In all other "professional" disciplines (law, medicine, financial, engineering etc) your worth increases with age - except software engineering.
In software engineering you are viewed as "expensive and outdated" once you reach middle age.
You wouldn't get a graduate lawyer to handle your divorce, a graduate med to operate on you, or a graduate to advise or complete your tax returns.
Yet graduates are just fine, cheap and dandy for writing that great App idea someone has which is going to make them rich and keep you in subways for a couple of weeks.
I'll be pointing this out to my kids if they try to follow me into the profession I thought was a good bet.

The consumers view of software is that it's "valueless", free and their birth right to obtain it without cost.
Which is why they get pissed if they are asked for even a tiny amount of cash to use it.
I get regular hate emails from people who download my Apps, which give them enough to try out the product before they purchase, telling me how much I suck.
My standard response to them is "beggars and buskers make more and give you less. You'd think nothing of tossing 99c in the hat of a stranger on the street yet you can take the time to email me telling me that my months of labor aren't worth the same?"

The cost of software is largely hidden in services, advertising (Google) or hardware (Apple).
So the perceived value of an software engineer is hidden.

That public perception isn't helped when one of our legion makes it big, like Mark Zuckerberg.
It gives me great satisfaction to see someone like Zuckerberg take an idea, execute it well, and reap the rewards.
The Winklevoss are an excellent example of all that's wrong with society's attitude towards engineers.

So my advice is, do what I did, do an MBA.
Once you have that title and a bit of experience in business you aren't just the "geek in the corner" you are the guy in the room who understands the whole picture better than anyone else there.
You'll find your own "stock price" on the rise once more.

I thought that the recent revelation that his original NZ residency application failed to disclose a dangerous driving conviction left it open for him to be deported?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11350895

So the whole "illegal" raid, dodgy handling of his arrest and application for his extradition could be a moot point now.
He's seriously pissed off the NZ power's that be after the Internet-Mana, mud slinging, campaign in the recent election.
That and putting John Key's mate, and ex-Mayor of Auckland, Banks in jail for failing to disclose Dotcom's donations fully.

A man with few friends, no money and a lot of powerful enemy's.

The reason 80% of percent of French motorists drive diesel-powered cars is because they are the most economical option.
Not just French but in most of Europe you'll find the diesel car is the popular option as it's the most economical choice.

The introduction of the "AdBlue" legislation on goods vehicles, and now private vehicles, has reduced the pollution deficit in comparison to petrol to a point which is even better. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_exhaust_fluid

Take a typical French family car and compare same sized engines of petrol and diesel (this car has AdBlue).
http://www.nextgreencar.com/view-car/49548/citroen-c4-grand-picasso-1.6i-vti-vtr+-120hp-petrol-manual-5-speed
http://www.nextgreencar.com/view-car/49561/citroen-c4-grand-picasso-1.6-e-hdi-vtr+-115hp-diesel-manual-6-speed

Which one pollutes the most? Why the hell would you want to start "phasing out" the cleaner car?
Why not just offer everyone driving a fossil fuel car the same incentive to move to electric?
Why pick on diesel when it's now cleaner?

I'm all for electric and the end of burning fuel to drive around but you have to ask the question of WHERE that electricity is coming from to charge up your car?
Is the problem just being shifted?

At least when you burn the fuel yourself you have the choice of which fuel you burn and how well you burn it.
When you are consuming electrons off a grid you've given up a lot of your freedom of choice.

If he'd changed his name to Kim Turkey he might have gotten a Presidential Pardon today.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/every-thanksgiving-the-president-pardons-a-turkey-or-two-whats-the-point/2014/11/20/1b6a69da-63ab-11e4-836c-83bc4f26eb67_story.html

I heard Kim Dotcom is trying to be one of those turkeys in a last ditch desparate attempt to return to his former low profile life style.

This is just another symptom of all that's going badly wrong for software engineers as a profession.

In all other "professional" disciplines (law, medicine, financial, engineering etc) your worth increases with age - except software engineering.
In software engineering you are viewed as "expensive and outdated" once you reach middle age.
You wouldn't get a graduate lawyer to handle your divorce, a graduate med to operate on you, or a graduate to return your business accounts.
Yet graduates are just fine, cheap and dandy for writing that great App idea you have which is going to make you rich and pay for their subways for a couple of weeks.
I'll be pointing this out to my kids if they try to follow me into the profession I thought was a good bet.

The consumers view of software is that it's "valueless", free and their birth right to obtain it without cost.
Which is why they get pissed if they are asked for even a tiny amount of cash to use it.
I get regular hate emails from people who download my Apps, which give them enough to try out the product before they purchase, telling me how much I suck.
My standard response to them is "beggars and buskers make more and give you less. You'd think nothing of tossing 99c in the hat of a stranger on the street yet you can take the time to email me telling me that my months of labor aren't worth the same?"
One person even replied with "I'm sorry for my attitude".

So now it's gotten to the political level and Apple has side stepped the issue with a single word change.
What a cop out.

Those who say Apple gear is expensive fail to realise that the company is including in the cost the huge investment in their software development.
You buy your Mac/Pad/Phone and each year, for about 4 or 5 years, you get free annual software updates and bug fixes.
Microsoft never did that, they charged you and worse...
Giving it away for free, Google, is worse as it just strengthens this consumer perception that software is valueless.
What the consumer doesn't realise is that with Google they are the product which is being sold to pay for their development.

