I think that success can be reasonably defined as attaining goals.
So the answer to your question is wholly dependant on your goals for the project.
Do you want to out-rank Linux on Freshmeat?
Do you want to clone a commercial app?
Do you want to create the gold standard app for a particular purpose?
Do you want to learn a new language?
If attain your goal, that would be success. If you end up taking a detour that is as interesting, useful, or fulfilling as your original goal, that is probably success as well.
Anything else is probably failure.
You seem to equate success with popularity. Download stats are pretty easy to monitor. You could do google searches for your project and your "biggest competitors" and count the hits. (You could even do sucks/rocks analysis.)
Actually, the first person I had sex with wanted to marry me. I guess I was a natural.
Simple ignorance isn't funny. People who are ignorant and totally unwilling to expend any effort in dragging themselves out of their ignorance are hilarious.
Do you think that Ford gets calls like "Where is the 'go' button?" or "How much gas do I have in my car?" I kind of doubt it, but if they do I hope whoever fields those calls post them on the web!
I guess Michael has never done tech support. They aren't just jokes.
A buddy of mine took the following call (from memory):
T: Thank you for calling Dell, this is [name deleted], may I have your service tag number, please? C: . ..? T: The service tag is a six character, alphanumeric code printed on a white, bar-coded sticker on the back of your computer. C: . ..? T: It is on the back of the box that everything plugs into. Not the monitor. C: [Service tag deleted.] T: How can I help you? C: What is my fax number? [Ah, now we're getting sort of on-topic.] T: . ..? C: Someone needs to send me a fax, but I don't know my fax number. T: It's your phone number. C: No, my computer has a fax modem. I need to receive a fax on it, not a phone call. T: . . . ! [20 minutes of trying to explain the concept of "fax" and get a phone line plugged into both an active jack and the right jack on the modem.] T: Thank you for calling Dell. T: [to me] You wouldn't believe the call I just had. [T relates call.] Me: I would have just told her "That service tag number you found . . . that's your fax number. Thank you for calling Dell. *click*"
After that I always wanted to get that call, so I could say, with all the technical authority I could muster, "six."
I had the excellent opportunity to attend a private boarding school for my sophomore year of high school. It was quite frankly the best school and time that I had had at school.
I learned something from your post:
Boarding school sissies are the only people who indent their posts on Slashdot.
The answer is: buy a "workgroup" printer, not a "soho" printer.
I have an HP LJ1200 (Mmmm. HW PostScript) which is perfect for me.
But that's not why I'm posting.
By "shave and a haircut" you seem to mean "two bits." But by context you seem to mean two cents. Two bits is 25 cents . . . or two pieces of eight, A.K.A. a quarter.
According to the article these quantum computers will use registers and operators. The registers will be useful for holding pointers to memory locations. The operators will include boolean operators.
Also according to the article these low-level constructs will eventually combined into "objects" consisting of both commands and data.
Wow. It's hard to imagine such a computer. This is some futuristic stuff!
Kimchee isn't necessarily made from cabbage. I can't stand the cabbage kind, but I like zucchini and scallion kimchee.
It also isn't what you probably think of when you think "pickled." It is traditionally coated with a pepper paste, sealed in masonry jars, buried, and allowed to ferment.
It is really just this side of rotten.
The bigger treat than eating kimchee is riding on a bus with thirty people who eat kimchee daily.
But then, they insist that westerners smell like warm milk.
In an early NASA launch project the engineers needed to know the exact weight of every component in the craft. The programmers swore that the software didn't weigh anything. The engineer in question finally slams down a bunch of punch cards in frustration and demands to know how much the software weighs.
We are in total agreement that the GUN is a 7.62 (aka 30 cal).
The BRASS in the SPECIAL EFFECTS SHOT does not appear to be COMPATIBLE with the GUN.
Hence the sig. In the Matrix guns that are belt-fed 7.62 rounds spit out 5.56 brass. In the matrix, guns that have magazines that are only capable of holding hand gun ammo eject rifle (5.56) brass.
There was a disconnect between the guns being filmed in the action scenes and the brass being filmed in the special effects shots.
When Neo pulls out the two compact sub-machine guns we get a good side view which shows the mags. They look for all the world like 9mm Parabellum mags. A couple of shots later they show the rain of brass. Clearly rifle brass. Looks like 5.56 to me.
A few minutes later Neo goes to work on the office where Morpheus is being held (putting Morpheus at great risk of being a casualty of friendly fire (which, BTW, isn't)) with a mini-gun. From the front view it appears to be 30 cal+. Again, a few shots later we see a rain of brass. (This time from below. Beautiful.) And again, looks like 5.56 to me.
