4 times in 12 years? Underachiver?
You, my friend, have a serious problem. A self-esteem problem. Being promoted at an avarage of every 3 years is what the large majority dream of. If that (and your low self-esteem, which appears to derive itself from amounts of promotion/year) is what's troubling you, these books, all of which have had life-changing impact on mine, are the type you should be reading and looking for:

Seneca "Letters from a Stoic" - its roughly 2000 years old iirc and thus public domain (downloads all over the web). .... The best things in life are free.
Seneca was a bizarly rich and very powerfull man in Rome back in the day and is one of the more popular members of the 'Stoic' school of philosophy. Stoicisim is basically the western variant of zen buddism, without the weird stuff. Cult of Less, Lean living, focussing on the spiritual and mental, etc. ... It's all there and all started here. A must read for any educated citizen. And, btw., at the same time more comforting than any of the religios scripts can ever be imho. Whenever you're in a jam, take out seneca, read a few pages and you feel like someones breathed new life into you. If you think philosophy is for nutcases, you haven't been looking further back enough. The last 300 years have mostly been shit, but this guy is for real. No intelectual masturbating and no bullshit from this guy. Promise.

Marie 'Shakti' Gawain "Creative Visualisation"
Your standard 101 new age positive thinking book. A classic. Cheap, short, to the point. Where Joseph J. Murphy, Norman Vincent Peale, Rhonda Byrne and all the rest go on babbling for endless pages (and sometimes many books) Shakti Gawain cuts straight to the chase. A must for every bookshelf. Read this one and you'll know all there is to know about positive thinking and you'll get a neat stomachable dose of uplifting new age along with it. As with seneca I always go back to Gawain when in trouble and looking for advice on how to condition myself for the next trials. This little book has been with me for 25 years and it never grows old.

Tim Ferriss - "The four hour workweek"
This guy deserves some credit, if only for tipping me of on stoicism and seneca. The four hour workweek is basically a modern lifestyle design guide, a kind of 'Stoicism implementation plan'. I ran into this one a few years ago (when it was in the lists) and had quite a few usefull inspirations from it. His blog can be worth a read aswell, he also does (i)regular web chatshows with Kevin Rose of digg.com fame. Very funny and entertaining. Currently the latest article on his blog is on another stoic of ancient Rome, Cato.

Chris Guillebeau "The Art of Non-Conformity"
Guillebeau is sort of the less boastfull Tim Ferriss. If Ferris is to much haming and dick-waving for your taste, do at least try this guy. The book has similarities with FHWW, but also its own approach to the subject matter. Also very inspiring and well worth the money and time.

Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson "Rework"
Result oriented working in the brave new digital age. If there is a book that will lift your spirits and change your habits and workstyle for the better right away, in your current line of work, then it is this one. A must read for you and your co-workers once your done with it. The HR Chief of a large software corporation I once worked for came in one day carrying a stack of copies of "Rework" and just put them into the companies library. Didn't even bother registrating them with codes and tags first. Very smart move.

Anything from Alan Watts
The western zen buddhist. He changed me from a kid scared of life and death into a human being by introducing me to non-confessional, free zen buddhism. His explainations and lectures are top notch, very comforting and carry lots of weight. I can't tell if you'll still be as inspired once you've read Seneca, but I ran into this guy (at the age of 14) way earlyer than Seneca, so there. Definitely changed my life, this guy.

Rudolf Steiner "How to Know Higher Worlds: A Modern Path of Initiation" and "Intuitive thinking as a spiritual path" aka "The Philosophy of Freedom"
Forget what you have heard about this guy, most of it is legend. If his followers appear to outlandish to bear for longer than a few days in a quarter, I'm right there with you. Steiner however is the prime spiritual teacher of our time (he lived roughly 100 years ago). Any other religion or spiritual path pales im comparison. He starts with the mind and the human ability to think and takes it from there. Meditation is a subject, but not in the way we usually think of it. Think Linus Torwalds vs. your Grandma in programming and you get the picture of Steiner vs. Ole Nydahl or other spiritual authorities of today. If you want to spiritually advance yourself, these two books will have you covered for life. His mental excersises alone are years worth of brain-workout.

