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How about a nice poster of John McCarthy?
(With some gentle words of encouragement below...)

but it still doesn't approach Photoshop's ease of use or flexibility.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever. I suppose pointing out "Layers->Colors->Curves" isn't going to do any good, either, is it? I mean, what the hell is this? Are you people forced to use a computer with your hands cuffed behind your back or something? Right-click. That's what the right mouse button is for. Explore *every* submenu, in order. Open a test image and run *every* menu entry on it. You don't even need to open this free book or read any of my tutorials or read anybody else's tutorials. Everything's right there. If you don't like it, don't use it, but stop insisting that all the functions don't exist. It's dumb. You have just as much access to Google as anybody else, presuming you don't live in China. And then people wonder why we get frustrated.

As I've said before, I'm *dying* to see Photoshop ported. So *Adobe* can deal with you people instead of we GNU/Linux users.

Snarf-It -- "Snarf-It.org is a state of the art torrent indexer born out of the ashes of the legendary Suprnova, built by the old nova members for their huge community. It has access to the largest torrent, nzb and nfo database in the world where you can find torrents for dvd's, games, movies, software, anime and television all within our easy to navigate site."

Of course the other Snarf is fine too: "snarf is a command line resource grabber. It can transfer files through the http, gopher, finger, and ftp protocols without user interaction"

Cast off your old name! Your Jedi name isIBEVI CRMAI of the planet imodium!

Find your Jedi Name!

Jedi Academy Student
Jedi Programmer
Jedi Religious Member

And did he use the Official Jedi Name Generator?

Spam costs the user nothing to send because the recipient either buys in or deletes. What would happen if recipients who have no intention of buying string the spammer along, pretending to want to buy, getting quotes for bulk orders, wanting to know about origins, asking all kinds of pointless questions, etc..

Of course, if only a few people did this, it wouldn't have any effect, but if it happened on a huge scale, it would make spammers' lives more difficult.

Several folks have done this with the Nigerian Bank Frauds, sometimes getting the would-be fraudsters to make multiple trips to the airport, spend a lot of time in correspondence, and so on. Some have even gotten a bit of cash out of the scammers.

This is Darl McBride. He hires bodyguards because people infringing on his "intellectual property", while in fact being very nice and harmless scare him. (There are more of them.) Am I really the only one not surprised?

Just a followup:

Does Photoshop have anything like Resynthesizer?

How about Tileable Blur?

How about the Solid Noise plugin?

Is there native warping functionality in Photoshop, as IWarp provides in the GIMP?

How about the gorgeous Supernova?

IIRC, Xaos makes something (expensive) like GIMPressionist. Of course, Photoshop doesn't come with this functionality.

Lots of other things -- I haven't used Photoshop for a long time, so I'm not going to be much good at pointing out the things that it lacks...just pointing out that the functionality sword cuts two ways.

For output intended for print, Photoshop is better. For output intended to be digital, GIMP is better. Pretty simple.

Zachary Beane of GIMP fame, has a MySQL to PostgreSQL migration page with a Perl script and some advice.

Zachary Beane of GIMP fame, has a MySQL to PostgreSQL migration page with a Perl script and some advice.

It sucks

Here's why (Deconstructing Katz by Lloyd Wood)

Deconstructing Katz


Says all that needs to be said.

Jon Katz and Rob Malda are killing slashdot

I don't know wether he's a Jew or not, but let's deconstruct Jon Katz (and no it's not goat porn)

The truth about Jon Katz (and no it's not goat porn)

Jon Katz

http://www.xach.com/misc/wood_on_katz.html

Oh, man. This is hilarious shit!
http://www.xach.com/misc/wood_on_katz.html

....but there have been no posts by Jon Katz since early December ! Has he been ousted once and for all ?

If you too hate Katz, you'll love this

If the GIMP people want to increase their market share they need to fix the UI

Market share? Who is interested in market share? The GIMP developers are writing free software. We want the GIMP to be a useful tool that serves the needs of those who contribute to its development, and hopefully also serves the needs of many others. But market share is not a goal in itself.

That being said, the user interface needs to be improved and the developers are aware of this. Some parts of it have already been re-written in the current 1.3 branch and you will get a slightly better look in the Win32 version as soon as the Gimp and other GTK+ applications are converted to GTK+ 2.0.

If I find it bad as a computer guy, you can't bet your bottom dollar that graphic artists are going to hate it.

