Earlier quoted context omitted.
He's just too nice.
“Naive” would be more fitting here. At his age, he should have learned a thing or two about the world.
Chances are that that is what got us Apple...
Serbia grants citizenship to Steve Wozniak
81–90 of 117 posts
Re: Serbia grants citizenship to Steve Wozniak
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's one of few remaining militarily non-aligned countries. If Big War breaks out it is unlikely Serbia will be enacting conscription. It is also not a likely nuke target.
Serbia non-aligned militarily? I'm not sure that is accurate.
Care to elaborate? Serbia is not a member of NATO or other military alliances, does not supply arms to any country involved in current conflicts, and says it loudly.
Re: Serbia grants citizenship to Steve Wozniak
#83Why though? Did they just figure they’d grant one, and he just went ahead and accepted? Or is there a reason he needs one that wasn’t explained? I know that people sometimes shop around for a passport from whatever EU country for reasons, but Serbia isn’t one. (With all due respect to Serbia)
Election is in 10 days, so government is desperate to show how cool they are. He probably got paid few millions bucks, so they could parade him around and give him citizenship.
Re: Serbia grants citizenship to Steve Wozniak
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you?
I have. And it's a preposterous statement. And the Serbs that I consider my friends would readily agree with that.
Can you elaborate? I live in Serbia for two years and don't feel much xenophobia towards me. I am aware of above-average homophobic sentiment here, and some hate towards ex-Yugoslav neighbors, but hey, they were at war and it is mutual.
Re: Serbia grants citizenship to Steve Wozniak
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
I rather they kept the original spelling because that's his name, but only if Serbs can figure out how to pronounce it. Which, in the modern world, is a reasonable assumption for names written in the Latin script.
Being written in Latin script is not a guarantee on correct pronunciation; languages have wildly different ideas how to pronounce written text. Paradoxically, Serbian belongs in the group "write as you hear"; the mapping between writing and pronunciation is quite simple and uniform in slavic languages. It is English, that you have to learn twice -- first time to speak, second time to spell.
> Being written in Latin script is not a guarantee on correct pronunciation
Yes, I understand this: being a Spanish native speaker, I had to learn the rules of pronunciation of the English language. Spanish is also pronounced as written, mostly.
You can figure it out, so it's still better to spell English names in English, Serb names in Serb, and so on. The only concession I will make is leaving out extraneous accents and glyphs in informal writing (e.g. written accents; I will accept if they are omitted and substituted by the closest glyph in your language).
"Translating" names is something I really, really dislike. In this particular case, it's extra silly, since everybody who cares already knows who Woz is and will read his name correctly, Serbs included. This is not some random person whose name they just heard for the first time.
Re: Serbia grants citizenship to Steve Wozniak
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would Woz want Serbian citizenship? It’s not an EU country and let’s say it’s not exactly Monaco either.
It's one of few remaining militarily non-aligned countries. If Big War breaks out it is unlikely Serbia will be enacting conscription. It is also not a likely nuke target.
The country not being a nuclear target is only a relevant advantage if you move there.
Also, conscription is absolutely irrelevant for someone his age. Besides, citizens living abroad are usually not pressed into service, even in times of war.
Re: Serbia grants citizenship to Steve Wozniak
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
"creator of the global IT industry" might have been a miss-translation of "founder of largest global IT company"? Either way it is indisputable that he is a computer genius and it is a worthy boast that he chose to become their citizen.
One could interpret it as the creator of the PC, which is true. There was really no "Personal Computer" before Jobs and Wozniak came along. Not to say they also didn't stand on the shoulders of giants.
> One could interpret it as the creator of the PC, which is true.
The record differs, even if the hype supports it.
Specifically, the John Blankenbaker Kenbak-1 is considered to be the first personal computer.
https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/personal-computer...
Re: Serbia grants citizenship to Steve Wozniak
#88Tangential question: Could a country force its citizenship to any person on the planet like that? ‘From now on, Mr X is now one of our citizen, with all the taxes/restrictions it entails’
Of course not. A person should file a signed citizenship application, and then literally put a signature into their new passport.
Re: Serbia grants citizenship to Steve Wozniak
#89I like how they translate/transliterate his name into Serbian: Stiv Voznijak. Wish more languages would do that and not try to keep the original spelling just because.
It's funny because in Croatia we don't do that, but it's an almost identical language. I still remember reading old ex-yu comic books with New York spelled as Njujork and so on. The problem is that you can't really capture the pronunciation since english has more sounds and serbian and croatian are phonetic limited to 30 letters, Stiv Voznijak doesn't capture it correctly, that's how you get the harsh slavic/russian…
I believe that this is because the primary alphabet in Serbia is Cyrillic, so they transcribe it first and only then transliterate it into "abeceda".
Jumped couple of time seeing Cyrillic "Питхон", though)
Re: Serbia grants citizenship to Steve Wozniak
#90In other news Elon Musk is also Serbian https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdbHLzA4JLg
Of course he is, like Tesla before him.