I've lived in Oregon and in Texas (among other places), so I feel like I can respond to your statements.
First, I'm guessing that you don't own property in Oregon, or else you would realize how the state has made up for not recieving sales tax revenue. I would never own property in this state, simply because I could never afford to pay the property tax year after year.
This tax policy has several results. The first is that the state seems to want its average citizens to be renters. It would seem to place the largest tax burden on the wealthier land owner, but in reality, that burden is simply passed on to the renters/consumers in the form of higher rent/prices. In reality, the losers are the renters, not the property owners. Observe:
The government wishes to raise more tax revenue.
The only means available is to raise property taxes.
Property owners pass this additional expense along to their customers.
Renters/purchasers pay higher rates.
So, it turns out that Joe Average Citizen actually bears the burden of taxation in a system without sales tax. An interesting catch-22: How do you reduce your tax burden? By purchasing land on which you cannot afford to pay tax.
Sales tax, on the other hand, actually places a tax on purchasing. And who purchases more? Those with more money of course. So, in theory, sales tax is a fairer tax.
(Before anyone jumps on me for over-simplifying... Yes I know this is over-simple. I'm merely trying to illustrate that Oregon's system might not be the end-all of tax solutions.)
The only thing that has changed at all is that now we need to do two queries in order to get to the contact info. Observe:
$ whois slashdot.org
[useless conversation deleted]
Domain Name: SLASHDOT.ORG Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC. Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com Referral URL: www.networksolutions.com Name Server: NS1.ANDOVER.NET Name Server: NS2.ANDOVER.NET Name Server: NS3.ANDOVER.NET
Now using Whois Server from above we can get to the same old contact info we all know and love:
$ whois slashdot.org@whois.networksolutions.com
Of course, we could just assume that whois.networksolutions.com has all the registries (I know, not technically true) and skip the first step. Just more typing.
My point really is that anyone thinking that this is good because it will hide the contact info from spam gatherers is simply wrong. And those who think that this is bad because they will not be able to determine the contact info for legit purposes are also wrong.
We just need to specify which server we want to get the info from. I suppose this is about as good a situation as we could have hoped for in the event of multiple registries.
The one time I actually saw Explorer crash, I tried just this. I killed the non-responding Explorer and Windows dutifully tried to respawn it. This apparently didn't work, and what I saw next ranks among the most unbelievable things that I've ever seen come from a Microsoft product.
A dialog box popped up that said that Explorer could not be restarted and that I should now reinstall Windows! I'm not kidding. I was instructed by a Windows dialog to reinstall the operating system.
I decided that hitting the reset button might be a better first step. I was right. The computer rebooted and Windows started up without a problem.
I wasn't the admin on this system (I rarely use Windows machines at all) so I can't comment on how well the system was maintained. But apparently Windows doesn't need an admin -- users need only follow the instructions on the screen.
I love Dr. Dobbs. It has just the right mix of technical, interesting, fun, and funny. And I won't believe you if you claim that you don't flip immediately to the inside back cover for a dose of Swaine's Flames every time you pick up a new copy.
Honestly, it's the only mag I bother having a subscription to.
Re:Well, Linux still has a ways to go.
on
FreeBSD at COMDEX
·
· Score: 1
What seperates it from Windows in my mind, it that it's GETTING worked on.
Exactly! This sounds just like my standard response to many of my Windows-advocating friends who like to point out the deficiencies of Linux. "But Linux is getting better -- fast. When was the last time you said that about anything coming from Microsoft?"
[You can replace the word "Linux" in the previous paragraph with the name of almost any Open Source project and it's still true.]
I, for one, am glad that I've been around Open Source stuff long enough to witness the dramatic improvements. When my friends express excitement about Windows 2000/2001, I just chuckle quietly to myself. They have no idea what "better" means.
No one is forced to GPL their software... if you don't like it, do it yourself.
This is the single most used argument of GPL proponents. (It's usually followed by something implying that not using the GPL causes other entities to take the code hostage and make it proprietory. I'm glad you didn't make this silly assertion.)
Now, before some GPL-zealot chimes in with, "But the GPL is free!" let me point out (as if noone ever has before) that the GPL is a very restrictive free license. Perhaps the GPL is free, but free isn't necissarily the GPL. It is important to note that, of all the open-source licenses, the GPL is the only that I am aware of that doesn't play well with any of the others.
