Slashback: Electioneering, Blimps, Shuffling

Slashback is back after a long absence being devoured by gnomes. Read on below for updates on past Slashdot stories about the continuing Washington election brouhaha, the FBI's latest hunt for server logs, Photoshoppified GIMP, and more.

Let's get the politics out of the way.

The Washington state Republican Party has been working to prove that the election of November 2, between Democrat Christine Gregoire and Republican Dino Rossi, was too fraudulent to be trusted, given the small margin of victory by Gregoire (129 votes), and they want a new election. Hundreds of alleged fraudulent votes (mostly felons, but also out-of-state, duplicate, and deceased voters), uncounted ballots, unaccounted-for absentee ballots, and illegally counted provisional ballots comprise the bulk of the GOP's case. The trial begins May 23, and the judge expects it to last two weeks. The hearing to decide the burden of proof standard will be May 2.

Unctuous politicians relive their student-council glory days:

Jackson West writes "As it stands, two versions of the Electronic Engineering bill (discussed earlier on Slashdot) presented to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors have passed their 'first reading.' This means both the first, unamended piece of legislation, and an amended version that will "specifically exclude web logs, forums, opt-in email lists and postings on general web pages." The Rules Committee will consider the amended bill on Monday, with a final vote on both bills on Tuesday."

How to get attention, part IIVVIVIVM.

SanLouBlues writes "On March 30th, Slashdot reported on the FBI request for the logs of several radical-leaning sites. The Washington Post has an article about the man who was responsible for the posts which resulted in the FBI request. He claimed to have killed a cop in several forum posts."

Now on to the fun stuff!

Matt Omori writes to say that GimpShop, the recently mentioned version of The GIMP hacked to feel more familiar to users of Photoshop, isn't just for Linux and Mac OS X. "Yes, it's finally been coded for Windows XP. After lots of hard work, some people devoted to a website, plasticbugs.com, have coded GimpShop for Windows."

To use it, you'll need Windows XP, GTK+, and a reboot. However, I'd also like to point out a BigSven's comment about the themeability of The GIMP; it would be great to see GIMPersonalities of all sorts -- and it sounds like this can be accomplished with some XML editing.

Still looks actionable to me.

MrToast writes "The iPodLounge is reporting that LuxPro's Super Shuffle is back, but this time with slight alterations. The Super Tangent, as it is being called, has a slightly different button area and also has new headphones. Otherwise it appears to be identical to the iPod shuffle."

(The SuperShuffle disappeared from the Web site, and was reported as a hoax, shortly after it was mentioned in mid-March.)

Let's close on some uplifting news. Vaeske writes with more on my favorite futuristic means of broadband delivery, region-covering airships. "GlobeTel Communications Corp announced that they will be showing their prototype of the Sanswire One on April 12th. This "Stratalite" as they call it, will float in the stratosphere at 65,000 feet and provide line of sight communications to approximately 300,000 square miles, providing two-way high-sped communication. This project has attracted many high-profile NASA engineers to leave their posts for a position with GlobeTel. The military has also shown interest and was present at the GlobeTel Summit."

Comments

Let's get the politics out of the way

[Bongo Bill]

Recounts: not just for Democrats anymore!

Re:Let's get the politics out of the way

[Carnildo]

And if you lived here, you'd be getting reports on the *exciting* hijinks:
1) At least half of those "felon voters" who shouldn't have voted were juveniles when they were found guilty, and thus never had their voting rights stripped. Many of the others had their rights restored after serving their sentences.
2) Someone is challenging the votes of around 15,000 voters on the grounds that they are illegal immigrants. The evidence? Their last names don't sound American enough.

Re:Let's get the politics out of the way

[deserttrail]

Lets not forget that Gregoire didn't win that slim margin until after the third recount.

Re:Let's get the politics out of the way

[ahdeoz]

Actually, it was a suspected fraudulent recount that gave the Democrat (Gregiore) the victory. An election official (you know, the ones who count the votes) was quoted as saying "third times the charm!" when his preferred candidate won after two other counts that had the Republican (Rossi) as winner.

Re:Let's get the politics out of the way

[pudge]

At least half of those "felon voters" who shouldn't have voted were juveniles when they were found guilty, and thus never had their voting rights stripped. Many of the others had their rights restored after serving their sentences.

That's false. Some of them did turn out to be juveniles, yes, but it was not "at least half." Not even close.

Someone is challenging the votes of around 15,000 voters on the grounds that they are illegal immigrants.

I've never heard this, and if true, it has absolutely nothing to do with the GOP or Rossi. I met with the state GOP chairman last week, and we talked about the case, and it is in no way based on illegal aliens.

Nice try, though.

Re:Let's get the politics out of the way

[pudge]

This has nothing to do with recounts. This is about challenging the result and having a new election, not recounting the past election.

Re:Let's get the politics out of the way

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha. Depends on what you're talking about. The totality of all the votes alledged to be improper, or the worst cases of certain small counties. In which case his allegation is close to what was recently printed in the Seattle Times.

