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Steve Wozniak Honors Innovative Inventors 82

Posted by Zonk from the nice-thinking dept.
DigitalDame2 writes "Steve Wozniak, co-inventor of the Apple personal computer (along with Steve Jobs), hosted the first annual Modern Marvels Invent Now Challenge. Wozniak's favorite invention is one that shows where to clip your dog's claws without injuring the dog. The Strawjet, a creation that weaves straw left over from a harvest into building materials, won the grand prize."
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Steve Wozniak Honors Innovative Inventors More

Steve Wozniak Honors Innovative Inventors

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  • Inventions (Score:2, Interesting)

    by certel ( 849946 )
    I'm down with the dog clipping invention. Man, has anyone hit the dogs skin under the nail? That thing bleeds FOREVER.
    • That is why you need to have, on hand, blood clotting powder. I do not recall the name of what I use have, when I had pets many years ago, but you should be able to buy it from most animal care shops.
      • It's normally just called coagulant, anything else is just a brand name, for example hatchwells trimmex.
      • It's called styptic powder (or gel). It stops the bleeding fast, and many formulations have benzocaine or some such for the pain.

        My dog has some light toenails and some dark ones. With the light ones it's easy to see where the quick is, but with the dark ones it's just an educated guess, one I don't know I've gotten wrong until she yelps. :(

  • The real hero (Score:4, Funny)

    by craXORjack ( 726120 ) on Thursday May 25, 2006 @07:24PM (#15406050)
    Wozniak should honor Bill Gates. He invented Windows!

    • Re:The real hero (Score:5, Funny)

      by Jester998 ( 156179 ) on Thursday May 25, 2006 @07:40PM (#15406123) Homepage
      No, no, Bill Gates stole Windows from the Lisa.

      Bill's true innovations are many-fold, and remain largely uncredited. These include sending high-level windowing information to remote graphical clients, a practical use for LDAP, and my all-time favourite, and a powerful command-line interface.

      I believe he also invented FTP shortly after Gore invented the Internet.

      • Re:The real hero (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Bill Gates stole Windows from the Lisa.

        And Lisa got inseminated by Steve, who stole it from Xerox. [imdb.com] Since Lisa was Steve's daughter, does all of this make Steve a sick perv?

        -- Please mod me down since I'm not nice to Steve, everyone's hero --
    • Windows is OK, but the real hero is Al Gore for inventing the internet. How else would we get free music?

      Thanks Al!

    • No, no, no, the real hero is Al Gore. He invented the freakin' internet!
      • It's amazing how the internet rewrites history.

        The truth of the matter is that Al Gore created the first Artificial Intelligence, the A.I. Gore-bot.

        The AI Gore-bot created the internet (actually, "took initiative in the creation of the internet) when it was a senator. Later the AI Gore-bot ran for the office of President of the United States, but lost despite its uncanny resemblance to a human being. (Somewhere in there, the AI Gorebot was elected Vice President, but spent most of the time unplugged and hid
        • Speaking of re-writing history, look no further than this story's intro:
          "Steve Wozniak, co-inventor of the Apple personal computer (along with Steve Jobs)..."

          Steve Wozniak is the sole inventor of the Apple personal computer.
           

  • In other news... (Score:4, Funny)

    by markana ( 152984 ) on Thursday May 25, 2006 @07:30PM (#15406076)
    >The Strawjet, a creation that weaves straw left over from a harvest into building materials, won the grand prize."

    The firm of Rumpelstiltskin & Co. has filed a lawsuit against David R. Ward, claiming patent infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets.

  • Co-inventor??? (Score:5, Informative)

    by isecore ( 132059 ) <isecore@NOSPAM.isecore.net> on Thursday May 25, 2006 @07:32PM (#15406087) Homepage
    Steve Wozniak, co-inventor of the Apple personal computer (along with Steve Jobs)

    Err, as far as I know Woz made the computer, and Jobs decided he would market it. I'm having a very hard time imagining Jobs getting down and dirty with a soldering iron, since he's more of a talker and Woz is the guy who invented a computer just for the hell of it.

    Co-founder of Apple Computer Inc. would've been more like it.

    • Re:Co-inventor??? (Score:3, Informative)

      by datafr0g ( 831498 ) *
      Yep, I think the confusion comes from the fact that they were co-founders of the company Apple (with Ronald Wayne), I think it would be a long stretch to say they were co-inventors of the computer itself.

    • I hypothesize that one's technical abilities are inversely proportional to one's political abilities. And by political abilities I mean cunning enhancement of one's perceived value in such a manner to progress their position, salary, stock, etc. and in especially despicable instances, historically acclaimed for misattributed achievements.
      • But a great many people have neither.
      • That assertion is contradicted by the simple evidence of Bill Gates. Contrary to 'wannabe-hacker' folklore, Gates slung pretty good assembly code back when he had to. He personally wrote the Word Processing program for the TRS-80 Model 100, for instance. In 8085 Assembly Language.

    • And that would be the Apple II computer.

