Stanford address by Apple Chief....

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.



I love these kind of inspiring speeches.

What Women Want !! **

**This post is not my creation. Got it from Shubham's blog.

There are two basic stories for how men and women "start off" together, and two basic stories for how men and women "end up". Through all of time, I'm sure that men and women have been playing out these stories... and I'm sure that they'll continue to play them out long into the future (that is, unless I have something to say about it... and I do).

THE MEETING STORIES
Here's "Meeting Story #1":
Boy is attracted to girl. Unfortunately, boy doesn't have a clue about how to make girl feel ATTRACTION for him... so instead he tries to "pursue" girl by offering her dinners, gifts, and flowers. Girl finds boy "nice", but there are no "sparks", so she "just likes him as a friend".
Here's "Meeting Story #2":
Boy is attracted to girl. Fortunately for him, boy understands ATTRACTION, and begins to communicate with girl in a way that makes her feel a powerful physical and emotional response for boy that she can't control. The sparks fly, and boy and girl "get together".

As I'm sure you know...In story #1, GIRL is in total control of the situation, and both of them know it.In story #2, BOY is the one who's in control of the situation.

THE STORIES OF HOW THINGS "END UP"
Let's assume that somehow boy and girl actually "get together". Things usually go one of two ways after that...
Here's "End Up Story #1":
Boy and girl get together. Boy realizes that he "REALLY likes" girl. Boy begins to act more and more predictable. Boy starts to share "how he feels" about girl too often. Boy becomes more and more submissive. Girl loses that feeling of ATTRACTION that she once had for boy, and has no way of explaining or understanding why. Girl leaves boy, and boy is left wondering what happened.
Here's "End Up Story #2":
Boy and girl get together. Boy understands that no matter how much he likes girl, he cannot let himself become a Wussy who chases girl around "sharing how he feels" and become boring. Boy keeps the relationship interesting, and he keeps challenging girl. He stays in control of himself, and by understanding his role as "The Man" in the relationship, keeps girl interested and attracted to him into the future.

And again, as I'm sure you know...
In story #1, GIRL is in total control of the situation, and both of them know it.
In story #2, BOY is the one who's in control of the situation.

If you look at your experience with women, I'm sure you'll see that these short stories describe MOST of the experiences you've had. Now, of course there are slight twists and variations, but the message is clear:
YOU MUST UNDERSTAND HOW ATTRACTION WORKS FOR WOMEN... AND HOW TO KEEP THE ATTRACTION GOING WHEN YOU MEET A WOMAN YOU REALLY LIKE.
If you don't understand ATTRACTION and how it works, then you are destined to keep playing out these same stories for the rest of your life. It's very unlikely that you'll stumble upon the "magic solution" by accident...
ATTRACTION IS DIFFERENT FOR WOMEN THAN IT IS FOR MEN--
VERY DIFFERENT
The reality is that you CAN stop this negative pattern if you WANT to.
But the key is:
1) Understanding how ATTRACTION works for WOMEN.
2) Understanding YOURSELF so you don't ALLOW yourself to act like a Wussy, become boring, and turn a good thing into a bad one... but instead you do the RIGHT things to keep everything on the right track.

If you know how to make a woman feel ATTRACTION for you, then you can control your destiny with women. If you DON'T know how to make a woman feel ATTRACTION for you, then you cannot control your destiny with women.

Read that paragraph again, and think about it for a minute before you go on.

OK, so I mentioned that ATTRACTION is very different for women than it is for men. Different how? What do I mean by that?Well, generally speaking, for a woman, ATTRACTION is a PROCESS... not an "event". It happens over time, and it becomes stronger or weaker depending upon how well the man in the situation understands how it works.
For a man, ATTRACTION is much more of an "event", meaning that it's either there or it isn't. It really doesn't matter whether or not the woman understands how it works. (As an interesting side note, if a woman really knows how ATTRACTION works, and her intention is to manipulate a man, it usually works VERY well.)So think of a woman's "Attraction Mechanism" more like a volume knob than a light switch. It's like a fantastic, classy old car that needs to warm up for a long time before you can drive it... not like a brand new Honda that you can start up and get right on the freeway with.

Here's a little secret about women and ATTRACTION:
If you'll just take a little longer in every situation to AMPLIFY a woman's ATTRACTION, she'll love you for it... and you'll experience rewards that will make the extra time you spent seem like the best investment of your entire life.
Here are a few specific tips for you for the "Meeting Phase":
1) Start with something STRONG, not with something WEAK.When a guy finds a girl interesting, he usually turns into a ball of nervous mush. Then, he usually makes the mistake of letting the woman KNOW that he's nervous and weak.
Don't do it.
Do something STRONG.
Challenge her.
If she thinks that she's cool, make fun of her. If she's smart, argue with her a little.
If she's doing something, tell her that you could do it better.
When you PUSH a little, and show some BACKBONE, she'll push back. That's your sign that the GAME IS ON.
If you just chase after her like the 100 other Wussies that have been bothering her this week, you will just be another boring, predictable face in the crowd.

2) Keep the TENSION UP.
One of my favorite concepts is "Never let the line go slack". This means that once you SPARK the "chemistry" or "sexual tension", you need to KEEP IT UP.
Just because she starts doing things that hint to you that she's interested doesn't mean that it's time to STOP. Quite the opposite, actually. Turn UP the volume a little. It's working, so do more!

