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Torvalds the "5th Most-Powerful Man in Tech"
An anonymous reader writes "According to silicon.com, Linus Torvalds is the fifth most influential man in technology. The bio they have written for him isn't the most flattering to the open source community though. I quote: "If it wasn't for the presence of Lara Croft and Xena Warrior Princess, techies around the world would have posters of Torvalds on their walls."
It goes on to say: "In truth Torvalds best work is in the past"... which seems to negate their own argument for having him in there.
Also in the Top 5 is Steve Jobs (1) who comes out on top of Bill Gates (2).
As an interesting aside, the writer of the Sobig virus even makes it in at Number 42..."
Where's Darl McBride on the top 50? I'd say he's pretty influential right now. Look at him, he has the UNIX world groveling before him!
According to legend, when Apple became a corporation and therefore employees had to be numbered, there wasa disagreement between Wozniak and Jobs over who to be number 1 which was settled by making Woz number 1 and Jobs number 0. Now it is Darl's turn to be 0. :) Fitting isn't it?
The list has India's prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee at 8th.
India's boom - largely engineered by Vajpayee - means some analysts are predicting the country could face its own IT skills crisis over the next five years.
Nothing can be further from truth. Personally Vajpayee has had no effect on IT in India. He has no ideas or plans for the future, as far as IT is concerned. I think Narayana Murthy would have been a better choice.
I doubt the list is a well researched list.
karma : former act as leading to inevitable results
Putting Darl McTurd on that list is equivalent to putting the Iraqi Information Minister on a list of the most influential politicians in the Middle East. e.g. stupid.
I'm surprised at Number 3...I've never heard of him. Come on, Sklyarov above Ellison? Why weren't any networking or ISP execs mentioned in the top 5. It's obvious that networking and services are the biggest growth technologies. The guys who wrote this are stuck in the past with software developers. I'm not a good programmer, but I think I can safely say that there have been no major advances or paradigm shifts in software recently.
I believe hardware and networking guys should be making the top 5 or ten people in that list. Paradigm shifts in hardware are being seen all the time. Shifts to broadband, wi-fi, miniaturization, networking technologies, these are the future.
- Not writing a sig bows to your overlords on incomprehensible slashdot estonia...