Steve Jobs Resigns as CEO of Apple

[Tyranicus]

It is the end of an era. Steve Jobs has been the CEO of Apple since 1997. At that time, the company was almost dead in the water. Now, it has more money than any other US company. He led Apple during the development of the iPod, the most popular brand of portable music player ever made and the iPhone, which completely revolutionized the smartphone scene.

[Randomizer]

There's always a chance that he will be back. It's not like this is the first time that he's left.

 

With his health problems he does have priorities like being alive to do something.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Tyranicus

Now, it has more money than any other US company.

I'm fairly sure GE has around three quarters of a trillion dollars in assets, so unless you define "money" as "cash reserves on hand", that's not true. Furthermore, there's a reason that most companies don't keep massive piles of cash on hand, namely that doing that does nothing to help with profit and every dollar you keep in a bank account is another dollar that the stockholders are angry at you for not a) giving to them in dividends, or investing back in the company.

So it's not so much an instance of "Apple is awesome for having this much money", but "Apple needs to learn to not suck at managing the money they make".

[Tyranicus]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

There's always a chance that he will be back. It's not like this is the first time that he's left.

With his health problems he does have priorities like being alive to do something.

When he left before, it was for a temporary leave of absence. He has never resigned before.

Originally Posted By: Dantius

I'm fairly sure GE has around three quarters of a trillion dollars in assets, so unless you define "money" as "cash reserves on hand", that's not true. Furthermore, there's a reason that most companies don't keep massive piles of cash on hand, namely that doing that does nothing to help with profit and every dollar you keep in a bank account is another dollar that the stockholders are angry at you for not a) giving to them in dividends, or investing back in the company.

So it's not so much an instance of "Apple is awesome for having this much money", but "Apple needs to learn to not suck at managing the money they make".

I was speaking about cash on hand. I highly doubt the shareholders are complaining since Apple is the most valuable publicly traded company in the world.

[Dantius]

They're shareholders, you obviously don't understand. If I owned shares of Apple, and I saw that there was $78,000,000,000 worth of money with $15,000,000,000 of profit every year that I could be having a slice of, I'd be complaining.

 

Look at the numbers. Right now Apple pays exactly zero dollars in dividends. Some quick math means that there are about $80 on hand of cash, per share of Apple, with around $16 extra coming in every year. They could pay out a quarterly dividend of a dollar or two or even three per share, and if I were a shareholder with even a couple hundred shares missing out on potentially one to two thousand dollars a year, I'd be pretty mad.

[ex post slarto]

Boo, hoo. The rich people are mildly less rich than they could be.

[Dantius]

Not everyone who buys stock is rich, just smart. Long-term stock purchases, especially dividend stock that you then reinvest, is easily the best way to not only beat inflation but make quite a tidy profit on the side. And it's not like there's a line in the sand saying "YOU MUST MAKE THIS MUCH TO OWN STOCKS," in fact pretty much anyone with a couple thousand dollars to spare can get in the game and do just fine, and even strike it rich if you're smart and lucky.

[Goldengirl]

Originally Posted By: Tyranicus

It is the end of an era.

Steve Jobs resigning is the end of an era? What era, necessarily, is this - the digital era and revolution continues on. We'll still be inundated with new and increasingly more fancy gadgets to play Angry Birds with, despite this resignation.

As a microcosm of the Arab Spring, the Libyan rebels sacking Tripoli and the subsequent functional collapse of Gadaffi's regime is much more of the end of an era.

[Alorael at Large]

It's the end of an era at Apple. He's famous and infamous for his "reality distortion field" effect. He created the company, when he left it tanked, and when he returned it rose back to prominence.

 

—Alorael, who hasn't heard any Apple shareholders complaining. Apple doesn't have any incentive to pay dividents: the stock is already quite valuable, and they don't need to start paying out to drive that up. And if the shareholders want money, they can sell.

[ex post slarto]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

Not everyone who buys stock is rich, just smart.

I didn't say super-rich, I said rich. I suppose you're right; there are certainly some people in the bottom 50% of income and/or wealth brackets who own stock. But I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of it is owned by the wealthiest 20% (or by other companies).

[Dantius]

I'm kind of confused at what point you are driving at. Are you saying that the stock market is a construct of the upper classes to stop the poor from becoming enfranchised? Because that's what it seems like your saying, and that's not really the case at all.

