It's not the ratings that I take offense to, it's the parents who rely on them completely who create a bad situation.
Parents should have an active involvement in what their kids are doing, and you are doing just that. You made your *own* decision.
Most parents I've seen are content to let pop culture raise their children. They're lazy. I think that's much more sick than any kind of violence in the media. It creates a bad dependence on others. When someone else takes offense to something you think your kid *should* be exposed to... Well, you know the rest.
Personally, I think that you should not let ratings define your decisions. I think you should keep making the decisions yourself.
This is exactly what the opposition to ratings is all about.
I've never actually tried it, but SuSE is apparently tailored for blind access.
Upon initial bootup of the installer, and even the rescue system, it probes for a braille display. It supposedly allows a complete Linux install for a blind user without any sighted help at all.
People are invariably impressed when the "probing for a braille display" message comes up.
I suggest calling them up and talking to somebody in person. Those guys are really responsive to that sort of thing.
No, no,no. You didn't totally get what I meant. I am very glad that CML2 will make an appearance. Hell, I'm a very happy professional Python programmer. Even I want a system that handles dependencies.
What I mean is that regular users no longer need to compile kernels regularly. Modules were available for at least 3 years before I started bothering with them, and it has only been the past year that I haven't bothered compiling kernels on my desktop/laptop machines. This is mostly due to the way SuSE handles everything for me (I'm an ex-Slackware user and old habits die hard).
What I really mean is that Joe Blow ex-Windows user doesn't need to configure kernels. If I don't, then he/she doesn't need to, either.
If you're, say, a Debian or Slackware user, then you're used to doing these things. I'm strange in that I put myself into Joe Blow's position whenever I'm normally using a computer (I try to to think as a user). You're talking to somebody who actually migrated from vi to SciTE. Seriously. I was actually a die hard vi user. Nowadays, I forget most of that stuff and I like hitting F5, having code-completion, etc.
To sum up: Easier-to-compile kernels: good. The need to do so: not-so-good.
I hope that clears it up, but I'm quite drunk right now, so...
I live in Canada, so my experiences are probably different than any of the Merkins around here.
UPS: These guys really suck nasty ass when you live in eastern Canada. They don't actaually operate here. It gets passed on to Sameday (Someday) courier. I bought a laptop from Egghead which took a month to get here. There is no such thing as "air shipping" around here as far as UPS is concerned, even though their major call center is in New Brunswick. Worse than that, they pull a "Microsoft" by making their customers (including Matrix Orbital, sigh) sign a contract forcing them to use only UPS, even though the customers pay for it. I have tried numerous times to use Fedex or Purolator, to no avail. Even USPS is way better, IMO.
Fedex: No trouble. No problems. I have never had trouble with these guys. I recommend them if you're Canadian.
Purolator: Yes and no, mostly yes. They're really quick, even with the cheap rates. I was totally surprised at first that I was getting next day service without expecting it. My brother used to work for them, so I always used to get my packages directly from him. He'd sign and give it to me later, saving me a lot of trouble (I was in school or at work in the daytime). I buy a lot of stuff from DigiKey, who publishes a Canadian catalog (and a very cool website) with duties and GST included in the prices. They use Purolator by default if you're in Canada. They handle the GST themselves. That is truly cool, for a company based in Thief River Falls, MN, USA. Stuff comes in record time, even with the cheap rates. On the other hand, they destroyed a VA Linux server on us (my company), that was enclosed in a custom shock-mounted case we had made for us (demo server). They paid us fully what we originally paid for it and gave us a formal apology. That's very cool, IMO.
Fedex: Never a problem. "Overnight" shipping takes 2 days, instead of one, when ordering from the States. I just paid CAN$200 for SuSE 7.3 in this situation... Damn duties. I am relatively happy, though. This probably has a lot to do with how impressed I am with 7.3 (released on FTP today, in case you were wondering why the mirror sites were slow as hell, and probably still are).
Canada Post: Believe it or not, I am happy with the service. They are much cheaper than anybody else, and I just today recieved a shipment from BC (I'm in Halifax) that was sent out yesterday. Bravo. Crown corporations *do* work.
That's just my experience. Some of you probably have different experiences. Maybe it's like hard drives, where everybody has *one* brand they refuse to buy, based on past experiences. (I have 2: Western Digital and Maxtor, ugh)
90% of the time I configure a kernel, it's for a *different* machine.
