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That project was actually the game Breakout, one of the most popular video games of the 1970s. Jobs lied and told Wozniak that Atari offered only $700 for the project, the actual amount was $5000. So Jobs offered Wozniak only $350. This was back when making a game involved physically soldering breadboards together, actually designing the circuitry of the thing.
Wozniak is a bit of a weird guy though, I remember in an interview later he says he would have done the job for free. Guy just likes programming or something. He was probably aware at some level he was being screwed over, but never seemed to care much. He was excited to do computer stuff.
That game is actually kinda notable too because it changed how games get copyrighted. Originally the copyright filing was rejected, since it was declared too similar of a game to Pong and the graphics were too simple. Atari appealed and Ruth Bader Ginsberg herself was actually the appeals justice on that case, she declared it a novel, original work. On one hand it's cool that video games can be similar to one another, on the other hand RBG directly caused the video game crash of 1983 and basically made shovelware legal.
Rare RGB W while also being an entirely too common RGB L. Such is life.
And oh, to have Woz's material conditions where you can just throw yourself at your work without having to fear for starving to death under a bridge somewhere.
Virgin dying from a preventable form of cancer because you think you're too good for modern medicine vs chad surviving a plane crash even though you weren't qualified to fly the plane.
It's an astonishing clip, really. I'm sure Conan is hamming his reaction up for yucks, but everyone just truly seems to be confused. Bill is saying that the Great Leader didn't do it all and they just don't know how to mentally process it.
the way i explain the labor theory of value to people is very simple. i don't talk about commodities, commodity fetishism, proletarians, bourgeoisie, private property, the evolution of feudalism out of capitalism, hegelian dialectics or any of that complex historical materialist analysis that marx spends hundreds of pages building up before explaining worker exploitation. I cut straight to the chase.
I say these things, usually not all at once. I let people chew on each one:
- If you're a boss, and you own a business, you have to pay the worker less than their work is worth.
- If you pay them exactly what their work is worth, you don't make any money, your business won't grow, and you'll get bought out by some asshole who pays workers less.
- If you pay a worker more than their work is worth, you're losing money, your business will shrink, and you'll go out of business.
- the problem is the system, because the way the system is set up, workers have to beg for a job from people who own the places we work at, and the bosses only give the job to the lowest bidder, the people willing to do the most in exchange for the least in return.
Was trying to explain it to a coworker after we got into an argument when I said the executives in the office are living off our work. He said something about how we’re paid a fair market wage, so I pulled out our labor rate sheet and showed him just exactly how much our company charges clients for our labor (generally 4-6 times more than our hourly wage) and was like no, that’s the fair market wage and it finally made sense to him
My favourite scene from The Wire is the one where D'Angelo Barksdale explains the labour theory of value (not by name, obviously) using the example of the inventor of the Chicken McNugget for this reason
i just looked it up on youtube. my god that is absolutely an 00s time capsule
Of course Conan is thick as shit and doesn't get it, even going as far as to say "I don't thank the team behind me publicly, either!" That's the problem, dipshit.
He kept his show on air during the 2007 strikes, but like he was a writer himself for a long time. Maybe he could show more solidarity but he's not the worst either. https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1667271162626473985
Also, him being mean to his staff for laughs is a recurring bit.
He did come out in solidarity on the first ep of the strikes and kept his show on the air so everyone else could get paid. He famously did incredibly stupid bits like spinning his wedding ring on the desk to fill time without the writers.
I like how he said that gleefully as if to belittle what Burr is saying and it just makes him sound like the same kind of asshole Burr is talking about.
"I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone"
- RMS, on Steve Jobs's death