3) Tease.
The word "tease" has a couple of meanings. One of the meanings has to do with doing things that are slightly annoying to get a response from someone. The other meaning is subtly different, and has to do with drawing out a response that you want by doing certain things that indirectly trigger it.Do both.If you're about to kiss her, wait until your lips are so close that you can almost feel her... and then STOP. Pull away, and smile.If you want to know how she feels about you, say "You LOVE me" in a condescending tone of voice, and see how she responds. If she says "NO I DON'T!" in an exaggerated, mocking way, then she probably DOES "love" you.
Teasing is fantastic. Do more of it.

And here are a few tips for the "End Up" phase:
1) Never become BORING.
Being predictable and boring is a cardinal sin when it comes to ATTRACTION. Don't do either.
Of course, telling a man not to be predictable is like telling a dog not to hump your leg. Most guys are PAINFULLY predictable. We LIKE being predictable, actually. I get it. But when it comes to a woman you enjoy, you'd better figure out a way to STOP IT.There's nothing that will kill the sparks faster than her knowing what you're about to do or say.

2) Don't hand over control.Women like men who make decisions and take the lead. Now, I'm not saying that women like men who are overly controlling. What I am saying is that women don't like guys who are always saying things like "I don't know, what do YOU want to do, baby?".Women don't want men that they can control, so don't be one.

3) Respect yourself, and keep your own interests.When a guy meets a woman he likes, he often wants to spend as much time as possible with her.
This is natural, of course. But there's a big danger here, as well. If you put your life aside for a woman, you will become less interesting to HER. In the long run, it's MUCH better to keep your friends, your interests, and your hobbies, and to spend time doing the things you enjoy... WITHOUT HER.
And I think it's VERY important to keep improving yourself as a person, and continue to be a guy that she can look up to and respect. As soon as you start acting like she's going to be around forever, she'll start feeling less and less ATTRACTION for you.

THE BIGGER PICTURE
Now, as you read these examples, can you see the bigger picture forming?
Can you see the deeper message?
The deeper message is that you need to understand how ATTRACTION works for women, and you need to do those things that keep the ATTRACTION BUILDING FOREVER.

Now, where does this all begin?
It begins with YOU. And it begins with you learning how to control yourself and your emotions. It begins with you needing to understand the history of how and why men and women become attracted to each other. It begins with you learning the basics of how to use subtle body language and communication to make women feel ATTRACTION for you.

'SUPER' rocks

The audio of the Telugu flick "Super" really rocks. The music director Sandeep Chowtha really mixed magic into the music. The lyrics give it a sporting edge. Most of the items have already found places in many discos and are being subjected to remixes. The item "Mila Mila......" is awesome; needless to mention the other items like "Akkad bakkad......", "Masthana.......", "chandramukhi........" are a class apart. The remix song of "Masthana..." has been included in the latest release of the disk.

Heard that the flick features some really superb bike races and stunts. It has been shot mostly at Mauritius. I can hardly wait for the release of the movie.

You can listen to the songs at MusicIndiaOnline.com

Things You Don't Want To Hear From Technical Support

* "Do you have a sledgehammer or a brick handy?"

* "That's right, not even McGyver could fix it."

* "So -- what are you wearing?"

* "Duuuuuude! Bummer!"

* "Looks like you're gonna need some new dilithium crystals, Cap'n."

* "Press 1 for Support. Press 2 if you're with 60 Minutes. Press 3 if you're with the FTC."

* "We can fix this, but you're gonna need a butter knife, a roll of duct tape, and a car battery."

* "In layman's terms, we call that the Hindenburg Effect."

* "Hold on a second... Mom! Timmy's hitting me!"

* "Okay, turn to page 523 in your copy of Dianetics."

* "Please hold for Mr. Gates' attorney."

How the softwares come out

Software doesn't just appear on the shelves by magic. That program shrink-wrapped inside the box along with the indecipherable manual and 12-paragraph disclaimer notice actually came to you by way of an elaborate path, through the most rigid quality control on the planet. Here, shared for the first time with the general public, are the inside details of the program development cycle.

1. Programmer produces code he believes is bug-free.
2. Product is tested. 20 bugs are found.
3. Programmer fixes 10 of the bugs and explains to the testing department that the other 10 aren't really bugs.
4. Testing department finds that five of the fixes didn't work and discovers 15 new bugs.
5. See 3.
6. See 4.
7. See 5.
8. See 6.
9. See 7.
10. See 8.
11. Due to marketing pressure and an extremely pre-mature product announcement based on overly-optimistic programming schedule, the product is released.
12. Users find 137 new bugs.
13. Original programmer, having cashed his royalty check, is nowhere to be found.
14. Newly-assembled programming team fixes almost all of the 137 bugs, but introduce 456 new ones.
15. Original programmer sends underpaid testing department a postcard from Fiji. Entire testing department quits.
16. Company is bought in a hostile takeover by competitor using profits from their latest release, which had 783 bugs.
17. New CEO is brought in by board of directors. He hires programmer to redo program from scratch.
18. Programmer produces code he believes is bug-free....

The role of 'Education' in Reliance saga

One uneducated and poor man, Dhirubhai Ambani built India's largest private business empire- Reliance. Two business graduates from Wharton and Stransford universities, Anil and Mukesh(who are none other than the sons of the uneducated man) are busy breaking up the empire.
Sadly, Thats the power of education.