World Cup Memo Written By Steve Jobs Going Up For Auction 206
New submitter Dega704 writes with an excerpt from El Reg: "Before Steve Jobs came up with the iPhone or even the Apple II, he designed paddles for ball-flipping games at Atari where the scruffy 19-year-old was employed to improve game design. Sotheby's New York will auction off a document dating from Jobs's time there: a 1974 report that Jobs wrote for his boss suggesting ways to improve arcade game World Cup. According to Jobs' biography, his Atari days are most notable for his clashes with colleagues, who he considered to be 'dumb shits'. He was made to work night shifts there partly because he was in a phase of refusing to wash and so he apparently smelt bad, causing complaints from his co-workers. But Jobs obviously did some work at Atari too, with the document laying out his ideas for improving player experience. The typed four-page document includes three circuit designs in pencil and additional designs for the paddles and alignment of players defending a soccer goal."
Steve WHO? (Score:4, Insightful)
Steve JOBS came up with the Apple II? I don't think so.
Suitable for framing! (Score:1, Insightful)
One of a kind! Snot rag that Steve Jobs blew his nose into at an organic food restaurant in 1979! Yours for only $200K! Suitable for framing!
Venerated as a demi-god (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry Steve.
Re:"refusing to wash.." (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Venerated as a demi-god (Score:3, Insightful)
Basically the bully that got to boss around and fuck over all the nerds, but doesn't actually possess much along the lines of ability, at least i had some respect for bill gates and his skills.
Industrial designer (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I refuse too wash too! (Score:2, Insightful)
It's been done. Think different.
Re:"refusing to wash.." (Score:5, Insightful)
You may want to look up the definition [merriam-webster.com] of the word. It probably has many more meanings than you suspect.
P.S. - why are some people never happy unless they're ripping down someone else?
Re:"refusing to wash.." (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not about deriving pleasure from ripping people down. It's about treating pond scum like Thomas Edison or Steve Jobs like they did something good for society.
Re:Venerated as a demi-god (Score:3, Insightful)
Fact is, most people are pricks. So what?
Re:Steve WHO? (Score:5, Insightful)
Kind of shocking the guys at Slashdot would miss something as big as this. Wonder if they're just too young and inexperienced to know about Woz.
(Yeah, I know they're not -- which means only temporary idiocy could explain them making that mistake!)
Re:"refusing to wash.." (Score:5, Insightful)
He was a user-interaction genius, not necessarily a technical genius. He knew what people would want without them first knowing they wanted it.
Re:Venerated as a demi-god (Score:5, Insightful)
Thing is, if you take all those people who are pricks, and consider them "normal", Jobs is still a prick.
Re:Venerated as a demi-god (Score:1, Insightful)
right now I'm too busy fucking your mom.......
I guess that answers the question whether or not you were dropped on your head as a child.
It always breaks my heart... (Score:5, Insightful)
To hear about a young man on a path to providing joy and happiness to millions, only to lose his way and become a business executive. Where did we fail you Steve. You clearly had the potential. Antisocial, poor hygiene, you had all the traits of a budding young geek. Then somewhere a terrible turn south. Perhaps we'll never know.
Re:"refusing to wash.." (Score:5, Insightful)
To see the same phenomena in a scientific genius just pick up any bio of Issac Newton, he was widely recognised in his own lifetime as genius of the highest caliber by the public, and a common arsehole by his collegues and relatives. "American idol" style fawning over an arsehole who happens to also be a genius is definitely not something new.
Like him or not
I don't go out of my way to read about Jobs, Woz, BillG, et al, but I I like Woz as a person from what I've seen of him, Jobs I'm still undecided. None of that detracts from their status as modern day geniuses.
Re:Only a video game? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not always, but it often is. It's not always about the score, or winners and losers but how the game is played.
No doubt though, you also only watch car racing for the crashes.
Re:Venerated as a demi-god (Score:5, Insightful)
As a previous poster has observed, Jobs was probably a better computer technician in the pure "here's a bucket of ICs and a board and a soldering iron, build a computer" sense than most people here. It's just that his partner was Steve Wozniak, who took that shit to a whole different level.