So the cost of software is hidden by the big guys, either in the shelf price of the hardware or the services sold through it.

Don't get me wrong, I don't believe in re-inventing the wheel and we would never have gotten here without free software.
Kudos to those upon who's shoulders we stand.

As an App developer you have 3 choices.
1) Paid Upfront App - too much risk consumers think, it might be crap. Resulting in low install numbers
2) In-App purchase - great except for the winning free loaders who spoil it for everyone else.
3) Advertising - Unless you can get serious volume of installs and session length it's not going to pay.
There is a 4th one, which is services, but not all Apps can sell services.

On a final note I've seen my daily App installs plummet since the introduction of "GET".
I don't blame Apple, I blame the perception of those consumers who think they have the right to someone else's work for free.

Apple didn't disable TRIM. They just tightened up security around Kernel modifications.
I did 3 things to my desktop in October.
1.Updated it to OSX10.10
2.Bought and installed my first SSD.
3.Installed a 3rd party TRIM driver and in doing so switched off OSX10.10's kernel security so it would be unhindered.
Then I read today "Apple Disables Trim Support On 3rd Party SSDs In OS X".
Talk about BS...

Slashdot.org should be renamed "linuxandroidgeek.religion"
It's pathetic, it's bad enough with main stream media having political bias without technology media getting all one sided.

I'll be 46 in a couple of weeks and if I feel my age anywhere it's in my eye sight.
I can't read labels anymore without reading glasses.
Loved my iPhone 5S, there was just no reason to upgrade this year - except maybe 2.
The 1st reason was I develop iPhone Apps, so I really need to get a 6 Plus to test on, especially with it's iPad-esq UI.
The 2nd reason is that I can not read text on the 4" screen without squinting.
I can read anything on the 6+ screen comfortably.
The iPhone 5S feels like a little toy now I've had the 6+ for a few weeks, I couldn't go back to it.

There's a final bonus.
I don't carry the 6+ around everywhere with me, it's just too cumbersome for pockets.
Which I think is healthier, it's making me less attached to the device.

F.U.D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt

Anyone else getting a bit fed up with all this fear BS?
I'm I alone in feeling like our governments are treating us like a herd of sheep using fear to herd us and control us?

Only earlier today we had a post about giving up freedoms so we can be better protected.
http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/10/07/0235241/brits-must-trade-digital-freedoms-for-safety-says-crime-agency-boss

Now another article where we are again being told that a free internet is a physical threat to us and we can be murdered online. ...."found that governments are not equipped to fight the growing threat of "online murder", ..".
The solution - give up our freedom online.

How long until a post like this is blacked out as "unsafe".
Who is it really unsafe for?

Milan Kundera's book "The Joke" is fascinating insight into what happened in a Soviet block country (Czech) when someone wrote a joke to a friend on a postcard which the authorities saw and used.
We used to look at the East and feel good in ourselves that we weren't being watched and that we had freedoms they didn't. Not any more....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Joke_(novel)

The best thing to come out of the recent referendum on Scottish Independance has been to re-awaken the British public to politics and government.
It's not enough, there needs to be a more jarring and long lasting wake up call to what politicians are doing for corporates and the establishment under the guise of "public interests".
Mass surveillance isn't protecting us, didn't protect us in the past and certainly won't in the future.
Imagine McCarthyism with full access to your historical digital life to twist into whatever form needed to hound you out of your home, job, school, neighbourhood or even country?
Wake up!

When I started writing iOS Apps it was at the same time as Interface Builder was released.
As a beginner being able to visualise what was going on made the learning curve a walk up a hill instead of mountaineering.
Even though I've been doing it a while now I still use Storyboards but 50% of the time I find myself removing a view and codifying it.
As a design tool it is wonderful for prototyping.

There was a lot of resistance from the established iOS developers to IB when it first appeared.
I remember being scolded on stockoverflow for using IB and told that I should learn the hard way like they had done.
With Swift I see some parallels, I don't want to have to learn a new language even though it might be simpler and compiles faster code (allegedly).
It raise my hackles because of the time and knowledge I have invested in the status quo to date (ObjC).
In addition to the prospect of Apple ceasing support for ObjC in future Xcode releases forcing me to re-write my Apps in Swift.
I'm sure Swift will make the learning curve easier as IB did for me when I started.

There's a much bigger problem with all this which goes beyond Apple, Xcode & Swift.
As App development and programming becomes simpler and more dumbed down it has the effect of increasing the number of people who are capable of producing a non-complex App.
That drives down the value of an App developer.
It's hard enough making anything from App's without lowering the value in them further.

More good news for Elon. Telling folks what they can't buy, and making it hard for them to get, just makes it all the more exotic and tempting.

No one enjoys the pressure and pain of car showroom shopping. It's just not consumer friendly.
Yet consumers don't have the right or ability to indicate their distaste.

Besides the electric card appeals to the renegades, the rebels at heart who would be more likely to buy those cars anyway.
So the more corporate backed legislatives try to ban them the more sales they are going to get.

If they really wanted to hurt Tesla they'd just ignore them and not give them air time.

Rare doesn't mean jobs out there, rare can also mean specialised and, depending on where you live, hard to find alternative work when your current job disappears.
I know this from experience, an experience a lot of (soon to be ex) Cisco engineers are going to go through shortly...
Right now App's is where the programming action is. Don't be put off by the volume of Apps being created.