This little exchange is representative of what's been happening in the lead up to the Republican primaries with each candidate (save for Ron Paul perhaps) trying to prove they have the biggest straw man bat.

Of course none of this has anything to do with whether or not OWS people really represent the 99% they claim to be or why anyone would think that a technology that has thus far apparently contributed to their continued existence would suddenly need to be rebuilt from the ground up. I suppose first they'll need to invent their own Internet running on their own OS's and hardware before they can get back to protesting whatever it is that they're protesting.

As someone who worked for years as a contract developer I have to agree.

It's not like this was a side project with application outside of the company. Even if it was he'd need approval before implementing it in house if he wanted to get paid for it. It sounds like this software was developed specifically for this specific company rather than being a side project (truly on the side) that happens to be something that he could sell to his company. That he was dumb enough to apply his personal time and resources to company work is his problem, not theirs.

If it's not in your job description and you don't think you're paid to do something then don't do it. This is a little bit like mowing your neighbor's lawn without his knowledge or consent and then asking him to pay you for it after the fact. It's also a little bit like that Reader's Digest scam where they'd send you a book you didn't order and then send you a bill a month later.

Great man - RIP

Don't worry folks. We'll always have the zombie process to remember him by.

Seriously though. C is still an active language of choice for everything from embedded to server to desktop applications and Unix is the gold standard for operating systems. Most people will never know how much these technologies have and continue to impact their lives.

Oh, just because you don't have a sense of humor.

Sent from my Linux 3.0.4 x86_64 GNU/Linux

There are far less successful companies that also demand insane hours from their people with no overtime pay or comp days. At least at Apple those people were more than rewarded if they had a 401k with some stock in the company.

Seems to me that Jobs put in his overtime during the early years building Apple.

Pixar. Many of the people putting in long hours have become known personalities, Lasseter, Stanton, etc. Jobs was almost a faceless CEO in that role by comparison.

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” -Gandhi

Most American "Christians" don't even stand up to those two commandments.

If you want to get technical, the Bible is a mix of legend and history often written down generations after the supposed events took place. Accounts have been merged and rewritten leaving a mess of self contradicting passages. Modern "Christians" are oblivious to this and simply cherry pick what they like.

There's also a huge difference in leadership requirements to satisfy a board that wants the ceo to run a company for growth vs one that only wants the ceo to make the company look as profitable as possible on paper so they can sell it off to the highest bidder.

Carol Bartz is not just some idiot that got a masters in Business Administration and high profile job through connections. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Bartz I don't much care for her management style personally, and based on the turnover at Yahoo! in the last few years I think I'm not alone, but I do respect her as a person and also her many achievements. Let's face it. The board destroyed Yahoo! when they fired Jerry Yang. All they wanted then was to sellout the company for quick cash and it seems that's still all they want. As far as I can see, the idiots in this story are the members of the Board.

Does the world need 20 new pot dispensaries, record labels, and social media copycat companies? Why not just hire 20 people who didn't go to college for jobs that would otherwise require a college degree? Then he can tell us in 6 months how well that worked out for Paypal.

Small holes in airplanes have a tendency of becoming big holes. Especially when the hole is in the wall of a pressurized cabin and while cruising along at about 500mph.

Besides, simply crashing the plane doesn't seem to be the only goal of these thugs. I suspect that any deliberate battery explosion would be enough for the TSA to justify making flying ever more miserable for the rest of us.

Good one.

Perhaps less pivotal, but no Alonzo Church as in Church of the Church-Turing Thesis either.

I'd be content to say a lot of people deserve credit for getting us to where we are today.

Buddhism does one better than put your kids in a camp, they take them to live in a monastery where they get their heads shaved and parade around in church robes - somewhat more radical than anything Dawkins has proposed.

The history of China shows quite the backlash against Buddhism in general. When Buddhism started taking over culturally, the resistance was also far more radical than anything Dawkins proposes.

The Jains do have a legitimate claim to peace and non violence and like their hindu neighbors generally are not evangelical (the people I've met in my travels have confirmed that). However, like the Hindus, the Jains also build large temples devoted to their beliefs, which IMHO is still at least one step more radical than anything Dawkins has ever proposed.

You would have done better to cite Japanese ancestor worship. At least their ancestors did exist at one point, unlike the the gods of other religions.

good idea - for those who can identify what is vile

Interesting proposition considering that the Catholic Church does both. I believe Dawkins never actually said that as such, but rather made an insensitive comment about "the Church's real child abuse" or something to that effect. Still, is he more vile than the people actually abusing children or the institution that protects the abusers?

Dawkins is just one voice among many. Attempts to use him to brand a single unified atheist movement are more a result of his detractors than the efforts of the people he has come to represent - willingly or unwillingly. BTW, you can no more do a disservice to atheism, that is "not religious," than you can do a disservice to "not small" or "not a number" or "not bowling" or "not evil." Asserting anything at all about a "not" when nothing else is known about it is complete nonsense. Perhaps you mean Dawkins is doing a disservice to British people, or the scientific community, or to advocates for the separation of church and state, or to humanists, or to people who simply refuse to believe in anything for which there is no evidence.

People could be forgiven for not understanding much of philosophy.

Really? Which religions? Dawkins never trained any suicide bombers; he never tortured people in an Inquisition; he never launched a Crusade; he never advocated ostracizing people from their communities who don't agree with him; he never started any political parties; he never put "in Dawkins we trust" in the pledge or on the money of any nation; he never lobbied any nation to engrave excerpts from his writings on their military hardware; he never even organized any camps where parents could send their children to memorize passages from his books. Is there such a religion that does none of these things? He does advocate that you think critically about ideas presented to you and demand proof for people's conclusions. If you call this radical, certainly Christianity, just to pick a religion at random, is far more radical.

There's an old story about a child who claimed that a certain emperor who marched through the streets of his town was not wearing any clothes. I could be wrong, but I think that the child did not also wish to be emperor - he just wanted to point out that the emperor was not wearing any clothes.