BjornW

Simonw, have you considered using other methods than Twitter for signing in? I don't feel comfortable tying services together both as a user and as developer. I'm curious as why have you chosen for to only allow signing in with Twitter?

Don't judge a book by it's cover. I am running Ubuntu on my macbook. So at these conferences it may look like everyone is using macs and therefor OS X, but perhaps there are more people like me running Linux on a Macbook.

I always have to laugh a bit after people ask me questions how I got OS X to look so different from the stock version. Usually I explain that you may run any OS on your Macbook. Be it OS X, Windows or Linux.

ps: For those wondering why I run Linux on a Mac. In my case I tend to develop mostly webapps which need to run on a Linux based setup anyway, so it just makes my life easier to have the environments more or less the same. Although with the current powerful cpu's and nice virtual machine solutions such as VirtualBox or VMWare I might be tempted to run each project in its own vm on whatever OS the laptop came with.

I guess the average person assumes that a higher version number implies a 'better' (define your own interpretation) product. Seems Google is joining that particular use of version numbers as marketing. And to be honest, to some degree I can completely understand this. Imagine having to explain why Internet Explorer 6 is not a better product than Firefox 3....

As a developer I always find it hard versioning my work. Why do I consider it to be a 0.8 and not 1.0? Why would you consider it 1.0 and not 0.8? I try to stick to the following rule of thumb:

a.b.c

a) Major changes or multiple big new features b) Medium changes, maybe one or twee new small features c) Improvements

I'm curious as to what 'system' other people use to determine their software's version numbering.

Wow! This reminds me of the book Idoru by Willam Gibson.

Idoru on Wikipedia: "In the post Tokyo/San Francisco earthquake world of the early 21st century, Colin Laney is referred to agents of the aging mega-rock star Rez (of the musical group Lo/Rez, and seemingly very much styled after former The Smiths frontman, Morrissey) for a job using his peculiar talent of sifting through vast amounts of mundane data to find "nodal points" of particular relevance. Rez has claimed to want to marry a synthetic personality named Rei Toei, the Idoru (Japanese Idol) of the title, which is apparently impossible and therefore questioned by his loyal staff, particularly by his head of security, Blackwell.[...]" source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idoru

Many have already said it better and more in detail, so I'll keep it brief: not all is gloom and doom. You will (re)discover your strength. Talk with someone you trust or a professional. Take care!

I haven't read all comments on this, but I get the feeling a lot of HN-ers are not too fond of the article.

Personally it struck a chord with me.

In a previous life I worked at a non-profit aimed at doing 'R&D' in a social context (yes, this is vague and that was just one of the things making me leave...). Although I've left this organisation disillusioned and a lot more cynical about non-profits and their methods / goals, I still strive to use my skills for the betterment of all. Not that I always succeed (I'm by far not a saint), but I try to give something back. In my case I do this by offering a lot of my stuff under a open source license or Creative Commons license. Still, I sometimes wonder if I could/should strive to do more in the real world with tangible / physical results. Staring at a screen all day long and hoping my virtual work will lead to some positive results in the 'real' world and be meaningful for people occasionally makes me feel like I'm fooling myself. Therefore I think that the gist of Jolie's article hits the nail right on the head and asks the difficult question (for all of us regardless of skills or area of expertise): what have you been trying to do not just for the betterment of yourself, but also for the betterment of other's? Trying to combine this in your work is something I belief is worth striving for, even if we cannot always achieve it.

I agree with WilliamLP: It would really make this a lot more interesting if the process of the implementation of this game was documented as well. Nonetheless this is pretty cool especially given the constraints of fitting it in 10K.

I get the feeling HN has more posts on becoming rich lately and frankly I find it not very relevant for Hackers News. Yes, it's great if your hack/project/application allows you to gain a nice income, but personally I'm more interested in your hack/project/application and the process around it than the possible outcome of being financially independent. If that's your definition of 'rich'.

I've started with searching for a martial art fitting for me 2,5 years ago. I hadn't been training for a quite some time and I really needed to do something about it. I had practiced Judo during my child and early teen years and practiced Tae Kwon Do during college.