There are some graphic artists who contribute to the development of the GIMP and make constructive suggestions about how the interface can be improved. Although this may surprise you, some of these artists are happy with the current UI. It can of course be improved, but you should not assume that it is not good for experienced artists just because you do not like it.

If you want to have an idea of the improvements that have already been suggested for the UI and other parts of the GIMP, you can have a look at the list of suggested enhancements or the list of all bug reports about the user interface.

Once the UI has been fixed, then documentation needs to be re-written so that it's not orientated towards computer geeks.

This may sound like a cliché, but the best way to improve it is to contribute... If you do not have programming skills to improve the UI, you could help by writing a better documentation. If the documentation has too much of a "geek style", this is probably because those who contributed to it so far (most of them are not native english speakers) did not have enough time to improve the style. Please contribute if you have some spare time, as this would benefit everybody.

By the way, I assume that you know about the good books and tutorials about the GIMP. Some of these are suitable for non-technical users. One book that is often recommended is "Grokking the GIMP" by Carey Bunks and published by New Riders. The whole book is available online at http://gimp-savvy.com/.

To many people, it won't matter whether it's free, or whether it supports the same features of a commercial product from Adobe that is far more polished.

Maybe. But then again, to many people, it does matter that the GIMP is free software. It does matter that the GIMP has far better scripting abilities than other products (other features like color separation and support for different color spaces are planned for the next version). Some people are happy with Photoshop or other proprietary products... Well, then let them use the product they like. Once again, this is not about market share. This is about making a useful program (that is suitable for those who are interested in free software).

• Deconstructing Katz. The definitive word on the Katz phenomenon.
• Some Real Journalism:
  • Salon Books | Internet debate generates hot air!
  • Salon Technology | Quake, Doom and blood lust
• Anyone can do it, see? Katzdot:News for Geeks. Fluff that Matters.

Have you read Lloyd Wood's critique of your writings? He compares you to Richard Stallman (at least in terms of the reactions you both seem to cause in people) and analyzes your research and conclusions through various essays and pieces.

I'm curious. What is your reaction to this piece?

--

Absolutely right. But you'll be ignored; swamped by the number of dumb-fuck Katz groupies who WANT /. to be Katzdot. The situation was analysed last year in Deconstructing Katz.

Katz PR machine on overdrive: reality check essential.

• Deconstructing Katz.
• Katzdot:News for Geeks. Fluff that Matters.

Deconstructing Katz.

• Deconstructing Katz.
• Katzdot:News for Geeks. Fluff that Matters.

• Deconstructing Katz.
• Katzdot:News for Geeks. Fluff that Matters.

• Deconstructing Katz
• Katzdot:News for Geeks. Fluff that Matters
• A Revealing Exchange...
  1. tojonkatz
  2. tokatz1.txt
  3. fromkatz1.txt
  4. tokatz2.txt
  5. fromkatz2.txt
  6. fromkatz3.txt
  7. fromkatz4.txt
• Salon Books | Internet debate generates hot air!
• "Jon Katz is a [...] cheese grater on my butt"
• Salon Technology | Quake, Doom and blood lust

• Deconstructing Katz
• Katzdot:News for Geeks. Fluff that Matters
• A Revealing Exchange...
  1. tojonkatz.txt
  2. tokatz1.txt
  3. fromkatz1.txt
  4. tokatz2.txt
  5. fromkatz2.txt
  6. fromkatz3.txt
  7. fromkatz4.txt

• Deconstructing Katz
• Katzdot:News for Geeks. Fluff that Matters

Well, this is the problem, isn't it? Other publications have solved the opposition between the need for revenue and the equally important need to maintain editorial standards, so why can't slashdot? After all, its production costs are much lower than those of a print publication. Alas, I suspect that Rob & co. were, at least at first, just too naive to see what Katz is up to. Now, of course, slashdot is corporate property, and no executive is going to fire such a brilliant bullshit merchant. After all, it seems that bullshit attracts the most hits and comments on slashdot (including this comment, ironically -- but at least I'm using lynx, so they won't make any money out of me). Katz is "on-board", and there's unlikely to be any chance of shifting him until he finds a more attractive bandwagon to use.