That's my list, afaict. Couldn't tell if I've forgotten anything important. I also can't tell if all of these are 100% your fit, but I *can* guarantee you that they all have had a profound positive impact on my life and continue to do so. It would be very strange indeed if not each of these would at least give you something worth the money and time.

My 2 cents. Enjoy.

I've found that for web development today, weekly or twice a week is around about the sweet spot for non-trivial web-development.
Of course you need a modern pipeline. Good devtools, a framework, test first and a lead architect and scrum master who knows what he's doing. But the days of paper driven management in software development are totally over, except maybe for spaceships, military hardware, nuclear power plants and perhaps medical gear.

If you're doing web-dev management with a manually maintained papertrail, you're doing it wrong. It's that simple. And as an experienced scrum-master I'd say push-to-production once per week is minimum.

My 2 cents.

The GPL is a bad thing.

Then don't use GPL'd Software.
Really, it's that simple. Here, let me show you, it goes like this:
Don't like the licence of the software you're using? Don't use it.
See? Very easy.
Isn't it nice that we have a choice?
Thanks for stopping by.

It's not to late to learn new stuff and reorientate you profession or change your career.

In may I asked which degree I should go for for a late career boost (article seems to be archived without comments, which is a shame ... maybe you'll have more luck searching for it). The choice was CS or Business Informatics. I was leaning towards business informatics.

There was a bit of negativity in the responses (to late, missed chance, give up, blah-di-blah) but the overwelming majority was very supportive and gave very good advice. I was scared shitless of math (and still am) but started my college run for a BI Bachelor this winter-semester 10 days ago. Also due to the support and advice given here on slashdot. (Thanks again, folks!)

I'm working at the side as a developer, am on the move 13 hrs a day with something of a 70hr week, but it feels great. I'm as focused and determined as I ever was in my life and I'm being pay so low for my senior devwork at my job that no one can push me around. ... In a strange way, it's acutally quite liberating.

I don't know if I will score the solidly paying consultant job I'm now aiming for in 6-7 years (my experience will definitely give me an edge, that's for sure), but I definitely will feel better for myself once I've gotten that degree.

Going (back?) to college might not be an option for you - after all, I'm in Germany and tuition is basically zero, aside from 150€ in fees each semester, but it's never to late to change your life for the better.

Downsize/downshift, move you investments into certs for technologies or products that are currently hip or do you own private low-budget sabatical. Or even change your life entirely! I strongly recommend this guy, his four hour workweek is a fun read and at least good for some inspiration, even if you're not into that sort of literature.

Whatever needs to be done, don't be scared and make your move. I was scared too, but now that I've made my decision I feel very good and even score some envy from my buddies.

My 2 cents.

Obligatory:
John Gabriels Greater Internet F*ckwad Theory.

Why I don't use my MB Air quite as often anymore when I'm on the go

I got myself a 13" MB Air about a year ago. In terms of usage patterns it's the best thing I've owned since the Highscreen Pocket PC back in 1994. I can carry it wherever I go without any hassle as with a regular notebook. It weighs 1,3 kg, which is less than half of my 15" Dell. In a nutshell, it's the best computer for a developer who's on the move a lot.

Then I got myself a 7" HTC Flyer Android Tablet in February this year. Not because I needed it, but because I knew it's was the best non-apple tablet around I had considered getting into serious android development at the time.

It turned out that while the iPad letterbox format doesn't appeal to much to me as a portable device, the 7" 16by9 format is just the right thing for a tablet. On the go I am currentyl using the Flyer more than the MB Air. You can't develop that good on it (I haven't tried yet, but I presume) but for surfing, reading, watching movies and listenning to music the form factor are just right. It's a tad sluggish but I'd guess that Android 4 and the new super-cheap multi-core devices such as the Nexus 7 eliminate that problem.

Conclusion:
To me it looks as if Ultrabooks very quickly are falling into that compareatively narrow gap of portable developer and expert machines and that small form-factor tablets will rule the portable computing device market from here on out. Add keyboards, solid word processing and useable printing to Andorid, and maybe ASUS Transformer like devices will take yet another bit of the market.

My 2 cents.

The article is most likely a fake.
Tracking someones home simply by having an IP adress with no help from the ISP and various legal procedures? Yeah, sure.
*Not* going to the police over physical world death-threats? Yeah, sure.

