It got rejected because it ran a week or 2 ago. Everybody complains about duplicate stories, but when people get indignant because their submissions of duplicates you end up posting some of them.
Is nobody looking at anything other than the linked page? There's a "Tools" page that has not only a link to a search box that uses the results, but to their XML API for working with the engine.
If the name you're thinking of is directly pulled from a scifi or fantasy source, don't bother. These sources are WAY overrepresented as naming sources in software. Not only are your chances of coming up with something original pretty small, most of the names of characters and places in scifi are trademarked and you run the risk of being sued.
If the name you're thinking of comes straight from Greek, Roman or Norse mythology, try again. We've got more than enough mail related software called variations of "Mercury".
Run your proposed name through Google. The fewer results you get the better. If you get down to no results, you're there.
Don't try to get a unique name by just slightly misspelling something. Calling your new Windows filesystem program Phat32 is just going to end up with users getting frustrated looking at the results of "fat32" in a search engine.
If your name couldn't be said on TV in the 50s or 60s, you're probably on the wrong track. This is particularly true if you would like anyone to use your product in a work environment. No one is going to recommend a product to their co-workers if they can get sued for sexual harassment just for uttering its name.
If your product name can't be pronounced at all, you'll get no word of mouth benefit at all. Similarly, if no one knows how to pronounce it, they will not be very likely to try to say it out loud to ask questions about it, etc. How do YOU say MySQL? PostgreSQL? GNU? Almost all spoken languages on Earth are based on consonant/vowel syllables of some sort. Alternating between consonants and vowels is a pretty good way to ensure that someone can pronounce it.
The shorter the better.
See if the.com domain is available. If it's not, it's a pretty good indicator that someone has already thought of it and is using it or closer to using it than you are. Do this even if you don't intend to use the domain.
Don't build inherent limitations on your product into the name. Calling your product LinProduct or WinProduct precludes you from ever releasing any sort of cross-platform edition.
Don't use your own name for open source products. If the project lives on beyond your involvement, the project will either have to be renames or your name may be used in ways you didn't intend.
I'll put this up at phpgeek.com to build it up more.
Star Wars wasn't subtitled that in 1977. Only after there was more than one movie was it resubtitled. This essentially happened when they went to video.
Or automatically cache the results of those long query strings and update them at appropriate intervals automatically. Then, the site is "dynamic" when it helps, i.e. the editing end of things, and "static" when it helps there, i.e. speed in serving up pages.
I'm actually about 80% done with a barebones CMS that is aimed at these small sites instead of those who want "portals". Content is stored in the database, but is only pulled live from there when the cache time expires. Otherwise, PHP just passes the cached file through. When a user is logged in, they can use the IE WYSIWYG editor to change any piece of content they want. The layouts are HTML with the only PHP being simple displaycontent() functions.
The goal is that you take what are normally done in HTML and, while still maintaining speed by caching, make them easy to maintain.
I've already got a system like this and it's really simple. I've got a USB InstantDVD connected to my entertainment receiver and a DVD-R drive. Anything I can watch on my TV, I can dump to the hard drive or straight to DVD. The InstantDVD streams 3mbit, 4mbit, or 5mbit streams straight to the filesystem. The software it came with lets me say, "Make a DVD out of this file". A while later (1x DVD-R), I've got a DVD.
I can record from the satellite dish, the DVD player, my old VCR, hell, I could record Playstation games to DVD if I wanted to. It's really simple (not all in one box simple, but simple nonetheless). I just put something on to watch, hit the big red button on a computer software. When the show is over, I basically say, "Make a DVD" and I'm done.
HBO, Cinemax, Pay-per-view and I'm building a movie collection that grows pretty quickly. I'm also building a nice collection of shows like "Good Eats".
Lots of people complain about DVD-R's costing $1 a pop, but seem to forget that VHS tapes still run $1-2 all over the place. Sure, they're more expensive than CD-R's, but who cares?
But that's the point. When there was a shortage, you had the company over a barrel and got them to pay 100K. 3-4 years ago, they were complaining about your salary and now you get to complain about it.
