in a random sample of 50 photos of people's faces, BAIR blocked... how many?... 34.
Maybe that slogan should be: "now your children can only see 32% of the web," period.
Maybe they should have an option where if it finds a pornographic image it replaces it with a math exercise. For instance, instead of "Pamela Anderson Nude!" you could get "What percentage of 50 is 34? (answer 68%)"
Who was it who said Artificil Intelligence is no match for natural stupidity?:)
I've got a hard time accepting the fact that the Corinthian soccer team is better known than a book of the Bible!
I don't know what the original poster meant, but the *word* "Corinthians" only names the Bible book in English, while the name applies to the soccer team in whatever language you are addressing it.
While there are lot of non-Christian soccer fans out there, how many follow the leagues on the Iberian Penninsula?
Please, would you elighten us all on what the Iberian Peninsula has to do with this discussion?
There are millions of Christians in the world who have never heard of the Corinthians as a soccer team, but could probably quote you passages from the Two books in the New Testament!
I'll tell you what. I remember, as a child, going to church and wondering whether St. Paul had any business writing to the Corinthians (the book name in Portuguese is Coríntios), why not to the other team supporters. I was very young of course, but in Brazil and in many places in South America (except for our so beloved Argentinian brothers) children hear about the soccer team way before the bible book. And that's not out of lack of religiosity but because sports are in the news! And "Esporte Clube Corinthians Paulista" was founded in 1910! It has maybe 10 million supporters in the State of São Paulo alone. An interesting note is that it was named after an English team that played once in Brazil in the begining of the century and impressed the Brazilians a lot. To put things in a more U.S. perspective, imagine Miami Dolphins disputing some charity on dolphins.com; you'll get the picture.
I would like to add: a) this "Corintiao" thing makes no sense, it definitely sounds different; b)I'm not for this decision; c) Corinthians suck!
The program is painfully slow to start and close. It's a memory hog. Has horrible UI. Concept are counter-intuitive. Menu option names are cryptic. Gadgets are the worst I've ever seen. I haven't yet figured out how to see the headers. Even the sender's full address isn't shown in the mailbox window. Parts are translated, parts are not. I could go on with this all day long.
And maybe exploits aren't commom because of the small installed base.
At least with cars, they know that the oil needs to be changed every 5000 or so KM, and that when the tread on the tires is bare, those need to be replaced. People are still using IE 3.0! Users generally too lazy to upgrade software, even if there's a known security issue.
Emphasis was mine. This is precisely the problem: I am 100% sure that no one of the other 12 computer users at my office have the faintest idea that there may be security problems related to e-mail clients. We use Lotus Notes (yuck!) here, so I don't mind educating people on this new hole (I've never heard of any LN exploit) and I still think this is a problem to be dealt with by the sysadmins, which I'm not. The point is that most people don't keep insecure versions because they are lazy, they just can't imagine they are at risk. They just trust MS. Now, if I could just figure out why...
I don't think this is going to help much, except for allowing for the existence of a parallel hidden Internet, much in the way there are hidden forums in some weblogs... Take a look at how things work in Brazil (you may prefer BabelFish)
Once I really had to take a look at a company's website and they had the sad idea of registering as www.company.ind.br. I just couldn't find it! As a rule, nobody uses TLD's other than com.br, org.br and a very few net.br.
Good that you asked this question, because many who are going to d/l it may have the impression that PP8 lacks this functionallity.
The equivalent concept in PP is "objects". You can have many, select which you work on, show or hide, control their transparency, apply drop shadows and merge. Every time you create a new text a new object is created. It's a little clumsy at first but works fine.
I like PP very much, it is one of the very few reasons why I still have a DOS partition. For those with the bandwidth, enjoy!
1 - What kind of software runs the show? I assume you have at least software for positioning, a stellar body database and image processing/enhancing software. Which are those? Any other interesting bit about this?
2 - What computer/OS platform do you use? Is it basically off-the-box or did it need major tweaking to meet your needs? If so, how were those needs special?
Access is denied in my computer, it may have been fixed. I'm not running as Admin.
Re:BSOD on NT4 ( dunno about W2K )
on
Creating BSODs?
·
· Score: 1
Sure, I had to try this. The tray is gone even as I type, everything gets minimized to a standard issue Windows minimized box right above where there used to be a tray. So, it must have been fixed in some SP.
