I'd argue it is rather different. TV is one way. Your television browsing habits are slightly less revealing than say, your banking activities or the blog entries you post.
Also, Alexa claims to give you some value in exchange for letting them piggy back on your browsing. Nielsen is more public and more respected. This helps mitigate the sampling problems.
Suck it up and find a better metric for your boss.
If his "boss" (or any of the other scores of people who accost him about the popularity of websites) would let him pick the metric, he wouldn't have this problem.
The point of the article is that he has to defend someone else's choice of metric.
Or perhaps, the point is more of an "Ask Slashdot" sort of thing...
As in, "Hey all you/. geeks, what's a better way to do this?" Taco's comments on the flaws in Alexa's system and Control Group's comments on some of the particular challenges against this demographic in general support that.
Heck.. it seems like an interesting enough problem to me, but then again, I don't have a sig like yours:
/.: "Anti-Microsoft Rants, Apple and Google d*ck sucking." Pathetic.
If you hate it that much, why are you hanging out here?
(Sorry, I really need to stop feeding the trolls...)
I guess I don't really get this one either. Thinking that mass murders are common place and dealing with the pain and emotions of death that come from violence might be hard on a kid. Espcially when it might represent violence that doesn't really exist regularly in the real world.
But sex exists. And it doesn't kill anybody. What sort of negative effects are kids supposed to get form knowing what sex is and that that people have it.
I suppose this goes without saying...but it's just sex, right?
Where does the idea that sex is wrong, evil, or warping fragile little minds come from? Don't all these people who are complaing realize that sex is the reason they were born?
I just can't wrap my brain around this. Nothing is an excuse for parenting, and certainly not blaming the entertainment industry.
But, c'mon guys, it's just sex. It's been happening since the beginning. If it were somehow the root of all evil, don't you think we'd have found out by now?
If you can't get past Debian's installer, then Debian isn't he OS for you.
If that's the design goal for Debian, that's fine by me.. just thought you might want to know what your prodcut looks like from someone you are (apparently) intending to exclude.
I *want* to use Debian becuase it have the best package system aroudn (or so I'm told and my experiecne with RPM shows me), because it has the potential to let me grow and learn the full complexity of Unix, and because it allows me the ption to choose in terms of types of software (free/non-free/etc.)
I trust the ideals and the motivces behind Debian more than other commercial entities.\, and I want ot supor that sort of option to be out there.
Then don't use dselect. I haven't used dselect in years. All you need it apt-get.
I did use apt-get, for several packages when I wanted that were in the unstable distribution. Regardless, apt-get does not address my concern (admittedly poorly stated at first) of having some way to comprehensively understand _what_ packages are available.
What concept behind Debian do you love? [...]
Yes.. and others. Such as the (at least purported) motivationd of the developers and their philosophies. Their stated values of stability and openness and control for th end user. IN a real senes, I (perhaps foolishly to trust at all one might say) trust them not to have some secret agenda out for my pocketbook. That's why I try to support them. I wouldn't bother offering feedbakc if I didn't think what they offer has value. I just think it could be better.
(And before someone shouts: Then Make It Better! know that I do what I can with what time I have. Part of which involves piping up when I think I've noticed something.)
If all you need is a workstation OS to play games or write a report on, then definately choose Mandrake. It was built for that.
I didn't state my needs, but since you mentioned,..:)
I write papers anywhere.. I can boot a C= 64 emulatoer and run GEOS if I need to and still have more than enough power and flexibilty.
I don't use Linux for games. It can't compete, much to my chagrin. (At least not yet.)
I am looking to use my box to provide a development enviroment so I can get back ointo writing OSS projects again, teach others the joys of Unix and programming, and provide services for interactrive collaboration with some collegeus of mine. Also, I want the resourcefulness of having a Unix box avialable for when I need ot get things done that REALLY ARE SIMPLY but every other OS makes awkward becuase it didn't fall into one of thier predetermined buest guesses of what the end user wanted to do.
