Sure I am. Other companies sell hardware that is comparably nice and that if you sold a Macbook Air with Windows on it that nobody would pay extra for it compared to equivalent Dell or HP units. There are Android phones that are just as nicely designed as the iPhone or at least near enough as makes no difference. I've seen laptops that are just as nice as the Macbook Air. The nice hardware is really just a form of marketing. Make no mistake, it's very nice and it no doubt contributes measurably to Apple's success but it isn't the core reason why people buy Apple products.

What makes a Mac special is OS X. What makes an iPhone special is iOS. Take those away and you'll see Apple's profit margins evaporate faster than you can say "shareholder lawsuit".

The root cause of all problems like this is human error. If you haven't reached the place where there was a mistake by a human then you haven't gotten to the root of the problem. Might be bad machine design. Might be faulty programming. Might be operator error. Might be disregard or ignorance of safety protocols. Might be some combination of the above or a few things I haven't mentioned. But any failure in a machine made by man ultimately is the fault of a human. Might be an innocent mistake and the failure may not necessitate punishment but it will be human error make no mistake.

People don't pay more for Apples devices because of the aesthetics - not much anyway. They're nice and all but what people really are paying for is the software. Apple at it's core is a software company. If you put Windows on a Mac or Android on an iPhone (easily done) you'd have no idea if it was made by Apple or Dell unless you looked at the logo. Apple doesn't make their own hardware but they do make their own software and that is what people pay extra for. Their hardware is nice but nothing really special. They just won't sell you their software (usually) unless it is attached to a piece of hardware.

Don't believe me that Apple is a software company? Here's Steve Jobs himself saying so.

They've made a number of half hearted stabs at making servers over the years but they've never really been serious about it.

No company of any consequence is built by just one person. The error in your argument is you are presuming that Jobs couldn't have found another path or partner to success without Woz. Given that Jobs built three companies (Apple, NeXT and Pixar) it seems somewhat reasonable that chances of Jobs succeeding without Woz would be fairly high. We wouldn't have Apple but perhaps we would have had something else.

Whether Jobs is inspiring to you or not is a matter of personal choice and I don't disagree. Clearly he was very inspiring to a lot of people. It's ok if you aren't one of them. Personally I respect what he accomplished professionally (hard not to) but he's not someone I idolize or care to emulate personally. I doubt I would have liked to work with/for the man.

There are more ways to improve the world than through philanthropy. As just one small example: the iPhone I have sitting on my desk allows me to easily Facetime with my mother in Texas who is in a nursing home in hospice. I assure you that I regard that as an improvement to the world and Mr. Jobs is in no small way responsible for that being possible. Yes the guy was a major dick in some very tangible ways but to claim he's done nothing positive really isn't fair or accurate.

That's because very few of us will ever have such an opportunity. While I think most people are generally good and decent, experience has taught me that an awful lot of those same good and decent people are not above temptation. There are a lot of people (including some reading this most likely) who would screw over a friend for financial gain. People will steal if they think they can get away with it. I think Abraham Lincoln said it best - "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."

I think you are firmly in the minority there. I have huge respect for Woz but he's just not all that interesting of a guy. I've read his autobiography and honestly it was pretty dull and I'm firmly in the group that should be the target audience. Furthermore without Jobs you'd have never heard of Woz. Possibly the reverse is true as well but I have a strong suspicious Jobs would have been more likely of the two to succeed without the other. I say that meaning no disrespect to Woz at all. Great guy, great engineer, but he is a perfect example of catching lighting in a bottle.

The only people who think that Woz's work is more interesting are the sort of people (like us) who read slashdot. Jobs is a FAR more complex and challenging and intriguing character. The fact that you may not like him doesn't make him less interesting - quite the opposite. Flawed characters make for interesting stories. Nice guys doing the right thing is pretty boring most of the time. Nice but not a compelling story.

Which is a more interesting take than watching Woz and just thinking "what a nice guy" all the time.

Depends on the kid. I don't think you can realistically push anyone to be a global tech icon. That has to come from within and requires more than a tiny bit of luck. What you can do though is help provide opportunity and structure and see what happens.

Nothing wrong with what you describe but it won't change the world either. Some people want more out of their career than a comfortable life. Speaking for myself I've founded several companies, have run several others and I very much enjoy what I do for a living. I don't just want a basic 9-5 job with a few weeks vacation and a 401K. I want something more than that. I want to create successful companies. You aren't going to do that playing it safe or doing the comfortable easy thing.

