"The resulting data, which represents about 20 terabytes, will be available to everyone in the months to come, at least to people with a high-bandwidth connection."
Well, at least we know that we will be around for a few months. Do we have to download the whole bloody thing to find out when the world ends?
I worked at an MS only shop too, but I kept using Mozilla anyway. I figured I'd at least get a really threatening warning before I'd have to switch back. Whenever the network was frolixed up and the IE users couldn't get any work done I'd be there chugging away.
I agree. Hollywood gets it right sometimes. As I said I DID actually enjoy "I,Robot" the movie. While it didn't resemble any of the Asimov stories that I could find it was a "nice" plot. But my guess is they cast the film first and then put together a screenplay to fit the cast. Just a guess.
In the short stories, the "hero" is often an unattractive female "robopsychologist" who figures out the mystery after all her male coworkers have failed (ahead of it's time).
Lay the Asimov robot stories, both short stories, novels and the related "Foundation" series end-to-end and you have the makings for a spectacular series of movies... better than Star Wars at least. It's already laid out, relatively consistent and gets better as the story unfolds rather than fizzling as Star Wars and matrix do.
How can Hollywood pass it up, except, errr, they're morons.
"Well, it's kinda difficult to make a short story of maybe 1500 words stretch out into a 2 hour feature film without adding something."
Funny though, usually Hollywood uses the fact that in adapting a *novel* they have to figure out what to omit.
One wonders if someone were to make a movie out of something in-between short story and novel size would Hollywood get it right.
My guess is that length has little or nothing to do with it. "I, Robot" had a dozen short stories (which were related in such a way that you could mix and match them all you wanted) but for the life of me I couldn't figure out what the movie and the stories had in common other than the "Three Laws of Robotics", Asimov's name, and the word "Positronic".
I enjoyed the movie, but re-read the stories just to verify that they were not used for the movie. I really think the people in Hollywood are just too self centered to use something from the 50's. They want the name recognition, the guarantee that a million or so sci-fi fans will turn out, and other than that, the flexibility to let the dozen or so hollywood stars of the moment play themselves one more time. There is no Will Smith-like character in "I, Robot", so toss the stories in the trash and keep the title.
Like some operating systems I know, this formula is old and BORING and not worth the premium price asked for it by the "developers".
I want a pocket sized device, but with a full-sized keyboard. It should have addresses and appointments, and text messaging.
Oh, and a spreadsheet program, word processing, with full e-mail, and attachment support. But I don't want something that runs a variation on Windows, bleh.
Don't forget the obvious calculator mode. With hex conversion, trig, business calculation and graphing.
And for the subway ride, maybe some games, with full joystick support, 1280x1024 color graphics and hardware accelerated 3D rendering, and a gig of memory. I'll need a headset with microphone and a built in camera for online gaming.
Oh, it should be a cell phone of course, and since you have microphone and speaker in those, voice recognition and full Artificial Intelligence engine.
None of these rechargeable units that have to be plugged in every day. I want' something that will run for a month or two on a triple-A battery, and it might as well be soaking up the rays during daylight hours so as to make the battery last even longer. I'm all for conservation you see.
And it better not cost more than $50, cause it ain't worth it.
Quite the opposite. I don't care for vandalism, no matter what the politics are. There are many people (clearly among the moderators anyway) that always think the end justifies the means. They took my post, based on it's context as a criticism of the cause that these bikers were espousing, when actually I paid almost no attention to that.
When IBM plastered Linux stickers all over the place they had to PAY to pick them up. I LOVE Linux, but I think that was the right thing to do. I don't like people writing things on my sidewalk, doorstep, or the street in front of my house and I don't care if its a "have a nice day" or a "F___ YOU".
As far as protests go I think they should be non-violent, and they should also stop short of impeding OTHER people's rights of free speech. If the Communists for Kerry organization wants to wave their signs that's completely fine. If on the other hand they want to burn things in the middle of the street, block entrances to buildings, or engage in other acts of harassment (all of which are apparently happening), then that's not fine at all, and speaks volumes for the lack of maturity of those involved.
Regarding the guys "invention", I think its a variation on the dot-matrix printer concept which has been used for making t-shirts, painting pictures on sides of buildings, and a few other things. Basically you break whatever it is up into pixels, figure out how fast your print-head is moving and spit out the dots at the appropriate time. I have trouble thinking of a use for it that doesn't involve some innocent bystander have to spend the three weeks trying to wash it off..... but maybe for a company picknick held in their own parking lot it would be interesting. Or not.
