I'm a newbie and I always initially log in as root because that's the only way I can get adsl-connect going. I guess maybe I installed it as root, because it doesn't show up or run when I log-in as a regular user. Not a big deal but it is annoying to have to log in as root to get online and then to log out and log back in.
If the release is delayed for a short period of time, ( >1 month), I would agree that this is not a big issue.
But the delay does bring into relief the very long development lags in debian. Two years is a long time for a version upgrade. Take a look at any other distro two years ago, and they don't stack up against more recent distros.
On the other hand, the forthrightness of the explanation for the delay is pretty commendable.
But debian really should do something about making for frequent "Stable" upgrades. I believe this could be done without impacting security.
I suppose the biggest problem is debian's huge scope. Not only 10000 packages, but 11 platforms. The old sytem of development that started with far fewer platforms and packages is not scaling well with the project's increase in scope.
So either the process needs to change or the scope should be lessened. Security and stability should not be compromised.
There is a rather nasty precedent set here that a person does not have an intrinsic right to use their own name if:
a) someone else has it also b) that person is more famous than they are c) they are both in similar businesses.
By this reasoning, If you are named William Gates, and are not the famous one, you better not start a website called billgates.com that has to do with software.
There is a fair indication that the unfamous frampton was trying to cash in on the famous one's name, and this may indicate a certain amount of bad faith. The remedy was wrong, however. At worst, the site might have been required to say, "We are not associated with the untalented former guitarist of the Eagles, Peter Frampton".
A person should always have a right to their own name. You'll also note that the respondent was 61 years old. He has a claim of prior usage!
On the other hand, in reading the complaint, it does seem that the respondent was a bit of a loon.
The project manager definitely said that they were planning release of May 1. Call it unofficial or official or whatever, the statement was made by the person nominally in charge of the project.
I'm using Red Hat right now, and one reason (the main reason is that it actially installed smootly on my machine, unlike mandrake, slack or debian) is that I'm a little put off by the seat of the "seat-of-their-pants" way the project seems to be run.
I'm not trying to be insulting. I'm sure that the project is filled with fine programmers, but for users and potential users of the system, there seems to be a lack of accountability.
I'm not that interested in getting in a flame war with you, since I fear that you would be woefully outmatched.
Let me just say that your hostile attitude is pretty indicative of someone who should not be dealing with customers. I'm sure that you would do just fine in a job where you wouldn't have to deal with people. Have you considered janitorial services? It's just you and your mop.
It's very true that most customer support problems stem from the stupidity of management, not through the fault of the front line assistance. That doesn't make it good or excusable, whoever is at fault. And bad attitudes on the front lines don't help the situation any.
You and the management that spawned you are the reason tech support sucks, this attitude that the customer is always wrong, and that if the problem is not defined by your narrow job description, then its not the company's problem.
There is nothing mre ridiiculous than telling a customer "That's not my department".
If they are calling with regards to your company, it is your department. If you can't help them, get them in touch with someone who can.
Tech support is supposed to be working for the customer, not the other way around.
Find a competent labor lawyer and ask his advice, and absolutely don't assume a potential $50K liability without having a lawyer look at it. Don't let them fuck around with you on this.
This is serious money. You have a right to know your options from a competent source.
As far as I know, there is some precedence for this sort of arrangement. On the other hand $50K is a hell of a lot for one year's education and training for one person. If the training would be easily applied to another job, like a Harvard MBA (which is a hell of a lot cheaper, by the way), then you should be more willing to consider it. On the other hand, you have a right to not become an indentured servant.
This sounds kinda fishy.
Talk to a labor lawyer! Try calling your local bar association. They should be able to refer you to one. Or just look in the phone book. An initial consultation should be less than $100.
The cardinal rule of finding a web hoster is to make sure that you can CALL THEM ON THE PHONE.
If you can only get in touch via email, you will find yourself up the creek when something goes wrong.
Many of your cheaper hosters don't offer phone support, and it is indicative of an unprofessional operation. It means they either don't speak English, are a very small shop without adequate resources, or know that their service stinks and just don't want to be bothered by the large numbers of irate customers.
You may pay a little extra to know you can speak to an actual human being, but even if you never need the phone call, its availability is the first good indicator that someone is on the up and up.
Also, calling them is a great time to make sure your site won't be objectionable for them to host.
I might as well give a plug to my web hoster here, http://www.uptownwebhosting.com/. I use their virtual hosting service, which is the most economical.
Unlike many sites that cater to porn, they aren't overpriced.
I use them for 2 vanity sites with low usage, one of which is tongue-in-cheek pseudo-porn, the other of which is an art web site with content that could conceivably be called objectionable.
They're pretty cheap.
One thing I like and don't like is that they are not so professional. This means that they don't care about content. "We don't care as long as you don't get us into trouble," is roughly what they told me when I spoke to them. Unfortunately, this also means that they are sometimes hard to get a hold of (but at least they do have a phone number) and don't have 99.999% uptime (probably more like 99%).
Anyway, they aren't too bad. I wouldn't use them for anything too important, but if this is just a vanity project, I think you'll find them pretty versatile and cheap.
