Depending on how you define success, you may get different answer to the question above.
If you choose for the success criteria:
- amount of money made by programming AND
- number of people using the product AND
- impact on the community at large
the answer is probably Charles (Karoly) Simonyi, Hungarian born ex-Microsoft employee, billionaire, astronaut and original author of Microsoft Word.
True, there certainly are people that made more money than him and their fortune is closely related to software - but unlike Simonyi none of them was actively programming for major part of their career. Take Bill Gates for example - most of his coding goes back to his teenage years and after creating Basic, his role was not related with active code writing. Also the number of people using Altair Basic (or any basic) today is likely nowhere in the Word league.
I've stumbled upon this page, full of math jokes. Many of them are IMHO really good and extremly funny (your mileage may vary, though).
My favorite few:
Two male mathematicians are in a bar. The first one says to the second that the average person knows very little about basic mathematics. The second one disagrees, and claims that most people can cope with a reasonable amount of math.
The first mathematician goes off to the washroom, and in his absence the second calls over the waitress. He tells her that in a few minutes, after his friend has returned, he will call her over and ask her a question. All she has to do is answer one third x cubed.
1) Bruce Schneier
Bruce is author of several excellent books on cryptography, from very easy, thriller like read to a classic work Applied Cryptograhy (highly recommended). The blog goes back to 2004 and is fascinating read.
2) Paul Thurrott
Paul is the Windows guy from Windows Weekly podcast (recommended) who also runs the Winsupersite . He is one of the few people who focus on Microsoft technology and still keep balanced, fair view of the affairs. Paul is certainly not a Microsoft fanboy - and obviously not a Microsoft hater. He seems to share the same balanced approach in case of Apple and OS-X - he appreciates his strengths without being an Apple zealot.
How to extend the life of the Vista trial period to 120 days: Technically, if you try to use Ultimate Edition (which is legally allowed to use in VM) nothing really can prevent an unscrupulous user to keep using Vista for free - for the price of re-installing the VM every 120 days ...
Few Mac goodies: Adium is out in version 1.0 - get it here - more details on http://adiumx.com/
Last build before Leopard is out - http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0702.html. Btw, did you know that Apple UK has their own Mac guy and PC guy ? I love their accent, but I still think that John Hodgman is the best :-)
Time to clean up the link cache once again.
Obviously, most of the news on Techsites are Vista related. Web Worker's daily gives you 10 reasons why to upgrade to Vista and 10 reasons why not. MacHouse comments on complicated upgrade paths and Brian Briggs offers decision chart for the updgradees.
General spirit - compared to the launch of Windows 95 - is fairly cynical. The italian Mac bloggers sums it up: Niente di nuovo in Vista. So does this one. This site shows some real innovation :-). Despite it is Vista launch, Steve Jobs and OS-X seems to get almost as much publicity as Vista and as few bloggers commented - Microsoft does not take it easy - see Bill Gates TV appearance.
As of today, I am at podcast #26 of Security Now! and Steve with Leo are have started their "foundation series" on How Internet works. It is really great and enjoyable topic, nicely and very enjoyably presented. Given the delivery format limitation (voice without possibility of adding any drawing), there is of course limit on the amount of details that can be presented. Being a curious creature, I wanted to dig little bit deeper into "excruciating details" of TCP/IP and started to search for a good book.
I have started to listen the Security Now! podcasts from the very beginning - sometimes in summer 2005. Unlike some news-and-rumours podcasts that sound kind of weird if you listen them month later, this one did not loose a bit of it's freshness. Even listening the story of Sony Rootkit discovery again was very entertaining. I am now at first "mod-4" Q&A podcast, Number 16.
Every time I listen to Steve Gibson, one of two things happens. Either I learn something new, or I discover new, better way how to explain something I knew about in a very nice, accessible way. Steve's handling of differences between WEP and WPA, explanation why MAC address filtering gives no security and his VPN coverage was an excellent example of the later.
Since over 1 month I am using Web based tools for calendar, email, task management, bookmark management and note taking. One problem that these tools have is that as soon as your connection goes down, you are done. Game over. Few days ago I have discovered Scrybe, a tool which maybe can address this problem. Unfortunately, I cannot tell from my own experience, because the system is in private Beta and does allow you to register. But if you can believe the sneak peek video (linked from the site), it should combine calendar which is even better than Google Calendar, task manager and note taking program that would make Google Notes look like second class citizen.
For Jack, Manju and Michel: here is the poem we talked about.
Eye have a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.