[Sarachim]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

I'm kind of confused at what point you are driving at. Are you saying that the stock market is a construct of the upper classes to stop the poor from becoming enfranchised? Because that's what it seems like your saying, and that's not really the case at all.

Responsibility to shareholders effectively guarantees that a corporation is legally obligated to behave like a sociopath. There is nobody within the corporate power structure who has the power to place ethics over profit, because they are all subservient to the interests of shareholders who have not given them a directive to do so. Meanwhile, the shareholders themselves are almost all totally disengaged from actual management of the business of which they are part-owners.

[ex post slarto]

No. I'm just getting at the fact that the detailed workings of a single stock is mostly just going to affect people who already have plenty of money.

[Karoka]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

a couple thousand dollars to spare

A COUPLE THOUSAND DOLLARS?!?!?!

[The Ratt]

Yup. It happens. Unfortunately not to very many people.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Sarachim

Responsibility to shareholders effectively guarantees that a corporation is legally obligated to behave like a sociopath. There is nobody within the corporate power structure who has the power to place ethics over profit, because they are all subservient to the interests of shareholders who have not given them a directive to do so. Meanwhile, the shareholders themselves are almost all totally disengaged from actual management of the business of which they are part-owners.

Not really. I mean, corporations often behave like sociopaths, but you misdiagnosed the reason and prescribed the wrong solution.

Corporations behave like "sociopaths" (using an outdated mental health term to describe a collective entity is probably an abuse of notation, but I'll roll with it) not because they are beholden to their shareholders, but because they are beholden to profit. It doesn't matter who actually receives the profit, but corporations both publicly and privately held both act in the same fashion. Furthermore, claims about the "corporate power structure" not enabling people to place ethics above profit, well duh. The only time that it's actually possible for someone to do that is if they founded the corporation in the first place. Otherwise, they wouldn't advance up the structure in the first place. See also: politics in most democracies.

If anything, publicly trading a company offers an incentive to behave in a more ethical manner, since the price of a stock and thus the value of the corporation is dependent on public image- look at how BP's stock lost half its value during the Deepwater Horizon fiasco. The only real cost to the business was the writing off of an oil rig, stoppering the well, paying cleanup costs, and the legal funds and fees. To a company with the assets, profitability, and infrastructure of BP, that's not that much in relative terms. But because it was beholden to its shareholders, who decided that they didn't want to own a company that suddenly had a tarnished image and bad PR, it got hit so hard that I can virtually guarantee that the corporation is going to seriously revamp its offshore rigs to avoid another disaster like that, where a privately held company might have had no such incentive.

Your solution, somehow placing ethics over profit in the corporate power structure, is laughable. As opposed to stocks which depend on a vast variety of factors, success in the high echelons of the corporate world is based off of profit to a much higher degree. If I'm the president of Dantius Industries (especially if I'm paid in options or something like that), then I have a very, very strong motive to do everything possible to maximize the profitability of my company by, say, bulldozing Ephesos's forests, especially if the company is privately held, so the bad press wouldn't affect my salary much. If I own 100 shares of Slarty Industries, a stock that pays out a decent dividend with good stability, then I don't really need to be concerned with bulldozing Ephesos' forests to squeeze an extra buck fifty worth of dividend every quarter, and if President Slarty of Slarty Industries decided to do so, then the resulting stock tank would make it way, way worse for me in all except the very long haul, which most investors aren't in for. So in the privately held company, the motive to place profit above ethics is quite strong, whereas in the publicly traded company, it's far weaker, and practically nonexistent for the shareholders.

The actual solution, of course, is a thing called "regulation". We have agencies like the FTC and EPA for things like security fraud and bulldozing forests and such, and if a corporation in behaving irresponsibly, then the answer is not to decouple it from collective ownership, but to crack down on it with regulation and such. Now, granted, that's becoming more difficult now in the current climate, but that's a political problem, not an inherent flaw in the financial system itself.

And if, perchance, your comment was more narrowly focused on Apple, then I highly doubt that paying out dividends will suddenly make Apple behave like a sociopath. After all, they've managed to be pretty shockingly sociopathic without one, they just somehow have good enough PR and a stupid loyal enough fanbase that they can get away with it.