However, I have a friend who plays women characters and is constantly getting hit on in the game. Being able to hit *anyone* has put some of that behavior in check. She sees this as a feature not a problem.
I think being able to watch this one once conditions you to be able to watch it frequently. After all, just watching it once is really watching the same 20 minute movie over and over and over and over anyway.
Current Top 2 Books. Big Surprise.
on
An IMDb for Books
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy Ender's Gam
Followed by a pretty large list of SF and fantasy that makes me say...
Please, all of you readers who have discovered those shelves in the library and bookstores that don't have books with swords or spaceships on the covers, please, rate some of those books.
In all seriousness, I enjoy Hitchiker's Guide as much as the next geek, but as a holder of a degree in English I hope to see a balanced list of books rise to the top.
I frequently register software under the name Nonna Urbixness. Gets past pretty much every filter set up and isn't obvious until you try to pronounce it.
I've responded to EVERY telemarketer for the past 2 years with "add me to your do not call list". I've added myself to the MN statewide do not call list. I STILL get 4-5 telemarketing calls a week. They've just changed their tactics a bit to get through the loopholes in the MN law. Now, if they don't actually intend to complete the sale on the phone, they can get away with it. So, instead of being asked to sign up with a mortgage or buy siding on the phone, they just want me to set up an appointment with a friendly sales representative to discuss the matter in person.
Having been a turkey farmer, I concur. I am thankful every day that I get paid to sit in a chair and put my brain to work. Comparing that to starting every day "picking up dead" and those boring 8:00 meetings don't seem so bad.
I agree. I'm amazed (I know I shouldn't be) at the number of terms that get used on Slashdot in such a way that makes it totally clear, they've never seen the term in print and are only going on what they think they've heard in the past.
Half.com. All "used", but even if you only buy in "like new" or "brand new" condition, most CD's are under $10 there. Many older ones are REALLY cheap ($0.75) even in those good conditions. I've bought tons of stuff since I discovered them. I've had months where I bought 5-10 CD's a week. Before then, I almost never bought one. When the price came down for me it both made it not worth it to dig around on P2P for those songs and made me want to buy more. For me, it's not worth it to have to dig to find all 14 songs on a CD when I can have it delivered to the door for $5.
I find that at $5, I'll probably buy 5-6 discs, whereas at $18, I won't buy even 1.
Indeed. In fact, the idea that journalism SHOULD be objective is a relatively new one. News used to be reported with the understanding that you took the author's biases into account.
A lot of posters seem to be oblivious to the fact that people want to share things other than code. Things like art, literature and music. The GPL, BSD and other software licenses are a shoehorn fit at best and blatantly inappropriate in most cases when applied to these domains of intellectual property. Go read the GPL and see how many of the paragraphs deal exclusively with software terminology. Those licenses deal in terms of "source code", "machine code", etc. That's pretty easy to interpret for software, but what's "source code" in art? In music? Is sheet music the real source or should you be providing a fully instrumented MIDI file to work with as "source"? These new types of licenses are more appropriate for things that aren't software. This isn't a replacement for your precious GPL. It's, instead, an appropriate parallel for non-software instances.
I hear that. All of this "if every one just donated a dollar" talk doesn't go anywhere. If every user who downloaded my PHPTriad gave me $1, I'd have nearly $2 million. I made about $200 in 2 years with nearly 2 million downloads. I switched to a more commercial model and am doing much better. It's a sad fact, but without at least a small level of coercion or extreme celebrity, people don't pay.
Because when I take notes, less than half of the information I need to record is textual. The rest is a mismash of diagrams, visual linking of information, etc. On a regular computer, I'm left with really tedious methods for doing this. Select a rectangle shape tool with the mouse, draw its shape, click below and type a label. The actual typing of the text is inconsequential to the time to get the stupid rectangle where I want it. When I want to just quickly sketch out a network diagram or a layout for a new site or to note down how a bug is acting visually, being able to add a few words with handwriting recognition is a lifesaver.
