wmat

Similar to 'Improve the website' is to contribute to the project wiki. Many open source projects use wikis as a major part of their community documentation and are only useful when updated. Most wiki engines, such as MediaWiki even provide functions to list 'wanted pages' or similar.

Is there an accurate account of the international history of computing in existence in book form?

Awesome! Can't help but smile.

I only wish I had that kind of willpower.

Thanks for posting this!

Thanks for the video! dmr is a personal hero of mine.

"Somewhat comically, and arguably very Jobsian, Buffet later heard that Jobs had told people that he (Buffett) had agreed with Jobs' argument that Apple should, in fact, do nothing with its cash.

The reality distortion field in full effect, folks."

For the rest of us, it's called lieing. Is it not?

Fantastic idea. But one suggestion: - remove the requirement for a 5 character or greater username please!

Just donated $20 via PayPal to make it happen sooner ;)

For anyone wanting to effect change in their lives, look to research that can be backed up by scientific method. I dislike the self-help industry immensely. One example of good, scientifically backed advice is the work of Richard Wiseman: http://richardwiseman.wordpress.com/ In particular, I've found his book 59 Seconds quite useful. Similarly, I learned about Wiseman's work from the Less Wrong community, which is equally useful: http://lesswrong.com/

This is an interesting project, however, as someone who administers several wikis, both public and private I honestly wouldn't give up control of the server side to the cloud ever. The simple reason is data control. I want daily backups of my wiki data. Can I do that with this?

Similarly, where's the source?

Where's the install for private wikis, such as a company's private internal wiki?

Where's the api so I can write plugins?

Where are the plugins?

What is preventing wiki spammers?

Can I theme this for groups?

I see that groups are 'private' based on my invitations to them, but how can I be sure this isn't easily compromised?

Anyway, this looks interesting, but I don't think it can be used yet for any serious wiki work.

Interesting! I'd love to see this integrated into MediaWiki once it's more feature complete.

It seems to be a "an App Engine app that generates customized printable envelopes with the map to your recipient on them". Here's the developer's blog post about it: http://bit.ly/sVgTGh

I have a 6 & 10 year old and I work from home. I'll be the first to admit that it's not always easy, but with practice and realistic rules, it can be done.

With respect to the "travelling programmer" meme, I think it's less common for the older (say > 40 years) among us. As one who falls within that category, my priorities are far different now than ten or twenty years prior. I enjoy the stability of a permanent home, of watching my children build relationships in their schools and neighborhoods, of participating in my children's amateur sports teams.

Occasionally, my wife and I will fantasize about travelling the world, living experiences with our kids unlike those living "normal" lives, but we never do. I suppose for us, the "normal" life is good enough. We are together, and we laugh, and learn and live as a family. Not to say that our choice is right for everyone, but it's right for us. For us, uprooting our children from the only lives and friends they've ever known contains an element of selfishness that we're not prepared to swallow.

For me personally, I'm just as happy holed up in my basement office fiddling with BeagleBoards, or soldering together little electronic projects as I'd ever be doing anything else. I guess I'm simply a geek homebody.

But for those like the original poster and those that strive to attain similar, more power to you.

Just watched both available videos in the series and can't help but be inspired. The point that the "art is in the details" of a hand made item really resonates with me with respect to handmade guitars. Factory made guitars, from the big manufacturers such as Fender, Gibson, Martin, etc. are excellent guitars, but there's something about the attention to detail in a hand made guitar that makes it special, makes it art. I really hope they plan a film focusing on an small, independent luthier.

This list makes me weep. Where are the startups actually doing useful work? Do we really need to another company to help us target customers, sell crap people don't need, or share experiences with each other?

Not your average HN fare, but I just can't stop reading the captions to these celebrity photos. Absolutely hilarious!!

You should check out The Micropreneur Academy: http://www.micropreneur.com/ Many, many single founders there.