The fact is, the republicans list of improper voters isn't much, if any, more accurate than the various counties lists of proper voters. If they can't get it right at this late stage of the game, with all the heavy lifting done by the counties already, their expectation that the counties, which aren't as well funded as the Republican party, should have been able to do better is ludicrious on it's face. To say nothing of the relative sin of counting the vote that should be invalid versus the discounting of a valid vote.

If Rossi by 49 is fit to be a duly elected governor, then that horrible bitch by 129 is at least as worthy. That said, they're both comtemptible douchebags. I can only assume both political parties are in silent agreement to make Washington so unlivable that all the transplants will be driven back home before they agree to resume sensible policies.

Re:Let's get the politics out of the way

[hesiod]

> I am not showing bias here.
> Left leaning sites don't count.

I think you need to work on your bullshitting skills a bit more. There are only three sentences, but you still managed to contratict yourself completely.

Re:Let's get the politics out of the way

[pudge]

I was making no value judgments of any kind about whether recounts or having a new election is good or evil. In fact, I never had a problem with having recounts, either in WA or in FL (in FL I merely had a problem with the uneven recounts, which seven of the nine Supreme Court justices also thought was wrong). I supported the right of the Democrats in WA to have their second recount, even though I thought the recount itself was poor.

Further, I never said trying to nullify the election through a lawsuit is a good thing. I have since the beginning had mixed feelings about it. I think the case is very strong, but I am unconvinced it is the appropriate course of action. How to fix unreliable elections is a problem we don't have a good solution too, and this cure might be worse than the disease, even if it is justified.

I made no value judgments, I merely corrected someone when they said it was about recounts, as I will do with you: the GOP never tried to change any result in this election with a recount, despite your implication to the contrary.

I don't know why you and other people keep thinking and saying they did. The Democrats are the ones who did that, holding two recounts until they finally pulled ahead. There was never any recount when Rossi and the Republicans were behind.

In other words, your entire post is a misrepresentation both of the facts and of what I've said and thought about them.

Re:Let's get the politics out of the way

[Phillup]

The evidence? Their last names don't sound American enough.

You forgot the punchline. Dude's last name is: Ringhofer.

Man says votes from illegal immigrants
He culled list of voters for names that 'appear' foreign
Jim Camden
Staff writer
March 31, 2005

A Soap Lake man is challenging the voting credentials of hundreds of Washington voters, saying he thinks they're illegal immigrants who registered and cast ballots illegally.

But Martin Ringhofer may have a hard time proving the challenges he has filed in Spokane and 10 other Washington counties.

For one thing, there's the methodology of his research. Ringhofer said he obtained a list of people who registered to vote when they obtained or renewed a driver's license, then culled the list for names "that appear to be from outside the United States," particularly those that appeared to be Hispanic or Asian.

"We eliminated names that clearly sounded American-born, like John Smith, or Powell," he said Wednesday.

For another, there's the fact that many of the people on his list are citizens. In fact, The Spokesman-Review contacted a dozen of the 161 people on Ringhofer's Spokane County list, and all of them are citizens.

...

"I was well aware of the fact that there would be errors," he said.

But he doesn't see that as a problem because people on the list who are citizens can simply tell county officials that they are citizens and provide some proof. It's not his responsibility to correct those mistakes, he insisted, but the job of county elections officials.

...

original article

full text in this thread

Mostly fellons

[Anonymous Coward]

that would be 10% of the US population

Re:Mostly fellons

[conway]

And 89.7% of all statistics are false

The stats you link to show that 23 million crimes were commited, not that 23 million people were involved! Ever think about the fact that criminals tend to do a _few_ crimes before getting caught? It's only for "large" crimes (murder, rape, etc.) is it likely that the crime was commited only once. If a guy is caught stealing cars, he probably has done it quite a few times. Finally, criminals tend to get out of jail, and go back to doing more crime. Again, more than 1 per person.
So, if each criminal does on average, lets suppose, 10 crimes, that's only 1% of the population!

Re:Mostly fellons

[Dyolf Knip]

It also stems from a willingness to declare trivial acts "crimes" and villify and prosecute them far beyond anything sanity would deem reasonable. What is it, half of the USA's prison population is now there on drug charges? And probably half of remainder is there indirectly because of Prohibition II. The report is misleading because it does not define 'crime'.

Rejected Slashback: Allume's JPEG compression

[Kris_J]

That 20-30% JPEG compression system mentioned on Slashdot a while back is out. I'm getting an average of about 21% on all my JPEGs, except CMYK ones -- they don't pack.

Implementations are currently limited to a simple (Windows?) archive package (which doesn't appear to do any other file types any better than the previous version). I'm hoping for a Firefox image plugin and a Pocket PC port myself.

Re:Rejected Slashback: Allume's JPEG compression

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

SLASHBACK:
That section of Slashdot.org that directly links Windows executables without warning.

Airships...

[ImaLamer]

On a completely un-related note; last night I had some kids convinced that the Statue of Liberty had those spikes on her head to protect NYC from Nazi airships during WWII!

Re:Airships...

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

You are a dangerous man, Ima. Very funny!