Yeah, what passes for protest these days gets sillier and sillier. Everyone wants to enjoy their favorite hobby or passtime while engaging in protest against the evil dark lords. Too many airheads, too much time on their hands. What a horribly oppressed society we live in!
I just checked. I don't have mine. I've heard they are beta testing it with selected users. I can't blame them for that, after all Gmail is a slow rollout too. It's just that their page (the one you read while you are checking your mail) has all sorts of implications that it's already in production. What *IS* in production is the deal where you pay money to get 2G. I'll just settle for the free 250M, when and if it comes.
Since I have no paying relationship with MS, other than one of their mouse devices I'll be the last to get mine. Which is OK, as I already have Yahoo and Gmail. The Hotmail ID is for comparison purposes. When people ask me for advice on things like that I like to be able to tell it like it is.
"And I can assume that if Microsoft had 1GB Hotmail accounts that you and other Slashdotters would discourage the use of an equivalent piece of software...?"
You're joking right?
That would be totally different. A way cool thing.
But that isn't going to happen, because the Microsoft system is likely to colapse of it's own weight as soon as (or should I say if) they every give out the 250M they have promised. I think they may wish they had only promised 100M like Yahoo. Marketing department running it's mouth again.
"The same can be said of any large company. None are immune to changes in fortune. IBM, for example, iirc holds more software patents than any other company in the world."
The difference of course is that IBM actually engages in (or has in the past) research, both of a software kind and otherwise, while Microsoft has a division called research which works on experimental chat programs. That is not to say that Microsoft doesn't have some sharp software people of all kinds, but their emphasis has never been on "invention". Now watch of of them leap down my throat.
"You can buy it at any Staples or anywhere that they sell it without anybody asking for any proof that you are in any way part of an academic institution,...."
Uh, so what?
The issue here is not the costs (which is too much even at $125) but the quality of the product, which probably peaked out back around version 3. You raise a good point though. Only recently has it become so drop-dead easy to buy a copy of Word at less than the full retail price. As was the case when Word first went head-to-head with WordPerfect, MS is looking the other way, almost encouraging people to cheat to get the product for a "reasonable" price. What they are trying to protect is the knee-jerk reaction that businesses (and Federal and State governments) have that says we HAVE to standardize on this product, because, after all, we use it at home too.
No more has to happen to shake the MS monopoly at it's foundations than to get the average home use to realize that for e-mail, simple word processing, bankings, and a host of other activities all they need is a standards-based web browser. Our captains of industry (and government) are, when you get right down to it, no different than joe-average-home-user, except they are getting paid for their brilliant insights. Microsoft figured this out a long time ago and figured out how to sell to these, um, shall I be kind?, morons.
The jig is up. Google, and a few others following their example, are about to take the next step forward in Internet integration. I don't think Microsoft is prepared to follow.
Not only am I glad to see a luminary finally give MS the trashing it has long deserved, but the problems he mentions have been in the product for at least 3 years.
Now, if we can just get the Feds to stop using it, or at least stop requiring vendors to use it Word will die a nice quick (relatively) death.
I'll agree with most Slashdot posters on this. Your thinking is muddled:
"(Web will continue to be capitalized when part of the more official entity, World Wide Web.)"
followed by:
"But in the case of internet, web and net, a change in our house style was necessary to put into perspective what the internet is: another medium for delivering and receiving information. That it transformed human communication is beyond dispute. But no more so than moveable type did in its day. Or the radio. Or television."
If "World Wide Web" deserves capitalization, then it is almost a tautology that "The Internet" does, since in fact the former is nothing more than a colloquialism of the later. It would have been much more correct for you to say you are never going to use the term "World Wide Web" at all, and instead standardize on "The Internet" (or just "Internet") as do people who know what they are talking about.
Note the distinction between "Internet", that single network based on TCP/IP and related protocols allowing everyone in the world to be connected, and "intranet", or "internet" meaning any network set up using those protocols that allow one or more computers to communicate. The difference is significant.
Your examples show your ignorance. "television" or "radio" can refer to many things. A device, and entertainment industry, a form of broadcast spectrum, or a cable signal. Those words would be more comparable to "network", "networking" which I agree should not be capitalized.
Your move, carried to its logical conclusion would mean that the name of your publication should be changed to just "wired" since that word means "connected up with a wire". See the difference now?