Now, you're right. The Desert Eagles never seem to eject rifle brass. But when Smith shoots Neo point blank the brass being ejected and the round being stripped from the mag are clearly crimped blanks. The next shot shows a "live" brass hit the floor.
Oh, and apparently Desert Eagles don't have rifled barrels in the Matrix. The bullets that Neo stops in mid air look ready to be loaded, not just fired.
"I thought, 'Is it God? Is it an attack? Are we going to die?' The light freaked me out. It felt really funny, like it went through me," she said.
I need to see something like this, from time to time. It reminds me that, on an evolutionary time scale, we just stepped out of the caves a few moments ago.
I'm not saying the human race is doomed. But we do still have one hell of a long road ahead of us. I'm going to read some Sci-Fi now.
May I ask how old you are? I'm 27. The film really speaks to me, and I think that has a lot to do with the mindset of my generation.
It has multiple levels of action. It is introspective to an extreme. It doesn't offer any pat answers. (Except maybe, "Just go crazy and everything will work out.") It is entertainingly violent, while taking violence seriously. It is riddled with quoteable lines. Great perfomances all around.
Another vote for Hudson Hawk. I thought it was pretty lame 'till he fell off the truck and landed in the chair for his date . . . then the light came on.
How could anyone miss the gag when the are running around a castle, shooting suction darts with bombs on them, singing "Side by Side?" What kind of retard do you have to be to just think it is a bad action movie at that point?
I'd also like to mention a couple of flicks that were commercial successes, but are still under-appreciated.
First, Fight Club. There has been a rash of movies built around a clever plot twist. (I happen to like a lot of them, like The Sixth Sense and The Usual Suspects.) I think that a lot of people missed the incredible layers of depth to this film, and just saw it as a "trick ending" picture. I am not a big artsy-fartsy type guy, but I really think that Fight Club is both a document of our times and one of the true pieces of "literature" of the turn of the 21st century. Oh, and the movie is better than the book;-)
The other is The Matrix. Again, it has a tricky plot twist. This seems to throw people off. I was watching it with my Dad the other day. Now, he's a smart guy. He's pretty well read. So, Neo gets greased with the Desert Eagle and I have to explain that Neo is a Messiah. Geez, we were watching his copy of the DVD!
Anyway, those are the ones that spring to my mind.
PS: I'm so pissed that Jackson cut Bombadil from Fellowship that I haven't even seen The Two Towers yet! I REALLY wanted to see Bill Murray as Tom Bombadil!
I think that this is a pretty successful example of what you are trying to do.
It does take some effort on the part of the "core" people to keep it sane. And it is probably less than ideal in terms of organization and not having any "questionable" entries. And it isn't a nice DocBook "1.2.2 Configuring SquirrelMail for your IMAP server" type doc. But it does largely get the job done.
I have to disagree with you on the BDs, however. I think that they were the victims of a vicious smear campaign. I think that there is a very good chance that "they" were nutjobs, to a greater or lesser degree, but I have seen no evidence that they were the list bit dangerous.
AFAIK the government has yet to produce any evidence of illegal firearms in the "compound" (a word who's selection I find interesting).
I can hardly bring myself to judge them harshly for being well armed (a.k.a. "stockpiling weapons") since the facts bear out that the government was out to get them.
The sad fact is that all we really have to go on is HOs, since the government was so heavy handed in this matter.
Earlier in the same letter you quote in your sig TJ said of Shays' Rebellion (which is specifically the topic of the quote):
god forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion.
Honestly, I think that if the government ever tries to pull any shit like that again in Texas there will be an uprising.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that success can be reasonably defined as attaining goals.
So the answer to your question is wholly dependant on your goals for the project.
Do you want to out-rank Linux on Freshmeat?
Do you want to clone a commercial app?
Do you want to create the gold standard app for a particular purpose?
Do you want to learn a new language?
If attain your goal, that would be success. If you end up taking a detour that is as interesting, useful, or fulfilling as your original goal, that is probably success as well.
Anything else is probably failure.
You seem to equate success with popularity. Download stats are pretty easy to monitor. You could do google searches for your project and your "biggest competitors" and count the hits. (You could even do sucks/rocks analysis.)
-Peter
Actually, the first person I had sex with wanted to marry me. I guess I was a natural.
Simple ignorance isn't funny. People who are ignorant and totally unwilling to expend any effort in dragging themselves out of their ignorance are hilarious.
