I'm fairly certain that doesn't matter... You can sign a rental contract for an apartment without having read it. You're still legally bound to it. You signed it. Ignorance, especially willful ignorance, is not an excuse for breaking a contract.
IMO, we need someone to challenge Apple, too. Magnatune is pretty cool, but not quite competing with iTunes (Amarok + Magnatune, admittedly, is pretty neat though).
Catholic means universal, yes. I used the term "Roman Catholic Church" to refer to the actual religious group.
I have studied the founding of "the church," yes. I'm curious what "the church" is, in your definition, though:)
My main point is that "cult" is a word that is somewhat relative, as it refers to orthodoxy or unorthodoxy. Thus, it depends on who uses it. If the RCC says something is a "cult" it is using itself as the "orthodox" and comparing the cult to it. It seems that we are arguing from two positions; you would like a global definition of "cult" (similar to "religion") and I am arguing for a relative definition of "cult" that refers to the orthodoxy of the actual beliefs.
Thank you for posting your own definition. I am actually IN the religious groupings (being part of a religion, that is), and I even cited an outside source...:)
Catholics are not a cult, unless you talk to conservative evangelical Christians. It kinda depends on what dogma/doctrine of the RCC one looks at and how it is interpreted. It can get somewhat complex.
Lutherans are not a cult. Lutherans have basically orthodox teachings.
What one particular religion or sect is considered DOES change. Who said it didn't? What is a sect now may end up becoming more "popular" and the "original" may end up being a "sect." For example, 600 years ago, it was Roman Catholic or nothing, as far as "mainstream" things were considered. And yes, back then if you held to non-RCC you were a "cult" or, in more popular terms, a "heretic." In the present day, that is different, and the RCC is less heretic-happy than it was 600 years ago. Lutherans, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, etc., all are "orthodox" Christian denominations. Heavens Gate, Worldwide Church of God (at least when it started), Unitarians, etc., are not.
Who gets to decide what "orthodox" means may change. (note the distinction: who determines what is "commonly accepted" may change, but that is different from saying what is actually true or not changes... in other words, I'm not advocating a post-modern position in epistemology)
There's a reason that we don't have humans fighting to the death in giant amphitheaters, we've become more civilized.
What's the reason? What is "civilized"?
Considering the fact that some of the most "civilized" people can end up raping and murdering, I fail to see how being civilized has anything to do with it. with regard to the Puritans enjoying violence more so than the Romans, I still find that very dubious, especially if one reads actual Puritan writings.
As to civlization, between 150 and 50 years ago we had things such as eugenics and sterilization, Hitler, Mao Tse Tung, Stalin, Mussolini, the Vietnam guy (can't remember his name), etc. Civilized, you say? IMO, there is no difference as far as humans are concerned between the 1st century AD and now, except that certain societies, because of various influences, have had different - dare I say it - moral standards and influences, while others have not. Rome's influences (moral, religious, philosophical, etc) were different from America's, at least at the beginning.
However, the entertainment venues of a society often portray what the society is "really" like. "Civilized" often means "nicely clothed" and ignores what the society (or person) really is. So the question still remains, do violent video games reflect society, affect society, or some other option?
A cult is an "extremist" group that broke off of a religion. Thus a "Christian cult" is different from a "Muslim cult." It's more akin to "sect" except that it is typically viewed as heretical by the majority of the religion. For example, a "Christian cult" would be Heavens Gate or (depending on who you ask) even a group such as Mormons of Jehovah's Witnesses. Not being a Muslim, I don't know much about their cults.
Even google agrees. Or rather, wordnet.princeton.edu
followers of an exclusive system of religious beliefs and practices
fad: an interest followed with exaggerated zeal; "he always follows the latest fads"; "it was all the rage that season"
followers of an unorthodox, extremist, or false religion or sect who often live outside of conventional society under the direction of a charismatic leader
a religion or sect that is generally considered to be unorthodox, extremist, or false; "it was a satanic cult"
Keywords are "unorthodox" and "extremist" which tend to be relative terms based on what IS "orthodox" and "non-extermist" (normal?). So a "Christian cult" is going to be unorthodox, and obviously that orthodoxy isn't going to be defined by, say, a Muslim, or some other religion.
