I got a good deal on an all-in-wonder card, and the ATI support seemed to have improved, except that SuSE (my preferred Linux distribution) seems to be problematic with ATI cards more than other distros. Maybe the relationship with Novell will lead to an improvement in this situation, but you are right, at the moment Nvidia is the better choice.
With regard to flight sims, FlightGear has some nice features (such as the choice of flight dynamics models) but my preferred ones are XPlane and the IL2 series. In theory both will run under Cedega except that joystick support seemed a bit buggy last time I swapped in an old Nvidia card to try it. Mind you, Xplane's joystick mapping is flexible but somewhat odd at the best of time.
The Linux audio problem for me is that I have a 4 input USB audio breakout box that allows me to record 4 channels simultaneously (my mixer has 4 outputs) and this isn't supported at all under Linux. I've found Audacity and Ardour to be a bit unstable so far, unfortunately, although they are getting there. I haven't seen anything yet that matches the simplicity of Acid for just building up a track out of components, but I'll take a look to see if anything new has appeared.
Acid has a very easy to use interface so is very good for just roughing out song ideas quickly - record an example of the riff, cut and paste it into place very quickly to rough out the structure. Record another riff. Very soon you have the rough layout of the song and then you can save that to stereo audio and use that as a guide track for recording those parts properly in Cubase or Magix, etc.
Without the support for the USB breakout box it's still not ideal.
Linux has come a long way in terms of usability for general use. It's a lot easier than my first experiences of Linux, trying to install HardHat on an SGI machine 5 years ago or so. It is usable on the desktop for most things apart from some device and gaming support, I think. My mother seems able to use it (although she uses Windows day-to-day as setting up cross over office for her garden planning software is a bit too much for her).
There are three big barriers to my full adoption of Linux at home:
Lack of support for some hardware
ATI cards
USB audio recording systems
Track IR
Flight sims being mosly Windows-based, with Cedega still offering only patchy support.
No viable alternative to Cubase or Acid or Ejay
Re:Unknown Error In The Submission
on
Nuclear Batteries
·
· Score: 1
"So there is a risk, what else is new, there are many other dangerous, nasty, evil chemicals and products that we safely use each day without killing ourselves. Careful design and suitable precautions can do wonders."
You also have to be careful you don't fall into the trap of saying "There is dangerous stuff out there so it doesn't matter if we introduce more dangerous stuff".
You have to do a cost-benefit analysis of anything new to ensure that the benefits of replacing existing systems outweight the potential costs, and it has to include all benefits (i.e. costs of the current system) as well as all costs of the new system.
Current battery technology can be harmful, which is an argument to (a) not use batteries where possible and/or (b) use rechargeables where it is appropriate (i.e. where the number of uses you get out of it outweighs the additional toxicity of rechargeables.
Environmentalists seem to be happy to use rechargeables despite the fact that per-battery disposal they are more polluting as on the basis of toxicity per hour of use they are less polluting. If nuclear batteries offer additional benefit of this kind over and above rechargeables then they are worth promoting.
In the UK back in the 1980s the figures were originally a proper measure of those unemployed. Then it was changed to 'unemployed and receiving benefit'. Then the qualification for benefit was changed.
Basically many many governments use various tricks with regard to unemployment figures and different governments use different calculations. To compare you need to compare like-with-like from NGOs. But most NGOs interested in figures have their own axes to grind so you end up with different figures with different biases from different NGOs. It's quite confusing.
The same thing happens with crime figures too. Some govt crime figures in the UK jumped up about three years ago as the way they were collated and counted was changed. If you look at the British Crime Survey (non governmental survey of victims of crime) there is a smooth downward trend in those same crime areas. So even official government figures that are honestly collected may contain various levels of error or inconsistency purely due to methodology. I would hope that those making policy are kept abreast of these inconsistencies, though.
Re:All I know is...
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Replying to my own post, in the future immigration may be one of the ways to cover the costs of an aeging population. Since capital is increasingly mobile you can't necessarily cover the costs of older members of the population by taxing corporations which means that the two options are either cutting benefits dramatically for baby boomers (it was assumed in the 1960s that the future would be rosy, and many failed to save enough by taking the information offered and planning accordingly) or by taxing the workforce more heavily to pay for the costs. Since you can't tax foreigners living abroad then getting more people of working age into your country to work there, and be taxed, rather than outsourcing, is one way to make up the tax revenue.
