox could have been bigger than Apple and IBM combined.

        Shakes head, walks away...

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "Forget operating systems as a significant part of the story, they are just a detail."

        Vincente, the majority of the work done by PARC on the Alto was itself "stolen" from Vannevar Bush's essay on Memex from 1945, it's certainly not as original as you and many here seem to think. It also heavily influenced Engelbart and Sutherland, whose work *also* influenced Xerox and others and is often overlooked. In fact look at Engelbart's NLS UI in his demo and look at the Alto UI and ask how much Xerox paid SRI ($0.00). At least Apple paid Xerox!

        It's worth reading the articles published and available online for a number of years from Jef Raskin and Bruce Horn, both of whom were, y'know, there (http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~saul/wiki/uploads/HCIPapers/horn-raskin-apple-recollections.html). Sure, they disagree on a few points, but you can get a picture of the state of things as they were. That is of course if you are interested in having your world view mended.

        Using Engelbart is a good example, but holding Xerox up as a paragon of virtue when they basically did exactly what Apple did, but without paying, is wilfully misrepresenting fact to service a trite point. It's never is a simple as you make out. And it still will never change the fact that Bill stole from Apple.

    3. Slartybardfast
      Unhappy

      Reality distortion field

      It's the RDF that really pisses me off. Apple makes quite nice products for the well off and nearly bugger all for everyone else. Yet people who have very little money are brainwashed into believing that buying an Apple product will significantly make their lives better. It's mainly "media types" and a few tech jorno's i.e. Jon Honeyball etc who are the worst offenders. A brief trawl through Twitter during IOS 5 download day showed what a bunch of sheep these people are.

      Some of them make me feel sick. I used to follow Rob Brydon on Twitter until he caught the Apple bug. He recently did a reading of his new book (I wouldn't bother it's crap) at the Apple store which he called his "spiritual home". WTF! That was it, a swift unfollow occurred before I threw up over my keyboard.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @ Slartybardfast

        He must have been got at by that Apple Svengali, Fry.

    4. nematoad
      Unhappy

      Yes but...

      ... what a lot of people seem to have forgotten about the threat that Jobs made about spending all the money Apple had to defeat the "theft" of Apple's IP is that it was not his money to spend as he saw fit. It was the shareholders'.

      What did he think Apple was, a piggybank?

      1. Asgard
        Unhappy

        @"the threat that Jobs made about spending all the money Apple had to defeat the "theft" of Apple's IP"

        Worse still, I very much think Apple will unfortunately keep that same hostile course of action against other companies, even though Steve Jobs is now dead. The problem is when a corporation has a major figure head leader, the new corporation leaders cannot easily break free of any part of their founders mindset. In the case of Apple, that Steve Job mindset was so extreme that no one wants Apple to break out of the Steve Jobs ruthlessly minimalist design ethic on all his company released (which is ok, they can keep that), but the problem is, how does his company separate that from also following Steve Jobs extremely hostile mindset towards other companies. Unfortunately I very much think they will continue this hostile course of action against other companies.

        Steve Jobs very evident hostility towards other companies (and even hostility towards members of his own staff) combined with his extremely well documented control freakery, combined with his profoundly arrogant self-delusional state of mind doesn't exactly make him sound like the kind of person I would have wanted to work with. He sounded like he was more than a bit of a self-deluding tyrant, its just that his ruthlessly minimalist design ethic towards all his company released allowed his company to produce easy to use products. If it wasn't for that, he would have be very much like any other corporate director bully.

        I just hope his company won't keep on with the bullying, because they need to be focusing on new products, not continuing this arrogantly delusional fight. But you just know they are going to continue this incessant hostile fight. :(

    5. John H Woods Silver badge

      <pedantmode>

      "Lesser artists borrow - great artists steal" Igor Stravinsky. But I don't think he ever attributed the quote, so that must make him a great artist.

      </pedantmode>

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Headmaster

        @John H Woods: That quote has been attributed to Pablo Picasso. It's thought that both 'borrowed' it from T S Eliot; "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different." Whether or not Stravinsky and Picasso improved upon the dictum I'm not sure, they certainly expressed it more succinctly.

      2. This is my handle
        Coffee/keyboard

        Ummmm, Stravinsky (apologies to Homer Simson)

        I once saw "The RIte Of Spring" exquisitely danced to the choreography of Ballanchine. Neither of them actually danced of course. It was a double-bill in fact w/ L'Apres-midi d'une faune.

        Oddly, no one sued, or threatened to sue anyone near as I can tell.

        "Standing on the shoulders of Giants", indeed.