      Woz, in fact, invented it while he was working at HP. He went to HP to see if they wanted to market the new invention, and they said no. But they had the good grace of letting Woz to do it on his own if he wanted. So he quitted his job and teamed up with Jobs to found Apple Computer

      • No, the first one, the one he made whilst working at HP, was the Apple I. The Apple II came later. This is why the number two is in the name, because two comes after one.

        You might not have known this, but Apple often numbers their computers in this fashion. For example, there was not just the Apple I, and II, but also the III. The LC, LC II, and LC III. The Classic and Classic II. The Color Classic and Color Classic II. And several other examples. More if you allow for bigger jumps in numbering (e.g. Power
    • Well, you'd be wrong then.

      Jobs' first job (hmm) was with Hewlett Packard, where he met Wozniak. Later he became a technician for Atari. He never worked a day in a marketing department, although as CEO of Apple, NeXT and Pixar he did a good number of presentations.

      I don't think he did a lot of the design for the original Apple computer, but I know he did a lot of assembly work to fulfil their first order. I suspect some of the design came from him, but that may be more in the requirements than the technical.
      • Where the hell did you get your information from? Did you put it together from what you read on the back of cereal boxes?

        Jobs and Woz were introduced by Bill Fernandez, a mutual friend. Jobs was still in high school at the time. Jobs never worked at HP. He went to college, had some odd jobs, went to India, worked at Atari for a little while (and would bring in Woz to give him a hand), and eventually they started Apple.

        Jobs didn't design a thing about the Apple I. He certainly got to hear all about it -- the

  • Skip the spam (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25, 2006 @07:34PM (#15406102)


    here is the real link without any of the middlemen leeching pageviews off a 100 word summary and 100 adverts per page (and they wonder why people block adverts)

    http://www.historychannel.com/invent/?page=winner_ ward [historychannel.com]

  • Strawjet website. (Score:5, Informative)

    by technoextreme ( 885694 ) on Thursday May 25, 2006 @07:40PM (#15406125)
    Here is the webstie for the strawjet invention actually one the contest. http://www.greeninventor.org/index.shtml [greeninventor.org] I have to say this is one ingenious idea for third world countries to make cheap housing. You grow your food and whatever waste you produce is used to produce houses.

    • Re:Strawjet website. (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      And here [historychannel.com] is the page on the History Channel's website about the invention for cutting dogs' toenails. A story about it is here [uoguelph.ca]. No website yet.
    • And the best part: In a bind, you can eat your house. Bring 1 qt. water to boil, add 4ci of house, and season with a pinch of Mrs. Dash.

      Obviously these could never be sold in here in the US, because everyone would eat themselves out of house and home.. literally.
    • Wow, very nice. Thanks for the link.
      Interesting that they say wheat straw performs the poorest but they use it because it's so abundant. They say flax is better.
      Now hemp would probably be really excellent. They should try it in canada, where it's legal to grow (unlike here in the US).

      Hemp for oilseeds and then building materials from the straw, fantastic! Add lime and you get hempcrete anyway due to the high silica content of the inner stalk.
    • Not just third world countries. I could see this being a good material for use in regular pole barns, and possibly replaceing corrugated metal in other cheap structures. If this stuff isn't as conductive of heat, it would be ideal for the arid US southwest.
  • Won't Apple get mad?

  • Nice title. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ArCh3r ( 688116 )
    Innovative Inventors? That's repetitively redundant.
    • It's grade inflation. Back in my day we honored inventive inventors. Now you just have to be an innovative inventor. Soon we'll be honoring just innovative innovators. Then improving improvers. incrementing incrementers. maintaining maintainers. standard standardizers. imperfect imperfectors.

      Then you get dogs and cats living together, human sacrifice - mass hysteria. Hysterical hysteria.

    • No, he's just not interested in regular inventors, only inovative inventors.
  • These inventions pale in comparison to the likes of a bicycle with a seat on the handlebars and extra pedals, and a wig which wicks perspiration, as seen on American Inventor. Pretty much anyone could create a dog nail clipper, but it takes true genius to develop a toilet lid with a filter which prevents contaminates from getting sprayed all over the rest of the toilet using good old fashioned magic.
    • it takes true genius to develop a toilet lid with a filter which prevents contaminates from getting sprayed all over the rest of the toilet using good old fashioned magic

      But it only takes a few beers to render that lid filter useless.

      *ponders new Guiness commercial*
      A restroom that is a toilet, BRILLIANT !
  • Whatever happened with Woz's GPS startup? Did it ever go anywhere?
  • A bit more information about the dogs-claw-cutter-helper-thing is available at http://www.uoguelph.ca/atguelph/06-04-19/features. shtml [uoguelph.ca].
  • I can't help but wonder if there would be efective air exchange in buildings made of Strawjet pannels. From the FAQ:

    "Yes straw burns, but StrawCore panels do not. There two reasons why they will not burn;

    * The plasters that are used throughout the panels have a high mineral content which render them nonflammable.
    * Unlike conventional construction there are no wall cavities, which would otherwise facilitate combustion inside the wall."

    This panels seem to be pretty

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