PilotPirx

Funny, after responding to your post I was watching that IBM video on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrhDaAmn5Uw&feature=chann... somebody had posted on HN in the meantime. And "to invent" was what I actually wanted to add here, after I heard Bijan Davari in the video, saying "Our job is to invent" (around 26:30)

Nope, you're right to point that out. But a certain amount of success is an important requirement.

You can still fail sometimes and try again and have success or find out that something is just not possible.

So trying to put it in a single word was maybe a weak attempt. There are more factors, like do something new (and hopefully have success with it), learn a lot, hard work...

to succeed...

I'm not a gambling person. In such cases there is one thing I know for sure: You won't throw away your personal money, so for every $ I win you will need to earn one $ (at least).

Another problem: How do I know, that your program is anything like playing fair? You could set up chances in program from anything like 1/100, 1/100,000 or no win at all. How do you want to built up a really great reputation for your customers to trust you on this?

The puzzle would even complicate matters. It would need to generate a new problem for every customer, otherwise you'll soon find the solution on the web and everybody will win. Or people will write bots to cheat about it.

I don't see anything very hacker specific. Actually just some boring and overpriced t-shirts.

Network. Keep in contact and form alliances to ensure free speech and free information as long as this is possible. Communication was the key point in the events in Germany before the wall was falling.

Don't split your energies in small fights. The next step must be democracy, not fights about details of politics. Who are the people you can trust? Can they form a party that ensures free elections?

Our hearts and minds are with you. And we wish you all the best on your way to become a strong democratic country.

Have You access to world news? German news tells us, that Ben Ali is in Saudi Arabia now. His wife is said to have brought 1.5 tons of gold (worth 49 million euro) out of the country.

edit: I just read, that there are strikes in Jordania as well. Inspired by the events in Tunisia. (And Gaddafi in Libya didn't sound too happy about the events as well, maybe frightened of a revolution in his country as well)

There is a site http://openstudy.com/ where you can get into contact with other people taking the courses at OCW.

I wanted to work through the 18.06 calculus course anyway, so having that with enhanced material is great news to me.

Cool idea. Could be enhanced: If I mark a user as (for example) "fanatic" all his "troll" or "flame" tags are automatically converted to "funny" for me...

I think that vim/emacs against the rest of world question is becoming unbelievably boring. For on, we all have heard those arguments over and over again, so no reason to write another blog post about it.<br /> Vim is fast? Great. How fast are you guys typing while you code? For me there is always enough time, to switch to the mouse. Plus I nearly never use any of those great automatic formatting features all those vim people talk about. Tab key works for me. (Though some editors are really bad here, so I avoid them or turn auto formatting off)<br /> Maybe I'm just a slow programmer, but I mostly type a few lines of code, then think again if that's right, often enough compile and run. There is just no time to be saved for me by smart keyboard shortcuts. Sorry...<br /> Though some knowledge of Vim is helpful in case you don't have access to a gui. So I can use vim good enough, to edit some config scripts and for similar tasks.

It compensates for that by giving me a lot of new insights.

In general I look daily on sites like HN and bookmark everything that looks interesting.<br> Then if I need some tool for something important, I always Google if there is something new in this area, just to make sure I don't miss it.<br /> When I was developing websites with RoR I was very active at the RoR mailing list(Ruby on Rails: Talk). Mostly helping out other people, but following lots of discussions and reading answers, when I found a question interesting, that I couldn't answer myself.<br /> So for example, when we got into serious trouble with full text search with Ferret, I knew already, that many others had changed to Sphinx and no problems with it. Took me one day to change the project and make the search work as expected.<br /> And of course on that mailing list you can ask others, very experienced RoR developers about specific tools they use for certain areas. But mostly somebody who wrote something new, announced this already there, mostly starting a discussion about pros and contras of his solution.<br />

This is difficult in every single case.<br /> If the article is popular, the community made a decision. Flagging it as off-topic should e handled with care. Maybe he should at least have a look at the ongoing discussion to see, what people have to say. This may give him an idea, why others voted for it.

Would depend, what people think is really important. I come to HN to read about computer related things. I can get everyday news from other sites. Same for the discussions. I wouldn't expect too much special insight from HN people on this specific topic. Even if people live in the area, what should they know, that you can't read on CNN? (This may be different for other topics, yours may just be a bad example)<br /> And I really don't need the kind of "ban guns" discussion that started at /. right now. So I go with user "rewind", just let the community decide.