[Callie]

I don't know why, but this thread is giving me an odd compulsion to hug a cardboard cutout of John Maynard Keynes.

[ex post slarto]

Although it's become quite common, I still get a funny feeling inside every time you make a long post and I agree with it. Who are you and what have you done with Dantius?

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

Although it's become quite common, I still get a funny feeling inside every time you make a long post and I agree with it. Who are you and what have you done with Dantius?

Perhaps you're predisposed to agree with people who have sideways avatars with inverted colors?

[Triumph]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

Perhaps you're predisposed to agree with people who have sideways avatars with inverted colors?

What we need now is two people, each with a sideways avatar using inverted colors, to make contrary arguments. Will it reduce Slarty to gibbering madness as he struggles to decide which to accept?

[Sarachim]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

Furthermore, claims about the "corporate power structure" not enabling people to place ethics above profit, well duh. The only time that it's actually possible for someone to do that is if they founded the corporation in the first place.

Exactly. Separating ownership from management leaves nobody responsible the trade-off between profits and ethics. That was my point.

Originally Posted By: Dantius

If anything, publicly trading a company offers an incentive to behave in a more ethical manner, since the price of a stock and thus the value of the corporation is dependent on public image- look at how BP's stock lost half its value during the Deepwater Horizon fiasco.

First: I would argue that the drop in BP's stock had nothing to do with ethical revulsion, but was a herd response to the fact that BP's value was obviously about to decrease. A stock going down makes a stock going down. See also: every market panic ever.

Second: Even if I grant your argument, you're only strengthening my point. You're arguing that the people who literally owned BP had no idea (and thus, no control over) what was being done in their name and with their capital. If I needed proof that distributed ownership leads to a moral vacuum, this is it.

Originally Posted By: Dantius

Your solution, somehow placing ethics over profit in the corporate power structure, is laughable.

Straw man. When did I propose this as a solution? It's one of the properties of a solution. Debating solutions requires that we first agree about the existence of the problem I am proposing to solve.

Originally Posted By: Dantius

If I'm the president of Dantius Industries (especially if I'm paid in options or something like that), then I have a very, very strong motive to do everything possible to maximize the profitability of my company by, say, bulldozing Ephesos's forests, especially if the company is privately held, so the bad press wouldn't affect my salary much. If I own 100 shares of Slarty Industries, a stock that pays out a decent dividend with good stability, then I don't really need to be concerned with bulldozing Ephesos' forests to squeeze an extra buck fifty worth of dividend every quarter, and if President Slarty of Slarty Industries decided to do so, then the resulting stock tank would make it way, way worse for me in all except the very long haul, which most investors aren't in for. So in the privately held company, the motive to place profit above ethics is quite strong, whereas in the publicly traded company, it's far weaker, and practically nonexistent for the shareholders.

This scenario assumes that the general public is aware of the unethical behavior in question. In reality, as your BP example showed, it's generally kept secret from the public until the damage has already been done, and anything that's secret from the public is also secret from the shareholders.

Originally Posted By: Dantius

The actual solution, of course, is a thing called "regulation". We have agencies like the FTC and EPA for things like security fraud and bulldozing forests and such, and if a corporation in behaving irresponsibly, then the answer is not to decouple it from collective ownership, but to crack down on it with regulation and such.

This is a false dilemma between regulation and consolidation of responsibility. Regulation is obviously indispensable, but I think you'll agree that it's never going to be perfect. Regulation would be more effective if it were possible to pin responsibility on individuals in addition to corporations, especially since this would allow us to bring criminal law into play (this does happen sometimes, but not nearly as often as it ought to.) In the case of BP, the people who were punished (the shareholders) had no idea what was going on, while the people responsible (BP's management) got off unscathed, except insofar as they were also shareholders.

[Callie]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

Perhaps you're predisposed to agree with people who have sideways avatars with inverted colors?

Shhhhhh...the politicians might get ideas.

Nooooooooooooooooo!



(Oddly, when I googled "David Cameron side profile" one of the first results was a diagram of a prostate exam)

[Cairo Jim]

I wonder how people felt when they found out that Mr Burns' nuclear plant was really owned by a canary.

[Dintiradan]

Alright, let's see how many people we can get on this bandwagon...