Thanks to modules, regular users do not generally need to configure kernels. CML is most often used by people like me, who play with esoteric hardware and regularly apply various kernel patches, messing with the code in the process.
Windows XP has a thing called "remote desktop connection", which is a lot like remote X connections on Linux, except that things like sound and hardware ports are also brought across to the remote machine.
Ever hear of a 'sound daemon'?
It's not a new concept. There are dedicated X-terminals out there that support sound. KDE 2.x uses Artsd and GNOME uses Esd. They work quite well, AFAIK.
As for the 'hardware ports', what exactly do you mean? How else *could* it work? If I'm running an X session and I print in an application under it, it will use whatever system is on the box I'm running the program on.
Recently we have been having difficulties running the chip at 100MBit/sec
I had the same trouble in Linux. Rather than mess with it, I replaced it with an 8139. It's not fast by any stretch of the imagination, but it's better than being stuck on 10Mb.
For cheap-o cards, I've had good success with the Tulip and Rhine cards... Well, better than RealTek, anyway.
My favourite PCI cards by far are Intel's EtherExpress Pros. I've consistently been able to get much higher bandwidth out of them. Their switches are fast, too. Speed testing is part of my job, can you tell?:-)
That said, I still like 3Com's PCMCIA cards, but they are totally different beasts.
If I download something that's GPLed, then the copyright owner cannot remove that licensing. This is explicitly defined in the GPL. Later versions may be distributed with other licenses, but if you download a tarball which has the COPYING file in it and the appropriate notices, the GPL applies.
The different licenses are packaged separately. If you get Qt/Free Edition distibution (as in tarball), the GPL applies. If you get the Academic Edition distribution (presumably a CD), then a different license applies and it is marked as such.
Also remember that the GPL explicitly disallows selective rejection of use. TrollTech, in using the GPL, cannot restrict usage of Qt to certain groups and not others for any reason, as long as those groups respect the GPL. This includes the internal use group.
After all of your research, did you find anything about TrollTech using a *modified* GPL?
They cannot change the meaning of the GPL without modifying the GPL. GPL is OK for in-house development.
The stuff you found refers to the 'professional' and 'academic' licensing, which defines things differently.
Your last quote is what they think people *should* do, not necessarily what they can.
Re:Sun, why not KDE, for the last time?
on
No GNOME For Solaris 9
·
· Score: 3, Flamebait
for non corporate use, duh
Uh, no. Corporations can use GPLed code all they want, as long as they do not distribute binaries outside of their organisation without source. If they want to do that, however, they can buy a license to sell closed-source software.
The end result is that Qt encourages *more* open-source code, while GTK does not due to the LGPL.
Two things, though:
- Most software is written for internal use
- If you're going to sell apps, Qt is cheap as dirt as there are no individual licensing fees
It looks like Sun, contrary to the opinion of many Slashdotters, is *encouraging* closed-source by making it easy to do so.
Man, I'm really getting sick of these arguments...
Qt was never intended to be just a GUI. It was intended from the beginning to be a RAD environment. That means simplifying many programming tasks including, but not limited to: GUI stuff (QWidget on down), string use (QString, etc.), internationalisation (i18n, QtLinguist, etc.), 3D graphics (QGL), and the elimination of evil callbacks (signal/slots are my very favourite feature). You can also create non-GUI apps under Qt, if you want (KDE's 'dcop' command is an example. try an 'ldd' on it)
Database functionality is actually quite important for a toolkit such as Qt. Have you tried Kylix? It's biggest selling point is it's DB functionality. It's really simple to quickly create DB apps, even if you can only use MySQL or Interbase. We have it where I work but we use PostgreSQL. I will definitely be trying Qt's new DB functionality
Do you *really* want to make a frontend in Qt and a backend in Java? If you're going to use Java, you might as well use Swing or Awt for the GUI bits. Besides, I've seen some terrible experiences with getting different Java programs running under various JREs on Windows. If you can simply compile a binary and an installer, then the user only has to install one thing and can avoid JPain
You do have access to all the source-code. The only requirement is that you have to pay for _using_ it if you are making money on it.
That's not entirely accurate. You have to pay for using it if you are making money on it and you're developing closed-source apps.
You are free to make money off of Qt-based apps without paying TrollTech as long as you provide source to your customers as per the GPL. This is why distros are allowed to package KDE and any other GPL-licensed software such as Emacs, Gcc, and others.
