R
J
John J. Lee
Paul Rubin said:
As Michael says, you're pretty much describing disconnected IMAP. I'm
pretty sure it's supposed to handle multiple concurrent connections to
one account & mailbox well, but it doesn't have CVS-like merge
facilities -- I don't think I'd really want that, anyway.
In reality, though, disconnected operation seems to be poorly
implemented. At least, in Mulberry 2.x (or was in 3.x beta?), which
is supposed to be an exemplary IMAP client implementation, it didn't
really work for me (and Mulberry seems over-stuffed with features).
Maybe it does with the current 3.x releases, it's been over a year
since I tried it. Also, KDE's MUA (KMail?) is just getting support
for disconnected IMAP now, but I'm sure it'll be a while before it
actually works. Also, I've found it to be a pain to get MUAs working
with IMAP servers (mostly using pine, which again is supposed to be a
good IMAP implementation) -- I guess this is because the protocol has
too many knobs and dials for its own good. fastmail.fm has mostly
been very good (but one one-day outage during the recent power
failures in US, and another one before that -- I think they've
probably learned from that, though), very clueful and extremely good
value for money (one-off 15 USD payment when I joined, with quite
enough bandwith and storage for someone who has been subscribed to ten
or so mailing lists in the past, and gets a lot of spam, and I think
that price is still current).
If anybody knows of a free disconnected IMAP client that works
(especially in Python
, please let me know!John
I
Irmen de Jong
Will said:[Irmen de Jong]
While not written *in* Python, it's scriptable with Python:
http://www.thangorodrim.net/pangband.html (PAngband).
waaay back someone even created an Amiga version of this
game based upon Amiga Angband and my AmigaPython port
You did an AmigaPython port? Fun! How long does something like that
take?
Yeah, I did, years ago
See: http://www.aminet.net/aminet.cgi?string=python+language
How long it took to port Python to the Amiga? A few weeks
work in my spare time... I used a totally different compiler
and had to adapt and extend the code to AmigaDOS.
How long it took to create a PAngband version on the Amiga?
I have no idea, I wasn't involved in that
If you're creating a game from scratch, most time will be spent
in game rules, combat rules, and balancing (!). Creating a good
balanced game is hard, I've been told.
Depending on what you want to do the actual programming
can take a lot of time too, if you want 'really smart' AI...
If you want to do a single player experience you'll need that,
if you go for a (massive?)multiplayer experience you don't really
need smart AI because the other characters are also played
by humans
But that's not 'roguelike', is it?--Irmen
S
Sami Juvonen
J
JanC
(e-mail address removed) (Will Stuyvesant) schreef:
Mitch Kapor is not only chairman of OSAF, but (at least) also of the
wxWindows Foundation and the Mozilla Foundation. He might have a very busy
schedule...
Mitch Kapor is not only chairman of OSAF, but (at least) also of the
wxWindows Foundation and the Mozilla Foundation. He might have a very busy
schedule...
A
Aahz
Mitch Kapor was looking for a Python tutor a while back; he may be taking
a breather to really learn Python.
A
Andrew Dalke
Me:
Will Stuyvesant:
Have you scoped out how much it costs to run a company? Suppose
you want to pay a decent salary. Around here that's about $60 -
$70,000 for software developers, and about the same for good
computational chemists. (Maybe a bit higher, unlikely to be lower.)
Say 2 software developers, one with good comp. chemistry
experience, one with good QA skills, another for documentation,
and if it's the above environment then a usability engineer and
GUI developer -- call it 4 full-time equivalents, or about $1/4 million
per year. Add in overhead (health insurance, bookkeeping,
computers, etc.) and that's about $1/2 million per year.
If you've read "Crossing the Chasm", science -- especially the
so-called 'hard sciences' -- are on the early-adopter side of
the chasm. That is, there are a bunch of people who spent
years in libraries, doing research, writing papers, to get a PhD.