The next generation (Generation X if you will) will simply have to save much much more for retirement (I need to save more for one) since importing more people to be taxed won't work forever as those people will also get older unless the visas on which immigrants work are strictly time limited and they get booted out at 65. If the US dollar is high compared to the costs in their home countries this might actually work, however, as money saved working in the USA might offer a comfortable retirement for them in their country of origin (and without being a burden to their country of origin) as well as offering the USA the chance to garner additional tax receipts while they are working in the USA.
There are plenty of things that could go wrong, and encouraging immigration is not necessarily a popular choice. However the costs of an aeging population sometimes scare the pants off me.
That's an issue for all Western countries, and even countries beyond that.
Re:low unemployment compared to europe
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 1
Rather than take the official figures from the US government or French government (or the UK government - around 4%) it is best to take figures from international bodies that use the same criteria for determining what counts as unemployed. I remember back in thw 1980s when unemployment was very high in the UK and there were about 20 adjustments to how the figures were calculated, all of which had the effect of reducing the counts. I am sure the US, UK, France, Germany, etc cook the books to a certain extent, they may just be cooking them differently which makes comparasions difficult.
www.ilo.org would be the obvious place to look for figures at least on a consistent basis (although not necessarily balanced and fair - the ILO has its own agenda I am sure) but I can't find an obvious link to unemployment figures on that site.
There are probably other organisations, the ILO was just the one that sprung to mind in my pre-coffee state.
The monitor I use at home (SGI badged Sony GDM) is 12 years old and still going strong. My mother uses one from the same batch without problems, and my wife also had one until we moved 3 years ago and she took the opportunity to replace it with an LCD screen. We'd have to wait another 9 years to see if her LCD screen lasts as long as the CRT.
This wouldn't be a fair test, of course. LCD technology may have the potential to be more long lived, but there are all sorts of other components that may fail even if the LCD component itself is still going strong and technology gets outdated rapidly and repair or replacement of an LCD screen may not be economic or even possible 5 years after initial production.
With my wife's screen and mine I'd be comparing a relatively budget monitor (the LCD) with one supplied originally with a $3000 UNIX workstation that may have better build quality in all the peripheral bits such as power regulation and the like.
"Predicts Erik Willey, senior product manager at display maker ViewSonic, 'We're going to see an oversupply for the foreseeable future.'"
I didn't spot that initially. It seems, then, they ViewSonic hadn't mastered just-in-time production, or had assumed that the LCD TV would be a rip-roaring success and they would need to create a large inventory to cope with initial demand.
The question remains, does ViewSonic actually make the LCDs themselves? If not then there are two issues here: one is overcapacity for production of LCD TV screens, which is the problem of the manufacturer of the LCDs, and oversupply by ViewSonic, which is downstream of LCD production. Maybe ViewSonic makes its own LCDs, but it seems that most LCDs are made by Philips-LG and Hyundai,
with Matsushita, Toshiba and Hitcachi also being players. I don't know if ViewSonic is owned by any of these companies or which screens they use (very probably Hyundai, though).
Ok, there may be some excess supply (they made a few too many LCD TVs) but they seem to have dealt with the excess supply (stopped making too many TVs) are are left with excess capacity to make TVs, which is now being tasked to things there is not an excess of. (Well, I would argue that there are far too many smartphones already, but for entirely different reasons!)
The only real advantages of LCD TVs currently are:
Being able to mount one on a wall (e.g. a bedroom) where you want to use a minimum of space.
Reduced power consumption.
Negative points are:
Viewing angles still limited
Not necessarily as bright.
There are other thin TV techologies coming along, though, which may be better for TVs than LCD (but perhaps a bit too heavy for a monitor, compared to how useful LCDs are for monitors).
It's excess capacity, not execcess supply. I.e. excess potential to build LCDs. If you could break up a 17 inch LCD into 100 smartphone LCDs then the argument would be more directly one of supply since you could simply break up existing LCD stock. However instead excess LCD TVs will simply not be built.
What you have is excess capacity of the creation of LCDs, and so the LCDs created will simply be ones for a different purpose. The production of LCD TVs will simply be lowered to match the demand such that price levels are approximately maintained. On the other hand production of LCDs for other gadgets for which the demand outstrips supply will be increased. This may lead to these items becoming slightly cheaper but there are many other factors involved in the pricing of a PDA or a phone (especially the latter given deep discounting already) that the price of these may not be greatly affected by a reduced screen cost.
