OK, I've been a Unix swe for 15 years now, but just getting into Linux. So last Friday, armed with a 6" stack of CDs from the expo, I finally decide to install Linux.
Being a novice at Linux (but not Unix), I decide to try out WholeLinux first of course. I wasn't concerned about install time, but ease of install. Pop in the CD, pop in the diskette, reboot, answer a couple of legalese prompts... A few minutes pass and no more questions are asked, and... Unbelievable! Everything is up and running! I've just installed Linux with very little stress! Yes, but... Where's apache? How do I configure the box for the LAN? And why the hell can I only see a 1/4 of the screen at a time and I have to constantly scroll up-down and left-right? Hmm, I have to configure a ton of things before I can do anything else... But how?!?! This might take hours to setup the way I want it...
So I give up and try Mandrake... Pop in the CD, reboot, ahh a series of good old questions on what I want to do... Choose partitions, network setup, packages to install... Many questions and 20 minutes later, my Linux is finally installed. That's a lot more effort than WholeLinux! was it worth it? YES! My Linux is up now already configured with a web server and everything else that I need. I can start enjoying Linux right away and get to know the intricacies of the system later.
WholeLinux might be a good idea for doing a vanilla install on many identical workstations, but it's not for a Linux newbie who wants to get a system up and running with little effort... Mandrake rocks, I won't recommend it to a Win or Mac user, but the end-result of the install is a much more usable system. For real *nix newbies, the Mandrake installer should at least support mouse input and provide more on-screen explanation...
This is all my humble opinion of course, YMMV. Now, is there an extended FAQ somewhere for Linux newbies?
"So excuse me for being skeptical when I see things like a pitch for an open source model for game development. My first reaction to e-mail from Time City was suspicious. How does an open source software development model track to game development? Games, it has always seemed to me, require really tight editorial control and direction. Can the free-for-all of distributed open source development produce a really good game?"
Hasn't this guy ever heard of nethack? I, and many friends, wasted long hours and days of our lives in the late 80s playing this game and hacking it up. Afaik, nethack is one of the earliest examples of the success of an open-source model. Before it got killed by the new graphics-based games, nethack had been ported to every machine/OS imaginable and I believe it even had a multi-player version, all open-source.
Sorry but I don't buy your arguments. They sound like old school thinking of "we must protect the public from themselves".
If anything, an open display of papers accompanied by slashdot-style discussions should improve the general public's knowledge and relationship with the scientific community. With open discussions, the regular folks would be able to point out their concerns and questions in public and get answers from the best in the field from all over the world (and not just their local doctor/scientist).
What if the published research is wrong and incorrect? What if it's misleading to the untrained eye?
Then the discussion that follows up the paper will quickly point out these problems, just like it's happened many times here on/.
99.99% of customers (this is a verifiable statistic, really it is, I swear, really, honest) want their websites to have a consistent look across all platforms and browsers, and they also insist (rightly) that their corporate identity system be preserved.
This has nothing to do with hard-coding every element size and font-type on your web-page. It is possible to design a web-site that has a consistent look and identity in all situations, without resorting to hard-coding sizes or using Flash. It just takes more skill and effort. Again, look at slashdot, it looks good and consistent most everywhere (that I know of), and it doesn't use Flash...
It really doesn't matter what design rules you follow and how well you follow them, the only thing that matters is this: does it look good or crappy? The redhat site (and all its look-alikes) looks real crappy on my browser, and it seems like it looks crappy on other people's browsers too. You can say that it follows some set of design rules 'till you're blue in the face, it doesn't change the fact that it looks crappy on my browser (and many others).
A site like slashdot looks great whether I access it on my laptop at 1280x1024 or on the library PC at 800x600. There is a simple reason why it works: don't hardcode anything. If I like to read text with 30 characters per line or 132 characters per line, I'd like to be the one to make that decision, and I'd like to be the one to configure my browser to display sites in that way, not some pompous old designer who can't see the difference between designing for a glossy magazine and a website.
I'm intelligent enough to configure my browser with the proper font and window sizes, please don't insult my intelligence by imposing your own standards on me!
