I have 38 years of experience. I started out as an MVS systems programmer, eventually coding program products on contract for various software houses, I've worked on various UNIX systems including Solaris and currently work on Linux and VMware. I'm also a developer at FreeBSD.org -- I used to do key zero supervisor state (kernel) programming for MVS (now zOS). I currently do programming for FreeBSD (some of it kernel). I've reinvented myself a few times. Same s**t, different pile.

I had a couple of students living in my basement a few years back. One was in third year comp sci. Many of his courses were Java and web based. I asked him if he was taking any O/S or compiler writing courses. He answered no and he had no intention of doing so. It makes me wonder how civilization will maintain what we built if there are few people with the ability to understand it. I don't think the age of the person matters. What does matter is that our universities are not producing enough people with the proper skills to replace those of us who have built the IT world we see today.

OTOH, they're probably hoping to establish some US market share. Sequestration is just around the corner and the DoD is looking to cut costs. I'm sure they want to market their less expensive version.

Anabolic steriods, growth hormone, aramatase inhibitors, clenbuterol, and other drugs. At one time even caffeine was banned (> 200 mg). What we really need is testing with teeth in it and the public to embrace natural athletes. As a retired athlete, when I competed, people wanted more and if it meant taking drugs, so be it.

This applies to virtually every venture. It explains why this world is in the shape it's in. What's worse is that the vast majority of us put into the same situation would do the same. The human heart is sick with competitiveness and greed. I could go on and on about this and sound like a sermon (and I'm not a religious guy either, just someone who's just sick of the mess we've put ourselves in). I don't see a solution because the next guy will be as bad as the first. Frankly I think this is the best we will ever have. Sad but true.

This whole thread is way off topic. He's asking now that he's 40, how does he stay employable. I'm 56, started in IT well over 30 years ago and have yet to be unemployed. What I have done is bounced around from job to job and from city to city. I started out as an IBM mainframe application programmer, then a developer for a software house, then an MVS systems programmer, back to developer for a software house, then MVS systems programmer, and finally as a UNIX systems admin (for the last 19 years). In the mean time I was invited to the development team of the FreeBSD project (committer) 11 years ago. I think that taking opportunities as the present themselves and being flexible, Be willing to do anything and even if you love or enjoy a technology, be willing to move on to keep bread on the table. The downside to bouncing around is that you scew up your pension. Throw a divorce or two into the mix and early retirement is no longer an option. If I had to advise someone about career choices, I'd say stay out of IT. Get into law or some other career that pays very well. Then retire early and follow your dream without hesitation. Sometimes following your dreams when you're young can lead to struggling for the rest of your life.

So what if M$ locks down Surface? The benefits to them are obvious. OTOH, the cast of many other hardware vendors won't just roll over and die either. Their into it to make a profit too. I think for a time Win8/9/whatever may continue to run on third party hardware however these manufacturers want to stay in business simply because it earns a living. If they can't put Windows on their hardware or if they have to compete, they'll find alternatives, such as Android, a Linux distro, or create their own Linux distro, not to forget that there are a few *BSD alternatives out there too. Red Hat, Ubuntu, Mint, and others would love to fill the void. What about proprietary hardware? GPL can make it difficult however some hardware vendors have distributed binary drivers.As long as the API is documented and the ABI doesn't alter from one Linux release to the next, I'm sure they'll be more than glad to fill that void. I think there may be more opportunity for market share. The only thing I see that could cause any significant issue to this business model is the coolness factor. If Apple remains the cool gadget to have or if Microsoft shares Apple's coolness, then third party hardware vendors will slowly become extinct and FLOSS as we know it n the desktop, laptop, and tablet will be a thing of the past. It really depends on what the public wants and what they're willing to pay. With BYOD becoming popular,business doesn't have to pay for hardware or software, let the employee provide that.From this POV the bigger fish will eat the smaller fish and we may see the end of FLOSS as we know it. Ultimately it's hard to say because the fickle public which is usually enamoured with coolness will ultimately decide with their pocketbooks what to spend their money on. If the third party hardware manufacturers can produce cost effective products using FLOSS which have enough coolness to attract the masses, Open Source software will survive. if not, the big fish rule the pond. P.S. Given the trend of the last 40 years of bigger (the 1%) getting an increasing share of the pie, I feel that over time the world will become a place with fewer choices and more control in the hands of the few. We may not see this immediately but over the next 10-20 years there will be fewer choices.

It's not the bugfixes people want. It's the perception of bugfixes. Remember, perception is reality.

/me thinks they will contract marketing out. Cutting marketing and outsourcing is the lesser of the two evils.

That's how I got into IT almost 40 years ago. I took a "Data Processing 20" course in high school. We learned the basics of IT, then COBOL and Fortran that semester. It was all punched cards then with turn around times of a week but enough to get me interested to obtain more education and turn it into a 30+ year career. I haven't looked at COBOL, Fortran, or S/360 (to z/Series) Assembler for years, now working on C, C++, and various UNIX variants (Solaris, HP/UX, DG-UX, Tru64, Linux, and FreeBSD) over the last couple of decades. There's less coding now (which I miss) and more BS but still, it's a well paying career.

I use a transparent Squid proxy. Traffic is redirected using IP Fiter on a FreeBSD system. I could use PF (or IPFW) however just not enough time in the day to "fix" something that just aint broke at the moment.

Depending on the person, after a while of being unemployed some may become depressed and vegetate in front of the TV instead of doing something constructive in life. I know of people who have taken their own lives after being unemployed for a while, so it doesn't take much imagination to understand why someone may not contribute to an opensource project while unemployed.