Secondly, Rome built a Colosseum (and other structures, but that's the main one in Rome, of course) purely for entertainment, correct? And there they watched (and enjoyed watching) gladiators and slaves and criminals either killing each other or getting killed by animals, etc. And often very violent, such as putting freshly-killed-animal skins on a person, tying him or her to a post, and unleashing half starved lions. Yup, definitely less "enjoy-violence"-esque than punishing someone with public humiliation by putting them in stocks. Obviously, Puritans were far worse and loved violence far more. Putting someone in stocks and facing public humiliation is worse than death by being tied to a post naked with smelly animal skins and getting torn to shreds by lions in front of tens of thousands of people.
Right.
Witch burnings, I offer no defense, except that I wasn't trying to compare mobs to general society. Did they happen? Unfortunately, yes. Did all Puritans like it? No. Read some accounts of contemporary commentary.
But did (or, present tense, do) societies, and on a greater scale, entire civilizations, have more violence than others? ENJOY violence more than others?
Example. Did, say, the Puritans enjoy violence? Not really. Did... I don't know, pick a society or civilization known for peace. Did they enjoy violence? Assyrians appeared to. Romans definitely did. It seems that some civs and societies actually promoted it, while others did not appear to do so. America
So, as EastCoastSurfer pointed out, does violence in the entertainment industry actually AFFECT people, or is it simply reflecting our society? Are either one of these actually Good Things (tm)? (if it's reflecting society, is that a part of society that we WANT to reflect? If it's affecting society, is that how we want society to be affected?)
Whether or not a correlation implies a causation is where more research comes in. If things aren't correlated at ALL, then causation is obviously NOT there. Causation necessitates correlation (at least, in my logic, I could be shown that it is in error though... at the moment seems pretty solid), so where there is a correlation, there might be a causation.
Unfortunately, most studies only point out correlations. And most "proofs" are actually just suggestions with some amount of good supporting arguments.
Playing devil's advocate... you're probably being somewhat sarcastic/facetious, but you are making a point. Being a proper devil's advocate, I thought I would point out that I don't know that most people believing in the games-cause-violence idea would say that games make people want to commit random acts of murder. Rather, that when tension builds/anger occurs, violence as an action comes more naturally than before the video-game-"conditioning." In other words, the fact that your reaction to J.T. is "kill Jack!" proves that the violent video games did have an effect - that is, they are affecting your reaction to something that displeases you.
I might be wrong, but I think any given netbook is going to be pretty cool with running PSP/DS/iPhone games fairly well? The, for lack of a better term, computing power of an iPhone vs. MSI Wind has to be tilted towards the Wind. I don't think Half-Life 2 is going to be running on an iPhone anytime soon:)
Agree that hardware issues are not isolated to Linux, but (partially due to Linux support and partially due to Linux driver support by vendors), my anecdotal evidence with wireless cards, sound cards, printers, and video cards is that they provided more issues with Linux than Windows.
I've used apt-get and RPM (yum and also smart). I actually don't particularly care, I'll use whatever works easiest in the distro...
Learning Linux. That's the more important question here, so here goes. Moving the X from top left to top right is a lot more of a minor detail than having to use a CLI to do something. I know, there are GUIs, but I hear lots of people complaining about GUIs (e.g., SuSE), and I've used some GUIs and they are scattered, not standardized, can be very hard to find in a given distro, etc. That aside, I agree that learning the new environment isn't all that hard. Gnome and KDE are fairly easy, with the biggest gripe I have being the menu (it comes with so many stinkin' default programs installed, and for some reason it doesn't like putting newly installed programs in the menu - at least, not when I was fiddling with desktop stuff for my parents).
As for using newbie-friendly distros, I will admit that they are pretty good for people who just want to check their e-mail online. But for the person that wants to do word processing, spreadsheets, read PDFs, e-mail, printing, iTunes (there's a big issue), has an iPod, and can do all those things in Windows and doesn't see why he/she should learn a new OS since Windows works... what then? Sure, basic stuff (clicking Firefox) is easy. What about a USB drive? Pictures? etc. IMO, either Windows has done a fairly good job with usability and compatibility, or people are just way used to it. I have to say, though, that after 10ish years of using Linux, I can still find a random thing in Windows easier than in Linux. Part of the reason is Linux distros change so much (I use SuSE and RedHat primarily, and the filesystem structures are quite different).