Remember, not all information can be easily typed in in vi.
Have you ever tried to diagram out a web site flowchart diagram on a Palm? Seriously? There's no room. I've always wanted something like these things (I know they've existed for a while). I've always got a legal pad with me. And I use it as a portable whiteboard. Think of how much effort it takes to do an ASCII diagram and tell me how much easier it is than just sketching it out and being done.
Not that I'm defending Windows, because I'm not, but . . .
Probably because that's the exact same thing that Linux advocates say when someone says that Linux is hard to install, or has an inadequate desktop or doesn't support hardware properly etc. They tell you that you're just out of date. The NEW distributions are much better.
Most of the detractors of LCD adoption do so on the basis of poor gaming performance and extrapolate that to the general population. However, I think that this may be a case where the demand for new hardware isn't being driven by gamers. I know that comes as a blow to the ego of gamers who consider themselves on the bleeding edge of hardware adoption, but LCD's are one of the few recent real changes in computer technology that offer something to "average" computer users: form factor and power consumption.
Computers have been moving into the living areas of homes for quite a while and the monitor is the last, big ugly intrusion into that space. Having a monitor in the living space wasn't a big deal when standard monitors were 14", but as 17" became standard and 19" could be next, these things have gotten huge. You now need 2 feet deep surfaces in order to just set the monitor down. And heaven forbid if you want to put your monitor somewhere that won't support 50 pounds.
I use computers heavily, but don't bother with much of the new hardware that comes out. I do, however, have a 15" LCD that I use as my primary monitor. Why? Because it is small, light and it leaves room for the scanner and printers in my workspace. Did it cost more than a 17" CRT or even a 19" CRT? Sure. But how many machines have way more CPU and video card power than they need too? I personally didn't even need the 32MB that my shared video card provides.
There's a general Mozilla issue with Ebay as far as I'm concerned. I don't know what it is, but Ebay will bring down my installations of Mozilla 1.2 EVERY time.
Slashdot Mirror
It got rejected because it ran a week or 2 ago. Everybody complains about duplicate stories, but when people get indignant because their submissions of duplicates you end up posting some of them.
Is nobody looking at anything other than the linked page? There's a "Tools" page that has not only a link to a search box that uses the results, but to their XML API for working with the engine.
Here are the beginnings of such a HOWTO
.com domain is available. If it's not, it's a pretty good indicator that someone has already thought of it and is using it or closer to using it than you are. Do this even if you don't intend to use the domain.
If the name you're thinking of is directly pulled from a scifi or fantasy source, don't bother. These sources are WAY overrepresented as naming sources in software. Not only are your chances of coming up with something original pretty small, most of the names of characters and places in scifi are trademarked and you run the risk of being sued.
If the name you're thinking of comes straight from Greek, Roman or Norse mythology, try again. We've got more than enough mail related software called variations of "Mercury".
Run your proposed name through Google. The fewer results you get the better. If you get down to no results, you're there.
Don't try to get a unique name by just slightly misspelling something. Calling your new Windows filesystem program Phat32 is just going to end up with users getting frustrated looking at the results of "fat32" in a search engine.
If your name couldn't be said on TV in the 50s or 60s, you're probably on the wrong track. This is particularly true if you would like anyone to use your product in a work environment. No one is going to recommend a product to their co-workers if they can get sued for sexual harassment just for uttering its name.
If your product name can't be pronounced at all, you'll get no word of mouth benefit at all. Similarly, if no one knows how to pronounce it, they will not be very likely to try to say it out loud to ask questions about it, etc. How do YOU say MySQL? PostgreSQL? GNU? Almost all spoken languages on Earth are based on consonant/vowel syllables of some sort. Alternating between consonants and vowels is a pretty good way to ensure that someone can pronounce it.
The shorter the better.
See if the
Don't build inherent limitations on your product into the name. Calling your product LinProduct or WinProduct precludes you from ever releasing any sort of cross-platform edition.