Don't forget the coolest feature of KDE file dialogs: bookmarks.
The GNOME file dialog is a royal pain to use. It's ugly (layout and widgets) and has no useablity features. I find myself frustrated whenever I use it.
I don't really think that's accurate, at least in some respects.
I find that Mozilla is overall more stable and has more (useful) features than Netscape 6.x. OpenOffice has less features than StarOffice, spellchecking being the biggest one.
You are right, however, about how Sun and Netscape use the projects.
Hmmm, so this story comes out just *days* after Kazaa and Morpheus switch to a central authentication server, primarily to block users of giFT.
Let's take a quote from the giFT page:
We believe that the protocol was changed in such a way that you must now log into a central server to get a new "key" for generating the cipher state for encryption and decryption. This was a bad move by FastTrack, as it now makes it's network reliant on a centralized server, and possibly puts them in a situation similar to Napster.
The everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to software. How many users choose SuSE just because the esoteric, useless package they need is provided as an rpm? It's probably not that many. Seriously, folks - how many users *actually need* five or six CDs of packages? Debian offers three but only the first is really required, unless you need something weird. But Debian doesn't have to pay the maintainers of the extraneous CDs; they're volunteers.
I prefer to have it on DVD and I leave it on my laptop as well as store the entire thing on a server. If I need a package, I can open up YaST and do a search. I much prefer SuSE RPMs because they seem to pay a lot of attention to detail, making sure that everything integrates nicely and is easy to setup. Do note that you're not representative of their big customers, who *do* want the kitchen sink approach, and often use Alice, a great system, to do mass installations. It all saves a lot of time in a big company.
The crappy installer. It's proprietary and annoying. dselect or kpackage blows it out of the water. And the penguin looks like the ball he's sitting on is wedged up his behind. (cf "Take it Tux")
The installer is great. Dselect has a *horrid* user interface and Kpackage is not an installer. I'm also sick of the "proprietary YaST" FUD I see around here. Did you actually *read* the license? Not only did I read it, but I agree with it. You obviusly have no idea that it is extremely customisable, either. Each YaST2 module is a perl script, which you can mess with. You can also make your own, if you want. It's really cool, and well documented. All of the source is there for the binary parts, as well, and you can modify it all you want, as long as you don't modify it *and* sell it. One or the other is just fine.
The fact that you need to cycle through each of the 5-6 installation CDs for a standard install. It completely defies reason.
You're totally wrong. Not much more to say here.
The silly, unprofessional prompts. "Have a lot of fun!" Is this really from a serious company that wants to make money? I showed it to my boss and he thought it was a joke (like the "redneck" dialect in RH 4 - which actually was funny).
I'm having trouble understanding you here. You think 'redneck' dialogue is professional and the single phrase "Have a lot of fun!" isn't? If anybody uses that phrase for their prime criteria for dumping a solution they should be fired on the spot.
Beeping right before rebooting the system. Again, it serves no useful purpose and only annoys your office mates.
Speaking as someone who works for a company that sells servers, we did the same thing. An ascending beep for startup and a descending beep for shutdown. Why did we do this? Reason 1 was that our customers asked for it. There are usually no monitors hooked up to servers and if you're shutting down from a ssh connection, it would be really nice to know when it's safe to turn the server off.
A bank that refuses to accomodate browser versions it's not able to personally certify as up to the task is arguably one that's safer, where I'd be more comfortable banking online. I have yet to find a bank that would consider supporting non-mainstream (and/or untested) browser versions.
Hmmm, you prefer banks that are not compliant to standards? You seem to think that makes it "safer."
That's some seriously twisted logic, my friend. My bank works fine under Linux. Actually, a couple of years ago I could do anything but pay my bills in Linux. The issue was posted to Slashdot as a story and it was magically fixed a very short time later. They're fine with Linux, as are most banks here in Canada.
You see, adhering to standards shows a much more competent IT department. You seem to think the opposite. That, to me, is crazy, especially when the non-standards your preferred bank uses (we are talking about Microsoft here, right?) have been shown to be woefully insecure, as compared to the alternatives. Mine uses Netscape Enterprise on Solaris, how about yours?
