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I learned electronics as a kid by messing around with old radios that were easy to tamper with because they were designed to be fixed.
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Walter Isaacson |
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89cc518
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David Brooks, "Our Founding Yuppie," Weekly Standard, Oct. 23, 2000, 31. The word "meritocracy" is an argument-starter, and I have employed it sparingly in this book. It is often used loosely to denote a vision of social mobility based on merit and diligence, like Franklin's. The word was coined by British social thinker Michael Young (later to become, somewhat ironically, Lord Young of Darlington) in his 1958 book The Rise of the Meritocra..
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Walter Isaacson |
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4318e89
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Those who met with greater economic success in life were responsible to help those in genuine need; but those who from lack of virtue failed to pull their own weight could expect no help from society.
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Walter Isaacson |
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07c68ea
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Printers are educated in the belief that when men differ in opinion, both sides ought equally to have the advantage of being heard by the public; and that when Truth and Error have fair play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter.
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Walter Isaacson |
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fde82d3
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Striving for social justice is the most valuable thing to do in life."27"
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Walter Isaacson |
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d45b61f
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Hubble then made an even more amazing discovery. By measuring the red shift of the stars' spectra (which is the light wave counterpart to the Doppler effect for sound waves), he realized that the galaxies were moving away from us. There were at least two possible explanations for the fact that distant stars in all directions seemed to be flying away from us: (1) because we are the center of the universe, something that since the time of Cop..
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Walter Isaacson |
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6002310
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Vision without execution is hallucination.
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Walter Isaacson |
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The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.
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Walter Isaacson |
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865dc11
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He told us to go back to the roots of the original 1984 Macintosh, an all-in-one consumer appliance," recalled Schiller. "That meant design and engineering had to work together."
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Walter Isaacson |
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5fca45c
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La sencillez es la maxima sofisticacion>>.
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Walter Isaacson |
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Even though they were not fervent about their faith, Jobs's parents wanted him to have a religious upbringing, so they took him to the Lutheran church most Sundays. That came to an end when he was thirteen. In July 1968 Life magazine published a shocking cover showing a pair of starving children in Biafra. Jobs took it to Sunday school and confronted the church's pastor. "If I raise my finger, will God know which one I'm going to raise even..
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Walter Isaacson |
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87f31e4
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I'm not sure," Atkinson replied. "Maybe six months." It was a wildly optimistic assessment, but also a motivating one."
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Walter Isaacson |
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818b8d9
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Jobs had not tempered his way of dealing with employees. "He applied charm or public humiliation in a way that in most cases proved to be pretty effective," Tribble recalled. But sometimes it wasn't. One engineer, David Paulsen, put in ninety-hour weeks for the first ten months at NeXT. He quit when "Steve walked in one Friday afternoon and told us how unimpressed he was with what we were doing." When Business Week asked him why he treated ..
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Walter Isaacson |
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3363c84
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That spring Larry Ellison saw Amelio at a party and introduced him to the technology journalist Gina Smith, who asked how Apple was doing. "You know, Gina, Apple is like a ship," Amelio answered. "That ship is loaded with treasure, but there's a hole in the ship. And my job is to get everyone to row in the same direction." Smith looked perplexed and asked, "Yeah, but what about the hole?" From then on, Ellison and Jobs joked about the parab..
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Walter Isaacson |
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d5af3fe
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summer of 2004, I got a phone call from Steve Jobs. He had been scattershot friendly to me over the years, with occasional bursts of intensity, especially when he was launching a new product
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Walter Isaacson |
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9031a67
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As Franklin recounted: He composed it in these words, "John Thompson, hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money," with a figure of a hat subjoined. But he thought he would submit it to his friends for their amendments. The first he showed it to thought the word "Hatter" tautologous, because followed by the words "makes hats," which showed he was a hatter. It was struck out. The next observed that the word "makes" might as well be omitted..
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Walter Isaacson |
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576768e
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Eddy Cue, who was in charge of the store, predicted that Apple would sell a million songs in six months. Instead the iTunes Store sold a million songs in six days.
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Walter Isaacson |
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d6959f9
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When shown his office, he was asked what equipment he might need. "A desk or table, a chair, paper and pencils," he replied. "Oh yes, and a large wastebasket, so I can throw away all my mistakes."
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Walter Isaacson |
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While gambling at checkers with some shipmates, he formulated an "infallible rule," which was that "if two persons equal in judgment play for a considerable sum, he that loves money most shall lose; his anxiety for the success of the game confounds him." The rule, he decided, applied to other battles; a person who is too fearful will end up performing defensively and thus fail to seize offensive advantages."
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Walter Isaacson |
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elected directly by the people based on proportional representation. The House would select members of an upper chamber, the president, and the judiciary. Franklin had long favored a legislature with only one directly elected house, seeing little reason to place checks on the democratic will of
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Walter Isaacson |
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7e28e65
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In doing so, he learned one of his pragmatic lessons about jealousy and modesty: he found that people were reluctant to support a "proposer of any useful project that might be supposed to raise one's reputation."
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Walter Isaacson |
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7e2601c
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Temperance: Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation. Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation. Order: Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time. Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve. Frugality: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; (i.e., waste nothing). Industry: Lose no time; be alway..