Slashdot Mirror
OK, I've been a Unix swe for 15 years now, but just getting into Linux. So last Friday, armed with a 6" stack of CDs from the expo, I finally decide to install Linux.
Being a novice at Linux (but not Unix), I decide to try out WholeLinux first of course. I wasn't concerned about install time, but ease of install. Pop in the CD, pop in the diskette, reboot, answer a couple of legalese prompts... A few minutes pass and no more questions are asked, and... Unbelievable! Everything is up and running! I've just installed Linux with very little stress! Yes, but... Where's apache? How do I configure the box for the LAN? And why the hell can I only see a 1/4 of the screen at a time and I have to constantly scroll up-down and left-right? Hmm, I have to configure a ton of things before I can do anything else... But how?!?! This might take hours to setup the way I want it...
So I give up and try Mandrake... Pop in the CD, reboot, ahh a series of good old questions on what I want to do... Choose partitions, network setup, packages to install... Many questions and 20 minutes later, my Linux is finally installed. That's a lot more effort than WholeLinux! was it worth it? YES! My Linux is up now already configured with a web server and everything else that I need. I can start enjoying Linux right away and get to know the intricacies of the system later.
WholeLinux might be a good idea for doing a vanilla install on many identical workstations, but it's not for a Linux newbie who wants to get a system up and running with little effort... Mandrake rocks, I won't recommend it to a Win or Mac user, but the end-result of the install is a much more usable system. For real *nix newbies, the Mandrake installer should at least support mouse input and provide more on-screen explanation...
This is all my humble opinion of course, YMMV. Now, is there an extended FAQ somewhere for Linux newbies?
I think I meant to say :1,$ s/emacs/vi/g
:%s/emacs/vi/g
I believe you meant to say
"So excuse me for being skeptical when I see things like a pitch for an open source model for game development. My first reaction to e-mail from Time City was suspicious. How does an open source software development model track to game development? Games, it has always seemed to me, require really tight editorial control and direction. Can the free-for-all of distributed open source development produce a really good game?"
Hasn't this guy ever heard of nethack? I, and many friends, wasted long hours and days of our lives in the late 80s playing this game and hacking it up. Afaik, nethack is one of the earliest examples of the success of an open-source model. Before it got killed by the new graphics-based games, nethack had been ported to every machine/OS imaginable and I believe it even had a multi-player version, all open-source.
Sorry but I don't buy your arguments. They sound like old school thinking of "we must protect the public from themselves".
/.
If anything, an open display of papers accompanied by slashdot-style discussions should improve the general public's knowledge and relationship with the scientific community. With open discussions, the regular folks would be able to point out their concerns and questions in public and get answers from the best in the field from all over the world (and not just their local doctor/scientist).
What if the published research is wrong and incorrect? What if it's misleading to the untrained eye?
Then the discussion that follows up the paper will quickly point out these problems, just like it's happened many times here on
99.99% of customers (this is a verifiable statistic, really it is, I swear, really, honest) want their websites to have a consistent look across all platforms and browsers, and they also insist (rightly) that their corporate identity system be preserved.
This has nothing to do with hard-coding every element size and font-type on your web-page. It is possible to design a web-site that has a consistent look and identity in all situations, without resorting to hard-coding sizes or using Flash. It just takes more skill and effort. Again, look at slashdot, it looks good and consistent most everywhere (that I know of), and it doesn't use Flash...
It really doesn't matter what design rules you follow and how well you follow them, the only thing that matters is this: does it look good or crappy? The redhat site (and all its look-alikes) looks real crappy on my browser, and it seems like it looks crappy on other people's browsers too. You can say that it follows some set of design rules 'till you're blue in the face, it doesn't change the fact that it looks crappy on my browser (and many others).
A site like slashdot looks great whether I access it on my laptop at 1280x1024 or on the library PC at 800x600. There is a simple reason why it works: don't hardcode anything. If I like to read text with 30 characters per line or 132 characters per line, I'd like to be the one to make that decision, and I'd like to be the one to configure my browser to display sites in that way, not some pompous old designer who can't see the difference between designing for a glossy magazine and a website.
I'm intelligent enough to configure my browser with the proper font and window sizes, please don't insult my intelligence by imposing your own standards on me!