I bet money that this is a fabricated news story by a loony pseudo journalist. Or that Leo Traynor simply doesn't exist. There are accounts on the interweb that indicate this.

What do these guys know that we don't?

Seriously, this sounds way out there. But then again, heavyer than air flight did sound so too, just a few years before the wright brothers finally found a solution to all the problems Lilienthal and others had been battling with. As did portable mass market Cray 2 supercomputers you can hold in your hand and make phonecalls with. ... And are mostly used to make fart noises and play Angrybirds.

Another question would be: For these guys to be right, which three things would be the most important to get developed within the next 10 years to make mass space travel and exploration viable?

From the top of my head, I get this:

- Massive cheap manotechnology or some sort comes to mind, for building a space elevator or some kind of super-cheap super-fuel, or both. Also supercheap super sturdy space ship hulls and stuff.

- Some serious biotech, maybe mixed with nanotech, to provide for pratically endless food, recycling of waste of all kinds and huge, i.e. magical advancements in medicine.

- What else? Don't know ... any ideas what we still need? ... Oh, yes, a completly new energy source. Something like Mr. Fusion in "Back to the Future". Nothing short of that will get us into space in a way Branson envisions it.

I'd says the following is given: Nobody is flying to mars using conventional recycling techniques like chemical air refreshment and nobodys ever doing large scale space travel with todays conventional launching techniques. If there will be mass space travel, some sort of space elevator or sänger flying machines will have to be involved. That's what I would guess anyway.

I'm sorry, I don't see Bransons or Musks Vision come true anytime soon, not in my lifetime I expect. ... But please, go ahead and do prove me wrong.

My 2 cents.

Anyone can programm if he has a healthy brain. And given enough time and programming problems anyone will discover his or her own version of functional programming, object orientation and all the other basic programming paradigms others have discovered too. For instance, most of us have discovered their version of OOP some time in their programming career all on their own.

Wether you'll have the mindset to work yourself into existing established insanities such as the C group of languages or Java or into huge libraries and complex existing systems and software kits and run into design patterns is a different story. As is if you are willing to slog through the existing insane historically grown chaos of our system stacks we have to handle today. That is what you'll have to do to get *paid* to program.

Those things aside, programming is more or less the same as disciplined thinking, and every healthy grown-up should be capable of that.

The truth is: For everyone who says you have to have a certain mind to programm, I can find a programming language that is turing complete, introduces innovative concepts that this person doesn't know to well and will be a huge pain for said person to programm in. Take an elitist ruby fanboy and he'll probably start crying and doubting himself (and the entire world :-) ) if you show him Lisp - for instance.

So one shouldn't be to distracted by enthusiasts who claim programming is an arcane art for a selected few.
Programming as a pastime is actually quite easy and fun. As are most things.
It's the hard dirty work that professionaly get paid to do. That goes for every learned profession basically.

My 2 cents.

As a rule of thumb, you should incorporate as soon as it saves you more money than it costs. That is, counting your additional personal time spent maintaing the corp. as expense, of course.

I presume the rules are simular to Germany where you have to file anual reports and stuff. Maintaining proper bookkeeping for a corp. costs money and/or time. Here in Germany it's freelance (roughly 500€/year of your time and/or money) vs. small business (Gewerbe, roughly 500€ to 800€ per year of your time and money, not counting extra taxes) vs. Ltd. (roughly about 1000€ to 1500€ per year, depending on some details). Founding a GmbH (german Ltd.) costs another 3000€ to begin with and takes a few months, but that's just your typical German burocracy and lawyer-lobby bullshit. If your LLC or something simular is anywhere near the costs in the UK, there's nothing to be worried about in that camp for you.

Generally, if tax savings and the usual legal bookkeeping tricks you can do with the corp are a measurable benefit and make up the cost of maintaining it for sure, then it's time to incorporate. If your business is growing you'll have to do it anyway - might as well start with the learning experience right away. If it's stable in size, then you'll save a few bucks and have a learning experience.

Find out how much bookeeping costs for a corp - it does cost more, because it's more work (Duh.).
Do also look at the laws in place where you live and only make the switch when you're sure you have a graps of things even if the bookkeeper screws it up for you. It's your ass on the line if they pin you down for fraud or something simular just because you missed a due-date for a report or something, so do some research of your local laws before incorporating.

