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An operation that should have taken you... what, 10 minutes?

Took me 30 minutes with the Cougar QBX mini-ITX case. I may be a big guy but I build my systems small.

https://twitter.com/cdreimer/status/874112440379744257/

People didn't want to pay for an expensive product with limited use-cases. Once the technology improved through Psion, Palm Pilot, iPhone; tech geeks became interested.

Not exactly. Read "Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure" by Jerry Kaplan, about the first pen-based handheld computer in the late 1980's that got screwed over by Microsoft ("Why aren't you using Windows?!"), Intel ("Why aren't you using the 386 processor?!"), Apple ("We invented that with the Apple Newton!"), and IBM ("We don't know what we're doing but sign these forms anyway!").

So your great source of "social media strategy" is from someone no one has ever heard of?

Guy Kawasaki — former Apple evangelist, author and speaker.

You must not be a real nerd. Turn in your geek cred and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

One single guy who is quite possibly almost as narcissistic and pathological as you?

You're thinking of Trump, who could learn a few things from Guy Kawasaki about social media.

He wrote a short story on amazon about pooping on the sidewalk, the one reviewer gave it 2 stars.

That was The Cabbage Patch Doll Fight: A Christmas Shopping Tale, about the Cabbage Patch doll in the early 1980's. Overall rating for that ebook is 3.5 stars.

He wrote on slashdot that the problem was that $1 ebooks just aren't popular anymore.

The problem is 1) people are unwilling to pay $1 for 1,000+ words, 2) a $1 dollar ebook can only be discounted to FREE, and 3) I'm no longer a big fan of FREE. My solution is to commission new artwork, consolidate my titles into fewer ebooks (2,500+ words), and raise the price to $1.99.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch has a long article on how the business change over the last 50 years and why indie authors need to develop their own personal brand.

http://kriswrites.com/2017/06/07/business-musings-brand-image-brandingdiscoverability/

The reviewer said they were expecting a story, but it was only a short transcript of a vague memory.

You would think that the price and the word count in the description would give hint that this ebook wasn't a magnum opus. It's easy to write a critical review when it doesn't cost you any money.

Modern computers tend to not have a serial port on the back (unless they are servers) but there is often a header on the motherboard you can connect one to.

The ECS Elitegroup KAM1-I motherboard has four serial ports: two in back and two headers. I built a Linux box around this motherboard for under $200 to serve as a terminal server to my Cisco certification rack. I'm running Red Hat Linux 64-bit on it.

I just figured your experience in life must be so painful that if someone encouraged your death you might just do it.

That may have been the case when I was a teenager. "Harold and Maude" changed my perspective on life. I have every intention of living, no matter how inconvenient that is for everyone else.

Leadership and Self Deception is an amazing book. If you want something for the tech industry: Activator http://amzn.to/2qYDoT1

Are they suggesting that Harvard students should be housed in California prisons?

That wouldn't be a bad idea. A 1978 documentary, Scared Straight!, had a group of juvenile delinquents meet harden convicts who scared the crap out of them to convince that a life of crime doesn't pay. Such an experience for the graduating class of Harvard might convince future Wall Street traders and politicians to be more ethical in their dealings.

Aside from a few very rare exceptions, that class of people doesn't go to jail even for really huge crimes. If you've been awake at all for the last 35 years you'd know this.

My favorite documentary is In Search of Shakespeare by Michael Wood. If you read other Shakespeare biographies that came out after this documentary, Wood is sometimes accused of making Shakespeare too popular for non-scholars and not serious enough for the serious scholars to take seriously.

I didn't read "Battlefield Earth" by L. Ron Hubbard until Amazon had the ebook version for $1.99 last year. I've enjoyed the book much more than the movie. Although I've read the first three volumes of "Mission Earth" as a teenager, I didn't read all ten volumes until this year. Gets off to great start, sags in the middle, and finishes with a bang. This book series is like the Trump Administration: just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, it takes you further down into the corruption that is humanity.