Kids these days... We knew the airships were a "Great War" item, that passed (gas) with the Hindenburg.

Fun stuff was best

[QuantumG]

GimpShop is cool. General themability of GIMP is even better. Of course, now that we've started down the path of making GimpShop people are going to whinge (don't they always) that GIMP doesn't have all the features of Photoshop. For those people I have two suggestions: code them, or pay someone to code them.

Stratalites are damn cool. You can use them like train stations to space. Get in your ground blimp, fly up to station 1. Get in your high altitude blimp, fly up to station 2. Get in your supermassive low pressure blimp and fly up to station 3. Get in your rocket and launch your ass into space.

Re:Fun stuff was best

[QuantumG]

And what if you need some feature that Photoshop doesn't have? You have to beg Adobe to code it for you or use a non-integrated third party tool. If all the Photoshop users would stop paying Adobe, pool their money and hire developers to make GimpShop do everything they want, it would be a better image manipulation program than Photoshop within a year. But people would rather be slaves to a proprietary software company than co-operate with each other. It's like unionisation. People would rather keep how much they earn secret in the hope that they're getting paid more than their neighbour than join together and demand better conditions for everyone.

Re:Fun stuff was best

[QuantumG]

I had this idea once. Basically you have a bugzilla which is for members only. You have to pay $10/month to be a member and for that you get 10 votes every month. You can file a feature request (or a bug) and that costs 1 vote. You can vote for feature requests that other people have filed (costs as many votes as you want). The money goes to a team of developers who work on whichever feature request has the most votes. You can also buy more votes for $1 each (so 10 votes a month is like the minimum).

Re:Fun stuff was best

[Anonvmous Coward]

"It's hard to write plugins for Photoshop (or any proprietary app) because often all the other plugins are proprietary (so you don't have anything to work from)"

Fair point.

"the interface that is actually exposed to plugin writers is not sufficient."

Unless you've actually explored writing a Photoshop plugin, this is not fair to say. I have written plugins for various apps before and some SDKs are good, some aren't. On the flip side, having source code is nice, but if you have to change it in order to make your feature work, then you risk being boned when a new version comes along.

Hey...

[ImaLamer]

Don't blame me, I accidentially voted for Pat Buchanan

I for one welcome...

[j14ast]

the return of our slashback overlords.

Anyone find it funny how the r's are trying this now? After all the hay they mad from the d's attempt?

That's funny

[fm6]

When they thought they had won the Washington Governor's election, and the Demos complained about votes that should have been counted but weren't, the Repubs sneered at them as poor losers.

Re:That's funny

[a whoabot]

The new(?) Republican thing is double standards. They get away with it because the left(not saying the Dems are the left) is toothless and because they themselves don't see it as double standards but just one standard: whatever helps "the right" is good, whatever helps "the left" is bad. Everything's a war for them nowadays and everything's fair in war.

Re:That's funny

[pudge]

Well, no, they didn't. They said the law should be followed. Which is exactly what they are saying now.

It's the Democrats who have changed their tune, previously saying the law should be bent to count every vote, and then once they took the lead, said the law should be followed strictly.

Re:That's funny

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Rossi very openly called for Gregoire to concede the race, for the good of the office, or whatever it was, when Gregoire was still behind and asking for a recount and all that.

Funny, also, in that Gregoire *DID* follow the legal steps...

I want to know the party breakdown on ALL contested ballots and voters.

Looks to me like the law *was* followed. It's sour grapes by Rossi and the Washington Republicans.

Get over it.

Move on.

Oh, I live in Oregon.

Re:That's funny

[Mr. Slippery]

The new(?) Republican thing is double standards.

Not that I want to defend the Republican party (not while it's being controlled by theocrats and neoimperialists, anyway), but double standards are politically universal.

A Word of Warning

[ewhac]

Adobe likes to think it has software patents on certain user interface elements of Photoshop. Macromedia was sued not long ago for emulating some of these elements in their Flash authoring tool (no idea how that suit resolved). Adobe are also litigious so-and-sos who are all too willing to harass people in defense of their intellectual "property".

So if Adobe feels even the slightest bit threatened by it, expect the project to receive a nastygram.

Schwab

I don't understand the acrimony directed towards

[MarcoAtWork]

the gimpshop guy by the gimp developers: they chose a license for Gimp that allows this kind of modification, the guy was definitely within his rights to go ahead with it whether or not Sven (or others) would've preferred him to 'work with them and not fork things'.

Rather than focusing about his 'rude' modus operandi Gimp developers should notice the HUGE positive reaction to his modification by 'normal users': if instead of sitting in their ivory tower and going on about 'Gimp is not PS, we won't change how the UI operates' the Gimp devs listened to users who have been begging for a PS-like UI for YEARS there wouldn't have been any need for a fork (they've also been beggin for adjustment layers as well, but who knows when that will happen).

I thought that this is what Open Source is all about: if you don't like it, fix it and release it (like this guy did).

If he had 'followed due process' he'd just have been ignored because 'Gimp is not Photoshop'. This seems like a case of damned if you do (you shouldn't fork the gimp) and damned if you don't (you're not a coder, so you have no right to complain).

