Steve Jobs' Yacht Impounded In Amsterdam 221
SchrodingerZ writes "The Venus, Steve Jobs' custom-made mega yacht, (valued at 137.5 million dollars), has been impounded in Amsterdam. Philippe Starck, the boat's main designer, had The Venus impounded by debt collectors, after supposedly Starck and his company, Ubik, were paid only 6 million of the 9-million-euro commission. Roelant Klaassen, a lawyer for Ubik, released in a statement that 'These guys [Jobs and Starck] trusted each other, so there wasn't a very detailed contract.' 'The Venus is a floating ode to both Jobs and Starck's minimalist aesthetic. Made entirely out of aluminum, with 40-foot-long floor-to-ceiling windows lining the passenger compartment and seven 27-inch iMacs making up the command center.' The ship was unofficially unveiled in late October, a year after Jobs' death. It now sits dormant in the Port of Amsterdam, until the payment dispute is resolved."
"Valued"? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Valued at 137.5 M$"?
Ahem...
I gather that's what Jobs paid for it, but if his heirs were to put that ugly-ass, unseaworthy monstrosity up for sale, something tells me it would fetch a lot less.
Strange (Score:4, Insightful)
Someone trusted Steve Jobs? Obviously they didn't know him that well.
Hehe, trust Steve Jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
Those that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Steve Jobs was a nasty mean spirited jerk who always cheated everyone whenever he could. Even close friends. In fact, he has no close friends, just victims who like battered wives thought that THIS time he would change. It is quite sad really that the guy himself that he could never get over his past. Shows you that money doesn't really make people happy.
You got to wonder what made him this way, so obsessed about money and power that he would screw supposed friends over and not even see it as wrong. And continue to do that when any new money would just be a number on a bank account. Compared to Jobs, people like Gates, Branson and Buffet seem a lot happier. Not nicer perhaps in their past but at least with age they learned not to be total assholes all the time. It is not like Jobs did not do any charity but more people will remember him as a prick then as a benefactor. Despite the fact that those friends he did screw over ultimately didn't exactly walk away empty handed.
My epitaph will probably read something like "who?" but it is better then "well, he did give us the iPod but he was such a dick". It not even as if he will be remembered as all that evil. It is just the paranoid always looking out for number 1 that people finally were able to vent after he died.
The guy who made an American company actually produce cool gadgets is more remembered for even in death trying to cheat "friends" and all that over a boat whose ugliness shows that whatever Steve Jobs had for talent, an eye for design was not one of them.
And now for the final insult: This post written on a Samsung Android Phone.
Cry havoc and release the Apple fans!
Re:"Valued"? (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah - I looked at the photo. Forty foot long floor to ceiling windows? (in nautical terminology, that would be "forty foot long deck to overhead ports") I guess it's alright to build a boathouse with that kind of crap. A ship? Fek - unless they run the damned thing aground first, it WILL have to weather a storm someday.
Speaking as a squid who has seen green water (not foam or white water, but green water with fish visible in it) submerge the bridge on an Adams class destroyer, I most certainly don't want to weather a real storm on this all-aluminum-and-glass garbage scow.
Re:"Valued"? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's all the windows, for me. That yacht is incapable of weathering a real storm. Twenty foot seas will cave those ridiculous windows in, flood, then capsize the stupid thing.
You sail on it - I don't even want to take a tour while tied to a pier.
Steve doesn't miss it at all... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Valued"? (Score:5, Insightful)
You speak of storms, sir, yet you also speak of destroyers.. note that the military ships you speak of will be standing on station, or going places that are a bit out of the way for various reasons (training perhaps, to ensure that the crew can take the worst of the weather when they need to)
But perhaps you don't have a grasp of the leisure aspect especially of the superyacht set? Those boats, like warships, can also travel at 40kts and have access to satellite images, wave height data and very good weather forecasting. They don't need to be anywhere near bad weather and indeed they usually run away when a violent storm approaches. They don't need to demonstrate how tough they are, and the people who own them really just like to lounge around in calm conditions in the sun. They can cross oceans in the calmest conditions, dodging around the worst weather and they usually do. The focus of design of such a yacht is not to endure terrible weather while carrying goods halfway around the world, nor to blockade a port in all weathers. The focus is that the owner is noticed, and envied for their wealth. That this boat is ugly is neither here nor there, it was custom built for 137 MILLION dollars and everybody knows it. The point was that people would look and say Oooh, that belongs to Steve Jobs, I can only dream I could be rich like him.