It is worth remembering that very few manufacturers make LCDs for computer monitors, even though there are very many brands. In terms of the retailers they will only wish to drop prices if it leads to such additional sales that it increases their profit. However they would rather sell more items at their current profit level. Market saturation and distinguishing your product on the basis of cost from a competitors comes into play here. Sometimes cutting the price of your monitor may not only reduce the profit margin but harm sales if your brand is considered to be a premium one. There are a lot of complex factors at play here.
If the increase is due to immigrants from Eastern Europe then the numbers who are infected must be small as the incidence in white males and females in the USA is falling. It is, however, rising amongst black males and hispanic males. It could be that data pooling of all whites into one ethnic group in these figures disguises things. Certainly failing to complete courses of antibiotics is a big factor in breeding resistance.
The USA has a surpsingly high rate of infection for a Western nation, higher than most of North West Europe. This may be a result of higher rates of prescription of antibiotics in the USA, and slo the use of antibiotics in animal feed as a growth promoter. In any case in all Western nations there is a problem with TB becoming drug resistant which is likely to be a result of strains becoming resistant in those Western nations, not the importation of strains from Asia.
Bacteria can become resistant by the exchange of plasmoids with other bacteria of a different species that has developed immunity. In addition the plasmoids that may convey resistance may give resistance to a wide spectrum of antibiotics. Thus being prescribed antibiotics for a cold (which will not help the cold) may convey immunity to a class of antibiotics on bacteria in your gut. It is possible for these to exchange plasmoids with TB bacteria. This can also occur in animal husbandry if antibiotics are used as growth promoters or as a prophylactic.
In Europe use of antibiotics has been lower than in the USA, so bacteria are a little less resistant here, but we are catching up. TB is on the rise in Europe too.
Having a large prison population creates, in effect, a large quarantine.
Not really, since eventually most prisoners are released. Also prison warders come into contact with the prisoners, and then frequent other places outside the prison. If you want to lock up all prisoners forever, for even minor crimes, and also never let the warders mix with the general population again then you have quarantine.
There's a house in Denmark that is actually energy positive (it is a net exporter of energy) although I doubt that a house of its design is actually practical for mass production.
One thing to do is compost. We compost as much as we can (we need a second compost bin now, though, as we don't use the compost quickly enough).
One issue we have with the result of compost (a very lush soil) is that we can only really put in household waste and grass clippings as garden waste often contains weed seeds. If anyone knows of a way to either kill off those weed seeds, or a use to put weed seed containing composted waste to I'd been keen to hear about it.
" I doubt many people would want to live in 800 square foot houses if given a choice."
Do you have any links for this specifically, as I don't see the need to flush toilets with water you could drink. Saying this our cats insist on drinking toilet water preferentially to fresh water in their water dish for some reason, but then they might like rain water more as they also seem to think rain water from a muddy puddle is especially delicious.
" I doubt many people would want to live in 800 square foot houses if given a choice."
It's about the standard size for the 'Universal' house design in the UK in the interwar period, and also about the size of typical terraced houses from the 1880-1914 period too. Our house dates from 1962 and has smaller base plan than houses build in 1918-39, but has been extended to about 1000 square feet.
You can have a large but efficient house, over and above the things that are common to all house construction, large and small (insulation, etc).
For example, open plan houses require more energy input as to be comfortable you have to heat or cool a large area. Separate rooms means that you can have a cold kitchen in winter if you are only going to be spending 5 minutes in their putting milk on your cornflakes. Also you can subdivide large living areas with temporary partitions and open them up when you have large gatherings, and so on.
Also the surface area of the house is important. A small bungalow can end up being less energy efficient than a larger 2 storey house.
" I think I've read somewhere that solar panels cost more in energy to create than they ever produce. Is this correct? "
No. Current solar panels generally recover the initial investment in 3 to 5 years (depends on how much sun they get, obviously) and last for about 20. They do degrade a bit in performance towards the end of their lives, but will typically provide 3 to 4 times the initial energy investment during their lifetime.