I quit both because, in my personal opinion they are too focused on doing one thing fairly well while more or less ignoring other aspects of fighting. For example: I found it very annoying that Judo did not allow any punches or kicks. While Tae Kwon Do didn't allow throws or ground fighting. Basically I was looking for a different look at fighting, be it kicking, punching, locks, throws or fighting with weapons. In my view everything should be possible depending on the context. At that time I found two possible matches (in my neighborhood) for what I was looking for in a martial art: Takeda Ryu and Krav Maga. After having followed three lessons of Takeda Ryu I didn't bother of looking at Krav Maga anymore since Takeda Ryu and the people training at the dojo matched what I was looking for.

So now I have been training Takeda Ryu Kobilza Ha for 2,5 years. I'm still just a beginner and need to learn a lot, but I enjoy training very much and that's what I consider to be the most important. Whatever martial art you like to start make sure you enjoy it and feel safe in the dojo.

I have the impression that it does have an effect on me outside the dojo, although I find it hard to describe what the effect exactly is.

Currently I'm practicing five budo disciplines in Takeda Ryu Kobilza Ha:

- Aikido (throws, locks ) - Iaido (swiftly drawing the sword and cutting correctly) - Jodo (fighting with a stick) - Jukempo (kicking, punching combined with throws and locks) - Kendo (fighting with a drawn sword)

If you would like to know more about Takeda Ryu, have a look at http://istb.info/index.php/home.html or look at some footage of demonstrations: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INx_CSA_I78 and our main event in Vienna Austria: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sxtTNjKSsk&;

ps: This is my own very personal and limited look at martial arts and I do not want to disrespect any Judo, Tae Kwon Do, Krav Maga or any other martial art practitioners.

Wonderful story and it made my day. I really like it when people are fixing problems and go above and beyond their job description.

Although I've only seen a part of a presumably actual conversation (haven't tried to confirm it using other sources) I do find the attitude shown by Bram Cohen to be something I would not have expected from 'one of the most well known and respected people in the whole open source community'. It actually saddens me to see an open source programming 'role model' of mine behave like a spoiled child

I do understand the frustration surrounding the policies, yet I also understand Freenode which is offering a free, gratis service. A more humble approach would probably have yielded a quicker result and IMHO was more appropriate.

ps: If Bram Cohen is not really happy with Freenode, he, as 'one of the most well known and respected people in the whole open source community' probably has other options to create a #bittorrent irc channel according his wishes.

You might have missed it, but the authors encourage you to contact them and give them feedback. It is probably to late for the written/published book by O'Reilly, but perhaps your feedback will be used to alter the online version. You might want to give it a try and let them know?

Nice! Reminds me of Alien Breed on the Amiga. Ah those were the days...

Could you tell us perhaps a bit more about the creation process of this game? After all this is hackers news and not an indie games forum ;)

Mhhm, the meeting will be held somewhere around 25-31 jan not december...

To clarify:

You can use GPL licensed software and sell it. There is nothing preventing you from commercially exploiting GPL licensed software. In fact there are plenty of companies doing so. You just have to include the source.

You might find this less attractive for your (commercial) goals and needs, but I find it quite attractive and important to have access to the source and the possibility to alter or enhance the software I use, while preventing freeloading (not quite true with GPL, see services as a loophole, AGPL is actually even better at preventing freeloading) to a certain degree.

for more information on the meetup check this link: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1011911

I'm willing to help out organizing. I live in utrecht. Have contacts with seats2meet and can also offer a free space. Contact me through my profile.

Definately interested. Located in Utrecht and able to provide a space.

Maybe a stupid question, but what would be the altternative?

Recently I started to think along these lines: code not being used and/or worked on is slowly decaying (due to bitrot :) ). Personally i would opt to share even if it's not perfect. Practice makes perfect and that's what you can do by making your work available to others and thus allow them to 'judge' your work. Your question seems to imply that this is part of why you're considering sharing your work. From a practical viewpoint: it might be good to think about maintenance and support, although i presume most open source project first need to be used at all before this becomes problem. I hope this makes any sense.

Interesting library. Thanks for sharing!

One question though: where does the screenshot of the item which has been clicked on come from? As far as I understand your lib does not provide any means to create a screenshot? Is this correct? Would it be possible to add this? If not could you explain how you would make sure the coordinates and the screenshot at any given time match?

Just curious and interested in using your library :)

The thing I found most interesting, is the use of couchdb and python for Raindrop instead of XUL.

My hypothesis: Due to CouchDB being used by both Canonical (UbuntuOne) and now Mozilla in new interesting 'products I'm more and less convinced that CouchDB will be become a the choice for data storage. It seems like a good replacement (although comparing the two isn't really fair) for sqlite.

