Almost every tech site on the planet has that story and you pick the National Enquirer styled tech site?

Tsk, tsk. The submitter should be ashamed. The Register has shown itself to be completely untrustworthy.

Plants don't need sunlight, they just need light. Scientists and engineers (Michael Massimino, the engineer who fixed the Hubble, praised it) who have been in space say they see nothing unrealistic about Andy Wier's The Martian. Michael Massimino, the engineer who fixed the Hubble, praised it. You can light your plants with electric lighting. The problem would be how to generate the electricity.

It appears to be completely different up there. Do Canadians have to pay to register a copyright? It seems that down here we have to pay for everything.

I should move to Canada! Bowker doesn't need a gun to rob you, a single ISBN is $125, 10 are $250. IIRC if you buy a thousand they're a buck apiece. It's a racket. I wonder if a US citizen living in the US can register an ISBN in Canada? Hmm, I'll have to look into that although I'm holding eight unused ISBNs.

You are correct about me, I friend my fans and read all the journals. That's about all I do at /. any more, post and read journals. I've found Soylent News to be a better slashdot than slashdot, the non-nerds haven't discovered it yet.

Check your other journal, I think I pretty much covered it there.

You mentioned my favorite author. In one of his books he noted that he didn't make a dime on Foundation for ten years; his publisher couldn't afford to market it properly. When Doubleday bought the rights from the previous publisher (I don't remember who it was) it was a hit.

My advice is, write as a hobby. Yes, it will take longer; Nobots took me five years to write. Now that I'm retired I'm doing it full-time, I started writing Mars, Ho! this time last year and am just putting the finishing touches on it.

I took a page from Cory Doctorow's playbook and put e-book versions of the first two on the internet. It didn't work; I've yet to make a profit. As you've found out, Bowker (if you're in the US) is damned expensive. I bought a block of ten ISBNs, so they were $25 each. Registering a copyright is $35, and although your work is automatically "protected" it really isn't; if someone infringes your copyright, you can't sue unless you've registered it (of course this will vary by country).

This time I'm trying to follow Andy Wier's lead, at least partly. According to wikipedia, The Martian was rejected by all the publishers, so he put it on Amazon as a 99 cent e-book, where it shot to #1 and stayed there, and a publisher bought the rights "for a six figure" payday. I'm skipping the "submit to publishers" part. Hell, Harry Potter was rejected by over a dozen publishers. The e-book for Mars, Ho! will be a $2 e-book, and I'm not assigning any of my ISBNs to the hardcover or paperback. Those will be available only to fans.

Like you, I got into programming for the fun of it and enjoyed it immensely. When it became a job, it stopped being enjoyable.

Writing hasn't been financially rewarding for me, but it has been one of the most emotionally rewarding things I've ever done. I couldn't imagine what it would feel like to see someone chuckling while reading a humorous passage, or overhear someone raving about one of my books, or getting fan mail.

Writing is like playing music. I know an awful lot of incredibly talented musicians, none are making much money at it; musical instruments and equipment are expensive and bar owners are cheap.

Thousands of books are published daily, and some not great writing makes best seller lists. I don't agree with Stephen King that James Patterson is "a terrible writer" but the book of his I read didn't impress me a bit. But he makes money hand over fist, selling a LOT more books than King, who is incredibly talented.

But don't take something you love and turn it into drudgery. You'll stop loving it, just like programming.

(Huh? how come ¢ doesn't work here?)

I like that! Yes, some good stuff is still around, but far too much as been lost. How old is that one? I hadn't seen it before. Back when K5 was still relevant, some of my articles stayed in the top five for years, but are gone now, locked away in someone's dusty archive.

I can think of only four reports of Illinois State Police dying on the job since I came back to Illinois in 1986, and all of them were automobile accidents. Not one died by gunfire.

Send the witless moron who spoke of the danger of being a cop a list of the most dangerous jobs, they're all over the internet. "Cop" ain't on any of them. The guy making ten bucks an hour roofing faces far more danger every day. And you're more likely to be shot at work because you're a minimum wage convenience store clerk than a cop.

Now, Fire/rescue, their jobs are far more dangerous than a cop's and a hell of a lot more of them are injured or killed on the job than cops. Those guys risk their lives to save lives, cops face little risk and most are too cowardly to take any risk at all to save a citizen's life. Hell, look at that thing in California this summer when the cops killed the bank robbers and the crook's human shields as well.

Well it was about remembering a photo so I'd say it's more about recall than learning

Indeed; I was always terrible at memorization, but when I learned a thing, I KNEW that thing. Memorizing Ohm's Law doesn't mean you know what it means. Understanding is far more than memorization.

My reaction was "well DUH!" as well. This is simply scientific confirmation of the obvious. Now, had the study stated that curiosity had no effect on learning, that would have been a startling finding.

But that's how science works; something that is blindingly obvious is often disproven. In this case it wasn't.

Just because the 1%ers have money doesn't mean they're honest.

I would think hoards of cash would indicate more of a tendency to dishonesty than honesty. It's hard to make an honest dollar, far easier to steal one.

I really don't see the 18th century guy recognizing an automobile as being a carriage. A smart phone, with its lit screen and moving pictures and everything would be completely alien to him.

I think "gaol" would have been more common in Europe than the US, and in fact Webster's says "chiefly British variant of jail, jailer". The story takes place in Southern Illinois about 30 miles from St. Louis (on the campus I attended).

You see plenty of 1%ers on TV. Hell, half of Congress is in the 1% club. The ones you don't see are the .01%ers; they hold the real reins of power..