Are you a computer programmer? Here is what Half Sigma thinks about your profession:

1. Computer programming is a low prestige profession.
2. As you get older, your desire to completely relearn everything decreases, so you are likely to succumb to the temptation of staying with the familiar technology for too long.
3. Whatever your position is, as a Computer Science person, you are socially classified as a geek.
4. The computer programming industry within the United States is an industry with a shrinking number of jobs (because of outsourcing).
5. Computer programming and IT in general is now seen as the foreigner’s industry and not a proper profession for upwardly mobile white Americans.
6. Computer programmers face the need to move up to management or likely wind up as underemployed fifty-year-olds, only suitable for lower paying IT jobs.
7. This trend, in which people without computer programming experience manage computer programming projects, is a result of the low prestige of computer programming.
8. If you look forward to one day having your own private office, then computer programming sure isn’t the way to go.
9. Computer programmers are cubicle employees, not considered important enough to be given nice workspaces.
10. If you can’t get into a Top 14 law school or a top graduate business school, then public accounting probably provides a better career path than computer programming.

So, if you are a computer programmer, maybe you should change your career and become a database administrator. After all, database administration is one of the fastest-growing jobs in the United States.

I believe that no matter what your profession is, keeping up to date with the “what’s new” in your industry/technology is very essential to career development.

Hyperlinks to some free libraries/tools for sending/receiving SMS with a PC are listed below. They are for reference only.
http://www.gnokii.org/
A free and open source library. You can use it to send/receive SMS using a PC through a mobile phone/GSM modem. You can also use it to update address book and calendar entires, handle logos, load ring tones, etc. A good-looking gtk2 GUI is available. A lot of Nokia phone models are supported. Although this library is targeted for Nokia phones, phones from other manufacturers may still work under this library. You have to check its website for the list of models supported.
http://www.pxh.de/fs/gsmlib/
Another free, open source library that works under a variety of OSs (e.g. FreeBSD, Linux, MS Windows). You can use it to send/read SMS messages with a PC through a mobile phone/GSM modem. You can also use it to manipulate the phonebooks in the mobile phone/SIM card, or to store/retrieve the contents in the SMS store of a GSM mobile phone. The list of GSM phone and GSM modem supported can be found on its website.
http://www.kannel.org/
A famous, powerful, open source, and free WAP and SMS gateway. You can use it to connect to an operator’s SMS center (SMSC), or using a GSM phone/modem as a virtual SMS center. Kannel can handle multiple GSM phones/modems. However, as Kannel is a complex software with lots of functions, it may be hard to use for beginners.
http://jsmsengine.sourceforge.net/
jSMSEngine is a free and open source library written in Java. With jSMSEngine, you can send and receive SMS messages easily with a mobile phone or GSM modem. As it is written in Java, you can use it in all operating systems that support Java, such as Linux, Microsoft Windows, etc. jSMSEngine supports both ASCII and PDU mode. The jSMSEngine package contains a standalone application jSMSServer. You can use it to send/receive SMS messages without writing your own code.
http://javasmslib.sourceforge.net/
This is the website for the Java SMS Library Project. To quote from the website, this project aims to provide “A multi purpose library that sends sms, images, ringtones and OTA provisioning over TCP/IP, modem or direct cable connection to a GSM phone.” The library is free and open source. However, the project is not under active development.