Let's try it on my desktop, shall we? (which is what we're talking about here, not shells as you guys are talking about):
- Click on big K
- Click on Control Centre
- Click on YaST2 modules (ok, so this one is non-obvious, but the search tab at the top will find it)
- Click on DNS in the tree on the left, or on the link on the right (preceeding the text "DNS and hostnames")
- Read the message about it requiring super user privileges and to click on the button below
- Click on the button below
- It asks for a root password, enter it
- The setup screen pops up, with a simple, to-the-point interface and a nicely-formatted explanation of what to do here on the left (ie: not as an extra step, looking for a help screen, that the majority of people fail to do)
- Insert necessary data
- Click 'Finish'
So, is that easier, harder or what?
Can you really say, considering the huge difference in the architecture (read: security) of the system?
Sure, you have to do more stuff, but there's a good reason for it, and I'll even be so bold to say that the last part is undeniably easier. However, you'll either have to take my word on it, or run SuSE to try it, because I can't really show you what it looks like...
There's also the fact that if I don't like how that was handled, I can change it, because the YaST2 modules are actually Perl scripts, which can be modified. I can also make my own modules.
That feature might not actually make it easier to use, but would come in quite handy in a large IS department for autoconfiguration and whatnot.
Slashdot Mirror
I applaud you.
It's not the ratings that I take offense to, it's the parents who rely on them completely who create a bad situation.
Parents should have an active involvement in what their kids are doing, and you are doing just that. You made your *own* decision.
Most parents I've seen are content to let pop culture raise their children. They're lazy. I think that's much more sick than any kind of violence in the media. It creates a bad dependence on others. When someone else takes offense to something you think your kid *should* be exposed to... Well, you know the rest.
Personally, I think that you should not let ratings define your decisions. I think you should keep making the decisions yourself.
This is exactly what the opposition to ratings is all about.
I say to you: Bravo.
I've never actually tried it, but SuSE is apparently tailored for blind access.
Upon initial bootup of the installer, and even the rescue system, it probes for a braille display. It supposedly allows a complete Linux install for a blind user without any sighted help at all.
People are invariably impressed when the "probing for a braille display" message comes up.
I suggest calling them up and talking to somebody in person. Those guys are really responsive to that sort of thing.
No, no ,no. You didn't totally get what I meant. I am very glad that CML2 will make an appearance. Hell, I'm a very happy professional Python programmer. Even I want a system that handles dependencies.
What I mean is that regular users no longer need to compile kernels regularly. Modules were available for at least 3 years before I started bothering with them, and it has only been the past year that I haven't bothered compiling kernels on my desktop/laptop machines. This is mostly due to the way SuSE handles everything for me (I'm an ex-Slackware user and old habits die hard).
What I really mean is that Joe Blow ex-Windows user doesn't need to configure kernels. If I don't, then he/she doesn't need to, either.
If you're, say, a Debian or Slackware user, then you're used to doing these things. I'm strange in that I put myself into Joe Blow's position whenever I'm normally using a computer (I try to to think as a user). You're talking to somebody who actually migrated from vi to SciTE. Seriously. I was actually a die hard vi user. Nowadays, I forget most of that stuff and I like hitting F5, having code-completion, etc.
To sum up: Easier-to-compile kernels: good. The need to do so: not-so-good.
I hope that clears it up, but I'm quite drunk right now, so...
I live in Canada, so my experiences are probably different than any of the Merkins around here.
UPS: These guys really suck nasty ass when you live in eastern Canada. They don't actaually operate here. It gets passed on to Sameday (Someday) courier. I bought a laptop from Egghead which took a month to get here. There is no such thing as "air shipping" around here as far as UPS is concerned, even though their major call center is in New Brunswick. Worse than that, they pull a "Microsoft" by making their customers (including Matrix Orbital, sigh) sign a contract forcing them to use only UPS, even though the customers pay for it. I have tried numerous times to use Fedex or Purolator, to no avail. Even USPS is way better, IMO.
Fedex: No trouble. No problems. I have never had trouble with these guys. I recommend them if you're Canadian.
Purolator: Yes and no, mostly yes. They're really quick, even with the cheap rates. I was totally surprised at first that I was getting next day service without expecting it. My brother used to work for them, so I always used to get my packages directly from him. He'd sign and give it to me later, saving me a lot of trouble (I was in school or at work in the daytime). I buy a lot of stuff from DigiKey, who publishes a Canadian catalog (and a very cool website) with duties and GST included in the prices. They use Purolator by default if you're in Canada. They handle the GST themselves. That is truly cool, for a company based in Thief River Falls, MN, USA. Stuff comes in record time, even with the cheap rates. On the other hand, they destroyed a VA Linux server on us (my company), that was enclosed in a custom shock-mounted case we had made for us (demo server). They paid us fully what we originally paid for it and gave us a formal apology. That's very cool, IMO.