An alternative to solar panels is solar heating, in which water is pumped into solar heated areas. It is less efficient but lower tech (essentially plumbing) and can be cheaper, depending on how much plumbers charge in your area. Essentially you use the solar heating to provide hot water for your house (people like hot water even in summer!) and thus reduce utility costs to heat it. In theory the hot water can be used for other tasks as well, but again at the cost of efficiency, but then the cost of the total solution tends to go back up to the cost of solar panels again. One of the nice things about solar heating is that there isn't a requirement for heavy metals and the like, although if the demand for copper pipes increased dramatically that might be a problem in itself!
At the moment, though, solar heating or panels are expensive for home owners. You can reduce energy use from the grid more cost effectively with other techniques (insulation, shading windows, more efficient boilers, or even just servicing your boiler) at the moment until volume sales reduces solar panel costs.
Some governments (e.g. Germany) have provided tax incentives to install solar solutions, or required that new government buildings include solar solutions where possible. The latter makes a lot of sense as the cost of solar panels on a new office block is a comparatively small proportion of the total cost, but stimulates the demand for solar panels, hopefully then bringing new production onstream.
Another area that people sometimes neglect when working out how much energy they use is watering their garden. Using tap water means using water that has been purified to human drinking standards, with quite a lot of energy input. Collecting rainwater run off from your house and storing it to water your garden directly saves energy. Given the downpours in the UK in August stopping run off going into your garden and flooding it (we had to bail our sunken patio out!) is helpful too! Mind you, since we had 6 inches of rain in 24 hours (I'd left a glass out in the garden) you'd need a huge water butt to cope!
I'm using slackware right now. I don't have a problem using it. My point is that it doesn't matter what I find easy, it matters more what a completely naieve user would find easy. I would find it hard to put myself in that users' shoes.
Slashdot Mirror
I got a good deal on an all-in-wonder card, and the ATI support seemed to have improved, except that SuSE (my preferred Linux distribution) seems to be problematic with ATI cards more than other distros. Maybe the relationship with Novell will lead to an improvement in this situation, but you are right, at the moment Nvidia is the better choice.
With regard to flight sims, FlightGear has some nice features (such as the choice of flight dynamics models) but my preferred ones are XPlane and the IL2 series. In theory both will run under Cedega except that joystick support seemed a bit buggy last time I swapped in an old Nvidia card to try it. Mind you, Xplane's joystick mapping is flexible but somewhat odd at the best of time.
The Linux audio problem for me is that I have a 4 input USB audio breakout box that allows me to record 4 channels simultaneously (my mixer has 4 outputs) and this isn't supported at all under Linux. I've found Audacity and Ardour to be a bit unstable so far, unfortunately, although they are getting there. I haven't seen anything yet that matches the simplicity of Acid for just building up a track out of components, but I'll take a look to see if anything new has appeared.
Acid has a very easy to use interface so is very good for just roughing out song ideas quickly - record an example of the riff, cut and paste it into place very quickly to rough out the structure. Record another riff. Very soon you have the rough layout of the song and then you can save that to stereo audio and use that as a guide track for recording those parts properly in Cubase or Magix, etc.
Without the support for the USB breakout box it's still not ideal.
Linux has come a long way in terms of usability for general use. It's a lot easier than my first experiences of Linux, trying to install HardHat on an SGI machine 5 years ago or so. It is usable on the desktop for most things apart from some device and gaming support, I think. My mother seems able to use it (although she uses Windows day-to-day as setting up cross over office for her garden planning software is a bit too much for her).
"So there is a risk, what else is new, there are many other dangerous, nasty, evil chemicals and products that we safely use each day without killing ourselves. Careful design and suitable precautions can do wonders."
You also have to be careful you don't fall into the trap of saying "There is dangerous stuff out there so it doesn't matter if we introduce more dangerous stuff".
You have to do a cost-benefit analysis of anything new to ensure that the benefits of replacing existing systems outweight the potential costs, and it has to include all benefits (i.e. costs of the current system) as well as all costs of the new system.
Current battery technology can be harmful, which is an argument to (a) not use batteries where possible and/or (b) use rechargeables where it is appropriate (i.e. where the number of uses you get out of it outweighs the additional toxicity of rechargeables.
Environmentalists seem to be happy to use rechargeables despite the fact that per-battery disposal they are more polluting as on the basis of toxicity per hour of use they are less polluting. If nuclear batteries offer additional benefit of this kind over and above rechargeables then they are worth promoting.
