The greatest computer genius

[billbuckhead]

Poll question: The greatest computer genius

Poll result (28 votes)
Bill Gates	(3 votes, 11%)	Vote
Steve Jobs	(4 votes, 14%)	Vote
Gordon Moore	(0 votes, 0%)	Vote
Linus Torvold	(6 votes, 21%)	Vote
Conrad Zuse	(0 votes, 0%)	Vote
Someone else	(13 votes, 46%)	Vote
Who cares?	(2 votes, 7%)	Vote

[billbuckhead]

1. The hits just a keep a coming since Jobs came back to Apple

This new mini mac will become the iPod for televisions. The new flash iPod will become the new jewelry.

The funny thing is that Pixar didn't suffer.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

2. Bill Gates was / is an OPPORTUNIST...not a "computer genius."

Gates is a "business" genius. Gates knew how to recognize the potential in technologies that were overlooked or not adequately protected by copyright law. He knew how to hire talent, people who probably DO qualify for the "computer genius" title when they step out of his shadow. He knew how to put the pieces of the puzzle that were ON THE TABLE BEFORE HIM together, but from where I stand, Gates "created" JACK SQUAT...so let's applaud his ambition and leave it at that.

[billbuckhead]

3. The first "Windows" program, Gates bought from someone else and sold it

to IBM before he bought it from the inventor.

[AntiCoup2K4]

10. Actually, it was the first version of DOS.

Windows was something MS came up with soon after Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak showed Bill the prototype of the original Macintosh.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

11. Exact-a-mundo.

Gates "observed." Gates "packaged." Gates "sold." Gates "created" SQUAT.

[Ready4Change]

4. Guys at (Xerox Parc)?

Not sure I've spelled that right, nor do I know names. But it was a computer research facility which did pioneering work on GUI's, developed the idea of the mouse, and from which Jobs got his "inspiration" for the 1984 Mac. (Or from which he stole the concepts to build into the Mac, depending on your point of view.)

Anyone have more accurate, complete info?

[qnr]

8. Pretty much correct, except it is PARC, for Palo Alto Research Center

And the computer they produced was the Xerox Star

[Ready4Change]

16. Thanks! What was the GUI OS ?

Was talked about a lot during the early Mac/Windows GUI lawsuit attempts? (Mac wanted to sue MS, MS wanted to sue Apple, Xerox said, if anything, Xerox should sue both?)

[qnr]

17. Don't forget Apple wanting to sue DRI, for GEM

http://www.thocp.net/hardware/xerox_star.htm

[Ready4Change]

20. Smalltalk!

Surprised to read that it was a language, rather than an OS. Ah well.

Thanks for the link.

[qnr]

5. My vote goes to Nolan Bushnell n/t

[Dookus]

6. Alan Turing?

[Osamasux]

7. Bob Metcalfe, one of the inventors of Ethernet

One of the architects of ARPANET, which became the Internet.
MIT Grad, Harvard PhD
One of the Xerox PARC researchers
Founder of 3Com
Brooklyn Boy

[Wapsie B]

9. John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry

Makers of the Atanasoff-Berry Computer

The Atanasoff-Berry Computer was the world's first electronic digital computer, built at Iowa State University during 1937-42.

[tridim]

12. Jay Miner, the inventor of the Amiga

Which IMO is still the greatest technological leap in home computing history.

Steve Jobs a computer genius? Hehe.. Woz is a genius, not Jobs.

[qnr]

15. Don't forget the Atari 400 and 800. They were his babies too.

Atari 1850XLD,codenamed "LORRAINE" was the Amiga, before Commodore bought it out from under Ataris noses.

[SKKY]

13. While I don't think Linus is the smartest person on the poll, let alone...

...of all time, I do feel that when all is said and done, he'll be considered as important as Bill Gates. Linux is HUGE, and getting bigger, and he really gave the Open Source community traction when he released the source code for Linux.

[AntiCoup2K4]

14. Gotta vote Steve Jobs and his buddy Steve Wozniak.

They created the original Apple computer (first home computer) in a fucking garage. Not a regular Mac user myself, but I got a lot of use out of the old Apple II's in high school - even though I went with the Commodore 64 at home because then, just as more recently, the Apples were priced preventably higher.

[qnr]

18. If a garage is your criteria, I'd say that Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard

beat Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak hands down, they started in a garage in Palo Alto, CA, way back in the 30's. And it wasn't the first home computer, to boot

[Anarcho-Socialist]

19. Alan Turing

Followed by Charles Babbage (who invented a theoretical mechanical computer, the Analytical Engine in the 19th C.) and the collective group at Xerox PARC in the early 1970s who came up with ethernet, GUIs, laser printing, e-mail and TCP/IP.

[jmowreader]

21. I gotta go with Ray Kurzweil

Ray Kurzweil invented:

* omni-font OCR. Before Kurzweil, you needed a special OCR ball for your Selectric if you wanted to scan printed text into an electronic system, you had to put it exactly in a certain place on a page...anyone who's ever attended the Intelligence School knows about typing DD Form 173. Now, you just tear a page out of a magazine, stick it in your scanner and stand back.

* the CCD flatbed scanner.

* the Kurzweil Reading Machine. This is the first usable text-to-speech system.

* the Kurzweil 250. One of Kurzweil's Reading Machine customers was Stevie Wonder. Stevie knew Kurzweil was an absolute genius, and one day in the early 1980s he posited something to Ray: acoustic instruments sound beautiful, but they're limiting--if you're making a recording and you blow a note, you have to re-record the whole passage; electronic instruments allow you to fix the note and do all manner of wonderful things to the music, but they don't sound good. Wouldn't it be great if we could apply electronic control to acoustic instruments? Kurzweil decided he could do this, and he went to work to create what is now the Kurzweil 250--the first electronic instrument to convincingly reproduce the sound of an acoustic grand piano. (It's also the first electronic instrument to convincingly reproduce the weight of one, but that's a story for another time.) Mid to late 1980s Stevie Wonder videos all show him playing his K250--he has the first one Kurzweil ever shipped.

Raymond Kurzweil started nine computer companies and all of them are still in business. (One with a fun name is his financial software house, FatKat--it's an acronym for "Financial Accelerating Transactions from Kurzweil Adaptive Technologies.")

If you've got a Windows box, hie thee to http://www.kurzweilcyberart.com / and download AARON, a "cybernetic artist." It's shareware, but not expensive.

No one knows who Raymond Kurzweil is, which is a shame. People think Gates is a computer genius. Gates is a marketing genius; he could sell ice to Eskimos. Kurzweil is a Renaissance man; he does a lot of things and does all of them well.

[ironflange]

22. Charles Babbage

To be able to conceptualize a programmable computer, in the mid-1800s, is uncanny.