Fedex: Never a problem. "Overnight" shipping takes 2 days, instead of one, when ordering from the States. I just paid CAN$200 for SuSE 7.3 in this situation... Damn duties. I am relatively happy, though. This probably has a lot to do with how impressed I am with 7.3 (released on FTP today, in case you were wondering why the mirror sites were slow as hell, and probably still are).
Canada Post: Believe it or not, I am happy with the service. They are much cheaper than anybody else, and I just today recieved a shipment from BC (I'm in Halifax) that was sent out yesterday. Bravo. Crown corporations *do* work.
That's just my experience. Some of you probably have different experiences. Maybe it's like hard drives, where everybody has *one* brand they refuse to buy, based on past experiences. (I have 2: Western Digital and Maxtor, ugh)
90% of the time I configure a kernel, it's for a *different* machine.
Thanks to modules, regular users do not generally need to configure kernels. CML is most often used by people like me, who play with esoteric hardware and regularly apply various kernel patches, messing with the code in the process.
There's a Java implementation of it, and there are platforms it runs on where Java doesn't, such as PalmOS.
The fact that Python is *much* simpler to implement than Java also contributes to portability.
You do realise that they don't actually make that stuff, right?
It's outsourced.
He's not actually playing Monopoly.
The "card" is a metaphor meaning that the top brass hired him to do it. As dumb as high-up people can be, nobody is *that* dumb.
What are they going to do? Cover their servers with plywood? Throw a tarp over the switches?
He also mentioned FireWire, which is great for video.
Ever hear of a 'sound daemon'?
It's not a new concept. There are dedicated X-terminals out there that support sound. KDE 2.x uses Artsd and GNOME uses Esd. They work quite well, AFAIK.
As for the 'hardware ports', what exactly do you mean? How else *could* it work? If I'm running an X session and I print in an application under it, it will use whatever system is on the box I'm running the program on.
I had the same trouble in Linux. Rather than mess with it, I replaced it with an 8139. It's not fast by any stretch of the imagination, but it's better than being stuck on 10Mb.
For cheap-o cards, I've had good success with the Tulip and Rhine cards... Well, better than RealTek, anyway.
My favourite PCI cards by far are Intel's EtherExpress Pros. I've consistently been able to get much higher bandwidth out of them. Their switches are fast, too. Speed testing is part of my job, can you tell?
That said, I still like 3Com's PCMCIA cards, but they are totally different beasts.
If I download something that's GPLed, then the copyright owner cannot remove that licensing. This is explicitly defined in the GPL. Later versions may be distributed with other licenses, but if you download a tarball which has the COPYING file in it and the appropriate notices, the GPL applies.
The different licenses are packaged separately. If you get Qt/Free Edition distibution (as in tarball), the GPL applies. If you get the Academic Edition distribution (presumably a CD), then a different license applies and it is marked as such.
Also remember that the GPL explicitly disallows selective rejection of use. TrollTech, in using the GPL, cannot restrict usage of Qt to certain groups and not others for any reason, as long as those groups respect the GPL. This includes the internal use group.
Oh, so it's ok for me to break into your house to retrieve my stolen DVD player you bought from 'a friend.'
After all of your research, did you find anything about TrollTech using a *modified* GPL?
They cannot change the meaning of the GPL without modifying the GPL. GPL is OK for in-house development.
The stuff you found refers to the 'professional' and 'academic' licensing, which defines things differently.
Your last quote is what they think people *should* do, not necessarily what they can.
Uh, no. Corporations can use GPLed code all they want, as long as they do not distribute binaries outside of their organisation without source. If they want to do that, however, they can buy a license to sell closed-source software.
The end result is that Qt encourages *more* open-source code, while GTK does not due to the LGPL.
Two things, though:
- Most software is written for internal use
- If you're going to sell apps, Qt is cheap as dirt as there are no individual licensing fees
It looks like Sun, contrary to the opinion of many Slashdotters, is *encouraging* closed-source by making it easy to do so.
Man, I'm really getting sick of these arguments...
OK, not so many points as I thought...
