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Slashback: Electioneering, Blimps, Shuffling
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."
Recounts: not just for Democrats anymore!
...but is it art?
that would be 10% of the US population
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!
Get your Unix fortune now!
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.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Get your Unix fortune now!
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?
Damn the man!
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.
SLASHBACK:
That section of Slashdot.org that directly links Windows executables without warning.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
So if Adobe feels even the slightest bit threatened by it, expect the project to receive a nastygram.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
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).
-- the cake is a lie
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
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.
I never vote for anyone. I always vote against.
-- W.C. Fields
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?
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.
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.
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.
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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?
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
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?
--
make install -not war
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.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
...because 'Gimp is not Photoshop'.
Shouldn't that be 'GIMP Is Mot Photoshop'?
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.
I thought slashback was absorbed into the whole dupe system...
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.
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.
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.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
Note that "His left" will be the right of those of us with the good conscience to face Him.