They have few qualms about spending more time and effort
to learn something. Compare this to sane people, who just
want things to work without usually needing to worry about
the details. I like that my car, a very complex device, needs
amazingly little attention from me. Scientists in their specialty
are the grease monkeys like my uncle who complained about
a 1938 model year truck which no longer had the door in
the firewall to tweak the carburetor while driving. One
chemist, when told by others that the software took a long
time to learn, replied "suck it up and just learn it."
I think this is bad, for two reasons. First, extending the
analogy a bit, it means the specialist are limited to 1930s
model cars instead of getting to 1960s rally cars; still able
to tweak and tune as needed, but it works and lets you
go places. Hence my company's motto "More Science,
Less Time."
Second, it prevents non-specialists from using the tools
for that field. There are many times when someone in
a related field (say, bioinformatics instead of chemical
informatics) needs use a few techniques, or times when
tasks once considered esoteric -- like a similarity search
of a subset of a DNA database -- are taught in
introductory-level courses. These must be made both
easy to use and robust in operation.
The problem with either approach is that it requires a
lot of new software to be written or rewritten, for reasons
I won't get into. Scientists tends to be more reactionary
than average, and stay with software where all the warts
are known rather than worrying about new bugs, or
having to justify in talks and papers why a new approach
was used over the standard one.
Putting all these together, that means any good software
for this field will take a lot of work, a lot of time, and a
long, slow acceptance period, which means it will take
3 to 4 years before my project dream is self-supporting.
Hence, "a few million dollars."
Instead, I'm doing consulting -- but still looking for a
company or three interested in funding me to work on
my dream.
Tools like SWIG make it quite easy.
He-he. I'm very biased in this respect, so everything I
can think of is in the computational life sciences, and
even when I relax that restriction I still end up with
things that I might make a living out of. "Useful" at this
point in my life means making money to live on, travel,
enjoy myself -- ie, the proverbial "life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness."
The list you gave (two games, a vector graphics program,
and a weblog program) don't fall into that category for
me since there's too much competition already in those
domains.
Go to sourceforge and browse the list until you find
something interesting. If you want, you can even limit
the search to Python. Or go to bioinformatics.org and
look through the list there.
Andrew
(e-mail address removed)
Will Stuyvesant:
Have you scoped out how much it costs to run a company? Suppose
you want to pay a decent salary. Around here that's about $60 -
$70,000 for software developers, and about the same for good
computational chemists. (Maybe a bit higher, unlikely to be lower.)
Say 2 software developers, one with good comp. chemistry
experience, one with good QA skills, another for documentation,
and if it's the above environment then a usability engineer and
GUI developer -- call it 4 full-time equivalents, or about $1/4 million
per year. Add in overhead (health insurance, bookkeeping,
computers, etc.) and that's about $1/2 million per year.
If you've read "Crossing the Chasm", science -- especially the
so-called 'hard sciences' -- are on the early-adopter side of
the chasm. That is, there are a bunch of people who spent
years in libraries, doing research, writing papers, to get a PhD.
They have few qualms about spending more time and effort
to learn something. Compare this to sane people, who just
want things to work without usually needing to worry about
the details. I like that my car, a very complex device, needs
amazingly little attention from me. Scientists in their specialty
are the grease monkeys like my uncle who complained about
a 1938 model year truck which no longer had the door in
the firewall to tweak the carburetor while driving. One
chemist, when told by others that the software took a long
time to learn, replied "suck it up and just learn it."
I think this is bad, for two reasons. First, extending the
analogy a bit, it means the specialist are limited to 1930s
model cars instead of getting to 1960s rally cars; still able
to tweak and tune as needed, but it works and lets you
go places. Hence my company's motto "More Science,
Less Time."
Second, it prevents non-specialists from using the tools
for that field. There are many times when someone in
a related field (say, bioinformatics instead of chemical
informatics) needs use a few techniques, or times when
tasks once considered esoteric -- like a similarity search
of a subset of a DNA database -- are taught in
introductory-level courses. These must be made both
easy to use and robust in operation.
The problem with either approach is that it requires a
lot of new software to be written or rewritten, for reasons
I won't get into. Scientists tends to be more reactionary
than average, and stay with software where all the warts
are known rather than worrying about new bugs, or
having to justify in talks and papers why a new approach
was used over the standard one.
