But I’ll tell you what: ideas are fucking worthless. Anyone could do FilePile. I could write MetaFilter in a day. The only thing special about the code is that it was written. The only thing special about the sites are the users.
Day: August 25, 2002
-
-
The way you define problem determines how you’ll approach solving it. Sometimes that makes a big difference. Let me give you an example: writing RSS aggregators is now en vogue (I see a new one every day). But those programs never go out beyond solving “I want easily aggregate RSS feeds”. But is getting RSS feeds really a core problem? No. The problem is bigger (and less well defined): we want to get new information on topics of interest to us. RSS feeds are a partial solution, but it has weaknesses. You have to actively look for feeds that match your interests. RSS feeds usually cover more topics than you’re really interested in but the burden of filtering uninteresting news is on you. What would happen if people tried to write “news gathering/filtering software” instead of “RSS feeds readers”? In my opinion we would get better software.
-
Oldskool Quake: Tenebrae has released a mod of the Quake source code to enable per-pixel lights and stencil shadows, allowing an oldskool game like Quake to take advantage of some of the newer graphics technologies. It is definately a cool hack.
-
GKrellM goes 2.0.0: It is now compatible with GTK 2.0, and the new version also has client/server capabilities. It is one of the best system monitors out there, for *nix or any other plaform IMHO.
-
Past my bedtime, news has accumulated and will be posted in the morning.