[Student of Trinity]

In the first place, Apple's big cash hoard already belongs to its shareholders, because they own Apple. True, they won't be able to use it to buy big screen TVs until they vote to direct its distribution as dividends. But most of them aren't desperate this moment for every bit of cash they can command, and are as happy to leave some of their money sitting with Apple as to leave it sitting in a bank. Apple may soon invest much of that money in buying other companies, and ultimately provide far better returns on that investment than the bank.

 

In the second place, it's not only current Apple shareholders who perceive Apple to be a better steward of investor cash than any bank. Lots of people think that Apple will probably do smart things with its bankroll, and this raises the current price of Apple shares. And this benefits current Apple shareholders immediately. If their Apple shares go up, they can sell some and buy that TV today. If Apple were to pay them out a big slice of its cash, they might actually lose more than they gained, if the markets judged the move negatively and Apple shares lost value.

[Harehunter]

Let me cite an example from personal experience. When I met my wife, she worked at K-Mart. Mr. Kresge, who founded the company, was still in control. His policy was to take care of the employees, so they would be happy to work there. This would result in better customer service, resulting in greater patronage by those customers. More sales, more profits. More profits, more expansion. Etc, etc, etc. His focus was on building the corporation.

 

When he retired and the company became a publicly held corporation, all this changed. Mr. Antonini was elected by the board to be Chief Executive, with the mission of providing greater profit to the share holders. That meant cutting costs. Fewer benefits for the employees; fewer employees tasked with the same amount of work as before but with a smaller staff; fewer full time employees who had a stake in the companies welfare; more part time employees who couldn't care less. This resulted in poorer customer service, fewer customers, less sales, and less profit. K-Mart had to file bankruptcy and reorganize. Sadly that meant the end of Builders Square. Walden Books was cut loose which was probably the best thing to happen to them. K-Mart lost so much image, that it had to close many stores; there is not a single K-Mart in Houston, the fourth largest city in the country.

 

Public shareholders often don't think that far ahead, and the results will have their consequences.

 

BTW, I have not nor will I buy BP stocks. I know too much of their safety record and I suspected a disaster like the deep water drill was inevitable. When AMOCO owned the refinery in Texas City, it has plans to replace the blow-down stack with a flare, an option which would not contribute to profits, but was safer. Their safety awareness programs were better as well. When BP bought them, they decided not to make that change. Safety awareness became slack in other areas. Then the explosion and 15 people died, with many more injured. Nope, I won't invest in a company like that.

[Student of Trinity]

Right — this is the downside. Here in Germany, for instance, a large fraction of the economy consists of medium-sized privately-held businesses that have been operating for several generations. They're typically very conservative, doing everything with the very long term in mind. They're often particularly reluctant to lay people off, preferring to cut hours or pay when necessary instead. A lot of these firms are niche specialists whose expert workforce is their biggest asset.

 

It's a different model. In many ways it works great. It doesn't make it easy for new young workers to get jobs, though, when so many companies are aiming for indefinite survival rather than growth, and hence are reluctant to take on the liabilities of new employees as long as their current staff can handle their current workload.

 

The American system also works, though, or at least it has worked pretty well on average for the past century. Most American companies are trying to go big or go bust, and they hire and fire freely.

 

Of course, it could be that the American style of capitalism works best in times of rapid technological change, and becomes ruinously wasteful in an era more like the one Marx foresaw, of accelerating competition for diminishing returns. We may well be entering such an era; despite all the hype, I don't expect to see change in my lifetime on the scale that my grandfather saw. He grew up in a world drawn by horses, and lived to watch men walk on the moon. I grew up with computers, and have lived to see faster computers.

[Harehunter]

I currently work for was established by two partners. It is still owned and operated by one founder, and the son of the other one. We have in ascendency the son of the currently active founder and the grandson of the other one. By that I mean that the ownership of the company will continue to be private. With that in mind, the outlook is that they will continue to grow the company including building our resume in other types of projects. It is a good company to work for. The number of people with long careers here is high; I have been here 20 years. Some people in our department have been here almost 30 years. And the owners and their sons continue to grow and expand the company creating more jobs every month.

 

As for how technology may change in your lifetime, don't be so depressed. Not only has the qualitative nature of change over the past few decades been great, so too has the rate of that change has increased. It may slow down for a few years while the world economy is depressed, but when we get someone with a greater vision then it will pick up again.