    6. mhenriday
      Boffin

      Haven't read the bio,

      so I can't be certain that rumours to the effect that Mr Jobs was a Buddhist are true, or more reality-bending hype. If, indeed, they be true, then what a pity it was that he never read - or if he had, never understood the import of the great Japanese writer Akutagawa Ryūnosuke's brief short story, «Kumo no ito» (a .pdf file of the Japanese original is available at http://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/000879/files/92_14545.html), in which the Buddha allows a spider to spin a thread all the tens of thousands of kilometres from Paradise to the Lake of Blood in Hell, in order that the murderer, arsonist, and master thief, Kandata, whose single good deed in life was to refrain from stepping on a spider, might use it to pull himself out of Hell and into Paradise. Kandata comes half-way, and all seems well until he looks down and notes that countless other denizens of Hell have begun to climb the thread. Fearing it will break, Kandata curses the other climbers and shouts to them to get off the the thread. At which point, of course, it does break at a point just above his hands, and Kandata is sent plunging back into the Lake of Blood....

      Bankrupt Apple to destroy Android ? Somehow I doubt that Mr Jobs is going to make it out of the Lake of Blood in which he finds himself....

      Henri

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Amazon price

    £12,50 for the hadrback book on Amazon, £12.99 on your Kindle.

    It's got to be worth £12.50. Shame the profit from the book isn't going to a cancer charity.

  8. Daedalus

    Last time we had anybody like Steve...

    ...he started a World War!

    1. John Bailey
      Facepalm

      Oh come on.. .

      Peewee Herman did not start a war!

  9. Hendala

    Blasphemy

    Burn all copies of this book (Including digital copies)

    1. Player_16

      You gotta buy 'em...

      ...to burn 'em

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Amazon price

    Not that it particularly matters, but the book has been priced at £12.50 by Amazon for the last 2 or 3 days, prior to that it was £12.

  11. James O'Brien
    Trollface

    And this explains alot.

    "And Jobs didn't just try out drugs, he thought that taking them was one of the best things he'd ever done, telling Isaacson: "Definitely taking LSD was one of the most important things in my life." Jobs relates in an interview: "Not the most important but right up there."

    Atleast the LSD explains a few things about his warped sense of reality.

    1. Ilgaz

      Choices

      Well depends on the person. You can end up being dead overdosed or live at park or you can use the experience to produce something like dark side of the moon. He used the experience to start apple computer.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This sort of thing makes him sound like a first rate arse. I thought I had encountered similar personalities in my working life, but never so many extreme traits all rolled into one.

    It makes Gates and Ballmer dancing around to Haddaway back in the day seem completely innocuous, almost attached to reality actually.

  13. Wang N Staines
    Coat

    free copy

    Is there a free copy on the Samsung's site?

  14. Bradley Hardleigh-Hadderchance
    Joke

    Cruel to waitresses

    Well, looks like we got ourselves a coder.

    Waffle Waitress: "What you coding for?".

    Young Smelly Steve: "Well, I code for many reasons, but I suppose the main reason I code is so I don't become a FUCKING WAFFLE WAITRESS!".

    (C) Bill Hicks.

    Apparently Steve wasn't much of a coder, or an engineer or... In fact nobody really knows what he did. Maybe a visionary? Yes, a visionary. That is it.

    Certainly not a waffle waitress.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uvs2g5Nj0NI

    It never gets old.

  15. John McCallum

    Sorry even at £12.50 I aint buying

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Thanks for sharing.

      No really. Personally, I'm relieved because I was worried that at some point you would crumble and buy it.

    2. Will Godfrey Silver badge
      Unhappy

      I wouldn't want it of they gave me £12.50 with the book. Blegh

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "Yeah and you smell like a big doo-doo head too, so nurghh!!"

        Grow up!

  16. Beachrider

    Some people just want to start their torches..

    I have never been an ardent follower of Steve Jobs. There were well documented reasons why he found himself outside of Apple Computer in 1985. Companies like Apple need both an emotional and logical drive. Steve was one of those stereotypical right-brained, emotion-centric people that some people find fun to be around. Without Steve in 1985, Apple found itself steering to the center of conventional wisdom and losing its direction.

    If you make appliances, you need industrial engineers to make your company excel. If your are selling creativity and entertainment, someone like Steve Jobs can either rip your company apart or propel it to heights.

    He did both in his life. He came at a time when people needed to expand their feelings about technology. He made some nice changes in those areas.

    Let the bookwriters start trying to translate him from current-events into history. This is an important first document.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Marmite

    You either worship the ground it walks on or you hate it.

  18. CmdrX3
    Facepalm

    Do me a favour

    Will someone please wake me up when it's all over.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @cmdrX3

      Oh no, you poor thing... did a nasty man come into your house/office and force you to read this article? No? Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    This is news....how?