That's not entirely accurate. You have to pay for using it if you are making money on it and you're developing closed-source apps.
You are free to make money off of Qt-based apps without paying TrollTech as long as you provide source to your customers as per the GPL. This is why distros are allowed to package KDE and any other GPL-licensed software such as Emacs, Gcc, and others.
Don't forget the coolest feature of KDE file dialogs: bookmarks.
The GNOME file dialog is a royal pain to use. It's ugly (layout and widgets) and has no useablity features. I find myself frustrated whenever I use it.
I don't really think that's accurate, at least in some respects.
I find that Mozilla is overall more stable and has more (useful) features than Netscape 6.x. OpenOffice has less features than StarOffice, spellchecking being the biggest one.
You are right, however, about how Sun and Netscape use the projects.
Reminds me of the number from the Hitchhiker's Guide.
Apparently, an older couple had the phone number. IIRC, they didn't mind the calls either.
Let's take a quote from the giFT page:
Can you say "Ooops?"
I prefer to have it on DVD and I leave it on my laptop as well as store the entire thing on a server. If I need a package, I can open up YaST and do a search. I much prefer SuSE RPMs because they seem to pay a lot of attention to detail, making sure that everything integrates nicely and is easy to setup. Do note that you're not representative of their big customers, who *do* want the kitchen sink approach, and often use Alice, a great system, to do mass installations. It all saves a lot of time in a big company.
The installer is great. Dselect has a *horrid* user interface and Kpackage is not an installer. I'm also sick of the "proprietary YaST" FUD I see around here. Did you actually *read* the license? Not only did I read it, but I agree with it. You obviusly have no idea that it is extremely customisable, either. Each YaST2 module is a perl script, which you can mess with. You can also make your own, if you want. It's really cool, and well documented. All of the source is there for the binary parts, as well, and you can modify it all you want, as long as you don't modify it *and* sell it. One or the other is just fine.
You're totally wrong. Not much more to say here.
I'm having trouble understanding you here. You think 'redneck' dialogue is professional and the single phrase "Have a lot of fun!" isn't? If anybody uses that phrase for their prime criteria for dumping a solution they should be fired on the spot.
Speaking as someone who works for a company that sells servers, we did the same thing. An ascending beep for startup and a descending beep for shutdown. Why did we do this? Reason 1 was that our customers asked for it. There are usually no monitors hooked up to servers and if you're shutting down from a ssh connection, it would be really nice to know when it's safe to turn the server off.
Hmmm, you prefer banks that are not compliant to standards? You seem to think that makes it "safer."
That's some seriously twisted logic, my friend. My bank works fine under Linux. Actually, a couple of years ago I could do anything but pay my bills in Linux. The issue was posted to Slashdot as a story and it was magically fixed a very short time later. They're fine with Linux, as are most banks here in Canada.
You see, adhering to standards shows a much more competent IT department. You seem to think the opposite. That, to me, is crazy, especially when the non-standards your preferred bank uses (we are talking about Microsoft here, right?) have been shown to be woefully insecure, as compared to the alternatives. Mine uses Netscape Enterprise on Solaris, how about yours?
Let's try it on my desktop, shall we? (which is what we're talking about here, not shells as you guys are talking about):
- Click on big K
- Click on Control Centre
- Click on YaST2 modules (ok, so this one is non-obvious, but the search tab at the top will find it)
- Click on DNS in the tree on the left, or on the link on the right (preceeding the text "DNS and hostnames")
- Read the message about it requiring super user privileges and to click on the button below
- Click on the button below
- It asks for a root password, enter it
- The setup screen pops up, with a simple, to-the-point interface and a nicely-formatted explanation of what to do here on the left (ie: not as an extra step, looking for a help screen, that the majority of people fail to do)
- Insert necessary data
- Click 'Finish'
So, is that easier, harder or what?
Can you really say, considering the huge difference in the architecture (read: security) of the system?
Sure, you have to do more stuff, but there's a good reason for it, and I'll even be so bold to say that the last part is undeniably easier. However, you'll either have to take my word on it, or run SuSE to try it, because I can't really show you what it looks like...
There's also the fact that if I don't like how that was handled, I can change it, because the YaST2 modules are actually Perl scripts, which can be modified. I can also make my own modules.
That feature might not actually make it easier to use, but would come in quite handy in a large IS department for autoconfiguration and whatnot.