[ex post slarto]

it's not inverted

 

for the last time it's not inverted

[Harehunter]

Nope, not inverted. A 90 degree offset is not inverted.

Diverted maybe, but definitely not inverted.

[Student of Trinity]

Nah, I disagree about the pace of recent change. It's been really fast compared to most of human history, but really slow compared to the outrageous burst of change that transformed the world between about 1860-1960. Things have really leveled off, compared to what they were.

 

It just takes a generation or two to put names on these things. People in my grandfather's generation didn't talk as much about change as we do, but that's just because they were closer to it than we were. To them it was all just individual things changing, not the Change! that we've grown up with. The very fact that we're more aware of it is a sign that we have less of it.

 

Maybe I can convey this by imagining what life would be like now, if technological progress had continued at its earlier rate.

 

Radio appeared around the turn of the 20th century, talking films a few decades later, television another few decades after that. At that rate, we really ought to have had full sensory simulation media, with artificial experiences piped directly into your brain à la William Gibson, for about ten years.

 

Cars appeared in the early 20th century, aircraft were widespread a decade or two later, we had jet airliners by mid-century or so, and moon landings by 1970. At that rate, cars should probably all have been replaced by individual flyers by now, and we should have a moonbase or be on Mars.

 

Antibiotics were discovered in the early 20th century, likewise X-rays. Lots of basic surgery techniques were developed in the surrounding decades, and we've had medical MRI since the early 1970s. Smallpox was eradicated by 1980. At that rate, we ought to have cured cancer by now.

 

I expect it could go on.

 

My point is certainly not that all these 'should have had' advances would have been comparable increments in fundamental difficulty to the ones before them. In fact it is very much harder to reach Mars than the Moon, very much harder to eliminate AIDS than smallpox, very much harder to understand the brain than to transmit information to it by sound and sight. I'm not saying that our rate of effort has slowed down.

 

But the ultimately discernible payoffs have definitely fallen off. Somehow humans seem to have passed through a sort of technical Happy Valley in the recent past, where there was a lot of relatively low-hanging technological fruit to be had. We seem to have picked most of it by now. There is surely lots more to pick, but it's higher on the tree, and it'll come slower. I think we're kidding ourselves not to admit that. I believe in the coming Diamond Age. I just doubt I'll live to see it.

[ex post slarto]

...the colors are not inverted...

[Harehunter]

Well let me put this way. When I first started working with computers 30+ years ago, the expected life-cycle of a computer was 10 years. Now the technology changes causes obsolescence in less than 1 year. Cell phones have advanced in speed, size and functionality at a rate that makes regular computers look like snails.

 

I remember reading the old Dick Tracy comic strips, and all the gadgetry they used. Who would have guessed back then that before we died we would actually have a cell phone you could wear on your wrist?

---------------------------------------

You make a valid distinction. The visible change in technology may be limited.

 

[Student of Trinity]

But it seems to me you're making my point. We have a ten-year-old computer sitting on my daughter's desk. I'd never use it at work, but only because I set a real premium on speed. In fact it still does almost everything I need a computer to do, so my daughter still uses it. Its obsolescence is a far different thing from the obsolescence of the horse and buggy compared to the automobile, or the double-bladed axe against the chainsaw.

 

As to the cell phone: Dick Tracy was set in the (then) near future. I think pretty much every original reader of Dick Tracy thought that they would live to see cell phones on their wrists. They thought wrist-radios would come before car styles changed much. The surprising thing is how long it has actually taken.

[Harehunter]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

...the colors are not inverted...

Nope, not inverted there either. Shifted down-spectrum, but definitely not inverted.

The only thing I find disturbing is the new nomen. It sounds like a place that needs a serious cleaning.

[Triumph]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

...the colors are not inverted...

"There are...four lights!"

[AethirWeb]

...okay two things. first ironically I'm reading this on my iPad. Secondly...

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[Dikiyoba]

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

Alright, let's see how many people we can get on this bandwagon...

Sure, why not?

Bow down before Dikiyoba the Great!

[ex post slarto]

I'll facepalm before Dikiyoba.

[Dintiradan]

@Slarty: Not inverted, perhaps. On the other hand, rotating and inverting my avatar took two clicks. And I am nothing if not lazy.