Do you think that Ford gets calls like "Where is the 'go' button?" or "How much gas do I have in my car?" I kind of doubt it, but if they do I hope whoever fields those calls post them on the web!
-Peter
I guess Michael has never done tech support. They aren't just jokes.
.? .? .?
A buddy of mine took the following call (from memory):
T: Thank you for calling Dell, this is [name deleted], may I have your service tag number, please?
C: . .
T: The service tag is a six character, alphanumeric code printed on a white, bar-coded sticker on the back of your computer.
C: . .
T: It is on the back of the box that everything plugs into. Not the monitor.
C: [Service tag deleted.]
T: How can I help you?
C: What is my fax number? [Ah, now we're getting sort of on-topic.]
T: . .
C: Someone needs to send me a fax, but I don't know my fax number.
T: It's your phone number.
C: No, my computer has a fax modem. I need to receive a fax on it, not a phone call.
T: . . . !
[20 minutes of trying to explain the concept of "fax" and get a phone line plugged into both an active jack and the right jack on the modem.]
T: Thank you for calling Dell.
T: [to me] You wouldn't believe the call I just had.
[T relates call.]
Me: I would have just told her "That service tag number you found . . . that's your fax number. Thank you for calling Dell. *click*"
After that I always wanted to get that call, so I could say, with all the technical authority I could muster, "six."
I learned something from your post:
Boarding school sissies are the only people who indent their posts on Slashdot.
The answer is: buy a "workgroup" printer, not a "soho" printer.
I have an HP LJ1200 (Mmmm. HW PostScript) which is perfect for me.
But that's not why I'm posting.
By "shave and a haircut" you seem to mean "two bits." But by context you seem to mean two cents. Two bits is 25 cents . . . or two pieces of eight, A.K.A. a quarter.
-Peter
According to the article these quantum computers will use registers and operators. The registers will be useful for holding pointers to memory locations. The operators will include boolean operators.
Also according to the article these low-level constructs will eventually combined into "objects" consisting of both commands and data.
Wow. It's hard to imagine such a computer. This is some futuristic stuff!
-Peter
Kimchee isn't necessarily made from cabbage. I can't stand the cabbage kind, but I like zucchini and scallion kimchee.
It also isn't what you probably think of when you think "pickled." It is traditionally coated with a pepper paste, sealed in masonry jars, buried, and allowed to ferment.
It is really just this side of rotten.
The bigger treat than eating kimchee is riding on a bus with thirty people who eat kimchee daily.
But then, they insist that westerners smell like warm milk.
-Peter
And the story is apocryphal.
But it goes something like this:
In an early NASA launch project the engineers needed to know the exact weight of every component in the craft. The programmers swore that the software didn't weigh anything. The engineer in question finally slams down a bunch of punch cards in frustration and demands to know how much the software weighs.
The programmer replies, "We only use the holes."
Are you trolling me, or do you really not get it?
We are in total agreement that the GUN is a 7.62 (aka 30 cal).
The BRASS in the SPECIAL EFFECTS SHOT does not appear to be COMPATIBLE with the GUN.
Hence the sig. In the Matrix guns that are belt-fed 7.62 rounds spit out 5.56 brass. In the matrix, guns that have magazines that are only capable of holding hand gun ammo eject rifle (5.56) brass.
There was a disconnect between the guns being filmed in the action scenes and the brass being filmed in the special effects shots.
Get it?
-Peter
This is a devastating blow to the Linux community and marketplace.
Wait, you said Sun Linux?
Never heard of it.
-Peter
You said:
I agree.
30 cal = 7.62mm (in gun math (.357 =
The brass that rains down is pretty clearly not 7.62.
It is pretty hard to tell in the first shot or two, but from the shot underneath it is pretty clearly 5.56.
-Peter
God is a myth. Heaven is a bed-time story. The Bible is the hammer of tyrants.
Or maybe we could have a rational discussion.
-Peter
Okay, here's the deal.
When Neo pulls out the two compact sub-machine guns we get a good side view which shows the mags. They look for all the world like 9mm Parabellum mags. A couple of shots later they show the rain of brass. Clearly rifle brass. Looks like 5.56 to me.
A few minutes later Neo goes to work on the office where Morpheus is being held (putting Morpheus at great risk of being a casualty of friendly fire (which, BTW, isn't)) with a mini-gun. From the front view it appears to be 30 cal+. Again, a few shots later we see a rain of brass. (This time from below. Beautiful.) And again, looks like 5.56 to me.
