Look it up Edison was a ....

GopherT

Joined Nov 23, 2012
8,009

Family Guy really hated Edison

Edison, Henry Ford and Isaac Newton were three os history's notorious dicks that school teachers praise. I'm sure there are many, many more. "Successful" people are not usually nice people.

I don't measure success the same way most do, hence the quote marks.
 
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JoeJester

Joined Apr 26, 2005
4,390
"Successful" people must be looked at "in toto" prior to passing judgements.

Your list didn't include Bill Gates, Steven Jobs, et al. Were you applying today's metrics to historical figures?
 

GopherT

Joined Nov 23, 2012
8,009
"Successful" people must be looked at "in toto" prior to passing judgements.
No. Looking at their entire body of work definitely should not be required. Requiring a total look implies that they get debits and credits for various areas of their lives. I don't care if they cure cancer, I will still call them a dick if that is how they treat people.

Your list didn't include Bill Gates, Steven Jobs, et al. Were you applying today's metrics to historical figures?
Yes it did. They are included in the "I'm sure there are many, many more" statement. I focused on the first three because I was specifically told by my school teachers that these people should be looked up to and emulated. The two you mentioned were not even in the history books (maybe not even the phone book) at that time.
 
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tcmtech

Joined Nov 4, 2013
2,867
"Successful" people must be looked at "in toto" prior to passing judgements.
I fully disagree and find that only people who are self serving dicks think that being thats how they justify much of their negative actions in life.

No. Looking at their entire body of work definitely should not be required. Requiring a total look implies that they get debits and credits for various areas of their lives. I don't care if they cure cancer, I will still call them a dick if that is how they treat people.
The thing is even if you do look at all of their life works in almost every case what you will find is their major work they got credit for was still most often primarily based on work and credit they stole or acquired from someone else anyway. If they look like a dick on the surface the odds are they were a dick all the way through.

Just look at all of our politicians who got their names on something. How many actually did any of the work and how many just signed their names on piles of paper in order to take credit for the work that others did until it earned them a name for themselves?

To me it's just like when talking to an engineer or architect who says they built building XYZ. Nope they didn't they draw pictures and did calculations so that a whole army of unnamed people who put in the millions of manhours of work to make the thing a reality so that that guy can have his name on a plaque in the main lobby saying he built it.
 

GopherT

Joined Nov 23, 2012
8,009
How many actually did any of the work and how many just signed their names on piles of paper in order to take credit for the work that others did until it earned them a name for themselves?
Do you think Steve Jobs really sat down and invented or designed the stuff in this list of 470 patents?

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-adv.htm&r=0&p=1&f=S&l=50&Query=an/apple+AND+in/jobs&d=PTXT
Most are design patents - so, maybe he recommended that one part is gloss vs. matte finish or some other important contribution.

Oh, and 3 more from his hobby at NeXT Computer, Inc.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-adv.htm&r=0&f=S&l=50&d=PTXT&RS=(AN/apple+AND+IN/jobs)&Refine=Refine+Search&Query=an/next+AND+in/jobs
 
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tcmtech

Joined Nov 4, 2013
2,867
Do you think Steve Jobs really sat down and invented or designed the stuff in this list of 470 patents?
No I don't. Contributed in some but took a lot of credit for work others did the majority of.

To me much of this is like how things between my Ex and I went towards house improvement projects. :rolleyes:

She drew some pictures, did a bit of online reading to find what materials she liked and then turned the project as a whole over to me to then finance, construct and finish of which if I did anything outside of her design or wishes was wrong and anything that look remotely like one of her drawings and was acceptable to her was something she did despite her not having contributed anything other than a pencil sketch or basic CAD rendering on a sheet of paper for something that just popped into her head one day.:confused:
 
Do you think Steve Jobs really sat down and invented or designed the stuff in this list of 470 patents?
I recall his (unabashedly delivered) mantra, to wit: "Never hesitate to steal a good idea" (With reference to his self-proclaimed theft of the 'GUI concept' from Xerox) -- Whether GUIs (applied to operating systems) were/are a 'good idea' remains debatable -- That Jobs was an eel of the most basal order, however, is indisputable! -- He, more than any other individual, is responsible for the dumbing-down of contemporary technology (from the end-user perspective) and, hence, the all but 'brain dead' status of the general public!:rolleyes: -- Granting that the 'general public' never aspired to anything remotely approaching 'the cognitive elite' -- The last three decades have born witness to marked, I would say tragic, decline... --- For all that it must be noted that, as vermin go, Jobs was a well neigh honest transparent jerk:mad::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

Best regards
HP
 
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