CommentRe:Scratch an Itch (Score 1)356
Yes, the last option isn't too useful, but I for one would love an ENIAC emulator.
Yes, the last option isn't too useful, but I for one would love an ENIAC emulator.
All the great FOSS projects so far have come from someone "scratching an itch"; Linux was made because Linus didn't like the networking and terminal emulation on MINIX, gcc was created because Richard Stallman needed a Free compiler. Take that thing that always bothered you, but that you never got around to solving, and solve it.
With a database.
A few examples might be:
-a database management system that actually works (for your own definition of "works")
-an interpreter for the programming language you always wanted to build but never got around to (the standard library for this language comes with a database API)
-port the concept of a database to a platform which has never seen one, eg.: write one in PDP-1 asm, or build a database program for the ENIAC (extra credit if you build your own ENIAC emulator)
For the non-Dutch: the 50plus party defends the interests of people above 50 years of age. I was quite surprised when I saw him on the Dutch news last year, showing off his "1337 h4x0r sk1llz".
No useful web site seems to need it, and my own work is in Python, C/C++, Go, or JavaScript.
Same thing here.
I hate the language; real men compile their code to real binaries (or have it interpreted from human-readable text files).
If you're saying it shouldn't illegal for me to break into a school's wiring cabinet and hook up my laptop to get access to things, you're a moron.
There are perfectly valid laws against burglary and breaking and entering. If Aaron Swartz were persecuted for that, no one would complain. The problem is that he was not; he was being persecuted for computer fraud and he was facing a longer prison sentence than someone who assists a terrorist group in building a nuke (20 years max), while his "computer crime" was totally victimless.
Bradley Manning did commit a nonvictimless crime. He stole secret documents, but in doing this he uncovered some far more horrible crimes of the American army. He might be a criminal, but he does not deserve a 10-year prison sentence.
Yes, I know, I misspelled his name!
A man who fought for my freedom has died.
The Three Bills which he defied,
COICA, SOPA, PIPA could,
Not stop the power of the world,
Led by this great modern sage,
Who died at a far too young age,
We fought, we struggled and we won,
Aaron Schwartz was the internet's son.
Oh, Creator of Reddit and RSS,
Was it fear of the feds?
We shall never know.
We can hypothesize though,
We can talk, comment forlorn,
But Aaron Schwartz is forever gone.
Slashdot, BoingBoing, Reddit, and 4chan,
BBC and Reuters all mourn this man.
Thank you Aaron Schwartz,
I wish you would have stayed a bit longer.
"I find networking technology absolutely trivial"
A physicist's "trivial" means something more like "it won't take me more than a year to work out the general theory, and then I might be able to provide a full description somewhere in the next two years, but it isn't TOO hard.".
In other words, he groks networking technology.
..I had so few files.
I checked with ALSI and I was *surprised* that I had 27 full GiB of personal files.
Then I read the all these TB-scale comments...
If you include the operating systems, I have about 50 GiB.
Definitely XKCD!
+1 agree
Being born in 1996, I missed out on most of computer history. Thank you, Casio and TI for allowing me to experience the growth of the computer -again.
It's like re-living history.
Someone please mod this up.
Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother. - Kahlil Gibran