    It's no news that the CEOs of large companies can be major league assholes, is it? I'm sure that Meg Whitman isn't much fun when she gets annoyed (which must be quite a lot, I imagine).

    I do think it's in pretty bad taste to crack jokes about a dying man's last days. Imagine that your doc tells you that you have only six months to live. Don't rag on the man for getting his comforts where he could. http://xkcd.com/836/ sums it up pretty well.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Jobs is bad hmmmkay

    What next - headphones designed by people who used to do crack; Though may well explain the lack of pointed corners in Apple designs as they give of a bad vibe man and stab my eye's.

    Apparently the authors of the Bible had also played with drugs, though back in those days they were called medicines.

    Though remember the Apple had a bad rep in that book.

    RIP Mr Jobs.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I don't get it, so what he dabbled in LSD? Many did in the crazy 60s.

    Didn't know that The Register was full of prudes.

    Ah, of course, I forgot, it's mostly IT techs here, your idea of being edgy is beating off to midget porn in your dark offices.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @AC

      You forgot - on the reg it's also fine to be constantly sozzled on alcohol too.

      But don't dare touch the real drugs... drugs are bad m'kay.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Hey - don't knock midget porn till you've beat off to it. Might I suggest Twidget?

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    I hope there's a good side to this guy. While the media will give us the expected freak circus show, book then movie, I can only hope he gave his money to charities and such, like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett pledged to do. Or did he just set up a trust fund for eternal litigation with Samsung and sabotaging Android.

    Please let it be that there's more to his legacy than a few gadgets and mindless religious followers...

  23. Goat Jam

    Cringley

    Robert X Cringely has announced that the original recordings for his late 90's series "Triumph Of The Nerds" that were considered "lost for all time" have turned up in a producers garage somewhere.

    Or VHS copies of them anyway.

    The original TotN had about 10 minutes of edited interviews with Jobs while he was still at NeXT and facing an uncertain future.

    This is the interview where he famously stuck the boot into Microsoft saying they had "no taste".

    Apparently the actual interview lasted over an hour, the entirety of which is included in the "lost tapes"

    He is currently applying "video processing" to the "antique" tapes and weighing his options on the best way to release it.

    More info and a request for suggestions are at his site http://www.cringely.com/

    1. jake Silver badge

      Cringely? Are you serious, Goat Jam? ::snicker::

      http://forums.theregister.co.uk/post/1201107

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @ jake

        If you're going to cite your own posts as some kind of proof, might be an idea to get the facts right. There was a legal agreement that allowed Stephens to continue using the pen name (and IDG paid his court costs), so I’m not sure how him using it is ‘theft’.

        Although Stephens wasn’t the first Infoworld writer to write under the moniker, I’m not sure him being the third means that there was “a series of authors” using the pen name previously. Something that can’t be disputed is that he wrote the ‘Notes from the field’ column’ far longer than the other two writers and established it. JB Morton wasn’t the first writer to use the pen name ‘Beachcomber’ to write a humorous column called ‘By the way…’ for the Daily Express, but he’s the one most associated with it – and for good reason.

        Stephens is no stranger to hyperbole and he’s a provocative writer, but he’s an entertaining and – what I suspect a lot of his critics don’t like – an accessible one. It’s all very well pooh-poohing Accidental Empires, as you did in the post you cited, but it and the accompanying documentary was an eye-opener for many. Not I take everything I read by him by gospel, but I certainly don’t reject it in a kneejerk reaction – that he predicted there was a good possibility that Meg Whitman would Leo Apotheker as HP CEO seven months before she did, isn’t going to be down to just blind luck.

        In this particular case, Stephens has said he’s found a copy of an interview with Jobs and he will release it – shouldn’t we wait to see if that happens before deciding to if it’s BS? Or at the very least, display some courtesy to those who are?

        1. jake Silver badge

          @AC 10:27

          Not proof. I just couldn't be arsed to copy & paste the whole comment; it seemed cleaner to post a link. This is TehIntraWebTubes[tm], after all.

          One question: so is it Stephens or Cringely? There are meds that can help with that.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            re: @AC 10:27

            Eh? I wasn't querying that you just pasted a link, but what you had said on the link - you seemed to be stating dubious opinion as fact.

            As to your question, you are kidding, right? The real name of the writer you were referring to is Mark Stephens - he's not the only writer to use the name of Robert X Cringley today, so his real name was used for clarity.

      2. Goat Jam

        Sigh

        Yes, I am aware that the "Cringley" name had been used prior to the current usage (at Byte magazine if I'm not mistaken) and I am also aware that the current user of the name had come to some sort of arrangement to take it permanently, although I'm unsure how mutually amicable that arrangement was in reality due to not being privy to the negotiation process at the time.

        All that is beside the point of course.