I'm going to stick with Red Hat for now, but one thing I liked about Slackware is that it at least did not cause any problems. But I am also wary of tying myself down to a distro that seems to be a one man show, regardless of how competent that one man might be.
My problems really weren't with hardware compatibility, Red Hat runs fine. My problems were with
1) My own lack of expertise and inability to get Xwindows working (Slackware)
2) An evil installation process that wiped out a lot of data. And then a desktop enviroment that crashed whenever I used the hardware config utilities. (Mandrake, and I hope that they go out of business, the arseholes)
3)Debian. For some reason the installation discs got corrupted. Anyway, I never got past installation.
Finally, I tried Red Hat, which I had avoided because: a) they have publically expressed tepid support for the desktop. b) they just seemed a little too corporate.
Well, I'm glad I gave them a shot, because they finally got Linux up for me.
Just putting my two cents in, but after 3 abortive attempts (Slackware, Mandrake, Debian) I finally got Linux workably installed through Red Hat.
I'm impressed with it, but it is definitely a work in progress.
Probably the biggest obstacle is just inertia. Whether it sucks or not, I've gotten used to my Windows box and have amassed the software on it and tweaked the interface that I'm used to.
Linux also lacks some pretty important software support on the desktop, particularly Adobe's Illustrator and Photoshop.
And finally hardware support is not out of the box. I still haven't started using my digicam with Linux because I'm worried it will be a long and tedious process.
That all said, I am very impressed with the potential of Linux as a desktop workstation. I'm really most interested in it as a server and platform for some big number-crunching.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a newbie and I always initially log in as root because that's the only way I can get adsl-connect going. I guess maybe I installed it as root, because it doesn't show up or run when I log-in as a regular user. Not a big deal but it is annoying to have to log in as root to get online and then to log out and log back in.
Isn't the linux kernel under the GNU?
And wou'll be much freer to be unable to find a decent job once you graduate.
On the other hand your classmates will be much cuter.
Life's always a toss up.
Yeah, but even to retain these degrees of functionality (file browsing and reading html files) don't you have a choice between several programs.
What my real question is, can't you swap out between several choices of competing browsers.
I'm asking because I don't know the answer.
If the release is delayed for a short period of time, ( >1 month), I would agree that this is not a big issue.
But the delay does bring into relief the very long development lags in debian. Two years is a long time for a version upgrade. Take a look at any other distro two years ago, and they don't stack up against more recent distros.
On the other hand, the forthrightness of the explanation for the delay is pretty commendable.
But debian really should do something about making for frequent "Stable" upgrades. I believe this could be done without impacting security.
I suppose the biggest problem is debian's huge scope. Not only 10000 packages, but 11 platforms. The old sytem of development that started with far fewer platforms and packages is not scaling well with the project's increase in scope.
So either the process needs to change or the scope should be lessened. Security and stability should not be compromised.
This is not slashdot FUD.
There is a rather nasty precedent set here that a person does not have an intrinsic right to use their own name if:
a) someone else has it also
b) that person is more famous than they are
c) they are both in similar businesses.
By this reasoning, If you are named William Gates, and are not the famous one, you better not start a website called billgates.com that has to do with software.
There is a fair indication that the unfamous frampton was trying to cash in on the famous one's name, and this may indicate a certain amount of bad faith. The remedy was wrong, however. At worst, the site might have been required to say, "We are not associated with the untalented former guitarist of the Eagles, Peter Frampton".
A person should always have a right to their own name. You'll also note that the respondent was 61 years old. He has a claim of prior usage!
On the other hand, in reading the complaint, it does seem that the respondent was a bit of a loon.
Heh. Windows XP had patches up on the very first day of release.
someone *please* mod this up
Yeah, but don't they have more people working on the packages as well?
BTW, thanks for the dates. They really help to put things into perspective.
I'm wondering if maybe debian ought to consider lessening the scope and ambitiousness of its releases, if only to keep them a little more current.
I now await the being repeatdly told that apt-get will solve all problems, including war in the Mid-East.
I think this is a bit of equivocation.
The project manager definitely said that they were planning release of May 1. Call it unofficial or official or whatever, the statement was made by the person nominally in charge of the project.
I'm using Red Hat right now, and one reason (the main reason is that it actially installed smootly on my machine, unlike mandrake, slack or debian) is that I'm a little put off by the seat of the "seat-of-their-pants" way the project seems to be run.
I'm not trying to be insulting. I'm sure that the project is filled with fine programmers, but for users and potential users of the system, there seems to be a lack of accountability.
I'm wondering, does anyone have any record/memory of how late other debian releases were past the promised date?
fp fp i hope i got fp
cuz this stupid site makes me wait 20 seconds to get it.
I can buy that hold times might go down.
I don't see how the quality of support will improve.
Sounds like your ideal is for noone to buy the product and therefore never call tech support and then you can get fired and collect unemployment.
Not that I'm knocking unemployment.
I can't argue much with the crux of your argument, that you are a helpless drone in a poorly run company.