I didn't read "Battlefield Earth" by L. Ron Hubbard until Amazon had the ebook version for $1.99 last year. I've enjoyed the book much more than the movie. Although I've read the first three volumes of "Mission Earth" as a teenager, I didn't read all ten volumes until this year. Gets off to great start, sags in the middle, and finishes with a bang. This book series is like the Trump Administration: just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, it takes you further down into the corruption that is humanity.

Are they suggesting that Harvard students should be housed in California prisons?

That wouldn't be a bad idea. A 1978 documentary, Scared Straight!, had a group of juvenile delinquents meet harden convicts who scared the crap out of them to convince that a life of crime doesn't pay.

Unfortunately "Scared Straight!" is a textbook case of an idea that sounds good in theory and makes good TV but when you do do proper controlled trials you discover that it is worse than useless: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

Are they suggesting that Harvard students should be housed in California prisons?

That wouldn't be a bad idea. A 1978 documentary, Scared Straight!, had a group of juvenile delinquents meet harden convicts who scared the crap out of them to convince that a life of crime doesn't pay. Such an experience for the graduating class of Harvard might convince future Wall Street traders and politicians to be more ethical in their dealings.

Can't get you a free pony, but here's a pony for $10.

Or get a fireproof and explosion proof bag for your batteries and devices.

...and their abuse of copyright.

If you want to read an important SciFi/Fantasy book, try Never Let Me Go.

Trump obviously got the idea to bomb the sun from watching "Sunshine" on TV.

Casey Neistat did a review of "American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road" by Nick Bilton. I haven't read it yet but looks like a good read.

https://youtu.be/7-nzTfv5IZY?t=88

Ever heard of him?

TTL Cookbook by Donald E. Lancaster. I bought a copy last month since I got back into through-hole electronics as an adult.

Being bought up by a larger company was the reason d'etre of many dot com startups. Today it's just another exit strategy on the VC's checklist when you come begging for money. Something that Antonio Martinez explained in his book, "Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley".

I finished reading "Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley" by Antonio Garcia Martinez. The author and his two engineers leave the startup they worked at to create a startup at Y Combinator to create a better version of the Digg toolbar (remember toolbars?) for Google advertisers in 2010. He sold his company and engineers to Twitter and jumped ship to Facebook in a three-way deal. The funny thing is that his engineers made out better than him in the end. As for Y Combinator, I've heard mixed things about their success rate.

That sounds like something Casey Neistat wanted in the Samsung Dex: the ability to use it as a regular cellphone and then plug it into a docking station or PC to continue working on the cellphone.

https://youtu.be/uOFDmbUlrT4?t=101
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/03/samsung-dex-is-a-galaxy-s8-dock-that-makes-your-phone-into-a-desktop/

Couldn't find that anywhere.

A little art house film called "Pumping Iron" that came out in 1977. You may have heard of it.

One of the most insightful comment in "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" by Robert Kiyosaki was when Rich Dad said: "Why climb the corporate ladder when you can own it?"

If you're working for a corporation and expect the corporation to make you rich, you're doing it wrong.

A corporate job should pay the bills while you nurture a side business that will eventually replace your income from the corporate job. Work as an owner, not an employee.

If you believe your "side business" can compete with people that quit their corporate jobs to commit completely to their business, then you are completely delusional. Even most people that dedicate themselves to their new business will unfortunately end up seeing it fail. Unless of course by "side business" you mean "rich daddy" buying a successful small business for you to play with

One of the most insightful comment in "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" by Robert Kiyosaki was when Rich Dad said: "Why climb the corporate ladder when you can own it?"

If you're working for a corporation and expect the corporation to make you rich, you're doing it wrong.

A corporate job should pay the bills while you nurture a side business that will eventually replace your income from the corporate job. Work as an owner, not an employee.

That story got covered in "Show Stopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft" by G. Pascal Zachary. A great book that is out of print and not available in ebook format.

