Steve Jobs' Missing License Plate 579
An anonymous reader writes "One of the famous stories about Steve Jobs is that he used to drive around in a Mercedez Benz sports car with no license plates, and that he would sometimes park in Handicapped spots on Apple's Cupertino campus. Jon Callas, who used to work on OS security at Apple, explains how Jobs was able to do this legally."
Legal loopholes (Score:5, Insightful)
He's okay with exploiting legal loopholes but when people want to jailbreak their phones, it's all of the sudden "let's get litigious and sue anyone that does this!"
Sounds like a Slashdotter (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Sounds like a Slashdotter (Score:5, Insightful)
Corporations and people are different. Different rules ought to apply according to those differences. Do we need inspectors to visit your home kitchen to make sure you're cooking all your meat to 165 degrees and don't leave food out? No, of course not. You have the choice to prepare your own food however you'd like because you're only taking the risk upon yourself. But they'd damn well better inspect factory farms and commercial restaurants as those have the potential to affect thousands of people.
It isn't about "small government" or "big government". Those are just slogans. It's about applying the policy that suits the situation without deciding that it has to be one way or another ahead of time.
Re:Legal loopholes (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I was exaggerating. They did, however, get in a tiff when a judge ruled jail-breaking was not illegal nor did it violate the DMCA
Re: (Score:2)
I was exaggerating.
That is not an exageration, that is a lie. An exageration is "they sued 30 people" when they sued one. Saying apple gets litigious and sues when they never did, though, is just a lie.
They did, however, get in a tiff when a judge ruled jail-breaking was not illegal nor did it violate the DMCA
Source?
Re:Legal loopholes (Score:4, Informative)
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/02/apple-says-jailbreaking-illegal [eff.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Thank you.
Re:Legal loopholes (Score:5, Funny)
10 PRINT "They did, however, get in a tiff when a judge ruled jail-breaking was not illegal nor did it violate the DMCA"
there.
Re: (Score:2)
The law is what you can successfully litigate.
Re: (Score:2)
"Quick! Let's turn the conversation to jail breaking!"
Re: (Score:2)
So if one is trying to secure a syste
Re: (Score:2)
"Compact Car Only" is an excuse to stuff an extra dozen parking spots. Nothing more.
Besides, compared to an 18 wheeler, my 3/4 ton pickup is pretty compact. It's always relative.
Pictures vs words (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I think the key thing to keep in mind here is that being a visionary and being a douchebag are not mutually exclusive.
OWS (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Does "OWS" stand for "false dilemma" in your native language?
Re:OWS (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention getting a liver transplant with full-blown pancreatic cancer* which had already metastasized**, possibly due to his unwillingness to undergo surgery at an earlier date***, by adding himself to the transplant list in multiple states****. And he actually bad-mouthed Bill Gates for doing full-time philanthropy... I'm no Gates fan, especially during his reign at MS, but give me a break.
* Generally a no-no, but I guess they make exceptions for billionaires.
** According to second-hand accounts, though it's unlikely he'd need a new liver unless the cancer had already spread. And transplanting an organ due to secondary (metastasized) cancer is a HUGE no-no, but again, I guess they make exceptions for billionaires.
*** There's no way to know for sure if his delay made any difference, but regardless, it's almost as bad as giving a lung transplant to a patient who keeps smoking after their diagnosis.
**** Not illegal, but most people can't afford to do it.
Re: (Score:2)
That 767 it just for parties. It's completely different.
Parking in Handicap (Score:3)
Re:Parking in Handicap (Score:5, Insightful)
There was no reserved parking at apple. It was one of those "round table" things - first come first served, no one felt superior about their parking place. Very frustrating since there wasn't visitor parking either. You're really left to the wolves if you show up at 11 :)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If I was part of the board and was aware of these actions, I would just turn the CEO parking spot into an extra handicap one.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure he has a reserved spot closest to his office. However, I imagine he occasionally meets with people at one of the other 6 buildings on campus and I can believe that he doesn't have a reserved spot at each of those.
Re: (Score:3)
can we please stop the steve jobs postings? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You're probably best untagging 'Apple' in the prefs until after the holidays.
Reminds me, I have two unopened tubes of Think Different posters to put up on eBay.
We built him up, time to tear him down (Score:2)
Seems to be following the standard course for famous people, they get puffed up to near god like levels and then we kick them into the gutter as everyone with a bone to pick gets their 15 minutes of fame.
