The Gimp is software that I am now happily familiar with, and want to improve my knowledge of.

I buy books to learn more about how to do things I want to do with the Gimp.

My hope is that money will become available to pay Gimp developers to more rapidly produce such wonderful things as the GEKL support and make the Gimp more useful to professionals as well as people like me.

I can't vote here.

If someone is paying me, then they get to say what will change. I might tweak it to do something that helps others, especially if it helps the work that pays me. And I always aim to do it right. But if no one is paying me, then the most important input is from me. If other people want something implemented, I will always listen.

But that is all obvious, isn't it?

We usually make several production releases every day. We have a complete configuration management system (conform) that totally automates building a server and releasing software. We have a complete dev environment and two test environments. We test code in pre-production first. But the key is our automation. It automates releases and rollbacks. Without complete automation (and competence), we would be submerged in paper work and bleary-eyed midnight releases like other teams in the company.

It never ceases to amaze me how many so easily dismiss the difficulty of replicating the ability of even animal brains to control their own motion. To replicate all the abilities of the human brain is something that some young slashdotters too easily dismiss as within the reach of their peers (though not within their own personal reach).

I dunno, some twit called tourvulds or summit.

I wear clothes. I have a lot to hide.

QuickBooks has scary limits built in. They suck you in with the entry price, but at some point if your business is successful and actually has multiple customers, you will exceed the built-in limits. Then it's time to upgrade. Not "it's time to think about upgrading" you have to upgrade right away because you have exceeded the limits and the version of QuickBooks you bought won't work any more. Expect to spend several thousand dollars.

LWN documents this happening.

Through the preservation, classification, and dissemination of patent information, the Office promotes the industrial and technological progress of the nation and strengthens the economy.

The USPTO also disseminates patent and trademark information that promotes an understanding of intellectual property protection and facilitates the development and sharing of new technologies worldwide.

uspto.gov

I've been told patents support innovation. I see that, in relation to software, they are used more like nuclear arsenals. Their true purpose becomes plainer.

I'm surprised to see this as news; it was discussed about nine months ago in Jon Corbet's article in LWN.net.

K. Y. Srinivasan topped the list of changeset contributors with a massive set of cleanups to the Microsoft HV driver in the staging tree; it's impressive to see how much cleanup less than 15,000 lines of code can require.

It appears that Microsoft's contribution needed a lot of cleaning up to bring it up to scratch.

I know many younger than me who are unwilling to learn new skills to augment their knowledge of Cobol and Foxpro. Their own lack of spirit condemns them.

I know people nearly as old as me who are nearly as passionate as I am to learn new skills, who are eminently employable.

The smart employer wants people who care and are able to do the work well.

Some employers are smart.

I was 53 when I changed from my job as a lecturer in a vocational college in Hong Kong, teaching computing, electrical engineering and systems administration for eleven years, to working as a hands-on engineer doing plenty of interesting software development in a large ISP in Australia. I have thrived since the change, and feel less stressed, not having to mark so many assignments, and not having to deal directly with plagiarism while hiding it from the administration, who pretend that it does not exist.

I love my work still, more than five years later, and enjoy working with free software; this allows me to produce solutions to problems without requiring support from management, except for paying for my labour.

I might add that although I am now close to 60 years old, I still ride my bicycle 160 km each week, and have a lot of energy and enthusiasm.

Also the subjects I taught and wrote the teaching material and practical laboratory exercises for apply very directly to what I do in my work.

I feel very lucky. Please do not listen to all the negative comments you see here, moderated as 'insightful'; if you have the enthusiasm, go for it. You will feel sorry if you don't.

I forgot to mention; I changed careers at the age of 53 from teaching to programming and system administration.

I'm a 58-year old Perl programmer and system administrator enjoying my challenging work.

I ride my bicycle 160 km each week, and have more energy than many younger programmers.

I am productive, have good control in deciding what I do, and enjoy a mentoring role.

I understand what pressures people are under, and get along well with my work mates and managers.

You are too old if you think you are. Otherwise, you can learn a great deal every day up to the day you die.

I am sorry about the tone of my last post; I don't mean to belittle your excellent efforts. I am glad of your good work. I'm just a daddy with a child who needs my time, and so I must move on, as I don't have a pressing need yet, just a curiosity, and I know I will be able to solve the problem of LaTeX to epub when the time comes, probably using tex4ht and some post processing. I was interested because I have written plenty of LaTeX for many years, and know I'll want to do this conversion in the future.