Two-way high-sped communication?

[Motherfucking Shit]

two-way high-sped communication

Is that where one of the parties is on Ritalin and the other one is on Adderall? I'd hate to have to keep up with that conversation.

If you want to fix voting problems, vote 3rd party

[Future Man 3000]

Most of these problems are old ones, and the people you (may have) voted in last time have had ample time to make sure enough voting machines were out and triple check the felon lists.

The fact of the matter is that neither side really seems to care about fixing the system when they are in power. Perhaps they feel they have more important things to do than perserve voting integrity, but each side seems to gloat when it looks like the other is getting the short end of the stick.

It does not serve democracy to prop up this failed process; it doesn't even really serve the candidates. All it does is turn something that should represent the will of the electorate into an elaborate game of legal manipulation and shenanagans, and the only way to stop it is to have overwhelming and incontestible voting returns in 2006 for the Rastafarian candidates. Thank you.

Sloppy reporting

[Anonymous Coward]

I started reading the Washington Post story about the cop killer, and everything seemed fine until one paragraph stuck out like a sore thumb:

His eyes are not a madman's eyes, but they look dilated, nothing but pupils, and when he turns to face you, he stares. In the antebellum courthouse, surrounded by sheriff's deputies, the stare is merely awkward. Imagine, though, those black eyes at night, with him holding a gun.

What the fuck is that doing in a newspaper? It's the newspaper's job to report the facts, not demonise him. Is this what passes for journalism in the USA these days?

Re:Sloppy reporting

[Sloppy]

No, I'm Sloppy reporting. You must be new here.

Seriously, though, it's pretty weird that some editor didn't notice that paragraph. Imagine those black eyes at night, looking at a computer screen.

Re:Sloppy reporting

[murphj]

By William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 4, 2005; Page C01

Section C in the Post is the Style section. This is a feature story, not a news story. Feature stories frequently contain prose like that. It would not have appeared in a story in the A section.

Re:Sloppy reporting

[Alsee]

I hear coverage of the next presidential election will be moved to the Style section as well.

-

Re:I don't understand the acrimony directed toward

[k98sven]

they chose a license for Gimp that allows this kind of modification, the guy was definitely within his rights to go ahead with it whether or not Sven (or others) would've preferred him to 'work with them and not fork things'.

Noone implied he didn't have the legal right to do so. He's not violating the law, just unwritten rules of etiquette; It's polite to try to cooperate before forking.

The real issue here, which the poster mentioned, isn't that he forked Gimp, it's that it seems he may have changed parts which didn't have to be changed in order to achive what he did. That's doing a disservice both to both parties, since it'll make it more difficult to merge in his changes into the Gimp, and newer changes to the Gimp into GimpShop.

If he had 'followed due process' he'd just have been ignored because 'Gimp is not Photoshop'.

What exactly do you base this on? The Gimp developer who posted seemed quite open to the idea. There's a big difference between developers not considering requests from users and developers not considering an implementation of said request.

You're proablly trolling but in case you aren't...

[CSMastermind]

It's not the system; it's the people who are using it. Both the politicians running it and the general public who buys into it. Here's a summary of what's wrong :

The media
The media in the USA is insane. They're the single biggest lobby group in America today and not only that but they're also in the director's chair because they control what politician's get elected. Everyone should go look up a documentary called Orwell Rolls in his Grave. Now a day's, all the media is controlled by a few companies thanks to deregulation by the FCC. And they can use the media to say whatever they please, and put down the opinions of anyone who disagrees.

The politicians
Basically all the politicians are rich white men. They got their wealth from inheritance. If they worked for it then they got some real lucky breaks. George Washington in his farewell address warned of political parties and named them one of three things that could break the American system. And guess what...they are. Right now there are two major political parties. It's impossible for two parties to accurately represent the broad spectrum of views held by millions of people. What more these two parties have near complete control so you're either part of them or you aren't a politician.

The people
We're the ones who let this happen and what more most people voting don't vote based on issues. Those who do don't check their sources and are very poorly misinformed. It's almost exactly like Fahrenheit 451 (The Ray Bradbury book....so help me god if someone mentions Michael Moore) where people vote based on who looks best, without even listening to them.

End conclusion? If you want something to change do something about it, do it a little at a time, learn the facts, read your history books and be sure to watch your politicians closely.

Eaten by Gnomes..

[marcushnk]

Slashback is back after a long absence being devoured by gnomes.
Lucky you don't use KDE.. Otherwise it'd be Dragons... 0.o

Re:I don't understand the acrimony directed toward

[Speare]

Okay, I'm not a fan nor a foe of the GIMP dev team, but I have to ask the same thing Sven said: how long do you think GimpShop guy is going to keep up a modern version of the modifications? Will there be a GimpShop 2.6? 2.8? 2.10? 3.0? If he has the personal dedication to rewrite GimpShop mods into each "end user" release of the GIMP for just a year, I'll be impressed. Itches fade and some itches aren't worth scratching for long, no matter how many other non-technical users are clamoring for the implementation.