Putting all these together, that means any good software
for this field will take a lot of work, a lot of time, and a
long, slow acceptance period, which means it will take
3 to 4 years before my project dream is self-supporting.
Hence, "a few million dollars."
Instead, I'm doing consulting -- but still looking for a
company or three interested in funding me to work on
my dream.
And I can not do C bindings (too long ago I did C).
Besides I don't *want* to C again
Tools like SWIG make it quite easy.
He-he. I'm very biased in this respect, so everything I
can think of is in the computational life sciences, and
even when I relax that restriction I still end up with
things that I might make a living out of. "Useful" at this
point in my life means making money to live on, travel,
enjoy myself -- ie, the proverbial "life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness."
The list you gave (two games, a vector graphics program,
and a weblog program) don't fall into that category for
me since there's too much competition already in those
domains.
I am looking for a fun project and inspiration and maybe even fun
people who join a project, you got that right
Go to sourceforge and browse the list until you find
something interesting. If you want, you can even limit
the search to Python. Or go to bioinformatics.org and
look through the list there.
Andrew
(e-mail address removed)
C
Christian Tismer
Ville Vainio wrote:
....
Before elaborating on that and spending much time thinking
about the details, please have a look into the PyPy project.
If you then still consider to roll your own, please let
us know why. http://www.codespeak.net/pypy
Thanks a lot -- chris
--
Christian Tismer :^) <mailto:[email protected]>
Mission Impossible 5oftware : Have a break! Take a ride on Python's
Johannes-Niemeyer-Weg 9a : *Starship* http://starship.python.net/
14109 Berlin : PGP key -> http://wwwkeys.pgp.net/
work +49 30 89 09 53 34 home +49 30 802 86 56 mobile +49 173 24 18 776
PGP 0x57F3BF04 9064 F4E1 D754 C2FF 1619 305B C09C 5A3B 57F3 BF04
whom do you want to sponsor today? http://www.stackless.com/
....
Before elaborating on that and spending much time thinking
about the details, please have a look into the PyPy project.
If you then still consider to roll your own, please let
us know why. http://www.codespeak.net/pypy
Thanks a lot -- chris
--
Christian Tismer :^) <mailto:[email protected]>
Mission Impossible 5oftware : Have a break! Take a ride on Python's
Johannes-Niemeyer-Weg 9a : *Starship* http://starship.python.net/
14109 Berlin : PGP key -> http://wwwkeys.pgp.net/
work +49 30 89 09 53 34 home +49 30 802 86 56 mobile +49 173 24 18 776
PGP 0x57F3BF04 9064 F4E1 D754 C2FF 1619 305B C09C 5A3B 57F3 BF04
whom do you want to sponsor today? http://www.stackless.com/
C
Christian Tismer
Will said:
I would like to provide some ideas which I'm carrying
around since quite some time. My reluctance is about
the fact that I almost never saw an announcement like
this being a serious offer. Most of the time it was
just some sugar spread around to make people excited,
creating lengthy threads with no result.
How serious are you about spending a reasonable amount
for a really innovative application in Python. I'm a bit
curious since none of my google hits reach beyond 2003.
ready to be convinced -- happy new year - chris
--
Christian Tismer :^) <mailto:[email protected]>
Mission Impossible 5oftware : Have a break! Take a ride on Python's
Johannes-Niemeyer-Weg 9a : *Starship* http://starship.python.net/
14109 Berlin : PGP key -> http://wwwkeys.pgp.net/
work +49 30 89 09 53 34 home +49 30 802 86 56 mobile +49 173 24 18 776
PGP 0x57F3BF04 9064 F4E1 D754 C2FF 1619 305B C09C 5A3B 57F3 BF04
whom do you want to sponsor today? http://www.stackless.com/
P
Paul Rubin
Christian Tismer said:
I don't see any bad consequences of posting interesting ideas for projects,
even if nobody takes them up.
A
Andrew Dalke
Christian Tismer:
Paul Rubin:
Suppose it takes 15 minutes for Christian to write up an idea.