I don't read that much lately, but want to throw in a few names:

- Stanislaw Lem (Solaris, The Cyberiad, His Masters Voice, Fiasco)

- William Gibson - evrything worth reading)

- Bruce Sterling

this one: http://challenge.greplin.com/

Drink more water. Dehydration is your enemy.

I had this (and the second book) and learned some of my first programming by making them run on my TI 99/4A

Is this a joke or is he serious? I'm not native English speaking, so I may miss some ironic details.

quote: "When you make an app that you've sweated over and spent days crafting—so it's as good as it can be—you owe it to yourself to charge for that app. Otherwise what you're saying is your app is worthless."

This app isn't worthless, because I invested my time in it. So it's at least worth that much time. If I charge for it is my personal decision and may depend on a lot of reasons. If "worth" equals money for you, that's simply a poor view.

quote: "The thing is when you make an app free your audience doesn't thank you for it."

Who cares? I made that thing. It was fun to make and then it's out. Take it or leave it...

I use KDE. Konsole has multiple tabs. KDE has virtual desktops. I work on a laptop permanently and don't see the point in this. And as already mentioned by Ogre and rudle, there are screen and tmux.

Read some books about algorithms. Implement the exercises in Python. "Artificial Intelligence A Modern Approach" by Russel & Norvig would give you some interesting insights and exercises.

Maybe you don't need money.

Could be enough to set up a website with accounts and a system that gives you "karma" for each bug you remove or a feature you add. Amount of karma depending on the bug/feature and maybe an additional voting system for users to push their favourite feature or most annoying bug.

Having a lot of karma on such a site may even be interesting for your resume when you apply for a job.

Yes, if I select "Burgers" I get restaurants that have reviews for their Burgers. If I select the restaurant I see these reviews, instead of having to select "Burgers" again. Maybe the "Burgers" tab should be highlighted then, so I know where I am.

This tab based layout for the selection of dishes will break, when you add more of them. Simply not enough space.

Needs a search function.

Needs a google map to get directions/distances. "Show me best burger place from my current position"

If I select "burgers" and then in the list of burger places select on I don't want to have to select the "burger" again in the restaurant view. Program should remember that it's in dishes mode now. The whole UX has something nasty "circular", where I have the feeling that I must provide the same information several times to get results.

Especially true for beginners who for a long time wont be able to write that kind of code anyway. Python + Panda3D on the other hand allows even a beginner to get a few simple models on the screen within short time. And that kind of motivation you can get out of it will pay for itself, even if you plan to add C++ in the future.

You can get a lot of good clothing in bike shops that you can wear over your normal clothes (shoes, trousers). Very good gloves, since your hands will freeze first.

A backpack to store the clothes when the weather changes. (best if your laptop can fit into it if you need to take it with you.) I have a backpack with a kind of raincoat, that can be pulled over it. Saved my laptop several times. Take a few plastic bags with you, when it rains heavily you can protect your equipment.)

good lighting equipment and reflectors are important if you bike in rain or darkness.

Mostly no music at all.

If I listen to music, then it's mostly classics like sonatas by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin or Mozart. And it's always music that I know very well, so that it doesn't draw away my attention. For the same reason it's mostly music with very few instruments. You can't concentrate on coding and a fully orchestrated symphony the same time. Jazz is another option. Again: Shouldn't be too complex. More like solo instrument. Keith Jarret playing piano is a good example.

Less likely other modern music. Singing I experience as distracting. Unless I don't know the language, so that I'm not tempted to follow it, Jan Garbarek playing sax together with the Hilliard Ensemble singing in Latin works great.

Though I listen to a lot of different music when I'm not coding.

I don't see the point in this article. quote: "The developer has to figure out what the return types are for any methods that are called"

The developer has to figure out the return type in Python as well, since otherwise he wouldn't know, if the returned object provides the method he is calling on it next.

fido = puppies[0]

If puppies[0] doesn't return a "dog" the following call will fail. At run time!

Anyway, you can alternatively break up the code in several lines without creating a temporary variable for each step, if it's only about readability:

string fidos_name = spot.get_puppies()

               .puppies[0]

               .get_name()

               .upper() + "!";

This ranks Google searchs.

When I started to use RoR around 2006 it was quite difficult to find good documentation. So you had to use Google quite a lot to find something useful. Nowadays RoR is better documented and you can find everything you want to know in a few central places. So people may have to search less to find what they want.

Oh, ok. Thank you for clarifying this point. I didn't know the book and thought it strange in combination with this unconfirmed information.

reading the pages URL "fooled by randomness" I would consider this a bad joke. Could somebody mark this post as [dead] ?