" Britain used WWI to do exactly the same thing"
I knew WW1 to be an evil imperialist plot created by Britain somehow, organised by the King contacting his cousins the Kaiser and the Tsar, no doubtl
Basically many many governments use various tricks with regard to unemployment figures and different governments use different calculations. To compare you need to compare like-with-like from NGOs. But most NGOs interested in figures have their own axes to grind so you end up with different figures with different biases from different NGOs. It's quite confusing.
The same thing happens with crime figures too. Some govt crime figures in the UK jumped up about three years ago as the way they were collated and counted was changed. If you look at the British Crime Survey (non governmental survey of victims of crime) there is a smooth downward trend in those same crime areas. So even official government figures that are honestly collected may contain various levels of error or inconsistency purely due to methodology. I would hope that those making policy are kept abreast of these inconsistencies, though.
The next generation (Generation X if you will) will simply have to save much much more for retirement (I need to save more for one) since importing more people to be taxed won't work forever as those people will also get older unless the visas on which immigrants work are strictly time limited and they get booted out at 65. If the US dollar is high compared to the costs in their home countries this might actually work, however, as money saved working in the USA might offer a comfortable retirement for them in their country of origin (and without being a burden to their country of origin) as well as offering the USA the chance to garner additional tax receipts while they are working in the USA.
There are plenty of things that could go wrong, and encouraging immigration is not necessarily a popular choice. However the costs of an aeging population sometimes scare the pants off me.
That's an issue for all Western countries, and even countries beyond that.
www.ilo.org would be the obvious place to look for figures at least on a consistent basis (although not necessarily balanced and fair - the ILO has its own agenda I am sure) but I can't find an obvious link to unemployment figures on that site. There are probably other organisations, the ILO was just the one that sprung to mind in my pre-coffee state.
This wouldn't be a fair test, of course. LCD technology may have the potential to be more long lived, but there are all sorts of other components that may fail even if the LCD component itself is still going strong and technology gets outdated rapidly and repair or replacement of an LCD screen may not be economic or even possible 5 years after initial production.
With my wife's screen and mine I'd be comparing a relatively budget monitor (the LCD) with one supplied originally with a $3000 UNIX workstation that may have better build quality in all the peripheral bits such as power regulation and the like.
I didn't spot that initially. It seems, then, they ViewSonic hadn't mastered just-in-time production, or had assumed that the LCD TV would be a rip-roaring success and they would need to create a large inventory to cope with initial demand.
The question remains, does ViewSonic actually make the LCDs themselves? If not then there are two issues here: one is overcapacity for production of LCD TV screens, which is the problem of the manufacturer of the LCDs, and oversupply by ViewSonic, which is downstream of LCD production. Maybe ViewSonic makes its own LCDs, but it seems that most LCDs are made by Philips-LG and Hyundai, with Matsushita, Toshiba and Hitcachi also being players. I don't know if ViewSonic is owned by any of these companies or which screens they use (very probably Hyundai, though).
Ok, there may be some excess supply (they made a few too many LCD TVs) but they seem to have dealt with the excess supply (stopped making too many TVs) are are left with excess capacity to make TVs, which is now being tasked to things there is not an excess of. (Well, I would argue that there are far too many smartphones already, but for entirely different reasons!)
They are down below $1100 now - more like $700.
Negative points are:
There are other thin TV techologies coming along, though, which may be better for TVs than LCD (but perhaps a bit too heavy for a monitor, compared to how useful LCDs are for monitors).
What you have is excess capacity of the creation of LCDs, and so the LCDs created will simply be ones for a different purpose. The production of LCD TVs will simply be lowered to match the demand such that price levels are approximately maintained. On the other hand production of LCDs for other gadgets for which the demand outstrips supply will be increased. This may lead to these items becoming slightly cheaper but there are many other factors involved in the pricing of a PDA or a phone (especially the latter given deep discounting already) that the price of these may not be greatly affected by a reduced screen cost.
It is worth remembering that very few manufacturers make LCDs for computer monitors, even though there are very many brands. In terms of the retailers they will only wish to drop prices if it leads to such additional sales that it increases their profit. However they would rather sell more items at their current profit level. Market saturation and distinguishing your product on the basis of cost from a competitors comes into play here. Sometimes cutting the price of your monitor may not only reduce the profit margin but harm sales if your brand is considered to be a premium one. There are a lot of complex factors at play here.