Some intelligent and well meaning individuals even argue whether the GPL is actually free, and I am at times tempted to agree with them. The GPL is indeed "obligatorily open," but that doesn't necessarily promote freedom, unless it's the FSF defining "freedom."
Instead, the GPL promotes the GNU Project. Everything GPL is a part of the GNU Project, and everything that uses GPL code must become GPL, and thus become a part of the GNU Project.
This is great if you are a big fan of the GNU Project. There are plenty of good reasons to be, but some people aren't or don't have the choice. If the developer doesn't control the all the licenses involved in a project then it boils down to two possibilities: rewrite the GPL code or rewrite the non-GPL code. In either case, good solutions exist which can't be used. Which portion do you suppose the developer will rewrite if the non-GPL portion of the project is, say, Oracle?
Now, I said all that to say this: The problem here is that we are discussing an open-source repository rather than a GPL repository. The former would be generally useful to free software projects and the latter would be useful only to GPL projects. If your stated goal in life is promoting the GNU Project then a GPL repository would right up your alley. But if you have issues with the GPL, either legal or philosophical, then a GPL repository's usefulness to you is marginalized.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that the GPL is congruent to free. There are lots of ways to make software free, but only one way to make software GPL. Not everybody who dislikes the GPL is a horrible miscreant who wants to enslave software.
Giga Information Group expects that Dickens's attorneys will seek lump sum payments ranging from $50,000 to $100,000 from firms that already have used the Y2K fix.
Doesn't the fact that they are seeking retroactive payments for before-the-fact patent violations in itself establish prior art?
"Oh by the way, that thing you've been doing for years, I just invented it yesterday. So you owe me money. Pay up."
Hmmm. This could actually be the solution to the inter-distro versioning problem everyone complains about. If all the distros did this then we would always have higher versions chronologically newer than lower numbers regardless of which distro.
Could be a good thing. We just need to get all the other distros to agree to do the same thing.
Burglary is actually good although right now it may seem bad. If it wasn't for petty thieves showing off or just exploring we'd live in a world where we could leave our doors unlocked. Right now while civilization is still young is the time to find out about such problems and fix them.
But really anybody who puts critical or highly private data inside their home should be beat with a stupid stick! Sure a skilled safecracker could break into your lockbox (or whatever you use) but it is highly unlikely if you have it hidden under the floorboards in your bathroom. The worst they might do is mess w/ your children which if you have homing beacons surgically implanted in them you should be able to find them in very little time. The only items likely to be lost are those too small to engrave serial numbers and we/hope/ that good pawn dealers would recognize such items quickly.:) If you don't have quarter-inch boiler plate steel covering your windows, a fifteen foot razor-wire fence surrounding your property and so on you really need better security and/or a pack of pit bulls.:)
I'm not sure how they can call this a real-time environment.
I thought that "real-time" had to do with getting raw access to resources. This way, I can know *exactly* when data arrives at my serial port, for example.
Everything in EROS, on the other hand, seems hyper-abstracted. No users; no files; no filesystems, for that matter; only objects.
Doesn't this make me somewhat at that object's mercy with regard to when exactly something happens? Can I be sure my data is actually written to disk? How can I be sure that there even is a disk? Did this stream arrive at the serial port just now, or was it 60ms ago and I'm just now being told about it?
Perhaps I'm just clueless here, or missing something obvious in my sleepy stupor. But their claims to being real-time just seem spurious to me.
As an owner of Applied Cryptography pulled it out to see if the remaining numbers in that sequence made sense as page numbers -- try the first word of each page...
As interesting an approach as this seems, I can't imagine that the solution has anything to do with this method. Would it make any sense that a precondition of winning the book was that you must already possess the book? I suppose you could get it from a library.
Honestly, I don't think that, as it stands, there's enough information to actually solve. We have absolutely no information about the context of the message. It could be anything from a list of related numeric values in sequence to the incoherent ramblings of a drunken pub crawler translated to Turkish.
The snippet is short enough that I would think that several plaintext answers could result, depending on what assumptions one makes about the context of the message.
Quake 5 is much cooler anyway. Don't waste your money on 4.
Except that Quake 5 won't run on your pitiful Dual PII-650. You'll need at *least* a Octium-5Ghz processor with a minimum of 16 Terabytes of RAM.
Since none of this has been invented yet... Wait! If time doesn't exist then this is all obsolete hardware -- pick one up at the local sidewalk sale for pocket change. Quake 5 is probably already installed.
But why would you want to play that when "Quake: Fourth Mellinium" will have been out for so long some day?