Don't use your own name for open source products. If the project lives on beyond your involvement, the project will either have to be renames or your name may be used in ways you didn't intend.
I'll put this up at phpgeek.com to build it up more.
Star Wars wasn't subtitled that in 1977. Only after there was more than one movie was it resubtitled. This essentially happened when they went to video.
Or automatically cache the results of those long query strings and update them at appropriate intervals automatically. Then, the site is "dynamic" when it helps, i.e. the editing end of things, and "static" when it helps there, i.e. speed in serving up pages.
I'm actually about 80% done with a barebones CMS that is aimed at these small sites instead of those who want "portals". Content is stored in the database, but is only pulled live from there when the cache time expires. Otherwise, PHP just passes the cached file through. When a user is logged in, they can use the IE WYSIWYG editor to change any piece of content they want. The layouts are HTML with the only PHP being simple displaycontent() functions.
The goal is that you take what are normally done in HTML and, while still maintaining speed by caching, make them easy to maintain.
I've already got a system like this and it's really simple. I've got a USB InstantDVD connected to my entertainment receiver and a DVD-R drive. Anything I can watch on my TV, I can dump to the hard drive or straight to DVD. The InstantDVD streams 3mbit, 4mbit, or 5mbit streams straight to the filesystem. The software it came with lets me say, "Make a DVD out of this file". A while later (1x DVD-R), I've got a DVD.
I can record from the satellite dish, the DVD player, my old VCR, hell, I could record Playstation games to DVD if I wanted to. It's really simple (not all in one box simple, but simple nonetheless). I just put something on to watch, hit the big red button on a computer software. When the show is over, I basically say, "Make a DVD" and I'm done.
HBO, Cinemax, Pay-per-view and I'm building a movie collection that grows pretty quickly. I'm also building a nice collection of shows like "Good Eats".
Lots of people complain about DVD-R's costing $1 a pop, but seem to forget that VHS tapes still run $1-2 all over the place. Sure, they're more expensive than CD-R's, but who cares?
But that's the point. When there was a shortage, you had the company over a barrel and got them to pay 100K. 3-4 years ago, they were complaining about your salary and now you get to complain about it.
However, I have a friend who plays women characters and is constantly getting hit on in the game. Being able to hit *anyone* has put some of that behavior in check. She sees this as a feature not a problem.
I think being able to watch this one once conditions you to be able to watch it frequently. After all, just watching it once is really watching the same 20 minute movie over and over and over and over anyway.
Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Ender's Gam
Followed by a pretty large list of SF and fantasy that makes me say...
Please, all of you readers who have discovered those shelves in the library and bookstores that don't have books with swords or spaceships on the covers, please, rate some of those books.
In all seriousness, I enjoy Hitchiker's Guide as much as the next geek, but as a holder of a degree in English I hope to see a balanced list of books rise to the top.
I frequently register software under the name Nonna Urbixness. Gets past pretty much every filter set up and isn't obvious until you try to pronounce it.
I've responded to EVERY telemarketer for the past 2 years with "add me to your do not call list". I've added myself to the MN statewide do not call list. I STILL get 4-5 telemarketing calls a week. They've just changed their tactics a bit to get through the loopholes in the MN law. Now, if they don't actually intend to complete the sale on the phone, they can get away with it. So, instead of being asked to sign up with a mortgage or buy siding on the phone, they just want me to set up an appointment with a friendly sales representative to discuss the matter in person.
Having been a turkey farmer, I concur. I am thankful every day that I get paid to sit in a chair and put my brain to work. Comparing that to starting every day "picking up dead" and those boring 8:00 meetings don't seem so bad.
I agree. I'm amazed (I know I shouldn't be) at the number of terms that get used on Slashdot in such a way that makes it totally clear, they've never seen the term in print and are only going on what they think they've heard in the past.
Half.com. All "used", but even if you only buy in "like new" or "brand new" condition, most CD's are under $10 there. Many older ones are REALLY cheap ($0.75) even in those good conditions. I've bought tons of stuff since I discovered them. I've had months where I bought 5-10 CD's a week. Before then, I almost never bought one. When the price came down for me it both made it not worth it to dig around on P2P for those songs and made me want to buy more. For me, it's not worth it to have to dig to find all 14 songs on a CD when I can have it delivered to the door for $5.
