Eben Upton gets my nod. The Raspberry Pi is a huge success; his goals were noble; they were to make an inexpensive computer that **anybody** could afford and use to learn about computing. Delivered.

As far as Snowden goes -- I award him some used toilet paper. If he was a patriot, then he would have kept his disclosures to what was patently illegal, that is, the NSA's warrantless collection of data from American citizens in America. But Eddy went way past that; he had an agenda, and his agenda was not to surface the NSA's illegal activities in the US, his agenda was to burn down the NSA completely. He's not a patriot, he is a criminal, a traitor, and I pray the next time he sees his homeland it is is from the inside of a cell. Meanwhile, I hope he is freezing his ass off in Russia.

My advice would be not to go into management unless there is a way to keep your technical skills up. You won't find the headhunters as eager to place managers, except the highly technically adept ones. If you let your technical skills rot, it may become more difficult to stay employed.

I've worked as a developer, architect, project leader and "director of development" (whoa) and I prefer the technical contributor roles -- but that's just me.

As far as the companies that appear to be "age-ist" -- run away! A lot of that is done because the younger developers can be had for less money, they can and will work longer hours (usually because they don't have a family or really any life outside work) and they just don't know better. I can tell you from the times I have done "leadership" that I would rather have two skilled old-timers than four fresh-outs working on my team. The two old timers will almost always out-produce the four fresh-uts in terms of actual delivery and quality. So you get what you pay for.

The Art of Computer Programming. Two volumes ought to be enough.

$5,231 is the taxpayer's contribution. The individual would pay another $2,877/year (if they are, for instance, a single 30 year old making $35,000 a year, that is outside of the range where the government subsidy kicks in.)

So... $8,000/person/year. Hardly affordable.

Uhh. Yeah. And it's worse than that -- remember where the feds get their money from.

1.36 trillion dollars over 10 years (http://obamacarefacts.com/costof-obamacare/). That is 136 billion dollars a year. For 10 million people to have insurance.

By my calculations, that is $13,600 per covered person, per year.

Hardly "affordable".

There is no shortage of skilled IT workers.

There is a shortage of skilled IT workers who are willing to work for what they perceive are "below market wages."

I can tell you as a person who has been hiring, you need to be willing to pay for quality. If you aren't willing to pay, the next best thing is H1B, where you get almost as much quality for significantly less cost.

It's planned obsolescence. That's no surprise from Apple, the people who brought us iPod touch with a un-replaceable batteries, macbooks with soldered in RAM, and 17 steps using 2 specialized tools to change battery in iPhone 5 etc.

The new OS looks like crap on your old (non-"retina") hardware that is otherwise still working fine. Sounds like time to drop another $1500 for the latest macbook. Super for Apple and their stockholders, sucks for you. I'm liking my Lenvo T-series laptops running Linux better and better every day.

If the feds come to me with a valid warrant to decrypt my phone -- I'll do it -- rather than risk contempt of court. Their warrant better say what they are looking for.

Anybody else wants to look at it -- they can suck it.

Police & other government agencies have been snooping on suspects' phones for too long, without a warrant, and that is in direct contradiction to this:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

That is the fourth amendment to the constitution, and it remains the law of this land. No, you cannot search my phone without a warrant.

Don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.

Microsoft has been successful because of their American engineering talent.

If they want to go, they should go. G'bye!

The ad hominem! I'm so proud of you.

They did have the first iPod, no doubt. But as far as the first portable MP3 player, no. Try PJB100, invented by Digital Equipment Corporation.

They did have the first iPhone, but that was not the first smart phone, no. Sorry again. Palm.

They did have the first iPad, but that was not the first tablet computer, not by a long shot. GRiD was first.

Oh yeah, that GUI they claimed to invent and sued Microsoft over? Yeah, not theirs, either. Xerox. Sorry.

Apple is a marketing company, not a technology company. They have brazenly stolen others ideas and (quite successfully) marketed them.

Enjoy your lock-in.

They've caught up with last year's Nexus 5!

Don't use random hot spots. It's like safe sex, only for your computer. Stay away from sketchy connections.

What is cool? Programming isn't cool. Programmers aren't cool. Being a guitar player in a great band is probably cool. Being a chick magnet might be cool. When has being a Java dev gotten anybody laid?

The only people who care about how "cool" a language is are posers. A professional developer is going to choose the tool that is going to let him/her build what he/she wants with the least fuss. For a lot of today's applications, that tool may well be Java.

What's uncool is a skill that won't get you a job. Java can get you a job, help you buy a car, a house, live your life.