I want ot be ABLE to get into the dirty underpinning when I need ot do something nobody planned on, but tha tDOESN'T mean I want to have to do it for tasks that ARE commonplace nowadays.
To take it to an extreme, why not just have the machine boot up into an echoless display where you can type 1's and 0's in straight to the processor? Ultimate power, right? Ultimate flexibility?
It's an art to draw the line between abstraction for ease of use and flexibilty which necessitates complexity. I just think the Debian install could do better.
Debian was built around other concerns.
The ones that attracted me the the concern for a free (as in libre) distribution of Linux.. the kind that values quality, stability, and providing the end user with software to take advantagre of his/her hardware, as opposed to simply making profit. I don't see why that means it has to be some sort of white tower that excludes anyone who isn't 133t enough (or has enough time to get there). I think there are more peopl than a select few who could benefit form the concerns Debian addresses, and I feel like a more functional installer would help that happen.
The installer is what it is, an installer. It is not an assistant. It has ALL the tools I need to install a production system. This is, after all, what Debian intends its stable distro to be used for.
This can get into semantics of what a production system is and what consittues assistance, but...
I guess I'm only trying to say that I cannot use dselect to easily comprehend what packages are available, and I expected to be able to.
dselect offers the most amazing selection of software I have ever seen available from my terminal.
I agree.. that's one reason why I like dselect and Debian. It gives me that choice.. just currently it does it in a bit of a spammy manner, IMHO.
The installer clearly states that tasksel will install the major packages you need from the selected theme.
tasksel was too vague/general in it's options for me. I suppose needed (need?) something somewhere between tasksel and dselect to get me started.
Try the net install iso. It is less than 50mb.
Thanks for the tip anwyayz, but I have no problems with downlaoding the 7 CDs.. (i guess I wasn't too clear on that one;) As a matter of fact I was proably just flaming more tha I shoudl have and (in retrospect) should have said so. Sorry about that. What I DID find annoying was that I somehow managed to take what shoudl have been no problem (Debain has GREAT package dependancy handling yadda yadda yadda) and managed to install SOME subset of packages to make furhter package installs fail.
Now that I've admitted it on/. I suppose I am morally obliged to see if I can reproduce the situtation for the benefit of everyone and make sure the nice vdevelopers know about it if it IS a real issue... *sigh* well I'll add it to my list...:)
But, I am persistent. For people like me, there is all the help I need from the greatest asset of Debian- the community.
I'll admit I'm slow to go to the community for answers (at least the interactive bits... the onlien references I am all over...) But I don't understand why having to be persistant should be a design goal fo the ditribution... And if it's not, the developers might want ot know if it's happeneing so they can decide if they care. That's all.
What you really should do is have some minimal set of packages you want.
I certianly had no idea I was getting into QUITE that many packages when I started.. (which speaks well of the package base Debian has, and poorly of either me for not seeing, or dselect for not clueing me in...)
I was also going for a VERY minimal install. I guess I felt like there wasn't a good weay for me to know WHAT was a available. I really like the idea behind tasksel, but it's too broad fo rmy usage.. I'm no unix wizard, but I am _way_ beyond newbie here..
Either way, thanks for the advice.. I'll certainly take a new approach the next time I try a fresh install. I proabbly also bit off more than I was ready to swallow when I tried to add the hardening stuff in the first pass. Maybe it's time I setup a LOCAL area network instead of "a couple machines with IP addresses on a hub..." and played with something where I can worry about paranoid level security AFTER I get the base system installed with the apps I need.
You know, the more I think about this, the more I think it's a general problem. Linux distro's come with TONS of software. I mean TONS... Even if you took the libraries and development stuff out of the picture, the list of pure end user applications and support utilities is still too much to put on a single page. Perhaps that is what gives me the most trouble with dselect right now.
Disclaimer: I am ignorant on current installation systems for almost EVERY distro except Debian, as I've not installed Linux for some time.. (funny how when it works you don't need to, eh?) so other distro's may solve these percieved issues of mine or not.