Sven had some good points: if the GimpShop were done "right" with the architectural aids that the GIMP already offers, then the work would be a lot more manageable, and would end up being a long-life supported option, even after the GimpShop guy was no longer itching to keep it up. However, in the one little posting linked, Sven said he got no reply-- it's hard to tell if the GimpShop guy was ignoring Sven for past sleights and attitude, or just didn't get the messages, but either one is pretty believable.

I do think the GIMP development team needs to realize that as the premiere image editing package for the OSS world, that they have a certain obligation that comes with it. Whether you like it or not, you're a role model, so you should act like one. Listen to users who don't code. Do some of the heavy lifting for those users. Incorporate features which interested Photoshop users want. Spend time on doing a few more things in a slightly more leader-compatible way, and drive adoption forward. You can't expect outsiders to become developers in the huge GIMP codebase to scratch their itch, because the key people who have the key feedback are not coders. Approach your userbase with magnanimity and humility instead of arrogance and disapproval.

What the..

[StikyPad]

5 minutes ago:
Slashback: Electioneering, Blimps, Shuffling
Posted by pudge on Thursday April 07, @10:20AM
from the like-a-rolling-stone dept.

Now:
Slashback: Electioneering, Blimps, Shuffling
Posted by timothy on Thursday April 07, @10:20AM
from the like-a-rolling-stone dept.

Who is this mysterious pudge? And why was he quickly and quietly removed as the author?

Re:What the..

[rzebram]

I believe pudge (Chris Nandor, http://sourceforge.net/users/pudge/) is one of the Slashdot programmers (if you look in the slash CVS you can see he has commit access). As for why he was removed, your guess is as good as mine.

Re:What the..

[pudge]

I started the article and handed it off to timothy, who then forgot to change the ownership to himself. And as I've edited hundreds of stories on Slashdot, I am not that mysterious ...

Pudge, Get Over It

[Doc Ruby]

When Pudge returns for a SlashBack, only the "Republicans wronged" phase of the contested WA governor election gets press. When their candidate was ahead by a statistically identical margin, after the first count, Pudge didn't seem to care how small it was. Even though the Republican margin, 46 votes out of 2.9 million, 3x smaler than this Democrat's final "small margin". And all the Republican rhetoric was "it's over, we won", and "Democrat crybabies just get over it". Especially poignant was the Republican candidate's public speeches demanding the Democrat stop the challenge, for "the good of the state". Now that it's months later, the good of the state demands a Republican challenge. Apparently, the good of the state of Washington originally demanded that hundreds of Seattle (Democratic) absentee ballots be rejected, including that of Seattle Councilman Larry Phillips. Isn't Pudge just a Republican partisan hack, sliding promotion of his side's weaselly campaign into the first story of a SlashBack peppered with other news of broad appeal?

Re:Pudge, Get Over It

[Doc Ruby]

Reporting that Republicans have filed a lawsuit over a slim Democrat margin, on a "Nerds" website, is obvious promotion of the Republicans suing - repeating the propaganda. Slashdot's format doesn't usually let editors publish stories they write themselves - they usually have to select from the stories submitted by "outsiders". SlashBack is an exception. And it hasn't been used in months. So it shows up just in time for Pudge to report Republican news barely relevant to the interests of this site's readers. If this trial were relevant at all, it might be appropriate to publish a submitted story about its outcome. But instead, it's obviously an abuse of Pudge's privileged position to publish Republican propaganda.

Re:I don't understand the acrimony directed toward

[mr_burns]

Yeah, even given the argument that they didn't want to have the gimp look like pshop, they should have at least fixed the interface they DO have.

It's BAD. I've been trying out GIMP on and off for many years and I always left with a very bad "if I have to work this way every day for the next X years until they fix it, I'll go totally mad" feeling.

The job of running this project is not to hold it back, it's to maintain and improve it. If you say no to things out of stubborn personal preference you're not doing your job: You're getting in the way of people who want to do the work.

I feel the same way about this fork as I do about x11.org. It was a long time coming.

Re:I don't understand the acrimony directed toward

[SiliconEntity]

...because 'Gimp is not Photoshop'.

Shouldn't that be 'GIMP Is Mot Photoshop'?

Sorry, but this was a couple of years ago.

[ptbarnett]

"On March 30th, Slashdot reported on the FBI request for the logs of several radical-leaning sites. The Washington Post has an article about the man who was responsible for the posts which resulted in the FBI request. He claimed to have killed a cop in several forum posts."

The Washington Post article was about a murder committed in November, 2002. The subsequent postings were six days later. The FBI is likely to have been disappointed if they just now made requests for server logs, after two years have elapsed.

I remember this particular incident, because I got a call from the FBI about it. The perpetrator sent his "manifesto" to an email address associated with a website I no longer maintain, apparently from an outdated list. The address got so much spam that I was simply using incoming messages to train SpamAssassin's Bayesian filter, then dumped them into the bit-bucket.

But, someone else forwarded it to the FBI (as I would have done, if I actually received it). Since my contact info was available for my domain name, I got a call from an agent who was trying to find any link between the recipients and the sender.