More likely: 3. Some Airman who fancies himself a [c|h]racker was using one of the computers in his shop during his break. Or even more likely: 4. Some Airman who fancies himself a [c|h]racker was using one of the computers in his shop when he should have been doing his work. AME [former Airman, USAF]
This whole thread is almost rhetorical in light of the forum. Let's sum up:
Statement: mention metal detectors, mandatory bag searches, whatever.
Response: outrage at the obvious civil rights violations/privacy issues/human rights/etc. involved in implementing the statement. General nods of agreement all around.
In a largely libertarian forum such as Slashdot, the response is a forgone conclusion of the statement. The statement is probably unnecessary because we already know the response.
My question is, then, how does this help? With junior high schools being overrun by organized gangs, what other solutions do we have? Next you're going to be telling me that we should be giving the students the wherewithall to defend themselves...
What actually makes you safe is ordinary people with the means to protect themselves and the willingness to assist and protect each other, even at risk to themselves.
Damn! Looks like you beat me to it. Are you actually suggesting that our children should be allowed (or perhaps encouraged) to carry weapons with them to school as a means of self-defense? I hope not.
The problem here is that you are making a generalization about adults and applying it to children. Children at school should not be allowed to defend themselves by whatever means they see fit. They don't have the common sense necessary to make sensible decisions about these things. This is why we make a differentiation between children and adults. Children need a much more strict set of guidelines with regard to their behavior. With all respect to those who advocate personal freedoms, allowing students the freedom to make their own decisions about self defense is not a workable solution in a public school.
I see a lot of ranting about how horrible it is that our children's personal freedoms are being abridged, but nobody is making good suggestions for other workable solutions.
Imagine that you are the school administrator of a large high school. What will you do about the following problems?
Kids are dealing drugs on campus.
Organized gang activity is prevalent on campus.
It is not only probable, it is almost certain that a number of students are carrying deadly weapons, including guns, while on campus.
Can you deal with these problems without stepping on somebody's personal freedoms? These aren't just hypothetical; they are reality on campuses everywhere. What are you going to do about it?
If you're in charge of a school and kids are carrying guns around, metal detectors begin to look like a really good idea. When gangs are staking out territory on campus, school uniforms begin to look like a really good idea. When dangerous drugs are being traded among students like baseball cards, searching backpacks begins to look like a really good idea. Do we have any better ideas? I don't see anybody expressing them.
My family moved a lot, so I went to four different high schools, at least one had a problem with gang-related activity, but even this was nothing like I'm seeing on the news lately. There is virtual anarchy on our junior high and high school campuses. What do we do if we are not allowed to install metal detectors and search book bags?
As a disclaimer, I must say that am all for individual personal freedom. But I've yet to hear anybody make a realistic suggestion about what can be done about the drug trafficing and gang warfare going on in our schools.
Try being a teacher sometime and see if your opinions about student's rights change at all. I'm married to a teacher, so I do have some clue here. Fifth graders (whom she's not allowed by regulation to even touch) have threatened her life. You can be sure that it scared her quite a bit, especially considering current events.
Waxing on about fascism is one thing, but children are, after all, children. They don't have common sense, by and large. And they aren't, by and large, responsible enough to handle all the personal freedoms we like to preach about. They need to be told what they are and are not allowed to do. They need to be forced to obey these rules. This is called discipline. In the absence of this discipline, children grow up to be spoiled adult brats who think that the world owes them something by virtue of their being human.
Ok, by little rant is over. Move along. Nothing to see here...
Re:New Disrto Is Needed
on
Linux Lite?
·
· Score: 1
Partitioning would be one of the last steps -- that way the partitioner can offer a minimum size.
That is SUCH a good idea! Choose your packages and then be shown a virtual du of your potential directory tree. Then you could make intelligent decisions about how to partition.
Are you distro makers listening?
Re: Package **Nightmares**
on
Linux Lite?
·
· Score: 2
There was an absolutely humongous list of packages with undecipherable names that all had intricate dependencies on each other. . . . Since no clue was really given as to WHAT these things were, I was forced (after several attempts at a minimalistic install) to install a humongous amount of crap @350 MB.
I discovered (although only recently) that hitting F1 from the dialog where you "choose individual packages" produces at least a semi-helpful description of the particular package. (Actually the contents of the description contained in the RPM package.)