Side note: I am currently playing with alternate package managers, now that I've got he system up and running, as well as the other packages for simplifiying package management.
That's about as troll-ish as I ever expected to see a post on slashdot, and it isn't even about Microsoft.
Well I suppose I've made an acoompliment in some regard at least:)
Which is why the Debian installer goes for the lowest common denominator instead of trying something fancy and high-faluting like, say, the Mandrake installer, which when I used it last kept dumping core after package selection.
The lowest common denominator by what quality? I honestly don't follow this one. The installtion seems aimed for the LEAST common denomniator, those skilled with Unix with familiar with Debian already. I fyou mean by hardware, I never said I needed a fancy GRAPHICAL solution, just a solution:)
And as for manual wading-through of packages--that's what the task metapackages are there for. [...] Dselect SHOWS YOU all this.
I still have to wade thorugh the other packages to get to them. If there were other better package installation utitlies, then why can I pick the package utitly i want to use when I'm installing? tasksel is a nice start, but I need something in between dselect and tasksel. Or PERHPAS just a batter way to sort through the dselect informaiton.
Are you nuts? The 7 CDs contain the packages for all the different arches--which you'll never need as a regular user.
1) Yes I am nuts.
2) I'm also paranoid, that's why I want a local copy of any data I may depend on.
3) While I didn't find nice ISO images sorted by architecture, I would like to.
That being said my last comment was pretty much flamebait,.. sorry about that. I should have tagged it as such.
Lots of views are expressed here, but as I just installed woody, I think many of you have missed some simply points:
If you can't get past the installer, the rest of the OS doens't matter. You'll never see it.
dselect is insufficient. It may be powerful, but when I have to WADE through 8600+ packages manually, one at a time, something is wrong. It shouldn't take me a DAY to just pick my packages.
Grabbing the release via jigdo on my Windows box (all 7 bin CDs) and tyrign to instlal the first time rsultied in SOMETHING causing all my selceted packages to be 'corrupt' in somebody's eyes.. (I suspect the hardening packages). Purchasing someone elese's burnm of the images revealed my CDs were fine, and I had to REPEAT the entire process from scratch ot get the OS to install.
I love the concept behind Debian. I want to have control over my system and over the TYPE of software I install. Debian will let me, but it punishes me for trying. I expect I'll be installing another distro shortly. I need to use my computer, not spend type getting it ready to be used.
Obligatory claim of competence: I started with slackware on floppies back in the 1.2 kernel days. I installed via floppies to bootstrap. I am not totally clueless.
If you haven't found them the last two years I've made
this post, you're missing out. Several small time game companies make cheap games often with a delightfully geeky bent:
Fluxx
($10) from LooneyLabs
A self-modifying card game where the rules of the game are the cards played.
Icehouse
($35) also from LooneyLabs
No, not the beer. A Unquestionably cool set of plastic pyramids suitable for playing a variety of games, and designing of your own games.
Falling
($10) from Cheapass Games
Imagine real-time (as opposed to turn based) blackjack on speed.
All of these games are perfect for sitting in
restraunts waiting for food, or other such
awkward time slots that normally get wasted.
A card game where the rules to the game are the cards you play. Very recursive, hence very geeky. Simple to learn, pointless to master. (It's partially luck based...)
A card game based around time travel. How cool is that? The official release date isn't until October 31st, but I can tell you from first hand experience that
the cards are beautiful and the
gameplay
is solid.
Until HTML is capable of presenting just the content, (until stripping out the HTML tags actually produces something readable) it is an unsuitable standard for mail or news posts.
If you need blinking red text in a javascipt rollover image on top of an animated gif tiled in the background to distract me while your embedded java applet plays music JUST so you can communicate with me via email, you shouldn't be communicating with me via email.
You probably shouldn't be communicating with me at all.
Katz was too hard on this film, and I'm grateful to you for pointing out its finer qualities since I certainly wouldn't have sounded as elegant as you did.
That being said, I do have three points to make.