If the increase is due to immigrants from Eastern Europe then the numbers who are infected must be small as the incidence in white males and females in the USA is falling. It is, however, rising amongst black males and hispanic males. It could be that data pooling of all whites into one ethnic group in these figures disguises things. Certainly failing to complete courses of antibiotics is a big factor in breeding resistance.
The USA has a surpsingly high rate of infection for a Western nation, higher than most of North West Europe. This may be a result of higher rates of prescription of antibiotics in the USA, and slo the use of antibiotics in animal feed as a growth promoter. In any case in all Western nations there is a problem with TB becoming drug resistant which is likely to be a result of strains becoming resistant in those Western nations, not the importation of strains from Asia.
Bacteria can become resistant by the exchange of plasmoids with other bacteria of a different species that has developed immunity. In addition the plasmoids that may convey resistance may give resistance to a wide spectrum of antibiotics. Thus being prescribed antibiotics for a cold (which will not help the cold) may convey immunity to a class of antibiotics on bacteria in your gut. It is possible for these to exchange plasmoids with TB bacteria. This can also occur in animal husbandry if antibiotics are used as growth promoters or as a prophylactic.
In Europe use of antibiotics has been lower than in the USA, so bacteria are a little less resistant here, but we are catching up. TB is on the rise in Europe too.
Not really, since eventually most prisoners are released. Also prison warders come into contact with the prisoners, and then frequent other places outside the prison. If you want to lock up all prisoners forever, for even minor crimes, and also never let the warders mix with the general population again then you have quarantine.
There's a house in Denmark that is actually energy positive (it is a net exporter of energy) although I doubt that a house of its design is actually practical for mass production.
One issue we have with the result of compost (a very lush soil) is that we can only really put in household waste and grass clippings as garden waste often contains weed seeds. If anyone knows of a way to either kill off those weed seeds, or a use to put weed seed containing composted waste to I'd been keen to hear about it.
Do you have any links for this specifically, as I don't see the need to flush toilets with water you could drink. Saying this our cats insist on drinking toilet water preferentially to fresh water in their water dish for some reason, but then they might like rain water more as they also seem to think rain water from a muddy puddle is especially delicious.
It's about the standard size for the 'Universal' house design in the UK in the interwar period, and also about the size of typical terraced houses from the 1880-1914 period too. Our house dates from 1962 and has smaller base plan than houses build in 1918-39, but has been extended to about 1000 square feet.
For example, open plan houses require more energy input as to be comfortable you have to heat or cool a large area. Separate rooms means that you can have a cold kitchen in winter if you are only going to be spending 5 minutes in their putting milk on your cornflakes. Also you can subdivide large living areas with temporary partitions and open them up when you have large gatherings, and so on.
Also the surface area of the house is important. A small bungalow can end up being less energy efficient than a larger 2 storey house.
" I think I've read somewhere that solar panels cost more in energy to create than they ever produce. Is this correct? " No. Current solar panels generally recover the initial investment in 3 to 5 years (depends on how much sun they get, obviously) and last for about 20. They do degrade a bit in performance towards the end of their lives, but will typically provide 3 to 4 times the initial energy investment during their lifetime.
At the moment, though, solar heating or panels are expensive for home owners. You can reduce energy use from the grid more cost effectively with other techniques (insulation, shading windows, more efficient boilers, or even just servicing your boiler) at the moment until volume sales reduces solar panel costs.
Some governments (e.g. Germany) have provided tax incentives to install solar solutions, or required that new government buildings include solar solutions where possible. The latter makes a lot of sense as the cost of solar panels on a new office block is a comparatively small proportion of the total cost, but stimulates the demand for solar panels, hopefully then bringing new production onstream.
Another area that people sometimes neglect when working out how much energy they use is watering their garden. Using tap water means using water that has been purified to human drinking standards, with quite a lot of energy input. Collecting rainwater run off from your house and storing it to water your garden directly saves energy. Given the downpours in the UK in August stopping run off going into your garden and flooding it (we had to bail our sunken patio out!) is helpful too! Mind you, since we had 6 inches of rain in 24 hours (I'd left a glass out in the garden) you'd need a huge water butt to cope!
I'm using slackware right now. I don't have a problem using it. My point is that it doesn't matter what I find easy, it matters more what a completely naieve user would find easy. I would find it hard to put myself in that users' shoes.