Now, you're right. The Desert Eagles never seem to eject rifle brass. But when Smith shoots Neo point blank the brass being ejected and the round being stripped from the mag are clearly crimped blanks. The next shot shows a "live" brass hit the floor.
Oh, and apparently Desert Eagles don't have rifled barrels in the Matrix. The bullets that Neo stops in mid air look ready to be loaded, not just fired.
-Peter
I need to see something like this, from time to time. It reminds me that, on an evolutionary time scale, we just stepped out of the caves a few moments ago.
I'm not saying the human race is doomed. But we do still have one hell of a long road ahead of us. I'm going to read some Sci-Fi now.
-Peter
You said in reply:
What can I say? I was trying to draw a distinction between commercial success and genuine appriciation. Something like:
I don't think that The Matrix was actually "deep" to any significant degree, but it was very literary.
-Peter
May I ask how old you are? I'm 27. The film really speaks to me, and I think that has a lot to do with the mindset of my generation.
It has multiple levels of action. It is introspective to an extreme. It doesn't offer any pat answers. (Except maybe, "Just go crazy and everything will work out.") It is entertainingly violent, while taking violence seriously. It is riddled with quoteable lines. Great perfomances all around.
What a film!
PS: Your homepage is gone!
Another vote for Hudson Hawk. I thought it was pretty lame 'till he fell off the truck and landed in the chair for his date . . . then the light came on.
;-)
How could anyone miss the gag when the are running around a castle, shooting suction darts with bombs on them, singing "Side by Side?" What kind of retard do you have to be to just think it is a bad action movie at that point?
I'd also like to mention a couple of flicks that were commercial successes, but are still under-appreciated.
First, Fight Club. There has been a rash of movies built around a clever plot twist. (I happen to like a lot of them, like The Sixth Sense and The Usual Suspects.) I think that a lot of people missed the incredible layers of depth to this film, and just saw it as a "trick ending" picture. I am not a big artsy-fartsy type guy, but I really think that Fight Club is both a document of our times and one of the true pieces of "literature" of the turn of the 21st century. Oh, and the movie is better than the book
The other is The Matrix. Again, it has a tricky plot twist. This seems to throw people off. I was watching it with my Dad the other day. Now, he's a smart guy. He's pretty well read. So, Neo gets greased with the Desert Eagle and I have to explain that Neo is a Messiah. Geez, we were watching his copy of the DVD!
Anyway, those are the ones that spring to my mind.
-Peter
PS: I'm so pissed that Jackson cut Bombadil from Fellowship that I haven't even seen The Two Towers yet! I REALLY wanted to see Bill Murray as Tom Bombadil!
-Peter
I hate to respond to a sig, but . . .
My copy of Bored got all wet. It's ruined!
I'm distraught, and just had to get that off my chest.
-Peter
The GPL says:
So, distributing a derivitave work of Konqueror under any restrictions beyond those in the GPL is a violation of the KDE folks copyrights.
What gives?
-Peter
If it sets a standard for computing competence like drivers licenses have set a standard for driving competence . . .
. . . oh, wait. What a horrible idea.
-Peter
Check out http://squirrelmail.org.
I think that this is a pretty successful example of what you are trying to do.
It does take some effort on the part of the "core" people to keep it sane. And it is probably less than ideal in terms of organization and not having any "questionable" entries. And it isn't a nice DocBook "1.2.2 Configuring SquirrelMail for your IMAP server" type doc. But it does largely get the job done.
-Peter
It isn't exactly a surplus, but consider Fistell's. It's at 1001 Bannock, right by VFW post #1. (Yahoo map)
They have a little bit of everything. But they only seem to have one guy working there that knows anything, so you are screwed if he's at lunch.
Good Luck!
-Peter
Look how surprised I am:
-Peter
I have to disagree with you on the BDs, however. I think that they were the victims of a vicious smear campaign. I think that there is a very good chance that "they" were nutjobs, to a greater or lesser degree, but I have seen no evidence that they were the list bit dangerous.
AFAIK the government has yet to produce any evidence of illegal firearms in the "compound" (a word who's selection I find interesting).
I can hardly bring myself to judge them harshly for being well armed (a.k.a. "stockpiling weapons") since the facts bear out that the government was out to get them.
The sad fact is that all we really have to go on is HOs, since the government was so heavy handed in this matter.
Earlier in the same letter you quote in your sig TJ said of Shays' Rebellion (which is specifically the topic of the quote):
Honestly, I think that if the government ever tries to pull any shit like that again in Texas there will be an uprising.
-Peter