shawnfratis

My advice to anyone would be to pick a career/job that at least relates to something that interests you. In the end it will make work a little more enjoyable. But as others have mentioned here, at some point you have to actually work and sometimes it's going to suck. That's just life. You can find a career that you enjoy, or sparks your interest enough to keep you doing it, but the idea of "never having to work a day in your life" (or however the mantra goes) is complete crap. So, get a job! And get a haircut!

>Ubuntu gives you a very clear option to pay for it when you download it.

If it works for you and you want it to keep working, making a donation/payment may not be the worst idea.

Yes, agreed. However, one of the points I think I'm trying to make is that that paying for a piece of software doesn't automatically make it better quality. I think that a lot of people in the free software world do try and put as much effort into making a good product as the ones in the paid world. Even under the pressure of not knowing how they're going to pay their mortgage. :/

I would not have a problem paying for software if what I was paying for didn't suck. Case in point: I have never been very happy with Win 10 since I got it, but in recent weeks it has become completely unusable, mostly because of their constant upgrades and behind-the-scenes processes that slow my machine down to a crawl. Out of frustration I wiped my drive and installed Ubuntu. Granted, Linux has it's share of problems but still works much better for my uses. So, one OS is paid and one isn't. Guess which? :/ My personal gripe is that it seems to me, when it comes to basic customer service, we the customers are on the bottom of the totem pole. Software companies spend more time worrying about how to reassure their shareholders than they do about making sure we have a usable, hassle-free product, and I've been seeing this trend getting worse in recent years. So until that thought-process changes these people will not get my money. As far as I'm concerned, at this point anyway, FOSS is the lesser of two evils.

>If you want nice things, you have to pay for them.

Why the hell do I have to pay for something that has already been offered for free? That's called bait and switch. And maybe this is a stretch, but I think that should not even be legal. In my mind it it is a form of false advertising. If you don't think it will sustain itself as a free service in the future then don't offer it as a free service in the first place.

>Up until age 39, I was never not given an offer after interviewing. Now after 40, my offer rate has dropped to 1 in 14.

Sorry to say this, but get used, as I have, to getting flooded with employment offers that might as well have a note on the bottom that says "all are welcome to apply-EXCEPT YOU." Why they bother to waste resources to send these out is beyond me, unless they are just sadistic.

I've said this before (kinda) and I'll say it again: if you're not happy with a feature in an open source piece of software then get involved with the development process: https://www.gimp.org/develop/ . If you don't know how and/or are not interested in learning then use another piece of software.

If you're looking for an AutoCAD alternative try Draftsight from Dassault Systemes. There is a free personal version, but even the paid version isn't that expensive and it works pretty well.

To me, it seems almost as if the web dev is saying "if you don't have the latest, most up-to-date, most powerful device/whatever, then we don't want you looking at our ads". Seriously? I thought the idea of advertising was to get as many eyeballs as possible. That way of thinking seems so counter-productive to me, plus I can't imagine the advertiser being very happy with that approach. Thinking back to my days working in recording studios, we always mixed stuff in a way that it would sound good on both a giant audio system or a small, cheesy boom-box, with the idea that we wanted everyone who listens to have a good experience no matter what system they were using. I'm not quite sure why this methodology can't be applied here.

Editors, for both music and film, animators and pretty much anyone who use non-linear systems very much rely on the space bar to start/stop playback. Much easier, faster and more efficient than always having to reach up and push a button.