Seems as though the patent is legit. Although it's not nice of them to sue without talking to the From1 builders first. ... Or did they attempt to do that and got rejected? If so, it's their given right to start legal action.
Could Form1 licence the patent is the next question I'd ask.

"Techie" != Software Engineer and with 40 you shouldn't be calling yourself software engineer anymore. Software Architect and Consultant maybe. ... It's partly marketing but there's also more to it:

With 40 one should be well their way to becoming at least half way familiar with management procedures. Not because it's cool, but it's the only thing that causes more wisdom and experience to make sense to anyone who would want to make use of it. I may be way smarter and more experienced than most of the people I work with, but if I can not leverage that experience by providing some sort of usefull leadership, I'm of lesser use that the 20 year old coder who sits in the corner doing stuff, simply because I'm more experienced, ask more money and put up with less shit. ... I bicker more than my comrades, but I should be in a position where this is an *advantage* to my boss.

As far as the general observation of software developer shelf-life, I'd basically second what is said in the GP.

Bottom line:
Always have a fallback and be prepared to proactively work on your career, also in terms of leadership and softskills and be prepared to move in to a position where you don't get paid for the work you do but for the responsibilities you take. Then software engineer shelf-life isn't a problem, it's simply a stepping stone on the usual career ladder.

My 2 cents.

Seriously, AFAICT, there are many FOSS VM solutions out there by now. And from what I've heard, none of them are extremely difficult to set up or run. They just follow different obvious or more hidden concepts and strategies, and thus may be suited better for certain setups. But as I say, a good FOSS project will have a good website, either by dedicated people who respect their webdesigners (allways a good sign of a professional non-elitist crew) or build by a dedicated company that puts money into the project.

Enter FOSS VM into Google, broadly scan the websites and take the one that 'looks' best and take it from there. If you run into requirements or usage scenarios that don't fit the one you then know you want to cover, switch.

Good luck.

I've never understood the Gnome hype to begin with.

I did like the fact that FOSS has two large desktop kits competing each other - that is a neat luxury - but the hype about Gnome I couldn't understand. The only thing Gnome really had going for it, compared to KDE or generic custom WM setups like a WindowMaker environment, in my opinion, was that you could, back then in 2001, with a litte work, get your desktop look totally different and awesome compared to anything else on the planet. But that was a large part to the relatively hassle-free GTK theming, and not on behalf of Gnome. And the people who did that usually did it using Enlightenment as their main environment as the way better choice anyway. And even without E, in my opinion WM or some default Fluxbox setup allways looks better than a bland and somewhat half-assed Gnome UI.

For the better part of the last decade Nautilus was flaky software in beta stage compared to KDEs Konqueror. Konqueror would kick Nautiluses ass up and down the street in terms of features and usability. It was the best FM on the entire plantet, and probably still is ... although I haven't been keeping up with all the details, changes and redos in the FOSS Desktop world since about 2006 so I couldn't really say. FOSS developers have a tendency to break things just to redo entire core-pieces of code or come up with new projects. ... What was that FM thing for KDE a few years back? Dolphin or something? ... Dunno, didn't care. I just remember thinking: "Oh, great, some guy fucking up Konqueror and thinking he can do better than about a decade of FM projekt work. Great." ...
Anyway, I am now using Gnome (2.something) on debian stable because it is the default and it's still way better than windows, but it does bug me with shit I'd expect not to have to put up with in 2012. The Filemanager (still nautilus? couldn't tell) wets its pants when accessing a dir across samba with the svn extension blocking the FM for minutes. Firefox has rendering errors in the tabs, and while the desktop pager works as expected, as far as I can tell it looks very much the same as it did eleven years ago in 2001. And even then E and WM had pagers at least as good, and you could run and customize them with a few lines of easy configging.

With KDE its a simular thing, althoug I'd say they did (and do) way better with the integrated desktop thing. KDE allways had Windows-style performance hog qualities, but they *did* offer the full Desktop experience. I'd bet that to this very day a well configured KDE is the best GUI on the planet, on a machine that can handle the workload. And yes, I know the Mac, I'm typing this on an MB Air with Snow Leopard. However, it wasn't that the KDE team hadn't also been smoking their share of crack while coding. Some dimwhit back in the 90ies had the brilliant Idea to copy the entire Windows KB shortcuts and make them KDE default, thus fucking with the entire userbase of opinion leaders that actually cared about them: The core FOSS unix crowd. As far as I know it has been that way since then. Granted, rare things are as easy to config as KB shortcuts in KDE, but come on! That's, in my book, at least as bad a markting move as Gnome is doing now with v3. Allthough I have to say that ever since Gnome v3 came about posts about gnome on slashdot have at least trippled. ... Maybe not so bad marketing after all. Gnome is refreshing its mindshare with its moves, that's for sure.