Some discoveries. Very slowly. With very limited flexibility and substantially reduced spinoff benefits. Robots are a great way to explore some things but they are not the preferred way to explore everything.

How digestible the plant is by people in space to start with. How the plant interacts with humans in a different environment for another. You cannot discover a lot of things that relate to humans without a human being present.

Who said anything about making something deficient? Strawman argument you have there my friend. Don't try to put words in my mouth.

Of course we'll invent good spinoff technologies. But they will be DIFFERENT technologies. There are some technologies that will only and can only be developed if you plan to send people. And this robot vs human thing is a false dilemma. It does not have to be an either/or proposition. We can and should do both. Hell we could triple NASA's budget by taking the money from our military. The obstacles are not financial or even technical, they are merely political.

As for which technologies are best I think that is a matter of opinion, not fact and you didn't clarify what criteria establishes "best". Best by what measure? And even if you come up with a measure I'm not sure that's a very useful thing to do.

There already is a tangible benefit to sending people. I outlined a large number of them. It will also take us decades to get to the point where sending people is a realistic option. The NASA administrator was interviewed on Startalk radio recently and he claims their on pace (funding permitting) to get boots on Mars in the 2030s. I'm extremely dubious that we will get there that fast but that's ok. If it takes longer so be it. What I think would be a tragedy would be to stop funding the research for how to get a person there.

I never claimed that we should. Not sure who's argument you are responding to but it certainly isn't mine. We should send people to Mars to explore. There isn't a robot you can design that can do the sort of exploring that a person can do. Robots should supplement the experience, not be an avatar for it.

Sure, why not? Raising kids is a lot of work and pretty important to the well being of our species. Why not allow people the time to do it well? Honestly I'm fairly disgusted by how little help is given to new parents here in the US. (close to none)

One year is as arbitrary as three. And you admit that spending some time with the child when they are young is a good thing so what really is your problem with maternity leave? Just because it isn't the amount you are accustomed to doesn't mean it is wrong.

NASA has blown up plenty of rockets before SpaceX. This rocket failure won't be the last. Let's not get all chicken little because one rocket blew up.

You get the most sophisticated tool we possess on Mars. One that can make discoveries orders of magnitude faster than any other tool we possess. You also learn a TON along the way about human physiology, botany, medicine, shielding, agriculture, and countless other subjects not relevant to mechanical robots that you would not otherwise discover. You'll also inspire a lot of people to get into science and engineering - far more than any robot mission ever could.

If you want to talk spinoff technology from manned spaceflight, so far we have infrared ear thermometers, ventricular assist devices, artificial limb enhancements, "invisible" braces, scratch resistant lenses, memory foam, enriched baby food, cordless tools, freeze drying techniques, water purification, pollution remediation technologies, food safety tech, and quite a bit more just from NASA alone. That is many billions of dollars worth of technological achievement that is directly attributable to manned spaceflight. The spinoff technologies alone have easily repaid the entire budget of NASA many times over.

There is nothing wrong with sending robots. We can and we should send more than we already are. But the notion that you gain nothing by sending people is demonstrably nonsense. The dumb thing to do would be to not send people. We don't have to do it tomorrow - I think it legitimately will take another 30-50 years at least to develop the technology to do it properly for an Apollo style mission to Mars. But if there is an investment with better bang for the buck in the long run I'm not sure what it is.

Fine. Let's assume that is true even though I don't really buy that argument. That still is no excuse for scamming a bunch of people into taking on crushing debt while providing no meaningful education nor a credible diploma from a respected institution. Hell, many of them aren't even accredited. Even if they haven't figured all the details out that is NO excuse for the fraud that these institutions are committing on thousands of people.

Point me at an example of a for-profit school that is not a good approximation of my description of them. Perhaps there is some for-profit college that is doing a spectacular job but I've certainly never heard of one.

I've actually lectured at several of them so I'm speaking from direct experience. I've also as an employer seen the quality of graduates they generally produce during the hiring process and let's just say I'm not impressed.

I think it is probably comparable to the accuracy level you'll get from a lot of teachers. I couldn't begin to enumerate the number of bogus "facts" I heard from teachers over the years.

I've been on the board of directors of several 501C3 non-profits. I also am an accountant specializing in corporate finance. I assure you that in general the paperwork burden for most non-profits is less than or no worse than that for corporations. In my experience it's generally been much less especially if the non-profit is quite small. For a large non-profit it's generally comparable to a for-profit business of similar size.