Not everyone can learn to use Linux, I agree... anyone can learn it. The question is, why should we require them to learn it simply for the sake of them not using Windows? If Windows is working for them, I am going to have a hard time telling them they should take a month off (exaggerated, but not much if you think of all the individual "Oh, so how do I..." issues that eventually come up) to learn how to use Linux instead of Windows? There are some advantages I could list, but for someone who is not interested in computers all that much in the first place, doesn't find OSS/Linux "interesting," and just wants to use their computer... and a lot of people, in my experience, fall into those categories.:)
Yes, they do. Windows is pretty good at offering compatibility with pretty much anything. But Microsoft also has a lot of people working on Windows, whereas Linux coders can't even agree on which text editor to make standard. On one hand, Linux DOES have too many options to be mainstream, but limiting the options won't make it any better, I don't think.
IMO, it's documentation and usability that's the issue. OSS developers like developing but documentation and usability "by the masses" tends to not be a big deal, I don't think. Ubuntu is somewhat of an exception, and it has become very popular. I'd also like to point out that it has a millionaire behind it, which must help:P
IMO, as long as the Linux "geek" user and developer crowd are not very interested in the stupid average user, Linux will remain in the small percentages. When we figure out that other people actually do have things they want to be able to do easily and not have to learn a bunch of new stuff (or use a text editor just to make a new icon on the desktop, or do more than a few mouse click just to open an MS Word document, etc) just to use their computer, maybe it will start getting more popular.
As it is, I am using it for people who won't know the difference, for the most part, besides the fact that they don't get viruses and malware anymore. Unfortunately, it still doesn't work smoothly, even with pretty basic hardware (Radeon 9800 3D acceleration was a pain to get working, Cannon MP210 printer wasn't very easy to get to work either due to only having Australian Linux drivers...). I also use it for old hardware (PuppyLinux on an old laptop with
And yet, many Linux geeks use RPM. And distros. Someone seems to like it for some reason. RedHat is pretty popular. So is SuSE.
Seems like this "let's choose one distro" thing will be harder than one might think. We could probably end up starting World War III over this, since a lot of Linux folks are so incredibly opinionated about distros, programs (vi vs. emacs, cli vs. gui, rpm vs. deb (vs. tarballs...), etc). Linux is cool and all, but the answer to the small user percentage isn't going to necessarily be the "no options" options, IMO.
Heck, in 3.5 years, your desktop computer will be 4 times more powerful than anything currently running today, too.
For being so picky about the terms in the article, you are quite lax with your own. I seriously doubt my desktop, in 3.5 years, will be able to do ~ 6 petaflops.:) (4x more powerful than "anything" currently running today)
Furthermore, 20 vs. ~1.5 petaflops is a goodly sized jump for 3ish years, isn't it? Computer speed growth has seemed to be slowing lately, with an emphasis being on multiple cores, not faster clock speeds like it was 10 years ago. So being able to get 20x the power of the current super computer in 3.5 years seems to be pretty good.
I think this is one of the more insightful posts I've read so far. The 90% of people that AREN'T using Linux (not including the Mac peoples), or whatever the number is, probably fall into one of three categories.
Don't have time to learn how to use a new OS.
Don't know what an "OS" is
Don't care, because what they use now is working, why should they take the time to learn something else.
I think we tend to forget that not everyone LIKES tinkering; most people want to push the button, click an icon, and read their e-mail. Then push the button again and leave. If someone really wants to do a "one size fits all" sort of idea, I think it would be better to get a "one documentation fits all" idea. For example, help people (no, sending people to distrowatch isn't going to help the average user) decide on which distro to download (based on how old their computer is, etc). Have documentation on how to do various tasks from out-of-the-"box" installs for all the distros (e.g., Ubuntu vs. SuSE vs. RedHat is fairly different as far as default programs, etc). Not everyone even knows what to ask "Google" when it comes to something they don't understand ("Uh, the screen is way too small. How do I make the screen bigger in Linux?" - that's going to turn up a lot of results that have nothing to do with Ubuntu 8.0.XY6234.2008 Feisty Fawn R2, which they don't even know their using...).
I'd much rather see some solid END USER documentation. APIs, libraries, services, etc., are all more developer or "geek" oriented. Improving interfaces would be a good idea though, agree with you there.
So either everyone learns what "apt-get" does (not to mention how to use a command line interface in the first place), or everyone runs commands and has no idea what they are doing. Then a hardware issue comes up with their video card. Oops.
Plus, why apt-get? Why did we decide to use debian over rpm? hmm.
One problem, if it's a problem, with Linux is that those that have learned to use it (read: taken time) presume everyone else can learn, too (read: has time). That's not the case.
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I'm fairly certain that doesn't matter... You can sign a rental contract for an apartment without having read it. You're still legally bound to it. You signed it. Ignorance, especially willful ignorance, is not an excuse for breaking a contract.