Star Wars did not have an unknown alien race who wanted to/did blow up Earth. Bad Katz. No Cookie.
The writing and dialogue in this film was excellent. With all the things too see and hear, it says a lot that the writing stood out so much that I noticed.
This is an American film. It was not made in Japan. As such, it is a landmark. Could you imagine seeing an American made film like this 10 years ago? 5 years? 1 year?
Go watch it. It's a little short, but fun. (And it's set a new standard for integrating CGI with traditional animation...)
Saturating a communications channel with noise in the way you describe just isn't feasible without the acquiescence of the other participants.
Fair enough. But much of the average end user today isn't using these moderated environments. I'd wager you don't use an AOL address. (Not that I do either, but Joe Averager does.. and it gets spammed, big time.) So does my old college account.
You're right, much of the internet communities are moderated or controlled, but aren't those the communities who have been here longer? Who aren't part of the JOe Average surfing from home after work? Aren't we still leaving a lot of the internet population out to flame with each other, or pushed out of the loop by flaming?
Do I have to know how to set up a kill file for my news reader before I can be allowed to participate without so much difficulty?
There is a difference. You can use your power of "free speech" to stop someone else from speaking by simply speaking loudly all the time.
If no one can hear anything but your yelling, then certainly no one else can speak, freely or otherwise.
The same can happen when an eletronic forum becomes bloated with so much junk that the signal to noise ratio approximates zero. Hence the UDP.
I know, I know. You can just "walk away" right?
You can be spammed out of a forum and start another and hope all those other folks can find it before the spammers do, right?
So you should change your email address when it gets so spammed that you can't use it anymore? What happens when every email address is that way? When happens when every USENET forum is that way? ALmost every communicaton o nthe internet that isn't somehow moderated is already suffering from these problems.
And don't forget that harassment can occur in any communicaton, and speaking with anger or foul language is different than harrassing someone with your speech. BOth of these problems already plague the net.
It will be interesting to have read articles directly from Katz himself, and have the real book open to examine, and then compare them to the actual movie produced. It could be a real chance to reverse engineer the "Hollywood filter".
The folks over at Looney Labs have a nice line of reasonably-priced and lightly intellectual games for your favorite geek.
Fluxx is a self-modifying card game that never takes itself to seriously for only $8.95
Aquarius, a beautiful dominoes derivative almost any age can enjoy for $9.95
Proton is a PocketBoardGame for two people that is not only a neat game, but inherently portable. Perfect for all those times you spend waiting and a steal at $4.95
Icehouse sets are great for playing more than a dozen different games. Not only are the new plastic pieces cool looking but the games are all unique and fun. From twists like beingturnless to dynamic game boards the variety and sheer neato factor make this a gaurenteed winner at $34.95 (if you can't handle the extra cost, you can get a fun, do-it-yourself set for just $2.00! Be forewarned that they don't norally stack like the plastic ones.)
Not everything is done for economic reasons. What about the thousands killed on the road each year? Doesn't that have something to do with why the seatbelt laws were passed?
True, and my example did leave much to be desired, however economic reasons were invovled, and economic reasons are some of the few that can be assumed as motivating factors by just about everyone. (Or at least the government.)
I suppose you believe that where there is not enough economic incentive to do so [...] there should be no laws to prevent employers ignoring safety and risking electrocutions, maimings, and deaths.
Don't get your feathers in a ruffle. I never said anything about should. I was merely commenting on what you also acknowledge does happen.
People can believe whatever they want to believe. Whether or not it's popular is a completely different issue.
Doesn't being persecuted for your beliefs count as a loss of freedom? I doubt many other people will repeat Singer's views with the obvious results it's had on his life, just because his thoughts were unpopular.
Natural selection pretty much took care of babies who were too ill or sickly to survive. However, people tend to take care of them now. If they want to do that, it's their business, their money, and their lives.
If we lived in a purely opportunitstic and capitalist society, perhaps. But, we don't. We have many goverment programs which aid the general populace, and many of those include financial support for those in need, regardless of how they got there. The general taxpayer pays for these subsidies, in essence funding poor decisions. That's why seatbelt lawas were passed. (Of course, we could have instead, removed the tax money from hospitals and such...)
I wouldn't trust genetic engineering yet until it is well-proven. Why implement a technology when you know you don't understand its ramifications?
I believe the point was not to advocate this as a solution, but merely acknowledge that there are options already in development that make Singer's issues worth discussion.
And, finally, do you like posting complicated, controversial articles of dubious relevance on slashdot?
I don't know so much about the dubious relevance. That's almost always an argueable point thanks to the "Stuff that Matters." definition. Of course, it does refer to both technology used as communication (particularly the internet) and a previously posted/. article. That seems pretty well grounded.
Is the article really that complicated, or is it the issue itself? Is controversial a reason to not post an article? Isn't that kind of limiting exactly the point this article is trying to explore? (Every geek loves recursion!)
I'll give you that John may take a lengthy approach to it, but he's a journalist, and not a man page author. That's one of the reasons I liek having him around.;)
While I don't feel that context is so terribly important for meta moderation in general, it is apprent to me that it is impossible to properly metamoderate any comment moderated as "Redundant" without context.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd argue it is rather different. TV is one way. Your television browsing habits are slightly less revealing than say, your banking activities or the blog entries you post.
Also, Alexa claims to give you some value in exchange for letting them piggy back on your browsing. Nielsen is more public and more respected. This helps mitigate the sampling problems.
Suck it up and find a better metric for your boss.If his "boss" (or any of the other scores of people who accost him about the popularity of websites) would let him pick the metric, he wouldn't have this problem.
The point of the article is that he has to defend someone else's choice of metric.
Or perhaps, the point is more of an "Ask Slashdot" sort of thing...
As in, "Hey all you /. geeks, what's a better way to do this?" Taco's comments on the flaws in Alexa's system and Control Group's comments on some of the particular challenges against this demographic in general support that.
Heck.. it seems like an interesting enough problem to me, but then again, I don't have a sig like yours:
/.: "Anti-Microsoft Rants, Apple and Google d*ck sucking." Pathetic.If you hate it that much, why are you hanging out here?
(Sorry, I really need to stop feeding the trolls...)
Being good is such a pain, maybe it's nice if we think that we can let loos ean dbe evil for awhile...
I suppose that's not such a bad thing, but if that's where all this comes from, it seems to have gotten a little out of hand.
Actually, no. But I do now. Thanks.
I wonder how many fundamental Christians know that other than subconciously. And also how many fundamental Christians there are.
I guess I don't really get this one either. Thinking that mass murders are common place and dealing with the pain and emotions of death that come from violence might be hard on a kid. Espcially when it might represent violence that doesn't really exist regularly in the real world.
But sex exists. And it doesn't kill anybody. What sort of negative effects are kids supposed to get form knowing what sex is and that that people have it.
Have sex? Maybe not. Know it is? Why not?
Where does the idea that sex is wrong, evil, or warping fragile little minds come from? Don't all these people who are complaing realize that sex is the reason they were born?
I just can't wrap my brain around this. Nothing is an excuse for parenting, and certainly not blaming the entertainment industry.
But, c'mon guys, it's just sex. It's been happening since the beginning. If it were somehow the root of all evil, don't you think we'd have found out by now?
Please don't use the possessive. [...]
the previous poster is not a member of Debian
Quite right. Sorry about that.
If you can't get past Debian's installer, then Debian isn't he OS for you.
If that's the design goal for Debian, that's fine by me.. just thought you might want to know what your prodcut looks like from someone you are (apparently) intending to exclude.
I *want* to use Debian becuase it have the best package system aroudn (or so I'm told and my experiecne with RPM shows me), because it has the potential to let me grow and learn the full complexity of Unix, and because it allows me the ption to choose in terms of types of software (free/non-free/etc.)
I trust the ideals and the motivces behind Debian more than other commercial entities.\, and I want ot supor that sort of option to be out there.
Then don't use dselect. I haven't used dselect in years. All you need it apt-get.
I did use apt-get, for several packages when I wanted that were in the unstable distribution. Regardless, apt-get does not address my concern (admittedly poorly stated at first) of having some way to comprehensively understand _what_ packages are available.
What concept behind Debian do you love? [...]
Yes.. and others. Such as the (at least purported) motivationd of the developers and their philosophies. Their stated values of stability and openness and control for th end user. IN a real senes, I (perhaps foolishly to trust at all one might say) trust them not to have some secret agenda out for my pocketbook. That's why I try to support them. I wouldn't bother offering feedbakc if I didn't think what they offer has value. I just think it could be better.
(And before someone shouts: Then Make It Better! know that I do what I can with what time I have. Part of which involves piping up when I think I've noticed something.)
If all you need is a workstation OS to play games or write a report on, then definately choose Mandrake. It was built for that.
I didn't state my needs, but since you mentioned,.. :)
I am looking to use my box to provide a development enviroment so I can get back ointo writing OSS projects again, teach others the joys of Unix and programming, and provide services for interactrive collaboration with some collegeus of mine. Also, I want the resourcefulness of having a Unix box avialable for when I need ot get things done that REALLY ARE SIMPLY but every other OS makes awkward becuase it didn't fall into one of thier predetermined buest guesses of what the end user wanted to do.
I want ot be ABLE to get into the dirty underpinning when I need ot do something nobody planned on, but tha tDOESN'T mean I want to have to do it for tasks that ARE commonplace nowadays.
To take it to an extreme, why not just have the machine boot up into an echoless display where you can type 1's and 0's in straight to the processor? Ultimate power, right? Ultimate flexibility?
It's an art to draw the line between abstraction for ease of use and flexibilty which necessitates complexity. I just think the Debian install could do better.
Debian was built around other concerns.
The ones that attracted me the the concern for a free (as in libre) distribution of Linux.. the kind that values quality, stability, and providing the end user with software to take advantagre of his/her hardware, as opposed to simply making profit. I don't see why that means it has to be some sort of white tower that excludes anyone who isn't 133t enough (or has enough time to get there). I think there are more peopl than a select few who could benefit form the concerns Debian addresses, and I feel like a more functional installer would help that happen.
The installer is what it is, an installer. It is not an assistant. It has ALL the tools I need to install a production system. This is, after all, what Debian intends its stable distro to be used for.
This can get into semantics of what a production system is and what consittues assistance, but...
I guess I'm only trying to say that I cannot use dselect to easily comprehend what packages are available, and I expected to be able to.
dselect offers the most amazing selection of software I have ever seen available from my terminal.
I agree.. that's one reason why I like dselect and Debian. It gives me that choice.. just currently it does it in a bit of a spammy manner, IMHO.
The installer clearly states that tasksel will install the major packages you need from the selected theme.
tasksel was too vague/general in it's options for me. I suppose needed (need?) something somewhere between tasksel and dselect to get me started.
Try the net install iso. It is less than 50mb.
Thanks for the tip anwyayz, but I have no problems with downlaoding the 7 CDs.. (i guess I wasn't too clear on that one ;) As a matter of fact I was proably just flaming more tha I shoudl have and (in retrospect) should have said so. Sorry about that. What I DID find annoying was that I somehow managed to take what shoudl have been no problem (Debain has GREAT package dependancy handling yadda yadda yadda) and managed to install SOME subset of packages to make furhter package installs fail.
Now that I've admitted it on /. I suppose I am morally obliged to see if I can reproduce the situtation for the benefit of everyone and make sure the nice vdevelopers know about it if it IS a real issue... *sigh* well I'll add it to my list... :)
But, I am persistent. For people like me, there is all the help I need from the greatest asset of Debian- the community.
I'll admit I'm slow to go to the community for answers (at least the interactive bits... the onlien references I am all over...) But I don't understand why having to be persistant should be a design goal fo the ditribution... And if it's not, the developers might want ot know if it's happeneing so they can decide if they care. That's all.
