Of course security updates should be enabled by default, and I do agree
that it's sensible for the system to _ask_ to try to install security
updates even if there's no network. But there are cases where security
updates don't make much sense, and I do think that the current behaviour
("there's no working connection to the Internet, but what the heck,
we'll try anyway, and if it doesn't work, the admin will have to wait
for the connection to time out an insane number of times") is a bug.
In my circumstance, I've been installing on a system with both an Ethernet card (supported during the install) and a wi-fi card (supported with non-free madwifi driver). I currently don't use the ethernet - wi-fi is all I use. When I go back to school (in about 2 weeks or so), I'll have Ethernet, but it uses
802.1x authentication so it still will be worthless for the install.
Furthermore, even if I had networking durring the install, I do NOT like the idea of downloading updates during the install without prompting - sometimes I'm using a satellite internet connection with some pretty hefty bandwidth quotas and would MUCH rather grab these updates during off-peak hours. I had this cause bandwidth throttling in the past when I was installing Debian in a VM with network connectivity during the install.
Anyway, it seems like there should be a "would you like to use the network" question or option in the installation boot menu. As it stands, the current behavior is quite bad for those who either have no usable network during an install (which I would have to guess is sizable) and even worse for those who *do* have networking but which have limited bandwidth that they don't want sucked up at will.
Tim