I find that at $5, I'll probably buy 5-6 discs, whereas at $18, I won't buy even 1.
Indeed. In fact, the idea that journalism SHOULD be objective is a relatively new one. News used to be reported with the understanding that you took the author's biases into account.
A lot of posters seem to be oblivious to the fact that people want to share things other than code. Things like art, literature and music. The GPL, BSD and other software licenses are a shoehorn fit at best and blatantly inappropriate in most cases when applied to these domains of intellectual property. Go read the GPL and see how many of the paragraphs deal exclusively with software terminology. Those licenses deal in terms of "source code", "machine code", etc. That's pretty easy to interpret for software, but what's "source code" in art? In music? Is sheet music the real source or should you be providing a fully instrumented MIDI file to work with as "source"? These new types of licenses are more appropriate for things that aren't software. This isn't a replacement for your precious GPL. It's, instead, an appropriate parallel for non-software instances.
I hear that. All of this "if every one just donated a dollar" talk doesn't go anywhere. If every user who downloaded my PHPTriad gave me $1, I'd have nearly $2 million. I made about $200 in 2 years with nearly 2 million downloads. I switched to a more commercial model and am doing much better. It's a sad fact, but without at least a small level of coercion or extreme celebrity, people don't pay.
Because when I take notes, less than half of the information I need to record is textual. The rest is a mismash of diagrams, visual linking of information, etc. On a regular computer, I'm left with really tedious methods for doing this. Select a rectangle shape tool with the mouse, draw its shape, click below and type a label. The actual typing of the text is inconsequential to the time to get the stupid rectangle where I want it. When I want to just quickly sketch out a network diagram or a layout for a new site or to note down how a bug is acting visually, being able to add a few words with handwriting recognition is a lifesaver.
Remember, not all information can be easily typed in in vi.
Have you ever tried to diagram out a web site flowchart diagram on a Palm? Seriously? There's no room. I've always wanted something like these things (I know they've existed for a while). I've always got a legal pad with me. And I use it as a portable whiteboard. Think of how much effort it takes to do an ASCII diagram and tell me how much easier it is than just sketching it out and being done.
If you use SquirrelMail, you can use a Bayes spam filter from the Squirrelmail plugin page.
Not that I'm defending Windows, because I'm not, but . . .
Probably because that's the exact same thing that Linux advocates say when someone says that Linux is hard to install, or has an inadequate desktop or doesn't support hardware properly etc. They tell you that you're just out of date. The NEW distributions are much better.
Most of the detractors of LCD adoption do so on the basis of poor gaming performance and extrapolate that to the general population. However, I think that this may be a case where the demand for new hardware isn't being driven by gamers. I know that comes as a blow to the ego of gamers who consider themselves on the bleeding edge of hardware adoption, but LCD's are one of the few recent real changes in computer technology that offer something to "average" computer users: form factor and power consumption.
Computers have been moving into the living areas of homes for quite a while and the monitor is the last, big ugly intrusion into that space. Having a monitor in the living space wasn't a big deal when standard monitors were 14", but as 17" became standard and 19" could be next, these things have gotten huge. You now need 2 feet deep surfaces in order to just set the monitor down. And heaven forbid if you want to put your monitor somewhere that won't support 50 pounds.
I use computers heavily, but don't bother with much of the new hardware that comes out. I do, however, have a 15" LCD that I use as my primary monitor. Why? Because it is small, light and it leaves room for the scanner and printers in my workspace. Did it cost more than a 17" CRT or even a 19" CRT? Sure. But how many machines have way more CPU and video card power than they need too? I personally didn't even need the 32MB that my shared video card provides.
There's a general Mozilla issue with Ebay as far as I'm concerned. I don't know what it is, but Ebay will bring down my installations of Mozilla 1.2 EVERY time.