Well, this is the problem, isn't it? Other publications have solved the opposition between the need for revenue and the equally important need to maintain editorial standards, so why can't slashdot? After all, its production costs are much lower than those of a print publication. Alas, I suspect that Rob & co. were, at least at first, just too naive to see what Katz is up to. Now, of course, slashdot is corporate property, and no executive is going to fire such a brilliant bullshit merchant. After all, it seems that bullshit attracts the most hits and comments on slashdot (including this comment, ironically -- but at least I'm using lynx, so they won't make any money out of me). Katz is "on-board", and there's unlikely to be any chance of shifting him until he finds a more attractive bandwagon to use.

This is a troll?? No, this is fair criticism. How much credibility can Katz have, when he condemns Microsoft and yet continues to use MS software? I mean, isn't credibility rather important for a journalist? -- or a "jounalist", to use Katz's curious neologism. Offtopic, then? Maybe. But I think not: after all, Katz is engaged in onthing but self-promotion, so his every article is really about himself. What could be more on-topic that some helpful criticism?

This book is about Jim Clark, the founder of Silicon Graphics. It is reviewed by Jon Katz, who, since being fired from Wired, has tried to make a living by sensationalising adolescent angst. Do we see any discrepancy here? The first rule of book reviews is that the reviewer should know something about the area the book deals with. Now, Katz knows shit about computers, shit about business, and shit about Jim : so why is he reviewing this book? Oh, yeah, I nearly forgot: isn't it about time we were told whether he is on the andover.net pay- roll or not?

So there's this rich guy, and he owns a boat, which has, like, computers and stuff on. Wow! This is truely "News for Nerds" and "Stuff that Matters"! NOT. As ever, here's where you go for more information about JK, and why this kind of crap makes it onto /.

Katzdot

For those who haven't checked out 1.1.x Gimp, you really should It's a horse of a different bitmap. There's so much that's new. The Gimp/Perl plugins (my favorite, as a few are mine) have really come of age. The user-interface is still a little quirky, but gods is it nicer than 1.0.

The fast unsharp mask is amazing. Try sucking in a photo of some forest scene or people. Use Image -> Equalize and then use Filters -> Enhance -> Unsharp Mask. You will see detail you couldn't see when you were taking the picture!

1.2 is going to really rock. Suck it out of CVS if you want to see the latest, and/or work on the code. There's a great CVS tutorial for accessing the Gimp here:

CVS Tutorial.

Also you can find Gimp News here.

Also, as a shameless plug, you could find out how to write plugins in Perl from my recent Perl Journal article. You can find out more about the Perl Journal at http://www.itknowledge.com/tpj/ It's kind of a funny article, since in it I plug my company, and I no longer work there ;-)

For those who haven't checked out 1.1.x Gimp, you really should It's a horse of a different bitmap. There's so much that's new. The Gimp/Perl plugins (my favorite, as a few are mine) have really come of age. The user-interface is still a little quirky, but gods is it nicer than 1.0.

The fast unsharp mask is amazing. Try sucking in a photo of some forest scene or people. Use Image -> Equalize and then use Filters -> Enhance -> Unsharp Mask. You will see detail you couldn't see when you were taking the picture!

1.2 is going to really rock. Suck it out of CVS if you want to see the latest, and/or work on the code. There's a great CVS tutorial for accessing the Gimp here:

CVS Tutorial.

Also you can find Gimp News here.

Also, as a shameless plug, you could find out how to write plugins in Perl from my recent Perl Journal article. You can find out more about the Perl Journal at http://www.itknowledge.com/tpj/ It's kind of a funny article, since in it I plug my company, and I no longer work there ;-)

Filters > Render > GFig.

To draw a straight line, click a point, hold down shift, click the destination point.

See tutorials for some new ideas.

Here is a better parody. Reload the page a couple of times (it changes). Seems to capture the repetitve character of slashdot pretty good.

Does this sound diplomatic to you?

I think that all the other projects from the GNU group are for Linux insignificant in comparison. GCC is the only one that I really care about. A number of them I hate with a passion; the Emacs editor is horrible, for example. While Linux is larger than Emacs, at least Linux has the excuse that it needs to be.

This makes me wonder if some of the anti-RMS sentiment that you see is really the result of a deeper ideological split than open vs free software: it all goes back to the vi/emacs wars.

After LinuxWorld, I was actually a lot less impressed with Linus than I had been previously. It seemed to me like he'd gotten his fingers burned in the past by shooting his mouth off, and had concluded that he should never say anything. Look at his old style back in 1992, during the famous "Linux is Obsolete" argument with Tanenbaum: Linux is Obsolete (This is also reprinted in the back of the "Open Sources" book).

If you want to see a real diplomat in action some time, check out Brian Behlendorf.