Not only is it a stupid idea, but the people who run these systems aren't the sharpest tacks in the box either. Even if firewall tools were foolproof, I worry that the people implementing the system will make mistakes. We are already used to seeing large parts of the Federal budget unacounted for on a department by department basis. Now it's only a matter of time before:
"Entire federal budget goes missing after hacker attack. Department head advises citizens not to worry. Microsoft disclaims any blaim as XP SP2 was not installed on government system"
Yes, they HAD to do something becuase the old DOS system was falling appart, but it's the same bunch who let it get to that state that will be implementing the new system. Be very afraid.
I found the article rambling and self contradictory. I often wonder why Apple people are so defensive about this. It's OVER. You can't go back. Your mission, should you decide to accept it is to figure out what to do from here on out. The article DID get one thing right though:
"The fact is that the Windows monopoly is an anomaly, and exists only because of IBM's decision to license the DOS operating system from Microsoft, rather than buying it or writing their own from scratch. Microsoft didn't choose or decide the "open" nature of the IBM-compatible hardware business -- they just went along for the ride and then took full advantage of their fortunate position."
Which makes the other considerations moot. The good news, is that Microsoft won't get another free pass dumped in their lap. They have to either produce better software, or cheat to stay ahead, and their ability to cheat is being rapidly cut off by the international market as well as enlightened IT managers here in the States.
My methodology has always been to watch the history of updates from a given source. After a couple of years of updates that do more good than harm you trust them enough to apply them almost immediately. I say almost because you at least try it on a few test machines first, but this can be done within hours of the updates availability.
What you do after not one, but several bad updates, those that break key components and fix problems that you don't even have, or claim to fix problems but actually don't, that is another matter. Having been burned on an update from any company, I put the company "on probation" and apply new updates only after extensive testing.
This is a simple intuitive approach, that I think most users apply to both software updates as well as new product releases, and even hardware purchases. I have my own shit-list of hardware vendors as I suspect most people do. I just don't buy from these companies until they do something to change their reputation. Most never do. It is a true rarity for a company to suddenly discover the value of quality products to their future business. Companies either get it, or they don't. Microsoft has never got it, other than the original release of Windows NT which appears to have been thoroughly tested. From more recent experience this must have been a fluke, or, since NT was such a departure from previous version of Windows they were just uncharacteristically carefull.
I'll join the chorus of people saying that big companies, governmental organizations,etc. ALWAYS do their own testing. If they did that testing during the beta phase for this update, then they are ahead of the game and may be applying it now for real. If they are not on the beta program, then they will test on their own systems starting now. I doubt there are many exceptions to this.
That answers a question I came in here to ask about the book "Quicksilver" which contains a strong implication that Newton was gay. Stephenson apologizes in the preface to the book for playing fast and loose with history, but my experience with him is that he doesn't just make stuff up out of thin air. So it's good to know that that aspect of the book was based on existing speculation.
One problem that people like me (history haters) reading historical fiction is that we don't know the facts from the enhancements.
The commentary accompanying the screenshots is both amusing and to the point. I've installed Debian so many times now that I hardly read the screens any more (Windows installs are the same way by the way... why are all home Windows machines on a workgroup called, uh, "workgroup"?)
Maybe a future version of the installer should leave the prompts as-is, but take the text for the prompts from a separate file that can be edited by a less technical newbie to eliminate the voodoo element of the whole thing. A world of good could come from just having more explanatory text in each prompt.
Be careful what you wish for. The best Windows installer IMHO was the one for NT. After that they started trying to detect too many devices that would hang the whole process.
I think the original plan for this Debian release was for a graphical installer, but to be honest I'd rather have one that JUST WORKS, producing a bootable system that can be tinkered with to deal with anything that's not perfect. The new installer, from my experience has improved the detection of devices, reduced the number of questions asked of the user. Once all these things are perfected (or nearly so) I suppose making it graphical will be a nice way to, um, slow down the whole process like Windows does. I can live without it.
Unlike Windows, the Linux install process is not a monthly maintenance task, so I hardly think it matters how it looks.
Slashdot Mirror
"The resulting data, which represents about 20 terabytes, will be available to everyone in the months to come, at least to people with a high-bandwidth connection."
Well, at least we know that we will be around for a few months. Do we have to download the whole bloody thing to find out when the world ends?
I worked at an MS only shop too, but I kept using Mozilla anyway. I figured I'd at least get a really threatening warning before I'd have to switch back. Whenever the network was frolixed up and the IE users couldn't get any work done I'd be there chugging away.
