David Colburn: Prepared to get biblical on your ass Back when he ran ad sales at AOL in the late '90s, David Colburn earned himself quite the nickname. The peons called him God — you know, the guy who turns water to blood and rains locusts down from the heavens. Once, at a holiday party in December 1999, Colburn called three rabbis up on stage and told them to pray for AOL's success, promising to donate $1 million to any Jewish cause if AOL's stock hit certain levels. The rabbis agreed, startling offended partygoers. But according to author Alec Klein, who recounts the anecdote in his book Stealing Time, none of them were about to say anything.

Here's to the screaming ones. The chair-throwers. The death-threat makers. The imperious gazers. The ones who see things differently — and will stare you down until you do, too. They're not fond of rules, especially those outlined by the human-resources department on "treating your employees with respect." And they have no respect for conversational decibel levels. You can cower before them, hide from them, quote them behind their backs, or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they're so damn loud. They've worked at Google. Apple. Microsoft. AOL. They've ruled the industry — or they've failed, loudly. Below, we present you tech's 10 most tempestuous bosses — the ones who scream different. While some see them as sociopaths, Valleywag sees genius.

AOL's dirty dealings are all in the past, right? With the SEC filing charges against eight former AOL Time Warner execs for their roles in inflating AOL's online ad revenue between 2000 and 2002, that's no doubt what present management would like you to think. Former head of business affairs David Colburn, former controller James MacGuidwin, and two others agreed to settlements and will pay back all ill-gotten gains with interest. The four others — former division CFOs John Michael Kelly and Joseph Ripp, executive Steven Rindner, and accountant Mark Wovsaniker — will contest the SEC's charges. The charges stem from an investigation the Washington Post began in 2002, which revealed that as it merged with Time Warner, AOL's business-affairs group completed a series of unconventional deals in order to boost its online ad sales numbers. In July 2002, the Post reported: