What if the number of debian-based distros is based on the deficiencies of debian.;)
I'm sure you meant that as tongue in cheek, but I'm also sure that the number is based on the ease in which you can make a Debian based distribution. Hell, there's a package in the Debian repository that you can install and run to make yourself a custom distribution in just a handful of commands.
I'm laughing at the sheer incompetence the loudest mouthed RPM-bashers are exhibiting in this thread.
Now, who should we thank for attracting an audience of clueless amateurs into the Linux world?
People in glass houses... Etc, etc...
Apt is merely a tool. People misattributed the benefits of debian to the Apt tool, when the benefit was really in the repository. Apt "for RPMs" is basically useless without a unified repository. Or at least several repositories that are linked against the same libraries and share dependency hierarchies.
The benefits of DEB over RPM have nothing to do with the tool, either. They have to do with how the two formats handle configuration (Or in the case of RPM, how they *don't*).
I was wondering the same thing... How long would it take for them to fire him for not showing up... It may be a while before they figure out how to get that big head of his out the door of the Soyuz.
It is almost risk free to issue student loans, so they're easily available. The common sense (but incorrect) assumption is that this makes education more accessible. The reality is that schools have turned the art of extracting the maximum amount of money you can afford out of you into a science. More accessible credit means they can charge as much as your credit limit can handle along with however much cash you have on hand.
When the Democrats won in 2006, they passed a bill to "increase access to education". They did this by eliminating the (already promised) interest rate subsidies on existing "fixed rate" loans to apply them to new loans. They changed the terms of my loan retroactively. Long story short, my interest rates went up. From 1.5% to 6.5%. My wife refinanced to fixed rate loans after graduating (Not the kind you describe where they count lower payments as "savings" even though you'll be paying for a lot longer), and was spared.
What to take from this? Refinancing is fine if you're smart about it and don't do it just to lower your payment, and never expect politicians not to pull a bait and switch when it becomes convenient for them.
Incidentally, most student loans are exempt from bankruptcy protection, so even if you can't pay you still have to pay. "Consolidated" loans are typically personal loans that don't qualify for the bankruptcy protection. So if you did have to file for bankruptcy at some point, you'd be better off if you had consolidated. That's a terrible justification though, and nobody should ever re-finance debt just because of that.
Also, since my loans were expensive after the change I simply paid them off, while hers are still a "bargain" (She earns more in interest on the cash than she spends in interest on the debt), so she still carries loans. It's a mixed blessing if you're of the debt-averse type.
I don't want to get into a war of semantics. I think licensing is a regulation. I think it turns out that's the only point we've ended up disagreeing on...
I did read it properly. Unfortunately the vested interest in increasing the user base is only one of the reasons people start to use drugs. It's debatable (and to me, doubtful) that it's the primary reason. Eliminating that vector is not a credible solution to ending drug use.
Theoretically (I'm aware it doesn't work in practice), though, removing availability actually does end use entirely.
If you want drug enforcement reform, it's important to understand the other side's goals and reasoning.
I agree with your contention that government should not protect people from themselves.
However I would be careful which regulations you classify as "protecting people from themselves".
There is a reason we have zoning. A large number of these were caused by experimentation. A large number were caused by simple carelessness too. The difference between protecting you from yourself and protecting others from you is merely an exercise in risk assessment, a judgment in how much risk you're willing to leave in the competence of strangers next door, and a balance between convenience (how inconvenient would it be if you weren't allowed to store a car battery in your garage? how inconvenient is it to the average person to make the chemist rent a lab in an industrial zone?), risk, and reward (which is more likely, the amateur chemist next door blowing up his house and burning the neighborhood down, or discovering something wonderful? how much more likely?).
We certainly shouldn't be regulating this stuff because we're afraid of terrorists though. That's just silly for a whole long list of reasons.
Authorities try to shut down meth labs because meth lab explosions take out whole apartment buildings, and damage many people's property.
It's not so simple as FlyingBishop being wrong. It's not black and white. Both of the first two comments in this thread have elements of truth to them.
If you lived in an urban environment, and your house burnt down because your neighbor's meth lab blew up, you'd be pretty pissed. You don't let your neighbor do his own plumbing for his gas furnace either, and for the same reason.
People need to be able to experiment and learn, and we also need to keep unsafe practices out of dense residential areas.
Why is it so hard for legalization advocates to understand that the war on drugs is really a war against drug use, and not drug sales. Eliminating drug dealers is supposedly a means to eliminating drug use. Any plan to eliminate dealers that involves users getting their drugs from somewhere else defeats the intent.
(Please note that this post doesn't advocate one position or the other. It merely points out the flaw in the parent poster's logic.)
Discrete components have gotten more and more expensive. In the past, the electronic components you bought at Radio Shack were the same parts that were used in the complete devices sold in the same store.
Today, electronic devices use tiny ASICs under epoxy blobs, surface mount microcontrolers, tiny capacitors and resistors that are sold on a reel and connected by a very precise pick and place machines... The discrete components are now manufactured solely for prototyping and hobby use. With the decrease in volume, the cost has shot up. Not only does that cut into the margins of a company like Radio Shack, but it also inflates the cost of stocking each store.
On the other hand, an internet supplier only has to keep one set of stock, can sell for less, can keep a wider variety... Radio Shack can't compete with that. They'd be fools to carry the types of components that they used to. Access to parts is greater now than it was anyway.
You know thats a nice statistic to trot out, but it doesnt really work like that in the real world in a corporate or home setting.
Oh, but it does. Especially in corporate environments, where companies buy hardware that is specifically supported by the software they want to run.
You'll have to tell the 40 or so developers I work with that Linux doesn't support the devices in their Latitude D & E series laptops (various models from over the last 3 years). They likely won't believe you though, since they run it every day... Did you have a bad experience installing on one machine and decide to exaggerate a bit? The ironic bit? The D series laptops have "Windows Vista Capable" stickers on them, but if you install Vista, the wireless, the sound, and Aero don't work. Dell has since released patches/drivers that you can install to solve the problem, but the Vista install doesn't support the hardware out of the box.
The fact that so many vendors are still using that old of an underlying platform speaks to their wisdom, not their shittiness.
If it's not broken, don't fix it. If an embedded device is still working, only a fool would "upgrade" the software on it.
Thats a bit misleading. That specific market doesnt run an OS at all. They run the POS they like from the vendor they like. They never see nor care about the underlying OS.
You're the one being misleading. That was exactly my point. They don't care about the eye-candy they buy the tool for the job it does.
You need to figure out whether you should run the latest version, or an older version? Hardly the same comparison...
You have the 32/64 decision with Windows too. But with Vista you have Home, Premium, Business, and Ultimate, each in 32 & 64 bit versions. That's 8 to choose from compared to two.
Where it excels is with older (even just slightly older) devices. Which is also where Vista falls down.
An end user is only likely to try to install Vista on older hardware. If it's newer hardware it would have come pre-installed.
Additionally, the problems with newer graphics cards and network adapters are few and far between compared to what they were even two years ago. Yes, if your graphics adapter doesn't work, your install is a catastrophic failure, but odds are it *does* just work for the vast majority of users.
All of this is beside the point though. The point being that Vista isn't any easier to install than any other modern OS. In fact, due to the copy protection it's actually more work.
The problem is the existence of government subsidies, and the exclusion of student debt from bankruptcy.
The problem is *not* people profiteering off the loans.
If loans were harder to get, tuition will drop. The universal constant is that schools will suck every dime out of you that you can afford, so why let them suck your credit dry too?
so in general the vast majority of people who use Windows (I think) couldn't really give a crap about eye candy in general, because they're busy getting stuff done
Which is why so many people are still running XP, Windows 2000, or even (in the case of a lot of retail and restaurant systems) Windows 3.1.
Also, you're confusing rabid fanboys with drooling masses. They're almost opposites.
MacOS: Insert DVD. Power on. Choose the hard drive to install to out of the list. Press Next.
Ubuntu: Insert DVD. Power on. Double click "install". Choose your timezone. Choose the hard drive. Press Next.
Vista: Figure out which edition you need. Insert DVD. Power on. Click Install. Enter product key. Select Hard drive. Select timezone. Configure firewall. Reboot. Perform activation.
All of the above assume all hardware in your system is supported. That's guaranteed with MacOS (if you've got a Mac), and Linux supports more devices than any other operating system on the market...
It's also turning around the phrase the far Right has been using and making it less effective.
This is the real problem. (It's not a feature)
The problem is that people "win" (debates, arguments, elections) based on who has the most clever sayings. Neither major candidate in the last election actually stood for the bulk of the things that their supporters/detractors actually thought they did, because it was all built on soundbites instead of substance.
Notice that the post I initially responded to is modded "insightful". I'm not angry. I'm afraid.
Or the phone with four moving parts fails less than the phone with a full keypad of moving parts, fails less than the phone with a full keypad of moving parts and an old-tech thin-film touchscreen...
Doesn't sound like bias to me. Sounds like common sense. If there are more parts to break, it will break more often all other things being equal.
(the only thing I ever had to replace my Treo for was a worn out key on the thumb board)
I call bullshit. Even in Europe. Reality has a center/center-right bias. Even among people who claim to be liberals, most people oppose immigration and the change that comes along with it, support what they (regionally) consider to be traditional values, and have strong religious beliefs.
The "reality has a liberal bias" quip is cute. But it's bogus. You'd have to live in a hole (ivory tower?) to actually believe it.
Funny, I was about to respond to the parent by saying that some people mistakenly think Godwin's law is an actual law. But you kindly demonstrated for me.
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What if the number of debian-based distros is based on the deficiencies of debian. ;)
I'm sure you meant that as tongue in cheek, but I'm also sure that the number is based on the ease in which you can make a Debian based distribution. Hell, there's a package in the Debian repository that you can install and run to make yourself a custom distribution in just a handful of commands.
I'm laughing at the sheer incompetence the loudest mouthed RPM-bashers are exhibiting in this thread.
Now, who should we thank for attracting an audience of clueless amateurs into the Linux world?
People in glass houses... Etc, etc...
Apt is merely a tool. People misattributed the benefits of debian to the Apt tool, when the benefit was really in the repository. Apt "for RPMs" is basically useless without a unified repository. Or at least several repositories that are linked against the same libraries and share dependency hierarchies.
The benefits of DEB over RPM have nothing to do with the tool, either. They have to do with how the two formats handle configuration (Or in the case of RPM, how they *don't*).
I was wondering the same thing... How long would it take for them to fire him for not showing up... It may be a while before they figure out how to get that big head of his out the door of the Soyuz.
We don't "deal with it". Wireless networking on the D620s and D630s just works out of the box with Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10.
This is why education is so expensive.
It is the only reason.
It is almost risk free to issue student loans, so they're easily available. The common sense (but incorrect) assumption is that this makes education more accessible. The reality is that schools have turned the art of extracting the maximum amount of money you can afford out of you into a science. More accessible credit means they can charge as much as your credit limit can handle along with however much cash you have on hand.
I did not consolidate. My wife did.
When the Democrats won in 2006, they passed a bill to "increase access to education". They did this by eliminating the (already promised) interest rate subsidies on existing "fixed rate" loans to apply them to new loans. They changed the terms of my loan retroactively. Long story short, my interest rates went up. From 1.5% to 6.5%. My wife refinanced to fixed rate loans after graduating (Not the kind you describe where they count lower payments as "savings" even though you'll be paying for a lot longer), and was spared.
What to take from this? Refinancing is fine if you're smart about it and don't do it just to lower your payment, and never expect politicians not to pull a bait and switch when it becomes convenient for them.
Incidentally, most student loans are exempt from bankruptcy protection, so even if you can't pay you still have to pay. "Consolidated" loans are typically personal loans that don't qualify for the bankruptcy protection. So if you did have to file for bankruptcy at some point, you'd be better off if you had consolidated. That's a terrible justification though, and nobody should ever re-finance debt just because of that.
Also, since my loans were expensive after the change I simply paid them off, while hers are still a "bargain" (She earns more in interest on the cash than she spends in interest on the debt), so she still carries loans. It's a mixed blessing if you're of the debt-averse type.
I don't want to get into a war of semantics. I think licensing is a regulation. I think it turns out that's the only point we've ended up disagreeing on...
I did read it properly. Unfortunately the vested interest in increasing the user base is only one of the reasons people start to use drugs. It's debatable (and to me, doubtful) that it's the primary reason. Eliminating that vector is not a credible solution to ending drug use.
Theoretically (I'm aware it doesn't work in practice), though, removing availability actually does end use entirely.
If you want drug enforcement reform, it's important to understand the other side's goals and reasoning.
I agree with your contention that government should not protect people from themselves.
However I would be careful which regulations you classify as "protecting people from themselves".
There is a reason we have zoning. A large number of these were caused by experimentation. A large number were caused by simple carelessness too. The difference between protecting you from yourself and protecting others from you is merely an exercise in risk assessment, a judgment in how much risk you're willing to leave in the competence of strangers next door, and a balance between convenience (how inconvenient would it be if you weren't allowed to store a car battery in your garage? how inconvenient is it to the average person to make the chemist rent a lab in an industrial zone?), risk, and reward (which is more likely, the amateur chemist next door blowing up his house and burning the neighborhood down, or discovering something wonderful? how much more likely?).
We certainly shouldn't be regulating this stuff because we're afraid of terrorists though. That's just silly for a whole long list of reasons.
Authorities try to shut down meth labs because meth lab explosions take out whole apartment buildings, and damage many people's property.
It's not so simple as FlyingBishop being wrong. It's not black and white. Both of the first two comments in this thread have elements of truth to them.
If you lived in an urban environment, and your house burnt down because your neighbor's meth lab blew up, you'd be pretty pissed. You don't let your neighbor do his own plumbing for his gas furnace either, and for the same reason.
People need to be able to experiment and learn, and we also need to keep unsafe practices out of dense residential areas.
Why is it so hard for legalization advocates to understand that the war on drugs is really a war against drug use, and not drug sales. Eliminating drug dealers is supposedly a means to eliminating drug use. Any plan to eliminate dealers that involves users getting their drugs from somewhere else defeats the intent.
(Please note that this post doesn't advocate one position or the other. It merely points out the flaw in the parent poster's logic.)
Discrete components have gotten more and more expensive. In the past, the electronic components you bought at Radio Shack were the same parts that were used in the complete devices sold in the same store.
Today, electronic devices use tiny ASICs under epoxy blobs, surface mount microcontrolers, tiny capacitors and resistors that are sold on a reel and connected by a very precise pick and place machines... The discrete components are now manufactured solely for prototyping and hobby use. With the decrease in volume, the cost has shot up. Not only does that cut into the margins of a company like Radio Shack, but it also inflates the cost of stocking each store.
On the other hand, an internet supplier only has to keep one set of stock, can sell for less, can keep a wider variety... Radio Shack can't compete with that. They'd be fools to carry the types of components that they used to. Access to parts is greater now than it was anyway.
Oh, but it does. Especially in corporate environments, where companies buy hardware that is specifically supported by the software they want to run.
You'll have to tell the 40 or so developers I work with that Linux doesn't support the devices in their Latitude D & E series laptops (various models from over the last 3 years). They likely won't believe you though, since they run it every day... Did you have a bad experience installing on one machine and decide to exaggerate a bit? The ironic bit? The D series laptops have "Windows Vista Capable" stickers on them, but if you install Vista, the wireless, the sound, and Aero don't work. Dell has since released patches/drivers that you can install to solve the problem, but the Vista install doesn't support the hardware out of the box.
The fact that so many vendors are still using that old of an underlying platform speaks to their wisdom, not their shittiness.
If it's not broken, don't fix it. If an embedded device is still working, only a fool would "upgrade" the software on it.
You're the one being misleading. That was exactly my point. They don't care about the eye-candy they buy the tool for the job it does.
You need to figure out whether you should run the latest version, or an older version? Hardly the same comparison...
You have the 32/64 decision with Windows too. But with Vista you have Home, Premium, Business, and Ultimate, each in 32 & 64 bit versions. That's 8 to choose from compared to two.
Where it excels is with older (even just slightly older) devices. Which is also where Vista falls down.
An end user is only likely to try to install Vista on older hardware. If it's newer hardware it would have come pre-installed.
Additionally, the problems with newer graphics cards and network adapters are few and far between compared to what they were even two years ago. Yes, if your graphics adapter doesn't work, your install is a catastrophic failure, but odds are it *does* just work for the vast majority of users.
All of this is beside the point though. The point being that Vista isn't any easier to install than any other modern OS. In fact, due to the copy protection it's actually more work.
The problem is the existence of government subsidies, and the exclusion of student debt from bankruptcy.
The problem is *not* people profiteering off the loans.
If loans were harder to get, tuition will drop. The universal constant is that schools will suck every dime out of you that you can afford, so why let them suck your credit dry too?
I hope they've started to get working on the shutdown menu. I hear that sort of thing can take a long time.
Which is why so many people are still running XP, Windows 2000, or even (in the case of a lot of retail and restaurant systems) Windows 3.1.
Also, you're confusing rabid fanboys with drooling masses. They're almost opposites.
Let me guess. You've only ever installed Windows.
MacOS: Insert DVD. Power on. Choose the hard drive to install to out of the list. Press Next.
Ubuntu: Insert DVD. Power on. Double click "install". Choose your timezone. Choose the hard drive. Press Next.
Vista: Figure out which edition you need. Insert DVD. Power on. Click Install. Enter product key. Select Hard drive. Select timezone. Configure firewall. Reboot. Perform activation.
All of the above assume all hardware in your system is supported. That's guaranteed with MacOS (if you've got a Mac), and Linux supports more devices than any other operating system on the market...
Why do you think I'm angry?
This is the real problem. (It's not a feature)
The problem is that people "win" (debates, arguments, elections) based on who has the most clever sayings. Neither major candidate in the last election actually stood for the bulk of the things that their supporters/detractors actually thought they did, because it was all built on soundbites instead of substance.
Notice that the post I initially responded to is modded "insightful". I'm not angry. I'm afraid.
Yeah. Bias...
Or the phone with four moving parts fails less than the phone with a full keypad of moving parts, fails less than the phone with a full keypad of moving parts and an old-tech thin-film touchscreen...
Doesn't sound like bias to me. Sounds like common sense. If there are more parts to break, it will break more often all other things being equal.
(the only thing I ever had to replace my Treo for was a worn out key on the thumb board)
We need to start referring to him as what he is (we needed to before the election.)
He's a uniter, not a divider.
I call bullshit. Even in Europe. Reality has a center/center-right bias. Even among people who claim to be liberals, most people oppose immigration and the change that comes along with it, support what they (regionally) consider to be traditional values, and have strong religious beliefs.
The "reality has a liberal bias" quip is cute. But it's bogus. You'd have to live in a hole (ivory tower?) to actually believe it.
Funny, I was about to respond to the parent by saying that some people mistakenly think Godwin's law is an actual law. But you kindly demonstrated for me.