Ah. :)
No you don't... ? :)
Rats. Strings attached, even on an etch-a-sketch :(
Not necessarily just western media..
if you look around and notice two things:
Depending on who you are, that's a big if.
IMO, we need someone to challenge Apple, too. Magnatune is pretty cool, but not quite competing with iTunes (Amarok + Magnatune, admittedly, is pretty neat though).
Sleep interrupts slashdot. oh well. :)
Catholic means universal, yes. I used the term "Roman Catholic Church" to refer to the actual religious group.
I have studied the founding of "the church," yes. I'm curious what "the church" is, in your definition, though :)
My main point is that "cult" is a word that is somewhat relative, as it refers to orthodoxy or unorthodoxy. Thus, it depends on who uses it. If the RCC says something is a "cult" it is using itself as the "orthodox" and comparing the cult to it. It seems that we are arguing from two positions; you would like a global definition of "cult" (similar to "religion") and I am arguing for a relative definition of "cult" that refers to the orthodoxy of the actual beliefs.
Thank you for posting your own definition. I am actually IN the religious groupings (being part of a religion, that is), and I even cited an outside source... :)
Catholics are not a cult, unless you talk to conservative evangelical Christians. It kinda depends on what dogma/doctrine of the RCC one looks at and how it is interpreted. It can get somewhat complex.
Lutherans are not a cult. Lutherans have basically orthodox teachings.
What one particular religion or sect is considered DOES change. Who said it didn't? What is a sect now may end up becoming more "popular" and the "original" may end up being a "sect." For example, 600 years ago, it was Roman Catholic or nothing, as far as "mainstream" things were considered. And yes, back then if you held to non-RCC you were a "cult" or, in more popular terms, a "heretic." In the present day, that is different, and the RCC is less heretic-happy than it was 600 years ago. Lutherans, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, etc., all are "orthodox" Christian denominations. Heavens Gate, Worldwide Church of God (at least when it started), Unitarians, etc., are not.
Who gets to decide what "orthodox" means may change. (note the distinction: who determines what is "commonly accepted" may change, but that is different from saying what is actually true or not changes... in other words, I'm not advocating a post-modern position in epistemology)
There's a reason that we don't have humans fighting to the death in giant amphitheaters, we've become more civilized.
What's the reason? What is "civilized"?
Considering the fact that some of the most "civilized" people can end up raping and murdering, I fail to see how being civilized has anything to do with it. with regard to the Puritans enjoying violence more so than the Romans, I still find that very dubious, especially if one reads actual Puritan writings.
As to civlization, between 150 and 50 years ago we had things such as eugenics and sterilization, Hitler, Mao Tse Tung, Stalin, Mussolini, the Vietnam guy (can't remember his name), etc. Civilized, you say? IMO, there is no difference as far as humans are concerned between the 1st century AD and now, except that certain societies, because of various influences, have had different - dare I say it - moral standards and influences, while others have not. Rome's influences (moral, religious, philosophical, etc) were different from America's, at least at the beginning.
However, the entertainment venues of a society often portray what the society is "really" like. "Civilized" often means "nicely clothed" and ignores what the society (or person) really is. So the question still remains, do violent video games reflect society, affect society, or some other option?
Ah, no.
A cult is an "extremist" group that broke off of a religion. Thus a "Christian cult" is different from a "Muslim cult." It's more akin to "sect" except that it is typically viewed as heretical by the majority of the religion. For example, a "Christian cult" would be Heavens Gate or (depending on who you ask) even a group such as Mormons of Jehovah's Witnesses. Not being a Muslim, I don't know much about their cults.
Even google agrees. Or rather, wordnet.princeton.edu
Keywords are "unorthodox" and "extremist" which tend to be relative terms based on what IS "orthodox" and "non-extermist" (normal?). So a "Christian cult" is going to be unorthodox, and obviously that orthodoxy isn't going to be defined by, say, a Muslim, or some other religion.
At the risk of feeding the trolls...
Hmmm. Read some Puritans sometime.
Secondly, Rome built a Colosseum (and other structures, but that's the main one in Rome, of course) purely for entertainment, correct? And there they watched (and enjoyed watching) gladiators and slaves and criminals either killing each other or getting killed by animals, etc. And often very violent, such as putting freshly-killed-animal skins on a person, tying him or her to a post, and unleashing half starved lions. Yup, definitely less "enjoy-violence"-esque than punishing someone with public humiliation by putting them in stocks. Obviously, Puritans were far worse and loved violence far more. Putting someone in stocks and facing public humiliation is worse than death by being tied to a post naked with smelly animal skins and getting torn to shreds by lions in front of tens of thousands of people.