That email seemed a waste of bandwidth to me. I mean, talk about stating the obvious. But I suppose he had to chime in with something.

OK, Mr. Goetz is correct for the most part on all counts. And I don't understand enough about the software patents arguments to really comment one way or the other. But what I do know is that the bottom line, and what ultimately turns me against software patents (and drug patents as well) is that this is really all about money.

How does humanity as a whole benefit from a patent holder demanding compensation for the use of their "software invention" when it's duplicated, unknowingly, by an independent hacker working in his basement on a pet project following the rapid uptake of their project by the greater software community? What if the hacker gave the software away for free? How does the original patent holder get compensated?

Or what happens when implementations of useful, but somewhat obvious technical solutions to problems are patented? Like linked-lists, for example? Or a compression algorithm? etc. etc.?

IMHO, just because someone implements something in software first, doesn't necessarily give them the right to own that implementation for some unreasonable amount of time.

There must be a better way?

I really hope it isn't.

As someone who enjoys tinkering with hardware, having access to the internals of a computer that desktops afford is just plain fun. I've never experienced the same with laptops, which typically require jumping through flaming hoops just to get the case open.

I see now that the details state that "It is possible through an algorithm for a computer to process a photo or video and produce a modified image, possibly improved."

So the use of "possibly improved" makes me happy. I suppose the naming of the algorithm with 'beautify' helps to describe what it typically would be used for.

Perhaps, but the use of a term like "we genetically like symmetry" bugs me. Has it actually been scientifically proven that humans have a genetic predisposition toward preferring symmetry? My google-fu turned up nothing. Isn't opinion naturally subjective, albeit informed by societal influences one way or the other?

The 'beautify a face' transformation should be renamed 'normalize a face' or something slightly less subjective then beauty. Although, I suppose 'normalize' isn't any less subjective. Suggestions? Perhaps 'standardize' or 'anglicize' or 'fashionize'?

I sure wish I'd had this tool 10 years ago when I was actually working on large websites.

What a great idea. Will future updates be available as well? Perhaps in a DVCS for easy access?

I'd be a happy man if ALL tech books lived in a DVCS. Users could fork it, push updates, fixes, etc. and the author could integrate changes as they see fit. No more searching for errata URLs, simply update your repository.

I'd even pay for this.

A great example of where this idea could be really useful is with Linux books like 'Linux Device Drivers', or 'Understanding the Linux Kernel'. These books are often out of date at the time they're published. I'd happily pay for access to them in a repository somewhere.

This is not unlike how the Pragmatic Bookshelf (http://pragprog.com/)works today with the exception that you have to wait for new book versions to become available, then regenerate them in your e-version format of choice. It'd be much more useful if the community of users could contribute back to the book source repository at their leisure.

For a duplicate post, it's sure been on the FrontPage for a long time.

So it was, thanks!

Thanks for this post, I'd love to see more content like this on HN.

I'd be curious to know what kind of software systems are in place now? Googling turns up some pretty big players, like http://www.gemcomsoftware.com/, http://www.minesight.com/, etc. I interviewed once many years ago at Vale-Inco in Sudbury, Ontario and at the time they were still hiring Fortran developers.

First off, if you have daily expenses like rent, food, etc. then you'll need a dayjob. You can choose to return to the SAP ABAP programmer jobs so you can pay your bills, and then work in your free time on your projects. Or, get a day job that complements your projects. Either way you're back into a day job for now. This is how a lot of entrepreneurs seem to do it.

Bottom line is that everything comes down to hustle and execution. Everything you "choose" to do in your free time should move your projects forward somehow.

If you need motivation, you could read a few books that inspire entrepreneurs, like Gary Vaynerchuk's 'Crush It' or Hugh Mcleod's 'Ignore Everybody'.

The thing to remind yourself of is that you are actually at a huge advantage compared to many. You've started and failed. Most people never even try. Use the knowledge you gained from failing to try again.