Serbia grants citizenship to Steve Wozniak
b92.net
b92.net
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_Serbian_...
Last year the European Parliament passed a resolution saying it "strongly regrets Serbia’s non-alignment with EU sanctions against Russia, which damages its EU accession process." There's also the problem regarding their relationship with Kosovo.
Also, only 34-43% of Serbians want to join according to polls. Compared to Albania's 97% and Montenegro's 79%.
I think Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia and even Ukraine are more likely to join the EU next.
Serbia, on the other hand, does largely share "European Values", more and more so every year.
Its political alignments can change very quickly. But the cultural trajectory is clear.
"The company desperately needed the Macintosh to be a hit. Instead, after an initial flurry of interest, sales of the new computer came in far below expectations. The Macintosh was underpowered, and the lack of software for it kept business customers away. In April 1985, Sculley convinced the Apple board to strip Jobs of his management duties. Sculley put out a statement that Jobs would continue to be a “creator of powerful ideas and the champion of Apple’s spirit,” but in reality Jobs suddenly found himself in a no-man’s land at the company he’d created. He was kicked out of his office and moved to a small building across the street, *which he nicknamed Siberia*. For a couple of months he dragged himself into the office to take the occasional phone call, but with depression setting in, he eventually stopped visiting the Apple campus altogether.
That September, Jobs officially cut his ties to Apple and announced plans to start a new company, NeXT, taking with him a handful of Apple engineers. "
[0] https://intellinews.com/interview-media-expert-says-no-limit...
Edit: read reply for more context
Also from https://apnews.com/article/wozniak-apple-serbia-passport-ele...:
“The convivial Wozniak, who teamed up with the late Steve Jobs to found Apple in 1976, arrived in Serbia ahead of Dec. 17 parliamentary and local elections, in an apparent boost for President Aleksandar Vučić and his populist right-wing governing party.
Wozniak said he feels “so lucky” to be in Serbia and that he and his wife Janet, who is also getting a passport, will from now on “promote” Serbia. He said he will become a Serb living in the U.S.
Vučić said at a joint news conference in Belgrade that “it is an honor” for Serbia to deliver the passports to Wozniak and his wife.”
It's customary for us here in EU to grant citizenship/titles/university degrees to various important people who have contributed to a specific field. Some countries do it out of recognition others for country/political gains, but it doesn't hurt to have a collection of passports :-)
I'm not sure that is accurate.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Military_alliances_...
Also, conscription is absolutely irrelevant for someone his age. Besides, citizens living abroad are usually not pressed into service, even in times of war.
There are lots of countries that are strictly militarily non-aligned (as in, not members of any mutual defense pact.)
It is true that there are relatively few countries that are not either militarily aligned or strongly in the geopolitical orbit of one or more of Russia, China, or the US, but...Serbia isn't in this category, either.
In Europe?
> It is true that there are relatively few countries that are not either militarily aligned or strongly in the geopolitical orbit of one or more of Russia, China, or the US, but...Serbia isn't in this category, either.
Actually, Serbia often gets criticized for playing a juggling game between EU, Russia, and China. As far as orbits go, for all its bravado about 'brotherly' Russia, it is actually mostly dependent on the EU
By the way, Wozniak mentioned that he and his wife were on vacation in cities along the Danube, so I guess that's the reason he's in Belgrade.
"It is the greatest honor for us that I believe that the Government of Serbia will grant the creator of the global IT industry a Serbian passport. I congratulate Wozniak and his wife, who will become citizens of Serbia today or tomorrow," said Vučić.
"We can boast that the computer genius is a citizen of Serbia," he said. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić met in Belgrade with computer engineer and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
Either way it is indisputable that he is a computer genius and it is a worthy boast that he chose to become their citizen.
Not to say they also didn't stand on the shoulders of giants.
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...
The Apple I was the first proper one (the way most people would recognize a relatively usable personal computer), and it kicked off a revolution. That revolution was coming though, Apple or not.
Apparently some friend introduced made arrangements for him to get the citizenship
‘From now on, Mr X is now one of our citizen, with all the taxes/restrictions it entails’
International law regarding nationality generally focuses on preventing statelessness, so there isn’t much on prohibiting additional citizenships.
This obviously causes problems for critics of the regime.
Is this just a bad translation?
"Dear Mr. Musk, here is your Argentinian Citizenship! We welcome you with open arms! P.S. please note that as of 2020 we have in place a tax on high-wealth individuals. The appropriate agency will be in touch. Renouncing citizenship takes about a year"
There are two actually.
US also imposes an unrivaled insane extraterritorial law (FATCA) on foreign banks requiring them to do expensive reporting on US persons, making them worldwide pariahs in the banking system even when they hold dual citizenship.
Wish more languages would do that and not try to keep the original spelling just because.
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.
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.
It’s no big deal.
There was a Mexican dude whose parents named him Joe, but they pronounced it something close to /Dzoe’/, so neither /Dzou/ nor /Xoe/. I think he was better off going by Joe over here.
But John and Joao are definitely not the same name. If someone asks you "is your name John or Joao?", even in Brazil there's only one right answer. At best you can say "both names can trace their origin to the same root name", but they are not the same name.
The Mexican guy's name or your anecdote is named Joe (but pronounced like he or his parents wanted it). There are no two ways about it.
In Argentina and Uruguay some people are called "Jonathan", only pronounced "Shonatan" (or in some Spanish pronunciations, "Yonatan"). That's the way it is.
Finally, phonetically spelling the name and surname of a known celebrity, as in Wozniak's case, just seems silly to me.
Is the president of the US You Baiden? That's a phonetic spelling in Spanish, after all! (Silly, right?).
If your name could be both John and Joao, then that would be, "Yes!"
Can you do that in general if you don't know the actual language, though? Even native English speakers sometimes have issues with certain borrowed French words, despite those being in English.
Jumped couple of time seeing Cyrillic "Питхон", though)
I love localized names. So I like what the Serbians did for Steve here.
In any event it’s his name but it’s their language and they get to spell it according to their transliteration rules.
I can't speak for China, but I can speak for Japan. I occasionally transliterate my name for one reason or another, but 99% of the time I'm rocking my name the way I identify with it. Don't mistake me for not participating the local culture. I speak the language, the government (city and federal), and my employer, a local firm, all use my latin name on all official documents and informal communications. My coworkers and friends will usually use my latin spelling as well. Bear in mind, these are usually mixed-provenance sentences where they'll switch to latin for my name in the middle of an otherwise fully native sentence. I'm happy to transliterate it when the situation calls for it but I'd prefer it not be forced on me if it can be helped.
To answer a sibling comment, do I identify it more spoken or written, I would say the written form. I'm tolerant of accents, foreign languages with separate syllabaries, verbal typos, and other such errata, so I don't really care strongly how my name is pronounced as long as an earnest attempt is made.