Right.
Witch burnings, I offer no defense, except that I wasn't trying to compare mobs to general society. Did they happen? Unfortunately, yes. Did all Puritans like it? No. Read some accounts of contemporary commentary.
But did (or, present tense, do) societies, and on a greater scale, entire civilizations, have more violence than others? ENJOY violence more than others?
Example. Did, say, the Puritans enjoy violence? Not really. Did... I don't know, pick a society or civilization known for peace. Did they enjoy violence? Assyrians appeared to. Romans definitely did. It seems that some civs and societies actually promoted it, while others did not appear to do so. America
So, as EastCoastSurfer pointed out, does violence in the entertainment industry actually AFFECT people, or is it simply reflecting our society? Are either one of these actually Good Things (tm)? (if it's reflecting society, is that a part of society that we WANT to reflect? If it's affecting society, is that how we want society to be affected?)
And correlation is not causation. I agree.
Whether or not a correlation implies a causation is where more research comes in. If things aren't correlated at ALL, then causation is obviously NOT there. Causation necessitates correlation (at least, in my logic, I could be shown that it is in error though... at the moment seems pretty solid), so where there is a correlation, there might be a causation.
Unfortunately, most studies only point out correlations. And most "proofs" are actually just suggestions with some amount of good supporting arguments.
Playing devil's advocate... you're probably being somewhat sarcastic/facetious, but you are making a point. Being a proper devil's advocate, I thought I would point out that I don't know that most people believing in the games-cause-violence idea would say that games make people want to commit random acts of murder. Rather, that when tension builds/anger occurs, violence as an action comes more naturally than before the video-game-"conditioning." In other words, the fact that your reaction to J.T. is "kill Jack!" proves that the violent video games did have an effect - that is, they are affecting your reaction to something that displeases you.
Note: I'm not arguing for the position.
I might be wrong, but I think any given netbook is going to be pretty cool with running PSP/DS/iPhone games fairly well? The, for lack of a better term, computing power of an iPhone vs. MSI Wind has to be tilted towards the Wind. I don't think Half-Life 2 is going to be running on an iPhone anytime soon :)
Agree that hardware issues are not isolated to Linux, but (partially due to Linux support and partially due to Linux driver support by vendors), my anecdotal evidence with wireless cards, sound cards, printers, and video cards is that they provided more issues with Linux than Windows.
I've used apt-get and RPM (yum and also smart). I actually don't particularly care, I'll use whatever works easiest in the distro...
Learning Linux. That's the more important question here, so here goes. Moving the X from top left to top right is a lot more of a minor detail than having to use a CLI to do something. I know, there are GUIs, but I hear lots of people complaining about GUIs (e.g., SuSE), and I've used some GUIs and they are scattered, not standardized, can be very hard to find in a given distro, etc. That aside, I agree that learning the new environment isn't all that hard. Gnome and KDE are fairly easy, with the biggest gripe I have being the menu (it comes with so many stinkin' default programs installed, and for some reason it doesn't like putting newly installed programs in the menu - at least, not when I was fiddling with desktop stuff for my parents).
As for using newbie-friendly distros, I will admit that they are pretty good for people who just want to check their e-mail online. But for the person that wants to do word processing, spreadsheets, read PDFs, e-mail, printing, iTunes (there's a big issue), has an iPod, and can do all those things in Windows and doesn't see why he/she should learn a new OS since Windows works ... what then? Sure, basic stuff (clicking Firefox) is easy. What about a USB drive? Pictures? etc. IMO, either Windows has done a fairly good job with usability and compatibility, or people are just way used to it. I have to say, though, that after 10ish years of using Linux, I can still find a random thing in Windows easier than in Linux. Part of the reason is Linux distros change so much (I use SuSE and RedHat primarily, and the filesystem structures are quite different).
Not everyone can learn to use Linux, I agree ... anyone can learn it. The question is, why should we require them to learn it simply for the sake of them not using Windows? If Windows is working for them, I am going to have a hard time telling them they should take a month off (exaggerated, but not much if you think of all the individual "Oh, so how do I ..." issues that eventually come up) to learn how to use Linux instead of Windows? There are some advantages I could list, but for someone who is not interested in computers all that much in the first place, doesn't find OSS/Linux "interesting," and just wants to use their computer... and a lot of people, in my experience, fall into those categories. :)
(that said, appreciated your comments...)
