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That agrees with my experience. After a certain age, there is an assumption that if you haven't been promoted to management, there is something wrong with you. I haven't worked as a programmer for about four years. I still love programming and code for fun, but I'd be happy if my job title never mentioned software again.

I'm in school training for a new career. One in which my 44 years--and anything since the last glacial maximum--is considered "recent." No doubt, I will still use my programming skills in my new career, and they will be a good selling feature after I graduate. As a programmer, I can count the number of times I've been paid to work outdoors on no hands. As geologist, it is part of the job. Even as a student, I've been some amazing places and seen incredible things. Any career that requires you to hike with a hammer, a bottle of acid, and a set of colored pencils is a good career.

I'm a red light, you insensitive photo...nevermind.

If a song download was ten cents rather than 99, I would probably spend much more on music that I do now. I suspect that would be true for a number of people. In the earlier days of VHS, a movie typically cost $80 or so. Video rental stores were the primary buyers, and most people simply rented them. The price per movie was simply too high for most consumers to contemplate spending. However, when the price of a movie dropped to $20 (the first was "Pretty Woman" IIRC), it sold an incredible amount. Sure, the drop in per-unit profits were significant (especially when you consider that there was now a retailer as well as a distributor acting as middlemen), but when you consider the volume increased by a couple (or three, I'd wager) orders of magnitude...let me do the math...carry the 2...they made a shitload. Before long, consumer-friendly prices were the norm and the profits from video sales were no longer chump change--they were a major part of the revenue stream.

This was the same industry that tried to stop the VCR. Fortunately for them, they lost and once they figured out that consumer-friendly prices were a good thing, the VCR (and started the habit that continues with the DVD, etc.) made buying movies routine and #4. Profit!

A similar industry tried to stop the MP3 player. Fortunately for them, they lost. But they still haven't figured out the secret about pricing. Apple knows that selling more units at a lower profit margin makes you more money, but they labels haven't figured that out yet and keep trying to push the prices up. At ten cents, more people would buy, and they would buy much more. Also, fewer people would bother with pirating; at that price buying is more attractive than searching the sharing networks and downloading crap rip after crap rip.

I don't know what the magic number is. Ten cents sounds about right, but it might be a bit more or a bit less. But it is much less than 99 cents, and much, much less than what the labels want to charge.

The current promotional model (probably) wouldn't work at this price, but even now it doesn't really work except for the few artists a label chooses to promote (most of their catalog gets no love). At this price, an album is $1-$1.50 or so. With the purchase of the album, toss in a handful of songs by similar artists. If I like them, I'd buy their albums without blinking. There are a lot of little things like that which would be cheaper than the current promotional model and (at that price) much more effective.

The really funny thing is that most flag-happy Americans, rather than honoring the symbol, treat it with disrespect. Both by tradition of etiquette and U.S. Federal law the US Flag Code establishes proper methods for the display and treatment of the flag. Plastering your car with flag stickers is improper; the staff should be attached to the chassis or clamped to the front right bumper. The flag emblazoned t-shirts, baseball caps, and so on are disrespectful. Military personnel, police officers, firefighters, and members of political organizations may wear a flag patch. It is otherwise forbidden on clothing. The flag shouldn't be used for any advertising purpose, but stores routinely do this to show how "patriotic" they are.

There is no penalty for violating the law, and it is not enforced, however, why would a patriotic citizen dishonor and disrespect on of the most powerful symbols of their country?

As far as the photo goes, in the doctored version, it is difficult to tell what the setting is supposed to be, but since the original photo was indoors, the flag should either be affixed to the wall (either horizontally or vertically) or, if it is on a stand, it should be permitted to fall freely--it wouldn't look as though it was in the wind. If the US military treats the flag so dishonorably, can they be trusted to provide "liberty and justice for all"?

If a flag is tattered or permanently soiled, it should be disposed of with dignity. The preferred method is by burning. Rather frequently in the US, laws are proposed to make flag burning illegal. A true patriot would find such a law to be borderline traitorous as it is a gross violation of both the First Amendment and the US Flag Code.

This article makes it unclear if WGF 1.0 is basically DirectX 10.0 or a Longhorn-specific system. If it isn't available to users of older versions of Windows, there is little incentive to rewrite code specifically for it. I think the adoption of Longhorn will be slow as I haven't heard any really compelling reasons to shell out the money for the upgrade.