Thanks to self-interested politicians like Utah's Orrin Hatch and others who'd rather fatten up on pork, China has a viable space program, while the US just has a money sink that keeps corporations flush in fat lobbying budgets.

... and wwwwrrrrrrrrrrrriggling

I voted CPU, but technically it was the plastic clips holding the heat sink against the CPU getting old and brittle. One of the clips cracked just enough to let the heat sink lift partially away from the CPU and, well... buh bye magic smoke.

What is it that determines whether a jerk sticks around long enough to succeed and become someone at the top that others excuse and follow or is fired with a "do not rehire" mark on his HR record?

"Sometimes people don't understand the responsibilities that CEOs have, so sometimes they'll take that as, 'Why is he being such an asshole?'" Wolff did allow that Pincus sometimes uses language devoid of "soothing qualities," and could be challenging to work for, depending on how you adapted to his management style. "He's moving at 100 miles per hour. You've either got to get on the bus, or you're not on the bus," he says. "Most people have a buffer. ... Mark's not like that. He thinks it, and he says it."

Perhaps the gameplay of FarmVille offers a lesson: you'll put up with shit if you get a little candy now and then, with a promise of a big payout later. Guys like Pincus have a knack for showing just enough promising results (cash profit) to whet the appetite while exploiting the "compulsion loop" of the people they work with. Nice work, if you can stand yourself.

http://www.angryflower.com/aposter3.jpg

Makes total sense, as Zynga's 'games' are far more like casino slots and other sorts of gambling than real skill- or puzzle-based games.

Bjeat mje tjøø ijt.

I figured any software developer worthy of the title had heard the story and understood the details already, so I merely linked to the Wikipedia article for reference. Yes, the full filesystem was the root cause, but the repeated reboots and failure of commands to the rover to go into night-time shutdown arose from a race condition within a critical sequence. If you want a more technical analysis, you'll find many, but one is http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall09/cos109/mars.rover.pdf