Jay Miner - No one will ever know.
 

After seeing an Article yesterday about Bill Gates in Time magazine about what a great billionaire humanitarian he is ( took him his first 10 billion to do something!? ), it came to my Attention that when he dies, he will be considered THE Man that brought an operating system to the masses!.

He will be revered as the pinacle and the key figure in all of Personal Computing and anyone or anything that came before him will almost be deemed as non-existant!.

So where does that leave poor old Jay Miner?. A man who brought us a machine that was light years ahead of anything at the time, a machine with Vision, and the worlds first truly multitasking and efficient operating enviroment!.

When he died, i didnt find out from TV or the Newspapers or through any other Mass media!. I found out in an Amiga Magazine, which i suppose you could class as mass media, but where did you ever hear of his death outside of the Amiga Scene!?..

If you have money in this world, you'll be more remembered for your social and financial status, more so than your innovation and vision.

Yes Bill Gates had a vision, and i do commend him on following through with that vision, but there were other greats in the computer industry that Deserve just as much Merit, if not more than Gates ever should.

And one of those Men is Jay Miner.

RIP Jay.. your not forgotten.

Well said. I'm glad to own an Amiga :spin

sad but thats the truth...:(

one more reason to own an amiga....:)

Word ! :great :great :great

Bill Gates was a much more influential to a wider variety of computers well before the Amiga was out. For instance, the PET, VIC-20, Apple II, TRS-80, C64, PC, MSX, etc. all used his version of BASIC. Plus, I think what the magazine article is about is the charitable work that his foundation does which Jay certainly never had the money to do.

Nothing against Jay Miner, of course he did create the computer I love.

It just goes to show what is wrong with this world. If you're an evil money-grubbing parasite who ruthlessly squashes competitors while selling shoddy rubbish, you'll be rich and powerful and be called a "great man". If you're a friendly genius who makes wonderful innovative things that are way ahead of their time, you'll be forgotten.

The Woz of Apple fame will be remembered for a long time. I think the masses equate people who are very rich in the tech field as being the important ones instead of the people who actualy did the groundbreaking work.

Lets face it while a few geeks stare in amazement at the technical acievments of a few engineers/designers just about everyone else bows to the MBA types that happen to be owning or running the companies that strike it rich. This is why engineering enrollment is down (no respect, low job security, shitty pay) while business schools are packed.

Other names that really shaped the computing world, but are mostly unknown.

Robert Metcalfe
Ed Roberts
Forrest Mims
Chuck Peddle
etc...

Saying that Bill Gates doesn't deserve credit is wrong. Without his BASIC, there would have been no personal computer.

I admit that I overreacted slightly with my last post (trying to rid myself of years of building Microsoft hatred before the new year...). If Microsoft died back in 1985, I probably would have looked back on it with fondness. It is Microsoft's post-BASIC years and increasingly evil business practices that disturb me.

If you look at a list of so-called "great men of history" they are usually people who have ruthless ambition and don't care who they hurt to achieve their goals. If you met them, you'd probably think they were total assholes. Many times, their "greatness" comes from the work of the people they manipulate or control. Think of the millions of people throughout history who did amazing things, but it just wasn't publicised or others took the credit for it.

Read what i wrote again!. actually i will show you.

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Yes Bill Gates had a vision, and i do commend him on following through with that vision, but there were other greats in the computer industry that Deserve just as much Merit, if not more than Gates ever should.
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Nowhere in that did i say wholeheartedly that Bill DOESNT deserve credit!?.

I said there are other greats in the computer industry that deserve JUST AS MUCH Merit!. Yes Microsoft did come before most others, but that still does not change the fact that there were OTHERS that should be just as noteworthy!.

Your post is reactive!. you read something, and interpret it as something else, when its clear that its the opposite.

The computer industry from Bill Gates early days to what it is today has rested on its laurels!. Rather than there being TRUE proggresive advancement through Apple & Commodore, we have been left with something thats based on a 70's architecture with alot of tarted up pretty features.