Anyway, I believe RedHat's install is getting better. I fiddled with Lorax (the RH6.1 beta) a little this weekend and I think that the new graphical install will be quite nice when they get it working correctly. Also, the new install options are:
Install Gnome Workstation
Install KDE Workstation
Install Server
Install Custom
So, more specialized install options is the trend. This is good. Also, install help is printed directly on the same screen as the options. Also good, pending useful help comments.
I still believe Linux isn't there yet as far as the novice is concerned; perhaps not even close yet, but it's getting better fast.
This has been mentioned several times. I think it's important to note that the ?acker's ability to vicariously write e-mail messages renders the question irrelevant.
It doesn't matter how much I payed for the mail service. If someone can represent themselves as me using the service then it could cost me quite a lot. The malicious intruder could reply to messages sent to me, delete important messages, subscribe my friends or business contacts to porn mailing lists, etc.
I'd say that, free mail or not, the amount of damage that could be done might easily exceed the cost of any mail service.
Slashdot Mirror
First, I'm guessing that you don't own property in Oregon, or else you would realize how the state has made up for not recieving sales tax revenue. I would never own property in this state, simply because I could never afford to pay the property tax year after year.
This tax policy has several results. The first is that the state seems to want its average citizens to be renters. It would seem to place the largest tax burden on the wealthier land owner, but in reality, that burden is simply passed on to the renters/consumers in the form of higher rent/prices. In reality, the losers are the renters, not the property owners. Observe:
- The government wishes to raise more tax revenue.
- The only means available is to raise property taxes.
- Property owners pass this additional expense along to their customers.
- Renters/purchasers pay higher rates.
So, it turns out that Joe Average Citizen actually bears the burden of taxation in a system without sales tax. An interesting catch-22: How do you reduce your tax burden? By purchasing land on which you cannot afford to pay tax.Sales tax, on the other hand, actually places a tax on purchasing. And who purchases more? Those with more money of course. So, in theory, sales tax is a fairer tax.
(Before anyone jumps on me for over-simplifying... Yes I know this is over-simple. I'm merely trying to illustrate that Oregon's system might not be the end-all of tax solutions.)
$ whois slashdot.org
[useless conversation deleted]
Domain Name: SLASHDOT.ORG
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.
Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
Referral URL: www.networksolutions.com
Name Server: NS1.ANDOVER.NET
Name Server: NS2.ANDOVER.NET
Name Server: NS3.ANDOVER.NET
Now using Whois Server from above we can get to the same old contact info we all know and love:
$ whois slashdot.org@whois.networksolutions.com
Of course, we could just assume that whois.networksolutions.com has all the registries (I know, not technically true) and skip the first step. Just more typing.
My point really is that anyone thinking that this is good because it will hide the contact info from spam gatherers is simply wrong. And those who think that this is bad because they will not be able to determine the contact info for legit purposes are also wrong.
We just need to specify which server we want to get the info from. I suppose this is about as good a situation as we could have hoped for in the event of multiple registries.
It was?!? We never did that.
A dialog box popped up that said that Explorer could not be restarted and that I should now reinstall Windows! I'm not kidding. I was instructed by a Windows dialog to reinstall the operating system.
I decided that hitting the reset button might be a better first step. I was right. The computer rebooted and Windows started up without a problem.
I wasn't the admin on this system (I rarely use Windows machines at all) so I can't comment on how well the system was maintained. But apparently Windows doesn't need an admin -- users need only follow the instructions on the screen.
Honestly, it's the only mag I bother having a subscription to.
Exactly! This sounds just like my standard response to many of my Windows-advocating friends who like to point out the deficiencies of Linux. "But Linux is getting better -- fast. When was the last time you said that about anything coming from Microsoft?"
[You can replace the word "Linux" in the previous paragraph with the name of almost any Open Source project and it's still true.]
I, for one, am glad that I've been around Open Source stuff long enough to witness the dramatic improvements. When my friends express excitement about Windows 2000/2001, I just chuckle quietly to myself. They have no idea what "better" means.
Why? My mouse has 3 buttons, and I know what the middle one is for.
This is the single most used argument of GPL proponents. (It's usually followed by something implying that not using the GPL causes other entities to take the code hostage and make it proprietory. I'm glad you didn't make this silly assertion.)
Now, before some GPL-zealot chimes in with, "But the GPL is free!" let me point out (as if noone ever has before) that the GPL is a very restrictive free license. Perhaps the GPL is free, but free isn't necissarily the GPL. It is important to note that, of all the open-source licenses, the GPL is the only that I am aware of that doesn't play well with any of the others.
