4 ms·

Imagine if the University had sued for their share of the IP and that was created using their resources… It’s funny because I thought Jobs/Wozinak got their in

Imagine if the University had sued for their share of the IP and that was created using their resources… It’s funny because I thought Jobs/Wozinak got their initial funding from selling phreaking boxes. And more recently, Anthropic engaged in criminal copyright violations with only a slap on the wrist. Feels like a common theme of every “great” company having its origins from a “boost” resulting from criminal activity. (After all, that’s where the money is!) Just imagine the criminal penalties possible for pirating and selling one copy of a movie or making one long distance phone call with phreaking.

dboreham 5mo ago
See also Airbnb and Uber.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
areweai 5mo ago
In the case of Microsoft, I'm not seeing it. Being born into a 1% household and understanding the asymmetric upside that having the money and the time to speculate is far more significant than the civil and criminal legal violations on the way. The most common way to go from one-percenter rich to .001% rich is to already have enough wealthy people generating capital in your personal network that you can raise capital on sweetheart terms to buy the labor of people who don't. Then you sell it at a massive premium and repeat. I think it's empirically dubious to identify the UW mainframes as the secret sauce instead of "being able to ask your mom for a meeting with the chairman of IBM followed by asking her for 80,000 dollars ASAP." If the original creators of DOS were born into a wealthy family and on a first name basis with the chairman of IBM, do you think they would've sold it to Gates? Trying to attribute the tech business "founding crime" feels like displacement for what is perfectly legal and accepted cultural practice.
- lostlogin 5mo ago
  We need a better system. We tried communism and that was shit, so this is the least bad system we have.
  - areweai 5mo ago
    Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.
  - r14c 5mo ago
    We didn't try communism as far as I know. We hunted it down and murdered it in its cradle if I'm reading the CIA declassified archives correctly.
    - 3240957042358 5mo ago
      Communists having killed of 100 to 140 million people is sufficient reason to hunt them down. But unfortunately there are still plenty of useful idiots, the same kind that propped up Mao, Pol Pot and Stalin.
      - r14c 5mo ago
        We kill people all the time, what's the difference? Isn't it a sovereign nation's prerogative to do whatever they want? That said, it is our prerogative to be nosy and violently mess with other people's affairs too so..
      - lostlogin 5mo ago
        > Communists having killed of 100 to 140 million people is sufficient reason to hunt them down. How many have democracies killed? It’s not like-for-like but how do we compare?
        r14c 5mo ago
        I would read that meta study. Especially if they verify and compare methods.
BobAliceInATree 5mo ago
Stanford had shares in Google because they had the rights to the PageRank algorithm. They sold their shares in 2005 https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-dec-02-fi-calbriefs2.3-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-dec-02-fi-calbr...
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
stuaxo 5mo ago
Superhans: "The secret ingredient is crime."

dboreham 5mo ago

See also Airbnb and Uber.

deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]

areweai 5mo ago

In the case of Microsoft, I'm not seeing it. Being born into a 1% household and understanding the asymmetric upside that having the money and the time to speculate is far more significant than the civil and criminal legal violations on the way. The most common way to go from one-percenter rich to .001% rich is to already have enough wealthy people generating capital in your personal network that you can raise capital on sweetheart terms to buy the labor of people who don't. Then you sell it at a massive premium and repeat. I think it's empirically dubious to identify the UW mainframes as the secret sauce instead of "being able to ask your mom for a meeting with the chairman of IBM followed by asking her for 80,000 dollars ASAP." If the original creators of DOS were born into a wealthy family and on a first name basis with the chairman of IBM, do you think they would've sold it to Gates? Trying to attribute the tech business "founding crime" feels like displacement for what is perfectly legal and accepted cultural practice.

lostlogin 5mo ago
We need a better system. We tried communism and that was shit, so this is the least bad system we have.
- areweai 5mo ago
  Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.
- r14c 5mo ago
  We didn't try communism as far as I know. We hunted it down and murdered it in its cradle if I'm reading the CIA declassified archives correctly.
  - 3240957042358 5mo ago
    Communists having killed of 100 to 140 million people is sufficient reason to hunt them down. But unfortunately there are still plenty of useful idiots, the same kind that propped up Mao, Pol Pot and Stalin.
    - r14c 5mo ago
      We kill people all the time, what's the difference? Isn't it a sovereign nation's prerogative to do whatever they want? That said, it is our prerogative to be nosy and violently mess with other people's affairs too so..
    - lostlogin 5mo ago
      > Communists having killed of 100 to 140 million people is sufficient reason to hunt them down. How many have democracies killed? It’s not like-for-like but how do we compare?
      - r14c 5mo ago
        I would read that meta study. Especially if they verify and compare methods.

BobAliceInATree 5mo ago

Stanford had shares in Google because they had the rights to the PageRank algorithm. They sold their shares in 2005 https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-dec-02-fi-calbriefs2.3-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-dec-02-fi-calbr...

deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]

stuaxo 5mo ago

Superhans: "The secret ingredient is crime."