Whatever way you put it, the real anoyances with Linux on the desktop are still the same they were 15 years ago when I started using it, and they have nothing to do with wether the Gnome (or any other desktop or WM) crew has decided to make a paradigm shift or not.

I've seen the screens of Gnome 3, I've installed the newest Ubuntu with Unity on a netbook for my daughter (yes, yes, odd and dumbed down, but it's not the end of the world there are some neat ideas in Unity and the Terminal works as expected. Imagine: I've used Unity and live!) and while there is quite a few things I'd fix before fiddling with new UI concepts, if Gnome thinks they'd rather redo their boring old stacked window UI, power to them.

If I in the future should set up a private Linux workstation I'll probably give E17 a shot. After all, it's been about a decade of work on it, that has to be worth something. Aside from that WM and Fluxbox are still very neat WMs and awesome WM looks very interesting aswell.

Its FOSS people, it's not that there aren't enough choices.

My 2 cents.

ASUS and their peers copied the idea about 10 years after the first netbook and started a new boom of cheap latop-like mobile computers.

Netbooks were started by ASUS and their peers as an 'appliance' laptop- They were Linux based and only cost a few hundred bucks. Microsoft didn't try to get into it until it was posing as a threat to Windows!

Let me fix that for you:

Netbooks were started by PSION as an 'appliance' laptop- They were EPOC based and only cost a few hundred bucks AND had 40 hrs of battery uptime. Microsoft did get into it with the last Edition WindowsCE, because PSION thought it would be a great Idea to get in bed with MS. PSION standing in the mobile market folded shortly thereafter, just as Nokia is folding now.

A shame actually, the original Netbook [wikipedia.org] was a very good machine with some features we can only dream about even today, 13 years later (like a really awesome keyboard despite the really small size)

EPOC went on to become the awesome Symbian Mobile OS which Nokia dropped after getting in bed with MS. ... What a coincidence.

To be honest I'd take a ancient DOS 4.0 System written in QBasic over Google Docs any time.

First of all: Moving to Google Drive for critical docs is a stupid idea. We (me and my freelancer crew) have team stuff on Google Docs, but those are for the very most part non-critical things. The rest are docs in Git Versioning with a central virtual server to push and pull. If Google Docs shuts us down, we won't miss a step. And if our vhost ISP folds, it takes me (or anybody else on the core team) to completely set up a new one and clone to that in less than an hour. That's how it should be.

I suggest you talk to Bob about doing a redo of the system *together*, preferably on x86 Linux, some kind of distriubted versioning (Bazaar has an x-plattform idiot-safe GUI as part of the core project) and maybe with a web-frontend. There are tons of easy setup/maintain FOSS systems that offer solutions for stuff like this. Help him sort the docs and show him some neat new stuff in the FOSS world and see to it that you *both* decide which system to slowly migrate to.

Coming on board as a kid and pissing into the captains soup is a bad idea, even if you know for sure that you know much better soup. Make it clear to Bob that you are here to help, and I'm sure he'll gladly listen to your suggestions, once you've delivered on your promises.

Todays portable lightweight low-power CPUs are yesterdays Workstation CPUs with 4 times the power. Apple has been trading off processing power for energy efficiency, design and small enclosures for quite some time now. It's one of the main reasons for their success. F.E.: I'm typing this on a 5 year old x86 mac mini, for which I have yet to find a competing non-apple product that matches it.

Yer Olde Desktop Setups are quickly going the way of the dodo. Fanless thin clients are as powerfull as a full-blown decked-out workstation in 2004, internal storage on HDDs is just plain silly once you've used an SSD device and you get highpower 4+1 multicore cpus in 199$ tablets with a batterytime of 8+ hours these days.
It sure wont be long before apple pushed out iMacs as thin as a slim screen, with 8+ cores for processing power. It could very well be that their ARM variant is the way to go for them.

However, Intel isn't exactly lagging behind in the low-energy CPU game either, and you can allready get viable Atom desktops. It might very well be that come the time Intel is up for the task of lowering their energy requirements for their CPUs and Apple stays with Intel.

There is interesting things to come, and I wouldn't be surprised if Apple would lead the innovation here once again.

Facebook doesn't care as much for the company as it does for the guy.
Facebook usually buys for talent (the smaller joints anyway), which is the smart thing to do in the top tier web business.

Personally, I'd sell and join FB. They've still got bizar amounts of cash in the bank after their maximum-gain IPO and are into all kinds of crazy stuff like building PHP JIT Compilers and shit. Sort of like Google a few years ago. Sounds like tons of fun to me. And he can still leave and start a new company if he gets bored in a few years. He'll have gained tons of connections and experience. It's win-win all around.

My 2 cents.

That will be modified as soon as the capability and the superiour firepower to occupy and defend celestial bodies exists.

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.