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.

If you find one that goes too high, it'll send you to intermission. I went for quite a while, and there was always something there. It's like My Little Pony, Minecraft, and Mario Brothers were thrown in a blender and thrown on a Geocities page. :)

That's pretty much what I was thinking. I thought they had all closed a few years ago.

I was taught to do it with a snake. Rare earth magnets weren't all that common in the consumer market at the time, and there was no Internet to order them on. :)

So you have heard of Greenpeace.

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.

Don't forget a snake to chase the cables through the walls. Getting the cable from the attic to the right level at the wall is usually the hardest part. Depending on the home construction, it can be almost impossible.

I ran the surround sound speakers for a friend. The TV, receiver, etc, were in a corner of two outside walls. The standard local construction was concrete blocks, a 1x2 or 1x3 strip vertically, some very thin fiberglass and vapor barrier, and finally the drywall for the interior. Outside walls also have a double layer of 2x4 for the header.

Since you're working where the roof meets the wall, you usually barely have room to get a drill in, and definitely can't get close enough to see down the hole.

Inside walls are a lot easier, if you can use them. They don't usually have a header, nor insulation.

It helps to have a friend (but not to be the friend) who has done it before. It takes some pretty serious bribes to get me to even think about doing it. :)

I always suggest wired over wireless. It will always be a better connection.

I'm not worried about it at all. I'm still curious though. Unless he was looking for some specific phrasing, I answered it in complete enough detail to make your own telnet client. :)

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?)

You can get one, but it will be delayed by years. :)

Much like Duke Nukem Forever, I'll believe it when I can buy it.

I noticed they don't have a pricetag anywhere. I suspect this toy will be one of those toys that most normal people can't afford.