What you really should do is have some minimal set of packages you want.
I certianly had no idea I was getting into QUITE that many packages when I started.. (which speaks well of the package base Debian has, and poorly of either me for not seeing, or dselect for not clueing me in...)
I was also going for a VERY minimal install. I guess I felt like there wasn't a good weay for me to know WHAT was a available. I really like the idea behind tasksel, but it's too broad fo rmy usage.. I'm no unix wizard, but I am _way_ beyond newbie here..
Either way, thanks for the advice.. I'll certainly take a new approach the next time I try a fresh install. I proabbly also bit off more than I was ready to swallow when I tried to add the hardening stuff in the first pass. Maybe it's time I setup a LOCAL area network instead of "a couple machines with IP addresses on a hub..." and played with something where I can worry about paranoid level security AFTER I get the base system installed with the apps I need.
You know, the more I think about this, the more I think it's a general problem. Linux distro's come with TONS of software. I mean TONS... Even if you took the libraries and development stuff out of the picture, the list of pure end user applications and support utilities is still too much to put on a single page. Perhaps that is what gives me the most trouble with dselect right now.
Disclaimer: I am ignorant on current installation systems for almost EVERY distro except Debian, as I've not installed Linux for some time.. (funny how when it works you don't need to, eh?) so other distro's may solve these percieved issues of mine or not.
Side note: I am currently playing with alternate package managers, now that I've got he system up and running, as well as the other packages for simplifiying package management.
That's about as troll-ish as I ever expected to see a post on slashdot, and it isn't even about Microsoft.
Well I suppose I've made an acoompliment in some regard at least :)
Which is why the Debian installer goes for the lowest common denominator instead of trying something fancy and high-faluting like, say, the Mandrake installer, which when I used it last kept dumping core after package selection.
The lowest common denominator by what quality? I honestly don't follow this one. The installtion seems aimed for the LEAST common denomniator, those skilled with Unix with familiar with Debian already. I fyou mean by hardware, I never said I needed a fancy GRAPHICAL solution, just a solution :)
And as for manual wading-through of packages--that's what the task metapackages are there for. [...] Dselect SHOWS YOU all this.
I still have to wade thorugh the other packages to get to them. If there were other better package installation utitlies, then why can I pick the package utitly i want to use when I'm installing? tasksel is a nice start, but I need something in between dselect and tasksel. Or PERHPAS just a batter way to sort through the dselect informaiton.
Are you nuts? The 7 CDs contain the packages for all the different arches--which you'll never need as a regular user.
1) Yes I am nuts.
2) I'm also paranoid, that's why I want a local copy of any data I may depend on.
3) While I didn't find nice ISO images sorted by architecture, I would like to.
That being said my last comment was pretty much flamebait, .. sorry about that. I should have tagged it as such.
Lots of views are expressed here, but as I just installed woody, I think many of you have missed some simply points:
I love the concept behind Debian. I want to have control over my system and over the TYPE of software I install. Debian will let me, but it punishes me for trying. I expect I'll be installing another distro shortly. I need to use my computer, not spend type getting it ready to be used.
Obligatory claim of competence: I started with slackware on floppies back in the 1.2 kernel days. I installed via floppies to bootstrap. I am not totally clueless.
If you haven't found them the last two years I've made this post, you're missing out. Several small time game companies make cheap games often with a delightfully geeky bent:
A self-modifying card game where the rules of the game are the cards played.
No, not the beer. A Unquestionably cool set of plastic pyramids suitable for playing a variety of games, and designing of your own games.
Imagine real-time (as opposed to turn based) blackjack on speed.
All of these games are perfect for sitting in restraunts waiting for food, or other such awkward time slots that normally get wasted.
They primarily do web hosting, but the features you are looking for are all still there.
csoft.net
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In the 'Under PlayStation 2' category, I've got to go with the wierd non-computer games from Looney Labs . Specifically they're all under the $40 mark.