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Walter Isaacson |
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efc3ff1
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The new Pennsylvania Fireplaces, as he called them, were initially somewhat popular, at PS5 apiece, and papers around the colonies were filled with testimonials. "They ought to be called, both in justice and gratitude, Mr. Franklin's stoves," declared one letter writer in the Boston Evening Post. "I believe all who have experienced the comfort and benefit of them will join with me that the author of this happy invention merits a statue." Th..
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Walter Isaacson |
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5c2e3cf
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Everyone must, from time to time, make a sacrifice on the altar of stupidity, to please the deity and mankind.
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Walter Isaacson |
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In it he argued that unrestrained capitalism produced great disparities of wealth, cycles of boom and depression, and festering levels of unemployment. The system encouraged selfishness instead of cooperation, and acquiring wealth rather than serving others. People were educated for careers rather than for a love of work and creativity. And political parties became corrupted by political contributions from owners of great capital.
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Walter Isaacson |
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Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see..
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Walter Isaacson |
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Jobs and his team went to a Xerox dealer to look at the Star as soon as it was released. But he deemed it so worthless that he told his colleagues they couldn't spend the money to buy one. "We were very relieved," he recalled. "We knew they hadn't done it right, and that we could--at a fraction of the price." A few weeks later he called Bob Belleville, one of the hardware designers on the Xerox Star team. "Everything you've ever done in you..
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Walter Isaacson |
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47dbbce
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Should we be unable to find a way to honest cooperation and honest pacts with the Arabs," he wrote Weizmann in 1929, "then we have learned absolutely nothing during our 2,000 years of suffering."
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Walter Isaacson |
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1b72ba7
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The two great Semitic peoples," he said, "have a great common future." If the Jews did not assure that both sides lived in harmony, he warned friends in the Zionist movement, the struggle would haunt them in decades to come.78 Once again, he was labeled naive."
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Walter Isaacson |
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7661c1c
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We thus arrive at the important result: Events that are simultaneous with reference to the embankment are not simultaneous with respect to the train," said Einstein. The principle of relativity says that there is no way to decree that the embankment is "at rest" and the train "in motion." We can say only that they are in motion relative to each other. So there is no "real" or "right" answer. There is no way to say that any two events are "a..
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Walter Isaacson |
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e51684e
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Wozniak could make one of the computers he had been sketching on
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Walter Isaacson |
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If there is no love, what then?"2"
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Walter Isaacson |
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I hate it when people call themselves "entrepreneurs" when what they're really trying to do is launch a startup and then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on. They're unwilling to do the work it takes to build a real company, which is the hardest work in business."
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Walter Isaacson |
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e8c7c10
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It was a perfect school for Einstein. The teaching was based on the philosophy of a Swiss educational reformer of the early nineteenth century, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, who believed in encouraging students to visualize images. He also thought it important to nurture the "inner dignity" and individuality of each child. Students should be allowed to reach their own conclusions, Pestalozzi preached, by using a series of steps that began wit..
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Walter Isaacson |
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2570423
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Visual understanding is the essential and only true means of teaching how to judge things correctly," Pestalozzi wrote, and "the learning of numbers and language must be definitely subordinated." 58"
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Walter Isaacson |
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2909479
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Brunelleschi's successor as a theorist of linear perspective was another of the towering Renaissance polymaths, Leon Battista Alberti (1404 -1472), who refined many of Brunelleschi's experiments and extended his discoveries about perspective. An artist, architect, engineer, and writer, Alberti was like Leonardo in many ways: both were illegitimate sons of prosperous fathers, athletic and good-looking, never-married, and fascinated by everyt..
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Walter Isaacson |
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588383d
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I do not know the substance of the considerations and recommendations which Dr. Szilard proposes to submit to you," Einstein wrote. "The terms of secrecy under which Dr. Szilard is working at present do not permit him to give me information about his work; however, I understand that he now is greatly concerned about the lack of adequate contact between scientists who are doing this work and those members of your Cabinet who are responsible ..
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Walter Isaacson |
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bdab527
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is to read things that are not yet on the page. Edwin Land of Polaroid talked about the intersection of the humanities and science. I like that intersection. There's something magical about that place. There are a lot of people innovating, and that's not the main distinction of my career. The reason Apple resonates with people is that there's a deep current of humanity in our innovation. I think great artists and great engineers are similar..
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Walter Isaacson |
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handled that,
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Walter Isaacson |
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What's on your iPod?
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Walter Isaacson |
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69615c4
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Walter Isaacson, the CEO of the Aspen Institute,
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Walter Isaacson |
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27e8265
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there, so Jobs left a message asking him to come to dinner the following evening. He would also invite the
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Walter Isaacson |
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Another way to describe the Second Law is in terms of entropy, the degree of disorder and randomness in a system. Any spontaneous process tends to increase the entropy of a system.
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Walter Isaacson |
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b8312ad
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Under Steve Jobs, there's zero tolerance for not performing," its CEO said. At another point, when VLSI Technology was having trouble delivering enough chips on time, Jobs stormed into a meeting and started shouting that they were "fucking dickless assholes." The company ended up getting the chips to Apple on time, and its executives made jackets that boasted on the back, "Team FDA."
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steve-jobs
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Walter Isaacson |