Your kid can't operate the EZ-Bake oven without one.

That's what I thought at one point, but they've redesigned the Easy-Bake Oven so it no longer needs a lightbulb...probably has a proper heating element in it instead.

As for what things cost in large quantities, knocking a nickel off the bill of materials adds up to $5000 on a 100k production run. I'm not sure if they're actually using skinnier wire in the lamps I bought or if they economized elsewhere (a less heat-resistant plastic for the lightbulb socket, perhaps?).

I'd bet you are also not aware of the 1925 Wizard of Oz.

Actually, I have. Oliver Hardy played the Tin Man.

So much for your "30 year" theory,

I'm looking forward to the Logan's Run remake, which will be based on the novel and not the 1970's movie..

A boring underpaid loser lives a really shitty life so he can save up money for when he is old and sick.

Re-read the comment. A janitor gives you stock tips at the urinal and you blow him off because you two don't share the same socioeconomic background. The paper announces his death and he leaves behind his a whole huge, you would be kicking yourself in the ass for not listening.

Or let's consider my uncle in Idaho. You look at him at him, think that he's a poor farmer, and blow him off. Except he's not a farmer. He's a tractor driver who owns a $250K tractor with computer navigation, satellite TV and air conditioning. He makes more money than the farmers do because he tills the ground from Spring through Fall, working 16 hours per day, and spends the winter fishing on the Gulf of Mexico. His net worth is $1M+.

Here's another book on wealth: "The Millionaire Next Door" by Thomas J. Stanley.

Gaining and losing money 3 times is your definition of success?

If you lost it all, could you regain it back again? That's the true measure of wealth.

Do us a favor and don't post more advice. On anything.

Here's another book on wealth: "Job: A Comedy of Justice" by Robert A. Heinlein.

slashdotters are going to take advice from special-ed, starting.... NOW

Start with "The Richest Man in Babylon" by George S. Clason.

The obvious mistake was not sending the seeds off to a planet that is 75-light-years away, where aliens and corporations would squabble over Earth's genetic legacy in the future. Check out "City of Pearl" by Karen Traviss, the first of six volumes in The Wess'har Wars series.

Not on 50k per year, that's for sure.

Something like the DJI Phantom P3 would be bought by my side business and written off as a tax expense.

Do toy boats even fit in the bathtub with your fat ass?

Plenty of room for the HMS Titanic .

You should look up Mark Zuckerberg.

The greatest PHP programmer that ever lived. I just got finished reading "Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley" by Antonio Garcia Martinez. The author sold his company and engineers to Twitter and joined Facebook in a three-way deal. He complained about using PHP for the frontend at Facebook. You would think a Harvard-educated programmer would use a better language for his webpages than PHP. I'm not going to knocked him for using PHP as it was part of the LAMP stack.

Except for creimer our very own resident troll billionaire who earns $55B+ despite being a stupid lazy fat American slob. So you see it's not true there are no tech jobs for Americans. There is one token tech job for one token American and that job is filled by the big fat ass of creimer.

My ebooks are available at Amazon and Smashwords. You can also visit me at my author website, personal blog, YouTube and Twitter.

I got finished reading "Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley" by Antonio Garcia Martinez. This book about Internet advertising took place after Biz Stone took off from Twitter. The author made a three-way trade to sell his company and engineers to Twitter while going off to Facebook. Surprisingly, Twitter and the engineers got the better part of the deal.

That's a mighty big "IF," friend. It also assumes that the market for it will remain for the next 30 years, which is another big "IF".

There's no "IF" about it. I make more money from ebook sales than I do from first serial right sales to anthologies. The virtual shelves have no expiration date. If I maintain this side business while working a regular job for 30 years , I'll have significant royalty income in retirement

Which piece of yours would you consider your best? Which are you proudest of?

