The agonizing for me at least isn't the $1, its the time I would need to spend to get to know the app and how it works and evaluate if it is the right one for me. The time spent on an app that turns out to be a dud was worth way more than the $1 outlay. That's where the real loss is.

Clever Mr. Gates, clever.

I'm sure I am in the minority, but I am proud of the fact that I got rich as a programmer and not by being a suit. How did I achieve that? I co-founded a small software company that was acquired by a large tech company. True we didn't pay ourselves much until we started making some good revenue, and it took us 7 years before we were acquired, but ultimately my ownership stake in the company got me more money in the end than if I had been working as an investment banker right out of college. I didn't turn into a manager or director or some suit who forgot his developer roots, I remained pretty much an architect/developer the whole time. I am really proud of that achievement.

But anyway, my salary at the acquiring company was quite good ($135k with bonus, stock, etc.). I checked on glassdoor.com and it looks to be comparable to other developers at the company. I agree with some previous posters that if you want to be treated more than just a code monkey, work for a company that understands what developers bring to the table, that programming is very much a creative art and not at all like a bricklayer. If you work for a company whose core business is far away from tech (off the top of my head I am thinking a manufacturer or an insurance company, etc.) you will probably not be thought of as key and so I would assume your salary would reflect that. Check out salaries for software developers at companies like Cisco, Apple, Google, and Oracle and you will see they are pretty good.

Now you do have to consider the location. These companies are all based in expensive areas (Silicon Valley, east coast areas like NY and Boston) so their salaries will have to be higher just because of that. But still, overall I do believe that tech companies will give better salaries for developers than other companies.

You spelled submitted wrong (submited). 8-)

I haven't digitized my home movies yet but barring media files, 5 of my 10 largest files are from World of Warcraft (the top one being patch.MPQ weighing in at 3.6 GB).

Lol good one! I am assuming you are referring to this.

Its funny you mention this because the best food I ever had was in a dream too! My dream was about lobster, though.

True, I guess it all comes down to what is more important for people. I would venture a guess that its having convenient, easy-to-use video at your fingertips than having HD and better optics (if that was important, why not get a full-fledged HD video camera). So if you can get that on an iPod anyway people will take that over a dedicated camera. Just a guess.

I wonder how much the Flip's marketshare will be affected by the Nano getting a camera. Sure its not HD, but the original Flip was a huge seller and the Nano has that and a lot more while still retaining ease of use (though a single button to record is still probably a bit easier). I know if I were the founders of Pure Digital I am psyched Cisco acquired the company for $600 million a few months *before* this announcement! I wonder how much Cisco would acquire them for now?

A colleague of mine has his own domain and creates a separate e-mail address from that domain for each and every newsletter, internet site, etc. Basically any site that needs an e-mail, he creates a unique address for (i.e. worldofwarcraft@mydomain.com).

What this does is tell him *exactly* who has been selling his address. He has actually had several times where sites people would consider "legitimate" would deny that they sell the address but after he explained his system to them they admitted that they did. Another good thing about this is that you can disable an e-mail address if one of them is compromised.

Its a lot more work than just using a single e-mail for everything but it works well.

You telling me there is no significant readership of Slashdot in metro areas with subways or trains?? I guess us city folk need to choose "other"...

Yes, my company (Fortune 100 tech company) also makes everyone get a laptop. As a developer, I prefer using 2 screens and we have the tall monitors (1600x1200) that are so much better than the widescreen ones since it lets us see more code vertically. My big beef is that I prefer to use a Mac and I've been wanting to upgrade to a Macbook Pro to replace my G5 desktop and use it instead of my crappy company-provided Lenovo. The problem is that even the Pros don't support 2 external monitors like docking stations on the PC do. Sure I can use one extra monitor and the laptop screen but that is not ideal. Until then, I'll probably stick to my desktop.