 

EDIT: Also, colour-shifting looks better with simple, cartoon images than movie stills.

[Niemand]

Slarty appears to have done something fancy, since I can't reproduce the colors in his avatar with a simple hue rotation from the original.

 

EDIT: Ha, now I have something (slightly) fancy, too.

[Harehunter]

I'm satisfied with my pun for an avatar.

[Alorael at Large]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

As to the cell phone: Dick Tracy was set in the (then) near future. I think pretty much every original reader of Dick Tracy thought that they would live to see cell phones on their wrists. They thought wrist-radios would come before car styles changed much. The surprising thing is how long it has actually taken.

Real paradigm shift advances are hard to see coming. Faster computers, sure, but omnipresent computers? That were combined with those portable cell phones? And the internet? Together, making huge amounts of data available anywhere at all times?

The big advances in medicine have already happened. What's left is mostly difficult, incremental change. We get better at treating cancer, but we won't eradicate it anytime soon. Our cars get more efficient and they get more gizmos built in, but they're still cars. Our space program... got eviscerated. A lot of the big, obvious, life-changing innovations are behind us. The paradigms have shifted, and now we just refine.

But the personal computer is from the 1970's and became really widespread in, what, the 1990's? The world wide web dates from the 1990's as well, and Usenet famously stopped being a fairly closed community in September 1993. YouTube and Facebook are just over half a decade old. We're in the beginning of the computer/internet/cloud age, not the end.

Nanotechnology? Well, it's perpetually just around the corner, but it's cropping up more and more in medicine and computing. Augmented reality? Coming up in smartphone form more than in ocular and brain implant form, but still arriving. Hardware improvements to our wetware? Limited at present mostly to reparative rather than enhancing, but brain-computer interfaces are a slow and awkward reality.

—Alorael, who isn't sure there will be anything like the number and magnitude of changes between 1900 and 2000 over the next 90 years. He is sure, however, that the era of huge technological progress isn't over. It'll just be in different fields.

[Student of Trinity]

Progress in physics has really slowed in the past forty years or so, after a huge burst of revolutionary advances that drove a lot of new technology. There was electromagnetism and maybe to some degree thermodynamics in the late 19th century, which really changed a lot of things. Then quantum mechanics took off in the 20th century.

 

It's not necessarily that the technology was all driven by the science. It was arguably at least as much the other way 'round. But the point is that there was a lot of new stuff to be discovered and applied, and that's a big reason why there was so much new technology. There hasn't been so much new lately. Maybe you only get radically new kinds of devices when you find radically new kinds of natural phenomena.

 

I keep an old National Geographic on my shelf, because it has an article on lasers, from just a few years after the laser was invented. All the main applications of lasers, except reading information from optical disks, had already been implemented at that point, at least crudely. When a new phenomenon comes along, technological exploitation often follows quite rapidly, though there can be a long stage of refinement before practical levels are reached. The refinement phase just isn't as exciting, but that's all we've had for quite some time.

 

In principle genetics-based biotechnology could be a big hit, and so probably could neuroscience. But somehow they haven't really gotten in gear yet, and it's been a while now.

[The Ratt]

So what did you guys use to alter your images, and where are you hosting them?

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: The (Armored) Ratt

So what did you guys use to alter your images, and where are you hosting them?

Paint can do it, and Tinypic is a good hosting site.

I'm glad to see this is catching on! Soon, they'll see the power of the inverted colors! THEY'LL ALL SEE!

[nikki.]

I'm subverting your inversion by having un-inverted colours.

 

I suppose that makes me Han. Or, at a push, Lando.

[Triumph]

I, too, have now become more powerful. Bandwagon FTW.

 

Edit: Lando System?

[Callie]

For some reason both Mac and Windows have a shortcut to invert the color on the screen, though if you take a screenshot it won't save as inverted.

 

Mac: Ctrl+alt+command+8 (not the keypad)

Windows: Ctrl+alt+i

[Tyranicus]

Originally Posted By: Excalibur

For some reason both Mac and Windows have a shortcut to invert the color on the screen, though if you take a screenshot it won't save as inverted.

Mac: Ctrl+alt+command+8 (not the keypad)
Windows: Ctrl+alt+i

That's for visually impaired people who see things better if they are inverted. Alternatively, it can be used to mess with people.