On the fiction side, it would be "The Giggling Mongoose: Scarlet Hearts". My bestselling essay is, "Death At A Hell's Angels' Funeral: Driving Past The Memories "

The $0.99 price model is dead. I'm in the process of revamping my catalog by consolidating titles, getting new cover art commissioned, and raising the prices to $1.99. I'll be releasing new titles next year.

That's a mighty big "IF," friend. It also assumes that the market for it will remain for the next 30 years, which is another big "IF".

There's no "IF" about it. I make more money from ebook sales than I do from first serial right sales to anthologies. The virtual shelves have no expiration date. If I maintain this side business while working a regular job for 30 years , I'll have significant royalty income in retirement

Which piece of yours would you consider your best? Which are you proudest of?

On the fiction side, it would be "The Giggling Mongoose: Scarlet Hearts". My bestselling essay is, "Death At A Hell's Angels' Funeral: Driving Past The Memories "

The $0.99 price model is dead. I'm in the process of revamping my catalog by consolidating titles, getting new cover art commissioned, and raising the prices to $1.99. I'll be releasing new titles next year.

I tried to use a FIDO U2F security key in my side business. Most of my vendors don't support using two-factor authentication with a security key. My web host provider plans to implement it Really Soon. Google will prompt me for my key if I make a major change to my YouTube account. Biometric passwords aren't going to work if vendors don't get onboard to upgrade their login systems.

Write a blog post about it, bro.

No one wants to read about your butthurt. Go buy yourself some Lady Anti Monkey Butt Powder to sooth over the pain.

You reinstalled everything - I'm asking, did you use some sort of automation tool to lay down a preconfigured base image?

I use Acronis True Image to image the system, backing up to a FreeNAS file server.

When Buzz Aldrin spoke at the Silicon Valley Comic Con to promote his book, "No Dream Is Too High: Life Lessons From a Man Who Walked on the Moon," I don't think he mentioned anything about the space station. Then again he read from prepared notes. When it came time for Q&A, he tended to drift off topic and the moderator had to bring him back on topic.

If they can do get explosives past inside a laptop case why can't they do the same using clothes, books, shoes etc.?

The last time someone put explosives in his shoe and try to light it on fire was in 2001. I don't recall a similar incident since then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_failed_shoe_bomb_attempte

The only reason exploding batteries are an issue was because of Samsung exploding phones, which you can now buy explosion-proof bags to carry in.

Microsoft is the same company that almost missed the Internet for Windows. When The Road Ahead by Bill Gates came out, it had no mentioned of the Internet.

That is simply false. The original edition discussed the Internet and stated it as "the most important single development in the world of computing since the IBM PC was introduced in 1981." The revised edition released within a few months added more focus on the Internet.

Ref: The Road Ahead Wikipedia article

Microsoft is the same company that almost missed the Internet for Windows. When The Road Ahead by Bill Gates came out, it had no mentioned of the Internet. Gates and the publisher revised the book. You can't have a visionary missing one of the biggest technological developments of his time.

As usual, if Microsoft appears to have done something right, they bought the software from someone else. It's never developed in-house.

Good point. I just got finish reading "Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley" by Antonio Garcia Martinez, about Facebook advertising. Microsoft bought this company for $6.1B, wrote down $6B in goodwill, and sold the advertising group for $0.1B to Facebook.

I'm reading "Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley" by Antonio Garcia Martinez, about Facebook advertising. I'm at the part where Facebook internal data connects with external data to attach personal information on to every piece of data that Facebook had collected from the web. Scary stuff.

And yet it's the very thing Zuckerberg, Natella and Larry Page are DOING.

I'm reading "Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley" by Antonio Garcia Martinez, about Facebook advertising. I'm at the part where Facebook internal data connects with external data to attach personal information on to every piece of data that Facebook had collected from the web. Scary stuff.

Despite being the world's largest marketplace, I get most of ebook sales through Smashwords and not Amazon. I doubt whatever changes Amazon had to make for Europe will trickle down to my bottom line.