While I like some of his products and his influence on design is without question I never would excuse half what he is rumored to have done. That being said, he's dead. Give it a few years and maybe we will get closer to the truth
Re: (Score:2)
Actually.... this is the first Jobs story that hasn't made the song "cult of personality" stick in my head. This one is at least instructive of the truth that the laws in this country are written for the rich to take advantage of.
I randomly stumbled on discussion of this in a gun forum talking about ownership of automatic weapons in the US. Its not that they are illegal to own, its just that they are impossible to legally own unless you can afford to jump through the legal loopholes and get special approval
Don't Hate (Score:5, Funny)
He's still a douche. (Score:2)
I don't care what loopholes he's able to use, doing that is still a douche move.
(Typed from my Apple Wireless Keyboard into a Safari textbox running on Mac OS X Lion on my 27" iMac. I love the products, but the more I learn about Jobs the more disgusted I become at him.)
The man was fracking prick.
If you have money, there is always loopholes (Score:2)
He couldn't use a License Plate (Score:2)
Why should he have to use a license plate?
Have you seen the License plates in California? They have rounded corners and limited buttons.
confirmation bias (Score:4, Informative)
How to park illegally (Score:4, Insightful)
what a dick (Score:4, Insightful)
People who get busted for parking in handicapped stalls should be forced to use a wheelchair for a week instead of a ticket. It's inconsiderate, lazy and just plain douchebaggery. Don't care who you are.
Simple Explaination (Score:4)
Steve Jobs was an ass. I know people like him that don't think they should have to obey the rules they don't like, but don't have the money to get away with most of it. Steve Jobs did and believed he knew better than anyone else, so he did what he wanted when he wanted regardless of the impact it had on others.
I don't understand why people worship this guy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Gates. This guy is a brilliant programmer
Err, what?
He can code, yes. I've yet to see evidence of anything even resembling brilliance. What code of his is actually known to be written by him (and not bought elsewhere) is well within the capabilities of average programmers of the respective time.
(which Steve Jobs could never do)
AFAIK he never claimed to. He's most definitely not the nicest guy around. Then again, neither is Gates. Oh yeah, he's trying to whitewash his name now with billions that he's taken from society in the form of monopoly rent. When people give away money, neve
not trying to defend these actions... (Score:4, Interesting)
But this brought up an interesting question. I know that California state law requires a certain number of handicapped spaces for all public parking lots and structures (public including lots intended for customers and employees), but I haven't been able to find anything about enforcing handicapped parking in private lots. Presumably, the city parking police wouldn't be cruising through a privately-owned campus like Apple's. Could an employee (or passerby) call to report such a violation? Or would the entity that owns the lot have to invite the police to enforce the handicapped parking space?
Absolutely an asshole move to do this, I'm just wondering, legally, how it works to enforce handicapped parking in private lots. Presumably one of those who keyed the car might have considered calling to report the parking violation, so I'm thinking that the municipality's parking police aren't allowed to do anything unless the owner of the property invites them to do so (which most shopping centers etc. would likely do).
Handicapped spots are poor design (Score:3)
Why? Because there are always too many or too few. Just like the fact that a stopped clock is right twice a day, you can almost never have just the right number of handicapped spots. So cities usually force businesses to err on the side of having too many, and that violates the Zero One Infinity rule [wikipedia.org] and represents a waste of land and money.
A better design would be more dynamic and responsive to current occupancy rates. Rather than setting some arbitrary number of parking spaces close to the entrance as handicapped spaces, designate zero handicapped spaces, but make sure the spaces close to the entrance never completely fill up [streetfilms.org]. Then there will always be a parking space near the entrance available for any handicapped person who needs to park there.
Perhaps Steve was simply annoyed at having to live with the poor design.
Keyed (Score:3)
Man.
How frickin' cool would it be to know you were one of the people who keyed Steve Jobs' 500 SL?
I'd take a picture of it and use it as my logo.
Re:Some should of keyed that car in the handicap s (Score:4, Informative)
According to the article, people did key his car for that
Re: (Score:2)
Should "of"?
Re: (Score:2)
You don't go to jail for a trivial infraction, you might go to jail for being a habitual scofflaw, based on some anecdotes I've heard, that would require hundreds of tickets... the lack of license plate is a pretty effective legal block to accumulating hundreds of proven tickets.
Re:What does "flaunt law" mean? (Score:4, Informative)
He had cancer for 20 years?
Re: (Score:2)
How long was he dying of cancer? The article states that he'd been doing this since at least the early 80s.