Why? Because it supposedly (I haven't tested this myself yet) makes it very easy to sync between different couchdb instances (making it easier to have on- offline applications) and because you can 'run' a complete application from it using only html and javascript.

I've been reading Chris Anderson's (http://jchrisa.net/drl/_design/sofa/_list/index/recent-posts...) about how couchdb would transform both desktop and webapplications and nowadays I tend to agree more and more.

Curious as what other people think of this..

With regards to point 2: I read something in a foreign language instead of just complex fiction. It forces me to slow down and it helps me keep up with my foreign languages. Usually this meant English (I'm Dutch), but since I read a lot of English during the day already, I started with reading German at night. I

Well, actually I was using cdbm and thought it might be nice to mention it on HN. Then I noticed you added some other interesting stuff as well, so even more reason to submit it to HN :)

So not an adventerous PyPi visitor, just someone who was looking throught his bookmarks ;)

Oh and thanks a lot for creating and sharing it. It's a great tool which IMHO should become part of the 'default' cd, mv and cp.

I'm based in Utrecht as well. A a meetup would be cool!

I understand the frustration of the developers of Ninja Words, but I do not understand why we keep having these Apple Store rejected app stories on HN.

If Apple is behaving like a jerk, why invest any energy in them? AFAIK there are other interesting developing platforms with interesting hardware. The iPhone might have a nice userbase, but I presume this will not matter in the end since most phones seem to head into the direction of being complete pc's anyway, why bother with a mobile 'desktop' application as new mobile browsers are going to be supporting more and more of the common desktop pc browsers features?

I mean - excuse my ignorance - , but why would a developer voluntarily deal with the ongoing Apple App store dictatorship? Without a healthy ecosystem of applications the iPhone is dead in the water. As is the current silo approach embraced by Apple. Why would a developer invest any energy into their doomed silo scheme?

IMHO let Apple reject applications as much as they want, history has learned us that the most open system will prevail (Video2000 Vs VHS for example) and my bet is on the Web and open OSses like Android, Linux and perhaps Symbian (if the ever get serious about going FLOSS).

I haven't read all comments yet, but some commenters seem to make the presumption that copyright is about artists. It is not. It is about the rightsholder which may in- or exclude artists. I'm writing this on my commute so I don't have the research to back it up at the moment, but I remember research has been done on the rightsholders and if I remember correctly only a small percentage were creators and thus actively contributed to culture. The larger percentage of the rightsholders were merely parasiting on ip rights created by creators already dead or who (had to) sold their ip-rights off for a meager sum. Copyright is therefor also less about incentive since it mostly benefits those holding on the 'old' creations and milking it instead of creating new works. I recommend reading the essays of Dutch professor Joost Smiers. He makes some interesting (and some wacky) points and is an interesting read.

What about rhizome.org? I'll admit that I only visit it perhaps once a month, but it if you like art perhaps rhizome is something to check out? Oh, as far as I know its more a blog than a community, so not exactly like HN.

AFAIK and IANAL you're not completely right.

It depends on the type of DVD you use. If for instance it's a movie DVD using something like CSS (remember DVD Jon?) and you access it's content by breaking the CSS "protection" then you're right. Basically if you need specific codecs or circumvent certain "protection" layers it would probably be something that you might want to check with a legal expert. In any other case where you want to access a plain DVD, AFAIK this is completely legal anywhere in the world.

I have tried the previous versions and I was a bit confused about it. It seems the extjs does not really care about no-javascript, because switching off javascript led to all sorts of issues. Its not so much that we expected people to have javascript turned off, but people are using mobile browser with limited capabilities and with using extjs the experience would degrade too much. At that time I was not impressed since I was looking for a non-obtrusive way of implementing javascript based interaction enhancements into our project and I expected (perhaps wrongly) the extjs framework to take this into consideration. Anyone have any experience with the new version and how it behaves now when javascript is either turned of or has limited capabilities?

Oh man, I so wished this was true...

C'mon IE dev team please include the option to use different rendering engines and the ability to use Firefox extensions. Oh and make IE run on linux so I don't have to install a complete OS just to test mono platform software. Oh and have a chat with Mac Safari people so that they will start making cross platform software instead of their stereo software. I mean, isn't this supposed to be the dolby digital age. Too bad it's almost the first of April