I hate to disagree, but there is a huge difference between conceptualization and marketing. But you realize you are saying that Apple would be where it is at today with a marketing person as CEO.

Marketing people might be able to sell refrigerators to inuits, but someone needs to come up with concept and direction. I've been involved with marketeers for a long time. They pitch products, not conceptualize, design or built them.

So much this.

While it doesn't fit the standard Slashdot meme of the CEO as worthless psychopath, there is a value, and an ability that goes with the work. Being a CEO in two organizations, and now interacting with them in my present position, I have to say I work my ass off to keep things running. I get called asshole at times, and sometimes people have to just trust me - it's my career on the line - but it isn't the fever dream people have about the position.

Also this. Wozniak was Wozniak. And Jobs was Jobs. They had an important synergy. But without Jobs, Woz would almost certainly be as you described.

Check out Clive Sinclair - he was an engineer and did pretty damn well selling his computers in the UK.

Kinda, I mean he did well, but it went under. Acorn did somewhat better and parts of Acorn are alive and well to this day.

Furber and Wilson lacked that marketing muscle. Were they a unique talent? I mean... no one else did that. Their CPU worked first time, outperformed their contemporaries, ran at a fraction of the power cost a fraction of the amount and went on to become massively popular.

Maybe Woz couldn't have done that, but it doesn't mean Jobs was the one required to help him, any competenant marketing type could have done the same. Vew few people could have designed the hardware and software that Woz did at the time.

I'd argue that Jobs was unusually good at marketing. Maybe as rare as Woz. I mean, look at the cult of personality that's developed around him where people think Apple (or really Jobs himself) invented all sorts of things which were actually popularized by Apple, but invented by someone else.

His schtick works.

MBAs are sheep. Blindly following the flock is what MBA schools teach them to do - and questioning conventional wisdom is strictly verboten.

Why else would they worship at the altar of stockholder supremacy, when transferring all their company's liquid assets to high-volume stock trading algorithms forces them to borrow money at commercial interest rates to fund their "investment" in AI, instead of using cash on hand for the purpose, and saving the interest payments for other investment purposes ... ?

...would anyone want a 32" screen on their FRIDGE? Are they going to sit in the kitchen and stare at it?

And having it, and not expecting MBAs to demand ads...

Retired programmer, sr. Linux sysadmin. I have NO "smart home" devices. I get enough ads on my computer.

Bzzt, thank yuo for playing. You have just shamed your family for generations to come. You do not win a year's supply of Rice-a-roni....

Ignoring the two acs below - they're both assholes who have no clue, and if they're not trolls from Russia or elsewhere, are posting from their basements.

No, cusco, it's not "business ethics". It *was* the MBAs, Friedmanites all, who decided that ROI was, to paraphrase Lombardi, "ROI isn't everything, it's the only thing." Products and services? No, ROI. And ROI must be this quarter. Destroy unions, ship jobs overseas to semi-slave labor? ROI!

That isn't a dealer vs direct issue. Neither model can protect against shitty vendors not handling warranty they way they are obliged to. Additionally the "competition" from dealerships doesn't help here either as it's not like some other dealer will do your warranty for you when you deal with your shitty point of contact.

That has nothing to do with sales or dealerships. I bought my car direct from the manufacturer, through their website, and yet get it serviced like normal at the local garage down the road.

You what? Is this a thing in the states? It's actually been illegal in Europe to build a fast charger that doesn't except credit / debit cards for 2 years now, and by the end of this year 100% of chargers with a capacity higher than 50kW need to accept credit / debit card.

Additionally low power chargers need to offer an option to pay without an app or subscription, but are allowed to direct you to a payment website (no need to add a hardware credit card reader).

But I for one am in favour of making it as difficult as possible for people to get a nicotine fix. The vape / tabaco industry provides zero benefit to society while having a lot of downsides. It should die in a fire.

I'm in a similar field. RF. We are in a time whereThe RF spectrum is about as clogged as it can get, teetering on the edge of becoming a train wreck. Yet people who know the nuances of keeping signals away from each other are becoming rare.

We had this weird dichotomy of people thinking "Radio is obsolete - if you are technical minded, go for digital technology and science!" while forgetting that a cellular phone is a little walkie-talkie, bluetooth is GHz band transmission, and so on. And we forget that our computers themselves are unintended RF generators. RF is an unruly beast. Its characteristics vary by frequency, time of day, even by weather.

People who understand how to keep this stuff working are not common any more. And we aren't being replaced nearly fast enough. Think of it like the COBOL problem. Old dudes and dudettes naming their price to come back to the banks and keep things running. Except physics based - seemingly arcane. I'm naming my price too, Some folks have told me I should grow my beard long, wear a pointy black hat and gown, and carry a wand. Plunk my magic twanger and the problem is fixed. Because to many, what I do seems like Magic. A good thing I like what I'm doing.

Not all, maybe only 2/3rds. But does that surprise you? Would you invest $1 in a chance to make $10? What would you ask about the investment? What about $1000 for a chance to make $10000? You'd probably want a bit more assurance that you will at least get your $1000 back. How much risk will you take on if we change that number to $100million? I'm guessing you will not part with that money without a "proven track record".

Wait what?

Are you also dating that love does not in fact transcend the fifth dimension and interstellar was also bullshit?

Come on man.

Comparing this to tipping is the wrong approach because tipping is fucking stupid. The problem with your analogy is that the executive are going to a for-profit business that isn't paying its employees properly. That's not the same as using open source software.

Better analogy: It's Monday. You went into the office. Sharleen brought in some cake. Did you tip her for the work she did voluntarily? Why not you monster!

Nothing has been co-opted. Open source hasn't changed, and corporations building their world on open source largely are actively following licenses. The way they were envisaged.

Now speaking of co-opting, what part of Open Source (old ways or current ways) give you any right to gatekeep what happens with the code you publish? If you give something away it literally can't be stolen (leaving aside your conflation of copyright infringement and stealing, shame on you, your UID is low enough that you will have been part of this discussion for 25 years already so you should know better).

What we are talking about literally goes against some of those freedoms. Specifically Freedom 2 and Freedom 3. You can't be free to distribute if a monetary contribution is used for gatekeeping.