Re:You're proablly trolling but in case you aren't

[pudge]

Basically all the politicians are rich white men. They got their wealth from inheritance.

One of the people in this race was a woman, and the other was a lower class guy who worked his way through college.

Washington in his farewell address warned of political parties and named them one of three things that could break the American system. And guess what...they are.

We've had two-party rule since Washington left office. If it hasn't "broken" the American system in the last 200+ years, what makes you think it will happen now?

We're the ones who let this happen and what more most people voting don't vote based on issues.

Actually, this was one of the most issues-oriented campaigns in many years in WA. It focused primarily on the size of the government budget and taxation.

But hey, don't let me dispel your illusions ...

Like...

[ImaLamer]

Do you mean anything like in Pakistan where there is no age floor for sex acts? Where you can legally sleep with 3 year olds?

Oh, sex outside of marriage is illegal, punishable by death though.

Re:You're proablly trolling but in case you aren't

[pudge]

No, it's been two parties. There were short periods, such as before the Civil War, where one party declined while another gained power. First the Republican-Democrats and Federalists declined while the Democrats and Whigs gained power, in the early 19th century. Then the Whigs declined while the Republicans gained power. But apart from those short transitions, it's always been two parties in control.

That's also not to say a third party candidate never had a chance at the Presidency: Roosevelt nearly pulled it off in 1912. But he was like Perot: the party had no power in Congress, just a charismatic leader.

About slashback absence...

[Zangief]

I thought slashback was absorbed into the whole dupe system...

Washington gubernatorial race

[Antony-Kyre]

If we don't fix the problems and have a fresh race among all the candidates eligible, then this will drag on and on for the four year duration.

At the very least, we should have another election this November, but it shouldn't be a run-off. It should be among all the candidates eligible last time, otherwise it's unfair cause it's changing the rules. If we want a run-off between the top two, then we'd have to hold a primary and have those two go on, or in other words, two more elections. I stick by what I say. I hope someone can back me up.

Slashback is back...

[SeaFox]

Slashback is back after a long absence being devoured by gnomes.

So will there be a Kslashback to fill in?

Hilarious

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel for you. I just spent 10 minutes chasing down DLL dependencies to try and get this working, and it still complains about g_value_take_string being missing from libgobject-2.0-0.dll. I can tell this means I have a version mismatch, but I don't care enough to keep trying at this point.

I love open source sometimes.

"We made a version GIMP that is finally almost tolerable to use! Come check it out and see how easy it is!

Just make sure you first download an unspecified version of GTK+ for Windows, available from some dude's personal home page if you Google for it, since we're still a bit foggy about the responsibilities of an 'installer'.

While you're at it, make sure you find the correct versions of iconv and pango, and don't have any old DLLs anywhere in your path.

Anyway, I'm sure you can figure it out."

Re:I don't understand the acrimony directed toward

[Greg@UF]

No, actually, you're dead wrong.

This is how - and why - F/OSS doesn't work.
That attitude is a complete turn-off. The only logical answer is "Bollocks to you, I'll go talk to the professionals". They actually want their products to improve. Better products = bums on seats = food on plates.
Doesn't cost the users a cent.

Every time I hear that "Contribute or shut up" line, I get another reason to keep using windows. Cos here's a hint :
When someone takes the time to say "Your program could be improved by doing xyz" they just contributed.

"Contribute or shut up" slaps them in the face.
It's not professional, it's not constructive, and it doesn't help Open Source.

Oh bah.

[oGMo]

"Obvious propaganda" etc. my ass. Just because it's not "promote the democrats!" it's eeeevil propaganda, right?

Wrong. Now it's fairly obvious that the Republicans want to win, and they change their tune when losing like anyone, but you hardly know the situation up here. It's much different than the national election; the Democrats have locally held the office for a long time, and we're in need of serious change. The business law up here is terrible, the economy is going to crap, the corruption at the upper levels is rampant, and the overspending is ridiculous. (Check out our "light rail" project sometime.)

I'm not a Republican. I'm an independent. I'm even fairly anti-Republican in many respects (especially as it relates to corporate law and big business). But the local government here needs change, and a Republican term or two would do us some good. Besides, there were some serious problems with the election: take time to actually read the posted facts before being blinded by your partisan-fanboy judgement.

Besides, the Dems had a chance to investigate things in the national election. Everyone seems to know there were serious problems there, too. There was barely anything done. So what gives?

Re:GTK+ on Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

DUH!!!! WOW, are you guys really so illiterate that you cant figure out how to install GTK+ for windows? Or, did i correctly understand the OP which states, basically, that the OP doesnt know how to install ANY software on windows?!?!?! amazing. whats wrong with you guys?

http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html

directions for all you asshats:
1-go to above link
2-click on GTK+
3-watch as it magically "downloads"
4-click on it again to magically "unzip it"
5-click on it ONE MORE TIME to magically "install it"

yes, installing software on windows is so mysterious and magical isnt it? CLICK ON IT!!!!!

