It's not that bad, actually. I moved from a steady job to contracting and it's not like you run a full-fledged business. I get my work through a bunch of agencies, so I don't have to do calling and selling and what have you. I just spread my resume around those, and they call and email me. There's also a local site where you can check out companies looking for a contractor. Once you have a client, it's usually a multi-month/-year, stable affair.

I do my own bookkeeping because I happen to like it, but a friend of mine simply gives it to an accountant. Since it's only a one bill a month and a handful of invoices, the costs are quite limited.

And I easily earn twice of what I used to earn.

"Congratulations, you're a spammer."

You're jumping to conclusions. There are perfectly legitimate reasons for that kind of mail volumes, such as administrering mail servers of a company that handles customer support tickets or a web shop with order confirmations, shipping notices, and invoices (3 emails per order). It could also be an opt-in mailing list.

For some reason, probably because you posted some amazingly insightful comment in the past, I have you marked as a friend here. Thus a new journal appears in my message center and I read it :)

No, because a big hurdle is of course lithography on 7 nanos, but the even bigger hurdle is using it with a high enough yield to make it commercially viable.

As long as my smartphone lasts through a long, busy day, I'm fine with the battery. I used to have an Android phone, and carry two extra charged batteries. However since the iPhone 6 Plus, I'm coming home with 70% charge left.

If you just need one extra screen, you could use an iPad: http://www.zdnet.com/article/d...
Of course, it looks to be Windows/Mac only and limited to one iPad, but they say they're actively working on it.

That is pretty darn funny :)

Roombas break in certain, specific ways. For example, the (outer case of the) gear box often develops cracks. I'd like to be able to print out a new cover, because that's the only thing broken right now. Getting it replaced involves buying a complete swiper assembly, $100-150 or so.

Great thing about the Roomba is that these problems are well-known. I've been keeping mine running 7-8 years, replacing infrared LEDs, ball bearings and probably the outer gear box this year.

Problem is that these photographers are still stuck in the 20th century, and will give you a printout.

They changed the photo business in the biggest attraction park in the Netherlands, quite recently. They used to charge EUR 10 or so for a single printout. Now they sell you a 4 GB USB stick for EUR 20 which you can load with up to 15 (?) photos and which you can re-use on a next visit until some expiration date. And afterwards, you can use it as any other USB stick. I thought it was pretty reasonable. It was the first time ever I paid for photos in an attraction park.

"I will agree that with the rate of technological change today, the current 20 year protection is ridiculous. Technologies are typically woefully outdated by the time patents expire. IMHO patents should last significantly less time than currently (say 5 years or so),"

A farmaceutical product can well take much longer than that between the time the compound was discovered and the time it has passed all clinical trials and gets approval.from the authorities.

I work in the high-tech industry, where it can easily take 5 years between the first conception and the actual sale of the product. Only for small, incremental changes of existing technology, we sometimes get below 2 years.

The patent system is broken IMO, but not because of the 20-year term. The threshold for patentability is way too low IMO. Every big player in the industry is aggressively patenting every little idea just because the others do the same and nobody wants to be bitten in the ass by a competitor's patent or a patent troll. (I am personally in a strange position,since my employer provides various incentives to generate IP, so I end up contributing to the systemic problem.)

I like Mega as well, but I felt the client for OS X was kinda clunky.

What I don't like about BT Sync is that it requires a specific port to be open. OwnCloud just uses the standard https port, 443, which is open anywhere.

This being a tech site, I suggest you do it yourself and get a virtual private server somewhere, then install OwnCloud. It's extremely easy, just get a VPS at one of the nice providers like DigitalOcean or Linode, install Debian and use dmcrypt or ecryptfs to encrypt the filesystem.

Then share your files over HTTPS. Done.

Sorry, I'm confused. You mean they don't care about his farts or about LibreOffice? Be clear, man! How are we supposed to have an intelligent conversation otherwise??!