Other than that, if you can move around income and revenue and save taxes and shit and there's a safe bet that you'll end up cheaper in the end, go for corp.

My 2 cents.

That sounds like a 'No Go' to me. Seriously, the pro and cons are so close together that one would need more data than what you've provided in the post, but to be honest, a 10% increase in salary isn't worth the risk if you really like your current job.

If the new one is a 10 mile comute vs. a current 100 mile comute, then the case may be different, but from the data you've provided I'd say it's a "No Go".

Think over the details and the possible risks and make your decision. And factor in the possibility that you might be the kind of person who spends the next 20 years wondering if he did the wrong thing. Then it's actually better to do the switch, even if it *is* wrong - just to get it clear.

I did a wrong carreer decision a year ago that moved me into a dead end yet again. On the upside I do now know for absolutely sure that that was, is and always will be the wrong way for me to go under such conditions. Knowing that can mean a lot when moving on with your life.

I'm currently totally broke (and I mean *really* broke!), will have to take on a crappy paying PHP/HMTL5 sidejob any day now and could be making 55000$ whilst learing Java instead right now if I hadn't turned down a job last year. But I still have enough to eat, good sex and space and time to go back to university. There's an upside to every turn in your life.

Bottom line:
Don't stress out over such things to much, no matter which move you make and no matter how it turns out in the future.

Good luck.

Apple did improve on the iPhone 4S. I like the shape better and find it quite amazing how they upped the precision in manufacturing again by orders of magnitude. ... Awesome detail improvement whilst maintaining that neat design. Once again this electronic fashion statement is going to sell like hot cakes.

Then again, I personally choose the Google leash over the apple lock-in any time and still am enjoying my HTC Desire HD. Great phone, tons of features, very rugged, especially with its neat Otterbox protective case. I'm probably going to use that for the next few years. Its also way cheaper *and* I can replace the battery. ... So to me there's really no need to by a piece of electronic junk every odd year right now.

My 2 cents.

Zuckerberg isn't dumb. This judgement on the whole HTML 5 craze goes to show. Techwise HTML5/CSS3/Ajax is a huge step backwards compared to other approaches, like, for instance, Flash. Flash is proprietary and invites doing all kinds of non-sense (sic), but it *is* a far better x-platform VM.

Going HTML5 is not to be triffled with and will bog down your systems performance way further than other VM solutions such as Java or Flash/AS. Any web developer worth his salt could have told Zuckerberg that.

The "problem" (lets just call it that for now) here is that geeks, i.e. opinion leaders, are willing to make huge technological concessions if the technology is more open than the alternatives. Some devs would rather chop their right arm off than develop against (semi)prorietary systems like iOS or countless versions of Android. Hence we've got native looking apps, that are web UIs in disguise, slowpoking about at speeds we know from Windows 95 Applikations back in the day. I presume Zuckerberg got himself talked into this by his devleads, who are, just like any respectable geek, probably way more concerned with system openess and anti-lock-in development wise than with business critical performance and end-user experience issues. That's my guess anyway.

You can say and think what you want about Zuckerberg and Facebook - I dislike the whole direction thinks have taken with this FB thing just as much as the next geek - but his conclusion is spot on. He's a developer himself and it's to his credit that he recongnises where his company bet on the wrong technology. You have to give him credit for that.

My 2 cents.

How is '5 Years or more' "very rare"? I know we live in a society that likes to waste things, but even by those standards, that's a little steep, no?

Anyway, my last KB was the current Apple wireless, and that was 3 or 4 years ago. I like the ease ot typing it has. I've also replaced my mouse with the awesome Apple trackpad. I currentl only switch to mouse for image editing.
Just like with ever other KB I clean it regularly, every quarter or a year at least.

Another KB I used for the better part of 10 years and still have lying around is a MS Natural KB. I used it exclusively on Linux :-). MS does build decent Hardware, you know? ... Software not so much, but the input devices are quite OK.

Anyway, should I get another KB sometime in the future it's probably going to be a "das keyboard" without letters and I expect that to last the rest of my life.

My 2 cents.

Fah'n, fah'n, fah'n auf der Autobahn. Fah'n, fah'n, fah'n auf der Autobahn. Fah'n, fah'n, fah'n auf der Autobahn. ... etc.