You're right. You win. Congratulations.
Nyah Nyah Nyah to you too.
I'm not that interested in getting in a flame war with you, since I fear that you would be woefully outmatched.
Let me just say that your hostile attitude is pretty indicative of someone who should not be dealing with customers. I'm sure that you would do just fine in a job where you wouldn't have to deal with people. Have you considered janitorial services? It's just you and your mop.
It's very true that most customer support problems stem from the stupidity of management, not through the fault of the front line assistance. That doesn't make it good or excusable, whoever is at fault. And bad attitudes on the front lines don't help the situation any.
Jeez.
You and the management that spawned you are the reason tech support sucks, this attitude that the customer is always wrong, and that if the problem is not defined by your narrow job description, then its not the company's problem.
There is nothing mre ridiiculous than telling a customer "That's not my department".
If they are calling with regards to your company, it is your department. If you can't help them, get them in touch with someone who can.
Tech support is supposed to be working for the customer, not the other way around.
Don't be a dumbass.
Find a competent labor lawyer and ask his advice, and absolutely don't assume a potential $50K liability without having a lawyer look at it. Don't let them fuck around with you on this.
This is serious money. You have a right to know your options from a competent source.
As far as I know, there is some precedence for this sort of arrangement. On the other hand $50K is a hell of a lot for one year's education and training for one person. If the training would be easily applied to another job, like a Harvard MBA (which is a hell of a lot cheaper, by the way), then you should be more willing to consider it. On the other hand, you have a right to not become an indentured servant.
This sounds kinda fishy.
Talk to a labor lawyer! Try calling your local bar association. They should be able to refer you to one. Or just look in the phone book. An initial consultation should be less than $100.
The cardinal rule of finding a web hoster is to make sure that you can CALL THEM ON THE PHONE.
If you can only get in touch via email, you will find yourself up the creek when something goes wrong.
Many of your cheaper hosters don't offer phone support, and it is indicative of an unprofessional operation. It means they either don't speak English, are a very small shop without adequate resources, or know that their service stinks and just don't want to be bothered by the large numbers of irate customers.
You may pay a little extra to know you can speak to an actual human being, but even if you never need the phone call, its availability is the first good indicator that someone is on the up and up.
Also, calling them is a great time to make sure your site won't be objectionable for them to host.
Actually, even if you host from your home, I bet that you'll find that your ISP will cut your service if someone complains.
Check out the Terms of Service. Most big ISPs cover their asses by saying they;ll boot you for objectionable content, just like any hoster.
I might as well give a plug to my web hoster here, http://www.uptownwebhosting.com/. I use their virtual hosting service, which is the most economical.
Unlike many sites that cater to porn, they aren't overpriced.
I use them for 2 vanity sites with low usage, one of which is tongue-in-cheek pseudo-porn, the other of which is an art web site with content that could conceivably be called objectionable.
They're pretty cheap.
One thing I like and don't like is that they are not so professional. This means that they don't care about content. "We don't care as long as you don't get us into trouble," is roughly what they told me when I spoke to them. Unfortunately, this also means that they are sometimes hard to get a hold of (but at least they do have a phone number) and don't have 99.999% uptime (probably more like 99%).
Anyway, they aren't too bad. I wouldn't use them for anything too important, but if this is just a vanity project, I think you'll find them pretty versatile and cheap.
Thanks for the offer and advice.
I'm going to stick with Red Hat for now, but one thing I liked about Slackware is that it at least did not cause any problems. But I am also wary of tying myself down to a distro that seems to be a one man show, regardless of how competent that one man might be.
Well at least he's being hosted on a Commie linux server, and not a Satanic and Commie BSD one.
I don't think I have the heart to tell him.
My problems really weren't with hardware compatibility, Red Hat runs fine.
My problems were with
1) My own lack of expertise and inability to get Xwindows working (Slackware)
2) An evil installation process that wiped out a lot of data. And then a desktop enviroment that crashed whenever I used the hardware config utilities. (Mandrake, and I hope that they go out of business, the arseholes)
3)Debian. For some reason the installation discs got corrupted. Anyway, I never got past installation.
Finally, I tried Red Hat, which I had avoided because: a) they have publically expressed tepid support for the desktop. b) they just seemed a little too corporate.
Well, I'm glad I gave them a shot, because they finally got Linux up for me.
Just putting my two cents in, but after 3 abortive attempts (Slackware, Mandrake, Debian) I finally got Linux workably installed through Red Hat.
I'm impressed with it, but it is definitely a work in progress.
Probably the biggest obstacle is just inertia. Whether it sucks or not, I've gotten used to my Windows box and have amassed the software on it and tweaked the interface that I'm used to.
Linux also lacks some pretty important software support on the desktop, particularly Adobe's Illustrator and Photoshop.
And finally hardware support is not out of the box. I still haven't started using my digicam with Linux because I'm worried it will be a long and tedious process.
That all said, I am very impressed with the potential of Linux as a desktop workstation. I'm really most interested in it as a server and platform for some big number-crunching.
So we'll see...