You'll find more information on their site, but here's a quick rundown:
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If you need blinking red text in a javascipt rollover image on top of an animated gif tiled in the background to distract me while your embedded java applet plays music JUST so you can communicate with me via email, you shouldn't be communicating with me via email.
You probably shouldn't be communicating with me at all.
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Katz was too hard on this film, and I'm grateful to you for pointing out its finer qualities since I certainly wouldn't have sounded as elegant as you did.
That being said, I do have three points to make.
Go watch it. It's a little short, but fun. (And it's set a new standard for integrating CGI with traditional animation...)
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Fair enough. But much of the average end user today isn't using these moderated environments. I'd wager you don't use an AOL address. (Not that I do either, but Joe Averager does.. and it gets spammed, big time.) So does my old college account.
You're right, much of the internet communities are moderated or controlled, but aren't those the communities who have been here longer? Who aren't part of the JOe Average surfing from home after work? Aren't we still leaving a lot of the internet population out to flame with each other, or pushed out of the loop by flaming?
Do I have to know how to set up a kill file for my news reader before I can be allowed to participate without so much difficulty?
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If no one can hear anything but your yelling, then certainly no one else can speak, freely or otherwise.
The same can happen when an eletronic forum becomes bloated with so much junk that the signal to noise ratio approximates zero. Hence the UDP.
I know, I know. You can just "walk away" right?
You can be spammed out of a forum and start another and hope all those other folks can find it before the spammers do, right?
So you should change your email address when it gets so spammed that you can't use it anymore? What happens when every email address is that way? When happens when every USENET forum is that way? ALmost every communicaton o nthe internet that isn't somehow moderated is already suffering from these problems.
And don't forget that harassment can occur in any communicaton, and speaking with anger or foul language is different than harrassing someone with your speech. BOth of these problems already plague the net.
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Regardless, congradulations, Jon. Well done, sir.
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They also review other small game companies offerings at their Contagious Dreams site.
It's where I'm doing more than half my Christmas shopping.
Enjoy!
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True, and my example did leave much to be desired, however economic reasons were invovled, and economic reasons are some of the few that can be assumed as motivating factors by just about everyone. (Or at least the government.)
I suppose you believe that where there is not enough economic incentive to do so [...] there should be no laws to prevent employers ignoring safety and risking electrocutions, maimings, and deaths.
Don't get your feathers in a ruffle. I never said anything about should. I was merely commenting on what you also acknowledge does happen.
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Doesn't being persecuted for your beliefs count as a loss of freedom? I doubt many other people will repeat Singer's views with the obvious results it's had on his life, just because his thoughts were unpopular.
Natural selection pretty much took care of babies who were too ill or sickly to survive. However, people tend to take care of them now. If they want to do that, it's their business, their money, and their lives.
If we lived in a purely opportunitstic and capitalist society, perhaps. But, we don't. We have many goverment programs which aid the general populace, and many of those include financial support for those in need, regardless of how they got there. The general taxpayer pays for these subsidies, in essence funding poor decisions. That's why seatbelt lawas were passed. (Of course, we could have instead, removed the tax money from hospitals and such...)
I wouldn't trust genetic engineering yet until it is well-proven. Why implement a technology when you know you don't understand its ramifications?
I believe the point was not to advocate this as a solution, but merely acknowledge that there are options already in development that make Singer's issues worth discussion.
And, finally, do you like posting complicated, controversial articles of dubious relevance on slashdot?
I don't know so much about the dubious relevance. That's almost always an argueable point thanks to the "Stuff that Matters." definition. Of course, it does refer to both technology used as communication (particularly the internet) and a previously posted /. article. That seems pretty well grounded.
Is the article really that complicated, or is it the issue itself? Is controversial a reason to not post an article? Isn't that kind of limiting exactly the point this article is trying to explore? (Every geek loves recursion!)
I'll give you that John may take a lengthy approach to it, but he's a journalist, and not a man page author. That's one of the reasons I liek having him around. ;)
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