Re:You're proablly trolling but in case you aren't

[Mycroft_VIII]

Read the bill of rights sometimes and see wich of those in-aleinable rights haven't a defacto 'unless the federal government decides otherwise' tacted onto them.
An easy, if somewhat contriversial example: how is it possible to be jailed for simply having a firearm on you when BEAR and NOT INFRINGED both apear in the second amendment (and before some ignoramus quotes the 'well regulated millitia part' please be aware if you are a us citizen of leagle age and sound mind you ARE the millitia. That and well regulated means functioning, not legislated)
Going further the fifth prohibits the taking of private property for public use without 'fair compensation', yet look at the drug fortieture laws. One man was hired for a charter flight and flew the customer from one island to another. The customer was dressed like many of the bussinessmen he'd flown before and he had no reason to suspect this person as anything else. Yet when he landed he, <b>his plane</b>, and the customer were arrested (yes his plane was 'arrested' not impounded). The man was carrying a fair amount of of some illeagle drug in his briefcase (it was full). The charges against the pilot/owner was dropped, not even a grand jury or anything, but the plane was still sold off.
Many of these drug siezed properties were a result of an anonymous tip (errr, confront accusers, no warrents shall issue? there's two more), in some cases the tip turns out bogus, but since 'suspicion of drugs' is the cause of the search and siezure the state gets to sell it off at auction anyway. Though that last has slowed almost to a stop because of the outcry.
Or more recently the 14th amendment directly prohibits the draft, yet it has used since the 1th was passed.
Many of our rights are regularly ingored. Unless of course you were taking issue with the implication this is a recent phenomena, which of course it's not, it's just a bit more pronounced.

Mycroft

Electronic Voting Woes

[mrosgood]

Washington State Republicans, passing over dollars to pick up pennies.

Evidence Of Election Irregularities In Snohomish County, Washington, General Election, 200

This is only about winning, at any cost. If the GOP was actually concerned about fraud, they'd insist that electronic voting machine vendors like Sequoia open up their boxes for independent inspection. As it is today, the contracts stipulate that vote counting is a trade secret.

That's just lovely.

More votes found...

[kwietman]

In King County, another 95 votes have been recently "discovered," which were not counted in the November election. By themselves, not enough to change the outcome of the race, but enough to fuel the fires of those (myself included) who feel we deserve another election. In another note, special election ballots sent to servicepersons overseas last week apparently contained everything except the actual ballot. Once again, the soldier gets screwed out of his or her vote, either by sending absentee ballots out too late or by simply not being given one.

Re:You're not biased

[rmerrill11]

"Just take a look at this, which, as you'll notice, isn't getting any mention in the media, because it's GOP-bashing season right now (well, all the time really). If it was claimed to be a Democratic memo, the media would be describing it as a Republican "Rove-esque" trick. ..."

You are complaining that the anonymous Terry Schiavo Republican Talking Points memo was faked by the Democratcs. Because, of course, any reporting on criticism of the Republicans is a partisan trick and an indication of media bias?

Actually, no. The Terry Schiavo memo is true - this morning the Washington Post is reporting that a Republican Senator fired a his staffer who admitted writing it.

Look I hate to break it to you, but the all the evidence and actions of the Republicans in Washington (Schiavo, Delay, lies about cost of Medicare, Social Security "Crisis", WMD's, torture policy, Clinton Impeachment, budget busting deficits and concurrent tax cuts for the hyper-rich, media consolidation, "nuclear-option" of taking away the filibuster option from the minority party, lack of any sort of investigation of White House actions) demonstrate that the Republicans in Washington are acting like amoral, unethical, hacks who will do anything for power and their party, in contrast to acting for the benefit of the country.

There are some principled Republicans in the country, I know some. But what are the core values that the ones in Washington are demonstrating? Why is it "media bias" to report on their actions?

Reporting on unethical actions is not media bias - and not reporting on false speculation that the Democrats "faked it" without any evidence suggesting that they did is not "media bias". Because, again, the Republican Senate staff DID write the Terry Schiavo Talking points memo. And it is good that people reported it, and that people be held accountable for it.

I have voted Republican, and will again for the right people. But this crop's willingess to lie, and to tolerate lies for their own benefit and to the long-term detriment of the country and our democracy is shameful and disturbing. I don't care if you vote Republican or Democrat - but vote for someone better than the current schmucks in power. There are some candidates our there who care more about what is good for the country than for their personal short-term gain, and who can still tell the difference between the two. We deserve, and need, better leaders than are currently running the show in Washington.

iCopulate

[Lord Byron II]

The iCopulate really exists!!

http://www.luxpro-corp.com/e_sc01.htm

Close Elections Suck

[Old VMS Junkie]

The only way to ensure a valid result is a blowout. Then no matter how much fraud there is (and there is always some on both sides) you can be pretty sure that the right guy (or girl) won. I highly recommend "Stealing Elections" by John Fund for those who want to read more about the depths to which politicians will sink.

Re:I don't understand the acrimony directed toward

[swinte]

True that!