Hmmmm, WHAT was I THINKING?!
I agree. Hollywood gets it right sometimes. As I said I DID actually enjoy "I,Robot" the movie. While it didn't resemble any of the Asimov stories that I could find it was a "nice" plot. But my guess is they cast the film first and then put together a screenplay to fit the cast. Just a guess.
In the short stories, the "hero" is often an unattractive female "robopsychologist" who figures out the mystery after all her male coworkers have failed (ahead of it's time).
Lay the Asimov robot stories, both short stories, novels and the related "Foundation" series end-to-end and you have the makings for a spectacular series of movies... better than Star Wars at least. It's already laid out, relatively consistent and gets better as the story unfolds rather than fizzling as Star Wars and matrix do.
How can Hollywood pass it up, except, errr, they're morons.
"Well, it's kinda difficult to make a short story of maybe 1500 words stretch out into a 2 hour feature film without adding something."
Funny though, usually Hollywood uses the fact that in adapting a *novel* they have to figure out what to omit.
One wonders if someone were to make a movie out of something in-between short story and novel size would Hollywood get it right.
My guess is that length has little or nothing to do with it. "I, Robot" had a dozen short stories (which were related in such a way that you could mix and match them all you wanted) but for the life of me I couldn't figure out what the movie and the stories had in common other than the "Three Laws of Robotics", Asimov's name, and the word "Positronic".
I enjoyed the movie, but re-read the stories just to verify that they were not used for the movie. I really think the people in Hollywood are just too self centered to use something from the 50's. They want the name recognition, the guarantee that a million or so sci-fi fans will turn out, and other than that, the flexibility to let the dozen or so hollywood stars of the moment play themselves one more time. There is no Will Smith-like character in "I, Robot", so toss the stories in the trash and keep the title.
Like some operating systems I know, this formula is old and BORING and not worth the premium price asked for it by the "developers".
I want a pocket sized device, but with a full-sized keyboard.
It should have addresses and appointments, and text messaging.
Oh, and a spreadsheet program, word processing, with full e-mail, and attachment support. But I don't want something that runs a variation on Windows, bleh.
Don't forget the obvious calculator mode. With hex conversion, trig, business calculation and graphing.
And for the subway ride, maybe some games, with full joystick support, 1280x1024 color graphics and hardware accelerated 3D rendering, and a gig of memory. I'll need a headset with microphone and a built in camera for online gaming.
Oh, it should be a cell phone of course, and since you have microphone and speaker in those, voice recognition and full Artificial Intelligence engine.
None of these rechargeable units that have to be plugged in every day. I want' something that will run for a month or two on a triple-A battery, and it might as well be soaking up the rays during daylight hours so as to make the battery last even longer. I'm all for conservation you see.
And it better not cost more than $50, cause it ain't worth it.
I'm canceling my XM account.
And um... It had nothing to do with this, or any other screw-ups with XM programming.
If this was directed at my post:
Quite the opposite. I don't care for vandalism, no matter what the politics are. There are many people (clearly among the moderators anyway) that always think the end justifies the means. They took my post, based on it's context as a criticism of the cause that these bikers were espousing, when actually I paid almost no attention to that.
When IBM plastered Linux stickers all over the place they had to PAY to pick them up. I LOVE Linux, but I think that was the right thing to do. I don't like people writing things on my sidewalk, doorstep, or the street in front of my house and I don't care if its a "have a nice day" or a "F___ YOU".
As far as protests go I think they should be non-violent, and they should also stop short of impeding OTHER people's rights of free speech. If the Communists for Kerry organization wants to wave their signs that's completely fine. If on the other hand they want to burn things in the middle of the street, block entrances to buildings, or engage in other acts of harassment (all of which are apparently happening), then that's not fine at all, and speaks volumes for the lack of maturity of those involved.
Regarding the guys "invention", I think its a variation on the dot-matrix printer concept which has been used for making t-shirts, painting pictures on sides of buildings, and a few other things. Basically you break whatever it is up into pixels, figure out how fast your print-head is moving and spit out the dots at the appropriate time. I have trouble thinking of a use for it that doesn't involve some innocent bystander have to spend the three weeks trying to wash it off..... but maybe for a company picknick held in their own parking lot it would be interesting. Or not.
Yeah, what passes for protest these days gets sillier and sillier. Everyone wants to enjoy their favorite hobby or passtime while engaging in protest against the evil dark lords. Too many airheads, too much time on their hands. What a horribly oppressed society we live in!