Some intelligent and well meaning individuals even argue whether the GPL is actually free, and I am at times tempted to agree with them. The GPL is indeed "obligatorily open," but that doesn't necessarily promote freedom, unless it's the FSF defining "freedom."
Instead, the GPL promotes the GNU Project. Everything GPL is a part of the GNU Project, and everything that uses GPL code must become GPL, and thus become a part of the GNU Project.
This is great if you are a big fan of the GNU Project. There are plenty of good reasons to be, but some people aren't or don't have the choice. If the developer doesn't control the all the licenses involved in a project then it boils down to two possibilities: rewrite the GPL code or rewrite the non-GPL code. In either case, good solutions exist which can't be used. Which portion do you suppose the developer will rewrite if the non-GPL portion of the project is, say, Oracle?
Now, I said all that to say this: The problem here is that we are discussing an open-source repository rather than a GPL repository. The former would be generally useful to free software projects and the latter would be useful only to GPL projects. If your stated goal in life is promoting the GNU Project then a GPL repository would right up your alley. But if you have issues with the GPL, either legal or philosophical, then a GPL repository's usefulness to you is marginalized.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that the GPL is congruent to free. There are lots of ways to make software free, but only one way to make software GPL. Not everybody who dislikes the GPL is a horrible miscreant who wants to enslave software.
Giga Information Group expects that Dickens's attorneys will seek lump sum payments ranging from $50,000 to $100,000 from firms that already have used the Y2K fix.
Doesn't the fact that they are seeking retroactive payments for before-the-fact patent violations in itself establish prior art?
"Oh by the way, that thing you've been doing for years, I just invented it yesterday. So you owe me money. Pay up."
Could be a good thing. We just need to get all the other distros to agree to do the same thing.
But really anybody who puts critical or highly private data inside their home should be beat with a stupid stick! Sure a skilled safecracker could break into your lockbox (or whatever you use) but it is highly unlikely if you have it hidden under the floorboards in your bathroom. The worst they might do is mess w/ your children which if you have homing beacons surgically implanted in them you should be able to find them in very little time. The only items likely to be lost are those too small to engrave serial numbers and we /hope/ that good pawn dealers would recognize such items quickly. :) If you don't have quarter-inch boiler plate steel covering your windows, a fifteen foot razor-wire fence surrounding your property and so on you really need better security and/or a pack of pit bulls. :)
I thought that "real-time" had to do with getting raw access to resources. This way, I can know *exactly* when data arrives at my serial port, for example.
Everything in EROS, on the other hand, seems hyper-abstracted. No users; no files; no filesystems, for that matter; only objects.
Doesn't this make me somewhat at that object's mercy with regard to when exactly something happens? Can I be sure my data is actually written to disk? How can I be sure that there even is a disk? Did this stream arrive at the serial port just now, or was it 60ms ago and I'm just now being told about it?
Perhaps I'm just clueless here, or missing something obvious in my sleepy stupor. But their claims to being real-time just seem spurious to me.
(This assumes that the Meta key on your system is the Alt key, which is usually the case on PCs.)
As interesting an approach as this seems, I can't imagine that the solution has anything to do with this method. Would it make any sense that a precondition of winning the book was that you must already possess the book? I suppose you could get it from a library.
Honestly, I don't think that, as it stands, there's enough information to actually solve. We have absolutely no information about the context of the message. It could be anything from a list of related numeric values in sequence to the incoherent ramblings of a drunken pub crawler translated to Turkish.
The snippet is short enough that I would think that several plaintext answers could result, depending on what assumptions one makes about the context of the message.
Except that Quake 5 won't run on your pitiful Dual PII-650. You'll need at *least* a Octium-5Ghz processor with a minimum of 16 Terabytes of RAM.
Since none of this has been invented yet... Wait! If time doesn't exist then this is all obsolete hardware -- pick one up at the local sidewalk sale for pocket change. Quake 5 is probably already installed.
But why would you want to play that when "Quake: Fourth Mellinium" will have been out for so long some day?
More likely: 3. Some Airman who fancies himself a [c|h]racker was using one of the computers in his shop during his break. Or even more likely: 4. Some Airman who fancies himself a [c|h]racker was using one of the computers in his shop when he should have been doing his work. AME [former Airman, USAF]
- Statement: mention metal detectors, mandatory bag searches, whatever.
- Response: outrage at the obvious civil rights violations/privacy issues/human rights/etc. involved in implementing the statement. General nods of agreement all around.