You hit the nail on the head: GIMP's interface sucks. There are no two ways about it. At work we use Photoshop every hour of every day. Being locked in to one vendor--especially Adobe--makes me nervous so we looked at the GIMP as an alternative. Our designers laughed it out of the shop because the interface was so badly designed.

Instead of bitching about the GIMPshop guy, the GIMP developers need to hire him and have him start reworking the standard interface; anything is better than the cobbled together mess they have now. The interface is so bad it completely eclipses all of the hard work they have done on the core features.

Re:I don't understand the acrimony directed toward

[k98sven]

I'm not the guy, so I don't really know his motivations, but he might have felt that 'do first, ask for permission later' was best in this case to create buzz about this issue.

Um, yeah. But it seems he didn't do that either. Seems the guy hasn't made any effort to work with the Gimp people, even when they contacted him.

That is unpolite, whatever way you look at it.

Obviously when faced with LOTS of users cheering this modification the Gimp developers will be a lot more open to the idea than if a lone developer asked for this feature through the 'proper channels'.

No, no, no. The Gimp developers know a lot of people want a PS-similar interface. It's been talked about for years. But it seems the people actually hacking on Gimp were happy with the interface as it was. That doesn't mean they wouldn't want to give it a "PS theme" if someone was willing to do wone. It just means they weren't willing to do it themselves.

Again, you don't seem to understand that there's a big difference between whinging "I want a Photoshop-like UI!!" and actually approaching them with "Hey, I've got a Photoshop-like UI here, do you want it?".

A user asking for a feature is asking is nothing more and nothing less than someone asking a complete stranger to spend hours of his time doing him a favour. You simply can't expect that unless the guy he's asking wants it himself.

Now actually contributing is offering someone a favour. And that is a completely different matter.

It would be nice if the Gimp devs listened to some experienced PS folks (not me, I'm no expert) who could point them in the right direction in terms of features users REALLY want vs features that the devs want.

That is simply not going to happen. Free software development doesn't work like that. It's software developed by people 'scratching an itch' for something they want. Now for some people, perhaps that itch is 'helping others'. But I assure you they are in the minority. You never have any guarantee a feature will be present unless you're either willing to code it yourself or pay someone to do so.

Re:Reagan? Really?

[bodrell]

The deficit, eh. A huge percentage of that was to fight the Cold War, which I am very happy we did. I am not happy about all the increases in social spending, but so what? How could I ever be happy with everything anyone does?

I guess I'm just unclear on the ideology here. Do you believe in fiscal responsibility? That's generally a "conservative" principle, whereas the pattern of spending during the Reagan years is anything but responsible. Do you believe in a nation's right to self-determination? That's another principle generally considered conservative, but fighting the Cold War went directly against it. Protecting a foreign country from communist invaders is one thing, but that is not what happened in Nicaragua, where the US funded the foreign invaders to try to overthrow a democratically elected Sandinistas. You may not agree with Sandinista politics, but do you really think they were a threat to the United States?

As to lying ... he is a "documented liar unless you believe" ... ? If it is left up to belief, he is not therefore a documented liar, and saying he is is, well, a documented lie on your part.

Point taken. That was poorly worded. I guess I should say that Reagan has been documented saying things that would be considered lies beyond a reasonable doubt. He was the commander in chief, and it is unreasonable to believe that he had no knowledge of what Oliver North was doing, or what the CIA was doing. In retrospect, Reagan's Alzheimer's makes his "I don't remember" statements slightly more believable, but not enough to exculpate him. But since there is really no way to determine someone's memory, it is untestable. He was certainly involved in some despicable covert operations, and that is documented (they happened on his watch, and he--not Congress, not anyone else--was responsible for the CIA's activities).

Anyway, more directly to the point: what President has not had terrible problems on his watch, some even caused by him? Abe Lincoln essentially started the Civil War, suspended habeas corpus, etc. and we revere him. It's the big picture, and even regardless of anything else, Reagan will be considered the right man at the right time because he is what we needed to defeat the Soviets.

I don't revere Abe Lincoln for precisely the reasons you mentioned. The Civil War tore this country apart, and was almost surely unnecessary. I believe it helped perpetuate racism in the American South. By 1900, the last country in the Americas (Brazil) had repealed slavery. Perhaps if there had been a more organic opposition to slavery in the Confederacy, our country would be less racist today. Instead, blacks continued to suffer under carpetbagger regimes and foot-dragging Southerners who wished for the good ol' days before the war. It's all hypothetical, but it is a certainty that slavery would have been abolished eventually, even without Union intervention.

As for Reagan's legacy (defeating the Soviets), perhaps you are right. But I think it's much more likely that the US will have a financial crisis due to the massive debt accumulation that will far overshadow any gains from "defeating the Soviets" (if that's what the arms spending race really was).

Besides fighting the Cold War, why else do you think Reagan was great? I'm genuinely curious, because I can't think of anything.

Re:Reagan? Really?

[js7a]

How can you in good intellect have to ask that question?

Reagan started a downward trend in real income and poverty that his followers continue to this day.

"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'

"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'

"He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'

"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life." -- Matthew 25:41-46, NIV

Note that "His left" will be the right of those of us with the good conscience to face Him.