Re: (Score:2)
It means the previous poster was a douche of the sort who thinks 'consensus of opinion' is English. In this case, the intended word probably was "flout."
Re: (Score:3)
I suspect the AC confused "flaunt" with "flout". Not too surprising, as it's a rarely used word these days.
Re:What does "flaunt law" mean? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
TRANSLATION: I don't want to read first hand information so I'll just believe what I want to say is true.
Re: (Score:2)
Doesn't matter what you feel, the fact was he didn't have a permit to park in those spots and was thus in violation of law. Whether or not he could have had a permit (had he applied) doesn't matter. A double amputee couldn't park there without one.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah it's a good thing he didn't let his fortune change him...
Swapping luxury vehicles every six months, parking scofflaw, ...
Re:Legally... (Score:5, Insightful)
You are making the assumption his ego wasn't this big before he made his money. From all indications, it was. His fortune didn't change him. It just let him act on some of his impulses.
Re: (Score:2)
Good point.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah it's a good thing he didn't let his fortune change him...
Swapping luxury vehicles every six months, parking scofflaw, ...
He did the illegal parking and tagless thing beforehe had his fortune. Getting his fortune just enabled him to use a legal loophole to keep doing what he always did in a legal fashion.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah it's a good thing he didn't let his fortune change him...
Swapping luxury vehicles every six months, parking scofflaw, ...
I don't know, a friend of mine does similar things (though not the parking in handicapped spots bit). When he buys a new car (which isn't terribly frequent, but he has bought two in the last three or four years) he doesn't put the plates on until he is actually pulled over and told he needs to (so far hasn't received a ticket for it). His minivan made it about 8 months without plates, his new Tundra about a year. During that time he makes full use of the ability to avoid bridge tolls by using the FasTrak la
Re:Legally... (Score:4, Insightful)
The laws only apply to the 99%.
Re: (Score:3)
If you even have to ask, you're not rich enough.
Handicapped tickets can end up with jail time for (Score:2)
Handicapped tickets can end up with jail time for people who doing all the time and I bet there are hard ass judges who will give some like the jobs the MAX time in jail.
Re: (Score:2)
So, err, how would they give him time in jail for parking on a handicapped spot... on restricted private property?
I can paint a pair of lines in my driveway and a big handicapped symbol between them, and park there all I want to. It would make me appear to be a dick for doing it (then again, some neighbors might get a laugh out of it), but it's perfectly legal for me to do that. Same with any other private property that isn't an obvious publicly-'open' store or retail outlet.
It would depend on California la
Re: (Score:2)
I was under the impression that shopping centers, movie theaters, etc. are required to provided a certain number of handicap parking spaces based on the sized of the lot, etc. Probably a requirement of ADA and state laws. Not sure how it applies to a strictly private campus, but given that normal workplaces have to comply with all sorts of ADA related requirements, I wouldn't be surprised if they also had to provide handicap spaces.
A lot of this story doesn't make sense. As others have pointed out, one woul
Re: (Score:2)
Most systems should be able to give you a ticket based on your VIN, too, which is visible through the windshield...
Well, assuming it isn't covered up. As far as I know there is no law against covering the VIN, only removing or obliterating it.
Re: (Score:3)
If the police don't have access to the property, then obviously they won't be writing tickets. A handicapped person who does have access to the lot might be able to sue Apple though because California allows private citizens to sue for ADA violations.
I believe ADA Title III has all the details.
BTW - your driveway scenario doesn't fit the parameters of Title III unless it's the driveway for a com
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If you RTFA you'd know that he's done it since the early 80s.
Re: (Score:3)
Karma can be a bitch sometimes.
Re: (Score:2)
Yah... like the sole comment on that page said... 'there's a reason they're always empty, even handicapped people don't want to park there, they just want to get treated the same as everyone else!' /sarcasm
Re: (Score:2)
It's a quote from a Seinfeld episode [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:2)
What a BS comment. Many of the legitimate users won't be able to use regular spots because they need to increased width of the handicapped spots. Ever seen a wheelchair user get out of his car?
But these reckless abusers of handicapped parking spots are never short on explanations and justifications for their sad behavior.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Take the bus, then, if you're mad about being stuck in traffic.
Re: (Score:3)
How does that make bus lanes not a stupid idea?
You might as well just block off another lane in the highway and then say "if you don't like it take the subway." Never mind that the closest mass transit stop is a mile from where you're going, we want to increase mass transit usage by artificially promoting highly inefficient use of public resources.