        The current Cringley has been using the name for at least 20 years and it is a known fact that he made a documentary called "Triumph Of The Nerds" that included an interview with SJ

        I have no idea what axe you have to grind with Cringley Jake, and quite honestly I couldn't care less.

        That some anonymous commentard on El Reg holds some animosity to some other tech blogger really is of no interest to me whatsoever. Really.

        You are clearly trying to have your 15 minutes of fame (http://forums.theregister.co.uk/post/1209072) on the coattails of Jobs demise and good luck to you I say, but that hardly matters to the rest of us who were not part of Job's circle of friends as you (allegedly) were.

        The fact remains the Cringley of today says he has over an hour of previously unseen interview footage with SJ and I have no reason to doubt that this is the truth.

        Your personal beef with Cringely has absolutely no bearing on that matter whatsoever and I for one would be interested in seeing the full interview, and that would not change if Cringely turned out to be Steve Ballmer in disguise.

        1. jake Silver badge

          @Goat Jam

          If I were looking for 15 minutes of fame, I'd be using my real name.

          "Triumph of the Nerds" had so many errors it was ... err ... cringe worthy.

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    re: Jobs is bad hmmmkay

    > Apparently the authors of the Bible had also played with drugs, though back in those days they were called medicines.

    No they weren't. Even drunkenness is frowned upon and enough to get you disqualified from leadership.

    I seem to think that "pharmakia" (translated, "witchcraft") is on the "don't do it" list for Christians, so shamanism is out, as is tasting the colour purple.

    It seems the Christian god wants his followers' judgement unimpaired. Unlike some other religions & cults I could mention...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @AC

      "It seems the Christian god wants his followers' judgement unimpaired. Unlike some other religions & cults I could mention..."

      And yet to be judgement unimpaired would mean that after reading their book you wouldn't be a believer would you?

    2. jake Silver badge

      @AC05:34

      "I seem to think that "pharmakia" (translated, "witchcraft") is on the "don't do it" list for Christians, so shamanism is out,"

      Raising the dead, healing the sick, curing the lame, giving sight to the blind ...

      "as is tasting the colour purple."

      One question: Wine into water, or water into wine? Judge not, lest ye be judged, sinner. Or at least have the courtesy to read your supposed "good book" for content before commentarding ...

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    LSD

    Definitely one of the most profound experiences available to man.

    I have to say though, it opened my eyes to the utter evil of the world/money/politics/Corporations etc and working for such is now a moral impossibility.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @AC

      But you use the product of those evil corporations to make this post?

      Tricksy.

  26. Spaller
    FAIL

    Jobs showed up at our microP labs in the late 80's. He asks, "Just drop the FPU and I'll buy it for $50". Veep: "No deal".

    Sad thing is that objective-C survived.

  27. Ilgaz

    I bet he won't get more biographies

    What kind of a horrible tabloid like PR campaign for a book of a self made billionaire?

    It could be understandable if the family needed money but as you know there isn't such an issue.

    I am not buying any apple product since they became an intel vendor and phone company but give me a break. Steve Jobs doesn't deserve this crap. Using UNIX eh? Sure every app has been written by government worker like people only drinking tea? Check where and when the computer revolution started.

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And nobody complains/notes that this story's icon is a peace symbol coloured in with WINDOWS' COLOURS? How odd.

  29. Paul 172
    Happy

    sed

    's/programme/program/g'

    Cheers,

    P

    1. PJI
      FAIL

      wrong

      ^u

      We do not all speak American. Oh, and do not use sed(1) if you meant to edit the file and save it. Use ed(1).

  30. Bradley Hardleigh-Hadderchance
    Windows

    Today a young man on acid realized..

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D0BeLz5blM

    Steve might not have been my best friend.

    But {

    BHHC: "Hi Steve, I'm a failed programmer too".

    Young Smelly Steve: "Oh go away and don't contact me again till you get a proper turtle-neck, just like 'Larry' has - love him or hate him - he has a good line in turtle-ware, unlike YOU!"

    BHHC: (Gibbering from the put-down [Lips quivering {Parentheses all but run out now}] and feeling none too confident) - "I'm sorry Steve, I'll see what I can do".

    }

    But he tickled a few peoples funny bones some where. I think we can all learn from that.

    Besides, no one deserves to die like that. And I know most of you are not wishing malice on him.

    It's a bit like - Don't blame the government for what they do - blame the people for accepting it as normal and allowing it to happen.

    Miniature golf anyone?

  31. I Like Heckling Silver badge
    Joke

    <sarcasm

    I'm going to steal the book... well actually I'm going to infringe the copyright of this book by acquiring it without actually physically touching it.

    <\sarcasm

    I guess that makes me great too. :)

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