The Last Lecture is an inspiring book - Randy Pausch was another great man that the technology community had lost and I recommend everyone to both watch the Last lecture and read the book.
The video is viewable here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo&feature=playe... (as embedded on the OP's submission)
Also, at about 2:40: "And I have experienced a deathbed conversion. I recently bought a Macintosh." Interesting given the context in which this article was posted on HN.
Also, about 5min in is a great example of how to correctly "break the rules".
For those interested in helping others afflicted with this awful disease, wanted to remind you of another fallen hero (and acquaintance of mine). His site has a few starting points for helping others with pancreatic cancer.
I don't want to get technical when the purpose of this article is clearly an expression of our collective grief about the loss of Steve Jobs.
Suffice it to say that for academic interest, it's worth becoming familiar with the difference between endocrine (e.g., islet cell [Jobs]) and exocrine (e.g. pancreatic adenocarcinoma [Pausch]) cancers because their prognoses differ wildly.