Re: (Score:3)
Go back. There's a few dozen comments on that page now, and most of them don't know it's a Seinfeld quote/joke.
Re: (Score:2)
He wasn't dying of cancer in 2001.
Re: (Score:2)
Where are all the supposed Libertarians here on /. pointing out what a government intrusion it is to tell private companies what kind of parking spaces they should have, let alone jailing people for not complying with them?
So moved.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's not just private companies required to have gimp spots. I own a condo in Falls Church Virginia, aka The People's Republic of Falls Church. A few years back our HOA was told that a repaving permit for our parking lot would not be granted unless we added a couple of handicapped spots. We had to take the 3 closest spots to the condos and make them into 2 handicapped spots. We lost our visitor spots and we had some seriously pissed off owners who wanted to take the city to court on 5th amendment grounds. B
Re: (Score:3)
Ha! That would be awesome! I'd love to hear a lawyer try to explain why
"nor be deprived of... property, without due process of law"
applies to situations governed by the process of law. That would be hilarious!
Re: (Score:3)
Re:"Someone like Jobs"? (Score:4)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
He did steal a liver, which kind of offsets the dying thing IMO, and it appears that he did this before he got cancer.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, that's almost a certainty. The number of patients needing organs pretty much always outweighs the number of organs available.
The urgency for the organ and the viability of the patient are two factors that go into the list. He did have a pretty urgent need, but he also had low viability, so the organ was wasted on him. They also tend
Re:We need a lot less handicapped spots... (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, the prime parking spots are on the other side of the lot, enabling you to get a healthy walk before getting back in the car.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:We need a lot less handicapped spots... (Score:5, Informative)
You may also see me parked in the handicapped space, get out of the truck all by myself and walk in somewhere. I never abuse the sticker, in that case, my dad is already inside and I parked there for when I bring him back out. Same thing if you see me walking to my truck by myself, chances are I was either dropping him off or I had to run back to my truck to get some paperwork we forgot or something.
My sister has brain problems too... looks perfectly normal but goes into seizures randomly throughout the day. She has a sticker because a parking lot is a dangerous place to fall and seize in (see my dad getting hit in the wheelchair). No, she can't drive. Don't be so quick to judge people when you don't know their circumstances. Yes, there are plenty of people that abuse them (and yes, they are very easy to get), but there are a lot of legitimate people that do need those spots even if you can't tell from watching them for the 30-60 seconds it takes for them to walk inside.
Re:We need a lot less handicapped spots... (Score:5, Informative)
One thing that DOES really irk the hell out of me... is when people park in a handicapped space an the handicapped person stays in the car while an able-bodied person runs into a store or whatever. THAT is abusing the sticker unless the disabled person is going to come into the store themselves at some point (maybe they were finishing eating because they have to be careful how they swallow, maybe they had to deal with a colostomy/incontinence issue or something, maybe they need to adjust their brace(s), etc).
I'm also not sure where all these open handicapped spots are that people complain about. It can often be difficult to find spots in the place where you need them the most - namely hospitals (40 or so total in a 6 floor parking garage at our main local hospital) and small doctors offices (3 at his primary care doctor, 2 at his podiatrist, etc). Even the Walmarts, malls, home improvement stores, etc here are often full. Then again, according to the census, 38% of the regional population is considered "disabled," which I just find to be insane (census currently provides an (X) but last time I checked and the data was available, it was 38 or 39, which I only remember because it floored me then).
Re: (Score:3)
No it is not as bad as using the handicapped toilet because it is free. I am under no legal obligation to not use the handicapped toilet.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Uh, I'm pretty sure he didn't have terminal cancer for the last 20 years.
The RDF alters the flow of time.
Re: (Score:2)
The campus has multiple buildings and my guess is that while he does have his own parking spot just outside his personal office, he occasionally parks just outside one of the neighboring buildings when he is meeting with people there.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually...depends on the city/state you're in.
I was living in one place...where they broad cast it on the news, that people were getting out of tickets given them for parking in a marked handicapped space.
Trouble is..those paces ONLY had the markings on the pavement. By the law of that locality, it wasn't officially a handicapped spot unless it had the sign posted in front of the space too (s
Re: (Score:3)
Didn't you notice the "Kramer" at the beginning? It's a quote from a Seinfeld episode [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
5. License plates ruin the look of the car
Re: (Score:3)
Probably, like so many laws, license plate laws mainly cause issues for the law abiding. Expired tags? Get a fine. No tags at all? Cop probably assumes you just bought the vehicle and moves on.