Latte sit-in for partial-birth abortion anyone?
"The world's information at your fingertips!"
Yeah, and your fingertips on another planet.
I just checked. I don't have mine. I've heard they are beta testing it with selected users. I can't blame them for that, after all Gmail is a slow rollout too. It's just that their page (the one you read while you are checking your mail) has all sorts of implications that it's already in production. What *IS* in production is the deal where you pay money to get 2G. I'll just settle for the free 250M, when and if it comes.
Since I have no paying relationship with MS, other than one of their mouse devices I'll be the last to get mine. Which is OK, as I already have Yahoo and Gmail. The Hotmail ID is for comparison purposes. When people ask me for advice on things like that I like to be able to tell it like it is.
I was joking about your joking.
I'm against all such vandalism no matter who it is directed against.
(Unless it's Microsoft)
(joking again)
"And I can assume that if Microsoft had 1GB Hotmail accounts that you and other Slashdotters would discourage the use of an equivalent piece of software...?"
You're joking right?
That would be totally different. A way cool thing.
But that isn't going to happen, because the Microsoft system is likely to colapse of it's own weight as soon as (or should I say if) they every give out the 250M they have promised. I think they may wish they had only promised 100M like Yahoo. Marketing department running it's mouth again.
"VCRs used to cost over five grand, and that was in 1973 dollars.
Once you start building anything in million-lot quantities, the prices plummet."
You mean anything but PCs and the operating systems that run on them I suppose?
"The same can be said of any large company. None are immune to changes in fortune. IBM, for example, iirc holds more software patents than any other company in the world."
The difference of course is that IBM actually engages in (or has in the past) research, both of a software kind and otherwise, while Microsoft has a division called research which works on experimental chat programs. That is not to say that Microsoft doesn't have some sharp software people of all kinds, but their emphasis has never been on "invention". Now watch of of them leap down my throat.
"You can buy it at any Staples or anywhere that they sell it without anybody asking for any proof that you are in any way part of an academic institution,...."
Uh, so what?
The issue here is not the costs (which is too much even at $125) but the quality of the product, which probably peaked out back around version 3. You raise a good point though. Only recently has it become so drop-dead easy to buy a copy of Word at less than the full retail price. As was the case when Word first went head-to-head with WordPerfect, MS is looking the other way, almost encouraging people to cheat to get the product for a "reasonable" price. What they are trying to protect is the knee-jerk reaction that businesses (and Federal and State governments) have that says we HAVE to standardize on this product, because, after all, we use it at home too.
No more has to happen to shake the MS monopoly at it's foundations than to get the average home use to realize that for e-mail, simple word processing, bankings, and a host of other activities all they need is a standards-based web browser. Our captains of industry (and government) are, when you get right down to it, no different than joe-average-home-user, except they are getting paid for their brilliant insights. Microsoft figured this out a long time ago and figured out how to sell to these, um, shall I be kind?, morons.
The jig is up. Google, and a few others following their example, are about to take the next step forward in Internet integration. I don't think Microsoft is prepared to follow.
Not only am I glad to see a luminary finally give MS the trashing it has long deserved, but the problems he mentions have been in the product for at least 3 years.
Now, if we can just get the Feds to stop using it, or at least stop requiring vendors to use it Word will die a nice quick (relatively) death.
That's OK, the Google version will run on any web browser. Am I the ONLY person that knows the reason for the timing of this?
(well, at least I'm pretty sure)
No, what you are referring to was the zeroth solar sail launch. Remember your audience.
Please write them and complain... I did:
I'll agree with most Slashdot posters on this. Your thinking is muddled:
"(Web will continue to be capitalized when part of the more official entity, World Wide Web.)"
followed by:
"But in the case of internet, web and net, a change in our house style was necessary to put into perspective what the internet is: another medium for delivering and receiving information. That it transformed human communication is beyond dispute. But no more so than moveable type did in its day. Or the radio. Or television."
If "World Wide Web" deserves capitalization, then it is almost a tautology that "The Internet" does, since in fact the former is nothing more than a colloquialism of the later. It would have been much more correct for you to say you are never going to use the term "World Wide Web" at all, and instead standardize on "The Internet" (or just "Internet") as do people who know what they are talking about.
Note the distinction between "Internet", that single network based on TCP/IP and related protocols allowing everyone in the world to be connected, and "intranet", or "internet" meaning any network set up using those protocols that allow one or more computers to communicate. The difference is significant.
