zero-point-infinity - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Lol (Score 1) 936

by zero-point-infinity on Tuesday March 10, 2009 @06:18PM (#27141953) Attached to: Living Free With Linux, Round 2

Forget Debian/Ubuntu/etc. Then, ask yourself what an "apt" is. And why it has anything to do with installing programs.

I have the good fortune of being able to recognize "apt" as an (english) adjective which roughly means "suitable". So far so good: "apt" might be an attempt to describe quality rather than function. But hm, maybe it's an acronym. The "p" might be for "program" but in this case I'm coming in with enough knowledge to realize that I'm installing "packages" rather than programs. "a" for "advanced" because it's a pretty good buzz word. "t"? Nope, stumped, so let's just look it up ... "Advanced Packaging Tool". Huh, 2/3 guessed for how to get from "something that installs programs" to "apt".

Sure, I would never guess on my own that the installer was called "apt", but being able to recognize an adjective when I see one was enough for me to avoid confusion.

Then, still remembering that you're forgetting you know Debian/Ubuntu, ask why you need "install" at the end of "apt-get", which sounds like you're already asking the system to get the program you're asking for. Non-geeks don't care about the difference between "get" and "install", and the redundancy throws a wrench in their understanding.

And there's a very simple, already implemented way to work around any confusion coming from this hyphenation problem. People could simply stop telling new users to type in "apt-get install" and instead use "aptitude install". As a bonus, you don't have to use two different base commands for installing and searching since "apt-cache search" becomes "aptitude search".

Yes, this still leaves the "what does a word that means 'skill' or 'talent' have to do with installing programs" issue (oh, haha, the program has a 'talent' for installing programs). But giving things arbitrary-but-sometimes-maybe-sorta-related names applies as much to dogs (going back to the previous comparison). Or taking a well-known program: do people really wonder what 'firefox' has to do with the internet? Seems to me that the understanding is as simple as "there's this program that happens to be called firefox that you can use for browsing the internet".

Comment Re:Great for testing/unstable users (Score 1) 386

by zero-point-infinity on Sunday February 15, 2009 @05:39PM (#26865587) Attached to: Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny" Released

Because during a freeze the updates to testing (i.e. the fixes to remaining RC bugs) still go into unstable first. Updates to unstable could make staging updates to testing a mess if the version gap between packages in unstable and testing became large.

Comment Re:It's about free software (Score 1) 583

by zero-point-infinity on Saturday February 07, 2009 @04:35PM (#26766513) Attached to: Microsoft May Be Targeting the Ubuntu Desktop

Right now the situation is such that people are forced, whether at work or at home, to use software where you aren't allowed basic rights to the software you use: to use your software in any fashion, to modify it however you want, and to distribute it to whoever who want.

Of course, the Free Software movement's idea of basic rights covers developer rights that most users don't really care about and would happily waive. Getting proprietary software EULA-free is probably good enough for the average user (and even then there's probably enough people who don't realize that EULAs are a problem, thanks to not bothering to read any).

Comment Re:So, why should I care? (Score 2, Insightful) 158

by zero-point-infinity on Sunday February 01, 2009 @07:11PM (#26687877) Attached to: NetBSD 5.0 RC1 Released

OpenBSD sells CDs but you can freely get an image from their FTP servers to burn your own install CD. Giving people the option to pay you for your work (and throwing in extras with the paid option) hardly makes the work proprietary.

Comment Re:Anti-competitive my rear. (Score 1) 589

by zero-point-infinity on Saturday January 17, 2009 @08:07PM (#26501563) Attached to: MS Silverlight To Stream Obama Inauguration Events

Two fields of competition. The GP's post wasn't referring to competition between Silverlight and Flash. He was referring to Silverlight's effect on OS competition. That is, if Silverlight's relevance to the internet increases without the plugin getting ported, then it's bad for the ability of other OS's to be/become competitive choices.

Comment Re:Will it matter? (Score 2, Insightful) 69

by zero-point-infinity on Sunday December 14, 2008 @02:58PM (#26112123) Attached to: Documentary Released On Canadian Fight Against DMCA

The point to the coalition is to defeat the government without causing a new election. If the governor general is even halfway reasonable, she'll allow the coalition to form the government rather than call another election.

Or maybe Harper will finally get it that in a minority government you need to try to work with the other parties at least some of the time. Yeah...

Taking a Look at Nexenta's Blend of Solaris and Ubuntu 248

Posted by timothy on Saturday November 22, 2008 @05:56PM from the little-a-this-little-a-that dept.

Ahmed Kamal writes "What happens when you take a solid system such as Ubuntu Hardy, unplug its Linux kernel, and plug in a replacement OpenSolaris kernel? Then you marry Debian's apt-get to Solaris' zfs file-system? What you get is Nexenta Core Platform OS. Let's take Nexenta for a quick spin, installing and configuring this young but promising system."

Fallout 3 Gets Leaked, Goes Gold 249

Posted by Soulskill on Monday October 13, 2008 @02:42PM from the sorry-about-your-luck dept.

Fallout 3 is due to be released in a few weeks, and Bethesda recently announced that all versions of the game have gone gold. They provided the systems specs for the PC release as well. Unfortunately for them, the Xbox 360 version was leaked onto torrent sites almost three weeks early. Bethesda is "looking into" how the game was distributed. In preparation for the launch, game director Todd Howard spoke at length with Gamasutra about the scope of the project, and the differences from their previous games, such as Oblivion. CrispyGamer recently ran a three-part series detailing their four hours of hands-on time with the game. We've previously looked at some gameplay videos for Fallout 3, and discussed the fact that no mod tools will ship with the game.

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