That's one ugly yacht (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:"Valued"? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, more or less my point exactly...
what were they doing out there in the face of a storm? They thought the ship would be safer at sea but they sure as hell weren't capable of running away from the storm track at 40kts. Even at 25kts, they could have been in florida the day before, or they could have gone the other way and been halfway to europe.
They were on a scheduled crossing with beancounters in control (not in command) and the captain was all 'full steam ahead' when icebergs had been reported.. and note that RADAR had not yet been invented nor did he have access to satellite imagery
They were out on the job going somewhere because they had to get there, in the worst storm the captain had ever seen! leisure superyachts have a different lifestyle, they don't do that.
Except that in these modern times, there are plenty of leisure vessels that are seaworthy for the conditions they are used in but not capable of withstanding a hurricane. Is every person who rows across a calm bay on a summer day a fool, because they didn't have a survival suit and an EPIRB on board? Every sailing boat does not need to be equipped for Cape Horn, when they are only going to Catalina Island for the weekend..
Re:"Valued"? (Score:2, Insightful)
Someone yelled what you're yelling, and now people are repeating this over the internets.
Runaway, you are a copy-pasting idiot, not a ship builder, yet you are pretending to make an intelligent comment by a ship builder.
Guess what, karma begging moron, one can build a seaworthy yacht with those windows:
http://www.liveyachting.com/motor-yacht-netanya-8
Guess what, skyscrapers catch even more wind, and they have vertical windows.
Guess what, you can design a window to cope with such minor forces, you can even design them to go into fucking space, and back.
Really, everybody with the "Oooh the windows will cave in and it will SINK" comments, and everyone who upmodded that to "5 Insightful" really needs a complete brain transplant. In any case you should be demoted from slashdot, go back to digg.
Re:"Valued"? (Score:2, Insightful)
blah blah blah RADAR blah blah blah RADAR blah blah blah
The USS Spruance once ran into Andros Island. She hit so hard she broke off her main mast.
In the middle of the day. They had, get this, RADAR. They even had EYEBALLS.
The best crews. The best training. No pressure to be somewhere quickly. Yet shit still JUST HAPPENS.
You are clueless. You really are FUCKING CLUELESS.
The Bounty could go 25 knots? No it fucking couldn't. Maybe 16 or 17. With a tailwind. In good seas. In any swells at all that thing would be lucky to do 12 knots.
Ever been on a 1,000-foot long, 100,000-ton vessel that gets smacked by a wave so damn hard the whole ship rings like a bell and the hull plates on the port quarter get stove in?
Shit happens out there. And when it does, all it takes is one mistake and lots of people can die.
And all the electronics available "in these modern times" (I'm LOL at that - literally) won't matter one bit. Cuz the ocean don't fucking care how "modern" you are when it swallows your toy boat with all its pretty windows whole. (OK, they're BUTT UGLY windows, but the point still stands)
That yacht - no matter its intended "lifestyle" - is an OCEANGOING VESSEL, but it's built in such a way that it simply can not withstand the rigors of what WILL happen out in the ocean. And all the talismans available "in these modern times" can't protect it.
Might as well put a bone in your nose.
Cuz the ocean don't fucking care.
Damn sheltered idiots, thinking just because modern conveniences have made their life easy that there aren't places on this planet that just don't fucking care about that and will KILL them.
"Oh, we'll just avoid that."
Not out in the middle of the ocean you fucking won't.
Re:"Valued"? (Score:4, Insightful)
You mention windows withstanding wind stronger than a ship has to withstand at sea. Your ignorance is two fold. Winds at sea are every bit as strong as they are anywhere above land. But - the wind is not the big deal. IT'S THE WATER!!!
1) Windows can be built to withstand bomb blasts, but that kind of glass is extraordinarily expensive. Aluminum is orders of magnitude cheaper.
2) You went where your mission required, even if it meant sailing straight through a typhoon. Private yachts avoid large storms.
Re:"Valued"? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've sailed on 50 ft yachts with windows on the side and been fine. These windows aren't standard glass like your bathroom mirror, these are custom engineered for the job they do, and they can easily handle some waves hitting them.
Re:"Valued"? (Score:4, Insightful)