> Which would you rather be: Apple or Xerox PARC?

wow. i would much rather 'be' xerox parc. i think that they brought infinitely more value to the human race and probably had a lot more fun doing it. the author is nuts.

"infinitely"?

Xerox PARC's biggest legacy was refining ideas from other people (Douglas Englebart, the folks who created Simula, et al) and then _not shipping them_. Sure, PARC prototyped the iPad but it was really invented by Stanley Kubrick or one of his production designers wasn't it?

If you're in the "Apple stole everything from someone else" camp then at least trace back the origins of everything to Maxwell and Faraday and Ada Lovelace and the medieval monks who invented logic and Euclid and don't just go one step back.

We _all_ stand on giants' shoulders. Not all of us help popularize the personal computer, the graphical user interface, object-oriented programming, computer animation, digital music players that fit in your pocket and hold your entire music library, and pocket-sized always-connected touch-screen computers.

People left PARC because they wanted to actually ship something. Putting actual products in the hands of real people was and is not something that PARC does.

I wouldn't say he's nuts per se, but he's comparing apples and oranges.

hopefully stallman will be able to go out on as high a note

when you create the worlds de facto compiler, debugger and maybe the world's most powerful text editor, you can say whatever you want.

your privacy is your own responsibility, not google's. there are services you can pay for that will erase your online identity and there are programs you can use to ensure you won't have to use them again.