This is a non-moving "field." It is nothing but a marketing word for third rate research on things which used to be called "tribology" and "chemistry."
Gates wrote BASIC at 20 and founded Microsoft in the same year. I thought everyone knew that.
I gladly accede to "mean and venal." However, I also make stuff people use, so I feel perfectly entitled to piss all over ... for example ... yet another webpage design company. I have a half dozen friends who design webpages for money; some of them even do fancy software type things. Why was some random webpage design company featured in business week? There was nothing exceptional about her business model or returns.
I'm sorry, dude: it is not at all easy to meet people as inventive as Farnsworth. Television... compared to making another kind of MEMS accelerometer? And what do these modern inventors do for an encore that compares to inventing what is still the most promising technique in nuclear fusion? Farnsworth was a living god of invention; do not take his name in vain, and compare him to dopes slinging VHDL or whatever.
I agree that inventors labor best in obscurity ... however, these guys were all nominated and carefully selected by Business Week. Some of the top 25 were impressive inventive types, as I realized later: they simply were not mentioned at all in the main article.
Bill Gates is only there because he's standing next to a bunch of hooters models who are obviously there for Warren's ineffable awesomeness. Warren is the most famous fundamentals trader there is, therefore he belongs in the picture, even if he isn't well known as a quant. I don't have any pictures of Richard Grinold next to pretty girls.
Buying a short, selling a long: it's still buying low and selling high if you do it right.
As for why I'm linked here: I haven't got a whit of a clue. My best guess is that someone realized I'm a big Lisp nerd.