Games performance isn't really the issue for these. These things aren't designed for games.
Totally agree. who is going to be playing Half Life 2 on a 8" or 10" screen? =P
Maybe some other games, but FPS? With a trackpad? (wh owants to lug around a mouse with their ultra portable netbook?)
Yes, they do. Windows is pretty good at offering compatibility with pretty much anything. But Microsoft also has a lot of people working on Windows, whereas Linux coders can't even agree on which text editor to make standard. On one hand, Linux DOES have too many options to be mainstream, but limiting the options won't make it any better, I don't think.
IMO, it's documentation and usability that's the issue. OSS developers like developing but documentation and usability "by the masses" tends to not be a big deal, I don't think. Ubuntu is somewhat of an exception, and it has become very popular. I'd also like to point out that it has a millionaire behind it, which must help :P
IMO, as long as the Linux "geek" user and developer crowd are not very interested in the stupid average user, Linux will remain in the small percentages. When we figure out that other people actually do have things they want to be able to do easily and not have to learn a bunch of new stuff (or use a text editor just to make a new icon on the desktop, or do more than a few mouse click just to open an MS Word document, etc) just to use their computer, maybe it will start getting more popular.
As it is, I am using it for people who won't know the difference, for the most part, besides the fact that they don't get viruses and malware anymore. Unfortunately, it still doesn't work smoothly, even with pretty basic hardware (Radeon 9800 3D acceleration was a pain to get working, Cannon MP210 printer wasn't very easy to get to work either due to only having Australian Linux drivers...). I also use it for old hardware (PuppyLinux on an old laptop with
And yet, many Linux geeks use RPM. And distros. Someone seems to like it for some reason. RedHat is pretty popular. So is SuSE.
Seems like this "let's choose one distro" thing will be harder than one might think. We could probably end up starting World War III over this, since a lot of Linux folks are so incredibly opinionated about distros, programs (vi vs. emacs, cli vs. gui, rpm vs. deb (vs. tarballs...), etc). Linux is cool and all, but the answer to the small user percentage isn't going to necessarily be the "no options" options, IMO.
Heck, in 3.5 years, your desktop computer will be 4 times more powerful than anything currently running today, too.
For being so picky about the terms in the article, you are quite lax with your own. I seriously doubt my desktop, in 3.5 years, will be able to do ~ 6 petaflops. :) (4x more powerful than "anything" currently running today)
Furthermore, 20 vs. ~1.5 petaflops is a goodly sized jump for 3ish years, isn't it? Computer speed growth has seemed to be slowing lately, with an emphasis being on multiple cores, not faster clock speeds like it was 10 years ago. So being able to get 20x the power of the current super computer in 3.5 years seems to be pretty good.
Mmm, doesn't the difference between a core and a processor have to do with how they are connected?
I think this is one of the more insightful posts I've read so far. The 90% of people that AREN'T using Linux (not including the Mac peoples), or whatever the number is, probably fall into one of three categories.
I think we tend to forget that not everyone LIKES tinkering; most people want to push the button, click an icon, and read their e-mail. Then push the button again and leave. If someone really wants to do a "one size fits all" sort of idea, I think it would be better to get a "one documentation fits all" idea. For example, help people (no, sending people to distrowatch isn't going to help the average user) decide on which distro to download (based on how old their computer is, etc). Have documentation on how to do various tasks from out-of-the-"box" installs for all the distros (e.g., Ubuntu vs. SuSE vs. RedHat is fairly different as far as default programs, etc). Not everyone even knows what to ask "Google" when it comes to something they don't understand ("Uh, the screen is way too small. How do I make the screen bigger in Linux?" - that's going to turn up a lot of results that have nothing to do with Ubuntu 8.0.XY6234.2008 Feisty Fawn R2, which they don't even know their using...).
I'd much rather see some solid END USER documentation. APIs, libraries, services, etc., are all more developer or "geek" oriented. Improving interfaces would be a good idea though, agree with you there.
So either everyone learns what "apt-get" does (not to mention how to use a command line interface in the first place), or everyone runs commands and has no idea what they are doing. Then a hardware issue comes up with their video card. Oops.
Plus, why apt-get? Why did we decide to use debian over rpm? hmm.
One problem, if it's a problem, with Linux is that those that have learned to use it (read: taken time) presume everyone else can learn, too (read: has time). That's not the case.
Ok.
Like this one?