Suppose it then starts a thread, and he spends another 45 minutes
on that thread to get his point across. And suppose it goes nowhere.
(As he says, that's the usual case. It's easy to talk, hard to do.)
Then that's an hour which could have been spent on more productive
efforts.
Oh, the first couple dozen times it's fun to shoot the breeze like
that, but after a while that sugar turns into saccarine.
Are you going to the Python conference? That's a great way to
talk with a lot of people and get ideas for projects. (And they
too have their own way to convert sugar into artificial sweetners.)
Andrew
(e-mail address removed)
Paul Rubin:
Suppose it takes 15 minutes for Christian to write up an idea.
Suppose it then starts a thread, and he spends another 45 minutes
on that thread to get his point across. And suppose it goes nowhere.
(As he says, that's the usual case. It's easy to talk, hard to do.)
Then that's an hour which could have been spent on more productive
efforts.
Oh, the first couple dozen times it's fun to shoot the breeze like
that, but after a while that sugar turns into saccarine.
Are you going to the Python conference? That's a great way to
talk with a lot of people and get ideas for projects. (And they
too have their own way to convert sugar into artificial sweetners.)
Andrew
(e-mail address removed)
P
Paul Rubin
Andrew Dalke said:
There could be a wiki page somewhere with a list of interesting
project suggestions. I'd put stuff there. I can think of all kinds
of cool programs that I'd like for other people to write ;-).
Nah, too expensive, I may go to CodeCon.
W
Will Stuyvesant
[Paul Rubin]
I was not looking for a job! I was just thinking about a project to
work on in my spare time, to sharpen my Python skills and because it
is fun. I already have a job (with some Python programming).
But um, Christian: what is that "really innovative application" you
mention? Something stackless? Or can't you share the idea because
you don't want others to start working on it?
I was not looking for a job! I was just thinking about a project to
work on in my spare time, to sharpen my Python skills and because it
is fun. I already have a job (with some Python programming).
But um, Christian: what is that "really innovative application" you
mention? Something stackless? Or can't you share the idea because
you don't want others to start working on it?
N
Nicola Larosa
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
You may wish to look at Quotient, by Divmod (the Twisted guys):
http://www.divmod.org/Quotient/index.html
While its scope is a little larger than email, it looks like it does (or will
do) most of what you need.
- --
Nicola Larosa - (e-mail address removed)
"A mathematical regularity, or syntax, is implicit in the world's
phenomena and can be said to *explain* the world no less and no more
than the grammatical syntax of a speech explains the content of the
speech." -- Steve Talbott, NetFuture
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux)
iD8DBQE/8pnyXv0hgDImBm4RAh7PAJ4tH9nQVFLPRwvdYMIfyLNVG7aKpwCaAkms
D3y8zER1Z64bNS2Hz9NvEl4=
=P6MN
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Hash: SHA1
You may wish to look at Quotient, by Divmod (the Twisted guys):
http://www.divmod.org/Quotient/index.html
While its scope is a little larger than email, it looks like it does (or will
do) most of what you need.
- --
Nicola Larosa - (e-mail address removed)
"A mathematical regularity, or syntax, is implicit in the world's
phenomena and can be said to *explain* the world no less and no more
than the grammatical syntax of a speech explains the content of the
speech." -- Steve Talbott, NetFuture
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux)
iD8DBQE/8pnyXv0hgDImBm4RAh7PAJ4tH9nQVFLPRwvdYMIfyLNVG7aKpwCaAkms
D3y8zER1Z64bNS2Hz9NvEl4=
=P6MN
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
C
Cousin Stanley
| Suppose you have the time and the money to start a new project
| in Python.
|
| What would you like to do ?
Will ....
You might spend some time checking the requests for programs
at the Made-To-Order freeware site ....
http://www.csn.ul.ie/~madman/software/order.htm
There are enough requests there
to keep a L A R G E army of coders busy
for a very L O N G time ....
| in Python.
|
| What would you like to do ?
Will ....
You might spend some time checking the requests for programs
at the Made-To-Order freeware site ....
http://www.csn.ul.ie/~madman/software/order.htm
There are enough requests there
to keep a L A R G E army of coders busy
for a very L O N G time ....