We are supposed to progress in functionality. But Microsoft has blatently consumed its competitors, and even though i know this is life!. the big fish eat the little fish. Its still a fact that what we have today, should not be what we have today!.

Innovation is something thats been left behind on the road to mass corporate profit, and people like Jay Miner or whoever else came before or after Jay ( i understand there were other greats too ) need to be respected and acknowleged no matter how much Bill Gates first influenced technology!.

Yes, the Amiga failed. but if i had of been the head of Commodore back then and i knew the Amiga was going to fail, then i would have still gone ahead with it. because its being passionate and believing in your product that gets you the most respect, self dignity and self satisfaction.. as opposed to walking over your competitors, and people for whom you should respect.

You people are gay retards, not giving respect to the ultimate creative and marketing genius, Steve Jobs.

You and your piece of crap little penises.

Yeah, Steve Jobs is another!. And how did you know my penis was so small!??.. have you been spying on me again!. :shocked

My second post was a response to mr_a500, not you. Sorry if I wasn't clear.

BTW, if you think Bill Gates is ruthless, what about Jack Tramiel? :D (IMHO, Bill looks like an alter boy compared to Jack. But, without Jack, we'd have no Commodore or Amiga).

I have no love for Jack Tramiel - or any other head of a large corporation. They're not the creators, they're the people who provide the financing based on potential profits. They get the credit for doing great things when really their motivation was just based on greed. The actual creators are usually forgotten. Does anybody remember the guy who wrote QDOS/86-DOS which was the basis of MS-DOS and lead to Windows? I don't - but Bill Gates gets credit.

Well I'm getting an AMIGA hopefully this month.

You mean everything to me, snookums. :xmas

Wasn't the Amiga buyout a post-Tramiel event?
I thought Tramiel was pulling the leads up until the 264 days (C16/plus4) which ended somewhere 1984. So he could be credited for at least helping to pull off all those 8 bitters from those days. Sure designers did the job, but you'll get nowhere without proper (yes you read proper) management. So that must count for something.

I wonder what would have happened if Tramiel held his position. I think they would have ran into trouble much sooner. History tells us he needed Irving Gould help to stay afloat or there wouldn't even have been a vic-20.

But let's not forget Chuck Peddle who did that wonderfull 6502. Is he still around btw?

Shut up little penis.....:bash :bash :bash

You only Love liberace

http://www.emediawire.com/prfiles/20...singlecopy.jpg

:lol :lol :lol he get the "Job" done ;) :laughing :laughing

I prefer the amiga, but the Playstation hardware seems OKay, and does the job nicely.

But I hear that there is a lot of flash computer stuff in japan which is Japs only :(.

Yeah Jay Miner rox, he did a nice job with the Atari 800 as well.

Business men , success ones at least have to be ruthless to certain degree. The dollar comes first and last.

Bill gates is not evil , he's an amazingly bright guy who was driven and clever enough to make it in the computer industry and by luck he happened to supply basic to IBM.

Now I'm not a gambling man but back in the 70s if I knew one of the biggest companies in the world needed my basic , I'd write it too.

Commodore was and is still seen as a toy company who made fun computers, the Amiga never sold in huge numbers. Apple were an odd hippy company with no money. atari made games machines.

Who would you make basic for ? And that is why bill gates is rich and he has only given money away because Paul Allen almost died of cancer and bills mum did die of cancer and his money could not help her. That's why he gives millions to charity.

And of course it looks good to American politicians.

You can make the greatest thing in the world..but if it's not popular it will be forgotten.

As for evil companies , MS is up there but so is Intel and Commodore. Jack shut down plenty of rivals and suppliers in his time. He was pretty much hated by business.

Jay will only be remembered by amiga and atari guys.

Ibm has Ms dos
The Mac had a GUI

To the public nothing much else happened.