|
Ads are disabled for your account.
Thank you for your contributions to Subnova.
|
|
|
20100718.144024
website is now in archive mode. visit blog.subnova.com for information.
20080730.144615
i added amazon context links... just because i can... if they're not too obtrusive... i'll leave them
20080114.231544
enabled mod_deflate on andromeda. the site is now seeing an estimated 80% reduction in overall size for clients to download
20080109.022443
added an rss 2.0 feed for the news at http://www.subnova.com/news/rss/. it will show the 14 most recent posts
20070823.031056
updated cq calculations so that if a member doesn't login to the website in the past 77 days, the contribution points start vanishing in a hurry... tanking the irank
[more]
|
|
|
|
|
|
106: Breakout Jobs and Woz
By Dr. Dizaster
(Note: a lot of the numbers in this one are vague by necessity; many of the participants offer wildly different views on how the deal went down, and as a result, the figures are all "About" right...)
It's the turn of the 80's. Atari is a small company that has released a couple popular games, Pong and its variants chief among them. A junior engineer by the name of Steve Jobs works for bushnell, making cartridges and assembling cabinets.
Bushnell is impressed by the young engineer's prowess, and tasks him to create a game called Breakout- a single-player pong game that had the player buncing the ball off a wall of blocks.
Also with the announcement is the initiation of a new bonus plan. Since the average Atari game used seventy-five chips, each of which had to be bought from an outside company, Bushnell offeres Jobs a cash bonus for every chip under 75 the game winds up being.
Now, at the time, Jobs wasn't the only "Steve" that could be found on the Atari floor. Steve Wozniak, a longtime friend and partner of Jobs, loved the new videogames, and would constantly dump money he didn't really have into the games at a local bar. Jobs, in an effort to keep Wozniak from gaming away his rent money, would sneak him onto the Atari floor so he could play to his heart's content for free. In exchange, Woz would help Jobs with any engineering problems he might have.
Jobs brings the "Breakout" concept to Wozniak, and Woz promises to "See what he can do."
Over the next 72 hours, during which it was rumored Wozniak did not sleep, Woz streamlines the game down from 75 chips to less than 30 in one fell swoop of programming genius.
Jobs takes the design back to Atari, much to the astonisment of his superiors, Bushnell included. Though the design is far too complex to be mass-produced efficiently, a deal's a deal, and Jobs walks out of Atari that day with somewhere between Five and Eight thousand dollars.
Jobs returns to Wozniak and congratulates him on his design, providing him with "Half of what they gave me."
Woz is thrilled to get $350.00. It isn't until weeks later that Wozniak discovers he's been duped, but by that time the money has vanished into Job's pet project, a little something called Apple Computer.
Wozniak was later quoted as saying "I knew Steve would make something for $60 and sell it for $6,000 if he thought he could get away with it. I just never thought he'd do it to his best friend."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
No articles have been posted in the last month.
Slackers.
|
|