C
Christian Tismer
Will Stuyvesant wrote:
....
Sorry, I've misread your posting. I thought you had money to
spend on a new, larger project. No offense in any way.
I have several. One of them is a radically different file
system. But in fact, I won't talk about it before getting
a first version done
ciao - chris
--
Christian Tismer :^) <mailto:[email protected]>
Mission Impossible 5oftware : Have a break! Take a ride on Python's
Johannes-Niemeyer-Weg 9a : *Starship* http://starship.python.net/
14109 Berlin : PGP key -> http://wwwkeys.pgp.net/
work +49 30 89 09 53 34 home +49 30 802 86 56 mobile +49 173 24 18 776
PGP 0x57F3BF04 9064 F4E1 D754 C2FF 1619 305B C09C 5A3B 57F3 BF04
whom do you want to sponsor today? http://www.stackless.com/
....
Sorry, I've misread your posting. I thought you had money to
spend on a new, larger project. No offense in any way.
I have several. One of them is a radically different file
system. But in fact, I won't talk about it before getting
a first version done
ciao - chris
--
Christian Tismer :^) <mailto:[email protected]>
Mission Impossible 5oftware : Have a break! Take a ride on Python's
Johannes-Niemeyer-Weg 9a : *Starship* http://starship.python.net/
14109 Berlin : PGP key -> http://wwwkeys.pgp.net/
work +49 30 89 09 53 34 home +49 30 802 86 56 mobile +49 173 24 18 776
PGP 0x57F3BF04 9064 F4E1 D754 C2FF 1619 305B C09C 5A3B 57F3 BF04
whom do you want to sponsor today? http://www.stackless.com/
A
Andrew Dalke
Paul Rubin:
Well, isn't that the problem? I can think of quite a few as
well. (Again, all chemical and bio- informatics related.) But
from experience the odds of anyone else working on them is
very low and the effort spent on putting those ideas on a
wiki, knowing that it's almost certainly going to be ignored,
makes it simply not worth it.
Now, if you said "I'm going to work on all kinds of cool
programs that others suggested" then that's something
different. Even then, you're going to work on things you
are interested in, which is only a small number of the
projects in the world that others consider interesting.
Andrew
(e-mail address removed)
Well, isn't that the problem? I can think of quite a few as
well. (Again, all chemical and bio- informatics related.) But
from experience the odds of anyone else working on them is
very low and the effort spent on putting those ideas on a
wiki, knowing that it's almost certainly going to be ignored,
makes it simply not worth it.
Now, if you said "I'm going to work on all kinds of cool
programs that others suggested" then that's something
different. Even then, you're going to work on things you
are interested in, which is only a small number of the
projects in the world that others consider interesting.
Andrew
(e-mail address removed)
B
Brad Clements
This site is out of date. Clicking on "this months requests" shows stuff
from May of 2000.
I think the site is dead. Clicking on "discusson forum" gives a 404 error.
P
Paul Rubin
Andrew Dalke said:
Shrug. The GNU project has had a project list since the 80's. Some
things stayed on it for many years and were eventually taken up by
somebody. I think if someone asks for a project and you spend a bunch
of time thinking one up on the spot, and then the person doesn't go
anywhere with it, that's not so great. If you think up something
on your own devices and put it on a list that thousands of people
will look at, that's a bit more promising.
C
Cousin Stanley
| This site is out of date.
| Clicking on "this months requests"
| shows stuff from May of 2000
Brad ....
The site is old and out of date,
but I think that many of the requests for programs
may still be valid and perhaps a good source
of inspiration for coders looking for projects ....
Pack a lunch, then try the Request Archive ....
http://www.csn.ul.ie/~madman/software/madereq/archived.htm
| Clicking on "this months requests"
| shows stuff from May of 2000
Brad ....
The site is old and out of date,
but I think that many of the requests for programs
may still be valid and perhaps a good source
of inspiration for coders looking for projects ....
Pack a lunch, then try the Request Archive ....
http://www.csn.ul.ie/~madman/software/madereq/archived.htm