In a largely libertarian forum such as Slashdot, the response is a forgone conclusion of the statement. The statement is probably unnecessary because we already know the response.My question is, then, how does this help? With junior high schools being overrun by organized gangs, what other solutions do we have? Next you're going to be telling me that we should be giving the students the wherewithall to defend themselves...
What actually makes you safe is ordinary people with the means to protect themselves and the willingness to assist and protect each other, even at risk to themselves.
Damn! Looks like you beat me to it. Are you actually suggesting that our children should be allowed (or perhaps encouraged) to carry weapons with them to school as a means of self-defense? I hope not.
The problem here is that you are making a generalization about adults and applying it to children. Children at school should not be allowed to defend themselves by whatever means they see fit. They don't have the common sense necessary to make sensible decisions about these things. This is why we make a differentiation between children and adults. Children need a much more strict set of guidelines with regard to their behavior. With all respect to those who advocate personal freedoms, allowing students the freedom to make their own decisions about self defense is not a workable solution in a public school.
I see a lot of ranting about how horrible it is that our children's personal freedoms are being abridged, but nobody is making good suggestions for other workable solutions.
Imagine that you are the school administrator of a large high school. What will you do about the following problems?
- Kids are dealing drugs on campus.
- Organized gang activity is prevalent on campus.
- It is not only probable, it is almost certain that a number of students are carrying deadly weapons, including guns, while on campus.
Can you deal with these problems without stepping on somebody's personal freedoms? These aren't just hypothetical; they are reality on campuses everywhere. What are you going to do about it?If you're in charge of a school and kids are carrying guns around, metal detectors begin to look like a really good idea. When gangs are staking out territory on campus, school uniforms begin to look like a really good idea. When dangerous drugs are being traded among students like baseball cards, searching backpacks begins to look like a really good idea. Do we have any better ideas? I don't see anybody expressing them.
My family moved a lot, so I went to four different high schools, at least one had a problem with gang-related activity, but even this was nothing like I'm seeing on the news lately. There is virtual anarchy on our junior high and high school campuses. What do we do if we are not allowed to install metal detectors and search book bags?
As a disclaimer, I must say that am all for individual personal freedom. But I've yet to hear anybody make a realistic suggestion about what can be done about the drug trafficing and gang warfare going on in our schools.
Try being a teacher sometime and see if your opinions about student's rights change at all. I'm married to a teacher, so I do have some clue here. Fifth graders (whom she's not allowed by regulation to even touch) have threatened her life. You can be sure that it scared her quite a bit, especially considering current events.
Waxing on about fascism is one thing, but children are, after all, children. They don't have common sense, by and large. And they aren't, by and large, responsible enough to handle all the personal freedoms we like to preach about. They need to be told what they are and are not allowed to do. They need to be forced to obey these rules. This is called discipline. In the absence of this discipline, children grow up to be spoiled adult brats who think that the world owes them something by virtue of their being human.
Ok, by little rant is over. Move along. Nothing to see here...
Que the moderators.
Or even llanfairpw llgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.c o.uk might be possible in some countries. Try it.
That is SUCH a good idea! Choose your packages and then be shown a virtual du of your potential directory tree. Then you could make intelligent decisions about how to partition.
Are you distro makers listening?
I discovered (although only recently) that hitting F1 from the dialog where you "choose individual packages" produces at least a semi-helpful description of the particular package. (Actually the contents of the description contained in the RPM package.)
Anyway, I believe RedHat's install is getting better. I fiddled with Lorax (the RH6.1 beta) a little this weekend and I think that the new graphical install will be quite nice when they get it working correctly. Also, the new install options are:
- Install Gnome Workstation
- Install KDE Workstation
- Install Server
- Install Custom
So, more specialized install options is the trend. This is good. Also, install help is printed directly on the same screen as the options. Also good, pending useful help comments.I still believe Linux isn't there yet as far as the novice is concerned; perhaps not even close yet, but it's getting better fast.
Dear Lord no! There's too many of us here now.
This has been mentioned several times. I think it's important to note that the ?acker's ability to vicariously write e-mail messages renders the question irrelevant.
It doesn't matter how much I payed for the mail service. If someone can represent themselves as me using the service then it could cost me quite a lot. The malicious intruder could reply to messages sent to me, delete important messages, subscribe my friends or business contacts to porn mailing lists, etc.
I'd say that, free mail or not, the amount of damage that could be done might easily exceed the cost of any mail service.