Your examples show your ignorance. "television" or "radio" can refer to many things. A device, and entertainment industry, a form of broadcast spectrum, or a cable signal. Those words would be more comparable to "network", "networking" which I agree should not be capitalized.
Your move, carried to its logical conclusion would mean that the name of your publication should be changed to just "wired" since that word means "connected up with a wire". See the difference now?
Not only is it a stupid idea, but the people who run these systems aren't the sharpest tacks in the box either. Even if firewall tools were foolproof, I worry that the people implementing the system will make mistakes. We are already used to seeing large parts of the Federal budget unacounted for on a department by department basis. Now it's only a matter of time before:
"Entire federal budget goes missing after hacker attack. Department head advises citizens not to worry. Microsoft disclaims any blaim as XP SP2 was not installed on government system"
Yes, they HAD to do something becuase the old DOS system was falling appart, but it's the same bunch who let it get to that state that will be implementing the new system. Be very afraid.
I found the article rambling and self contradictory. I often wonder why Apple people are so defensive about this. It's OVER. You can't go back. Your mission, should you decide to accept it is to figure out what to do from here on out. The article DID get one thing right though:
"The fact is that the Windows monopoly is an anomaly, and exists only because of IBM's decision to license the DOS operating system from Microsoft, rather than buying it or writing their own from scratch. Microsoft didn't choose or decide the "open" nature of the IBM-compatible hardware business -- they just went along for the ride and then took full advantage of their fortunate position."
Which makes the other considerations moot. The good news, is that Microsoft won't get another free pass dumped in their lap. They have to either produce better software, or cheat to stay ahead, and their ability to cheat is being rapidly cut off by the international market as well as enlightened IT managers here in the States.
Who can blame them?
My methodology has always been to watch the history of updates from a given source. After a couple of years of updates that do more good than harm you trust them enough to apply them almost immediately. I say almost because you at least try it on a few test machines first, but this can be done within hours of the updates availability.
What you do after not one, but several bad updates, those that break key components and fix problems that you don't even have, or claim to fix problems but actually don't, that is another matter. Having been burned on an update from any company, I put the company "on probation" and apply new updates only after extensive testing.
This is a simple intuitive approach, that I think most users apply to both software updates as well as new product releases, and even hardware purchases. I have my own shit-list of hardware vendors as I suspect most people do. I just don't buy from these companies until they do something to change their reputation. Most never do. It is a true rarity for a company to suddenly discover the value of quality products to their future business. Companies either get it, or they don't. Microsoft has never got it, other than the original release of Windows NT which appears to have been thoroughly tested. From more recent experience this must have been a fluke, or, since NT was such a departure from previous version of Windows they were just uncharacteristically carefull.
I'll join the chorus of people saying that big companies, governmental organizations,etc. ALWAYS do their own testing. If they did that testing during the beta phase for this update, then they are ahead of the game and may be applying it now for real. If they are not on the beta program, then they will test on their own systems starting now. I doubt there are many exceptions to this.
Ah...
That answers a question I came in here to ask about the book "Quicksilver" which contains a strong implication that Newton was gay. Stephenson apologizes in the preface to the book for playing fast and loose with history, but my experience with him is that he doesn't just make stuff up out of thin air. So it's good to know that that aspect of the book was based on existing speculation.
One problem that people like me (history haters) reading historical fiction is that we don't know the facts from the enhancements.
The commentary accompanying the screenshots is both amusing and to the point. I've installed Debian so many times now that I hardly read the screens any more (Windows installs are the same way by the way... why are all home Windows machines on a workgroup called, uh, "workgroup"?)
Maybe a future version of the installer should leave the prompts as-is, but take the text for the prompts from a separate file that can be edited by a less technical newbie to eliminate the voodoo element of the whole thing. A world of good could come from just having more explanatory text in each prompt.
Be careful what you wish for. The best Windows installer IMHO was the one for NT. After that they started trying to detect too many devices that would hang the whole process.
I think the original plan for this Debian release was for a graphical installer, but to be honest I'd rather have one that JUST WORKS, producing a bootable system that can be tinkered with to deal with anything that's not perfect. The new installer, from my experience has improved the detection of devices, reduced the number of questions asked of the user. Once all these things are perfected (or nearly so) I suppose making it graphical will be a nice way to, um, slow down the whole process like Windows does. I can live without it.
Unlike Windows, the Linux install process is not a monthly maintenance task, so I hardly think it matters how it looks.