The hype of HTML5 has been years coming, with Steve Jobs and legions of techies on slashdot and other sites calling for the death of Flash.

He is dead, Jim.

So how does writing bad code make him irreplaceable? He writes code that nobody understands.

Nobody except him. OP never said that this coder can't read own code.

Who else can maintain that cluster fsck?

So guy is working hard to make sure that he is irreplaceable. It could give him more years on paycheck, but eventually business will put business continuity on higher priority.

A lot of money in any case.

Lets put it in perspective. 10 billion a year. Lots of money to burn on rockets.

Or 1/10 of Russia's military budget for the same time period. two times less than promised increase in military expenditures. less than 3% of federal budget for 2011.

Given than budget is funded by exports of natural resources, I would say that they expect slight increase in oil/gas prices and bigger profit margins.

Space travel is fascinating, but it causes less worries for politics than health care, social policies or military.

In other words: Just search Google.

That's a very dangerous suggestion. If user accidentally uses google as search engine and searches for google, Internet will explode.

That's a common fallacy. There is no US statute, state or federal, that requires "maximising shareholder value"

You can call it a myth. If CEO does not use tax havens, he or she will be outvoted in next shareholders meeting in favor of CEO who does it. It is not in US statute. It is only corporate version of Darwin laws.

Therefore he's not important.

He is more important than you. AC never had his/her obituary posted on slashdot.

Can you imagine what a catastrophe it would be for the general population if they were all suddenly unable to Tweet about what they read on Facebook?

Last time some politic decided to cut off internet, masses went to streets and smashed authoritarian government to smithereens. We can only hope that it will happen to US too some day.

The classic doctors were better.

You will always love your first doctor.

That's closer to the real situation. some people like old ones. some like 10th or 11th doctor.