I'll try to use the computer as long as I can before rebooting, just for the kick.
Perhaps you would rather the US and USSR had fought a pitched battle in Western Europe?
I'll tell you: I'd prefer they had. That would be a lot more decent than sponsoring wars and coups all around the world (as they did in my country), and that applies to both parties. Now, I can't read your comment in any other way than implying that it has been better that they didn't. I still think that is a dumb point of view. If you don't think this way, I suggest you be clearer next time or accept the risk of being misinterpreted and flamed.
I am not American and I don't live in the U.S. (hence the nick!). As to hating Americans, I'll tell you what: They are not inherently better or worse than most people in the world. And their government just looks after the interests of those who feed their mouths, just like any other.
Personal attack? Your comment says it all...
About the xoxo part, I really hope you are a nice looking lady.
Between 1950 and 1995 most such ventures were part of the not quite war between the US and USSR. Perhaps you would rather the US and USSR had fought a pitched battle in Western Europe?
Congrats! You managed to express the dumbest point of view out of the hundreds in this discussion. May I ask you why the lives of Egyptians, Nicaraguans, Vietnamese, etc, are more expendable the those of Europeans? Maybe it's for the same reason the US (absolutely needlessly) dropped the bomb in Japan and not in Germany: the latter are white people!
I've recently had a similar problem, maybe it will shed some light on this long discussion:) : I'm in an NT network (which works damn fine, except for this problem I'm describing) and we used to have a proxy firewall. I used Netscape to browse. The sysadmin gave me a fixed IP and allowed me to ftp (which is not needed for my job but the guy is very nice and monitors everything). He asked me it I wanted to telnet outside our organization also but I declined. Everything was running ok. One day they switched the proxy software to MS-Proxy and I couldn't use Netscape any more. I talked to him and he told me that he suspected NS sends the password as plain text, whereas MS-Proxy expect them to be encrypted. It was kind of a wild guess from him, as I'm probably the only one in this 5,000 people organization that uses NS. He said he could go after the cause and a fix but I told him to let it be, he's pretty overloaded already.
I did my own search and what I found is that it is probably an authentication issue, having to do with MS-Proxy expecting NT hashes instead of LAN hashes, which your Linux client is probably sending. I read in more than one place (unfortunately I can't give you a link) that it *can* be fixed, but nobody seems to know how!
I'm not an NT network administrator, I'm probably missing something, I may be downright wrong, but if I am I would like to hear from more enlightened people.
Just one thing that must be noted if someone intends to use compressed air: there are many kinds of compressed air: Oil-flooded, oil-free and dry.
Oil-floded air is the one you obtain from oil-flooded screw compressors, the cheapest and most simple design for pressures between 50-200 psi. This is the most common type for medium to large compressors. Those we see in the street supplying air for concrete breakers are almost all screw compressors, but they are largely employed in industrial plants as well. This is not bad per se, for some tools benefit from it, some even demand extra lubrication in the air line. You don't want to use this kind of compressed air in your computer! Check with your maintainance staff before using it. If you are in doubt, blow some air through a white cloth for some 5-10 seconds and look at it: it it is yellowish or brownish, forget using it.
Oil-free compressed air comes from oil-free screw compressor (a different design with synchronized screws that do not touch each other) or piston compressors. Tire repair shops generally use the later. There are other less common designs. You can also have oil-free air if you pass oil-flooded air through special filters. It has some oil, but it is acceptable. If you use this, allow for a few hours for the more sensitive components to dry.
When you compress air it heats up a lot, then it cools down and a lot of water condenses. Dry air is the one that has passed through an aftercooler and an air dryer. These are actual filters, do not confuse these with watertraps, which only remove the bulk of it. This is the air you really want to use.
Last, be careful about air pressure. If the line pressure is above 50psi, don't bring the nozzle too close to whatever you are trying to clean.
It seems you were wise enough not to mention what language or environment you and your friend use!
The reason is portability. Not in the sense that your code should run in different OS's. I'm talking about that commonsense rule that states that portable code tends to be cleaner and have less bugs. If you are writing code that has to be compiled in different environments you educate yourself a lot.
When I first installed Linux I was in the middle of a project. I didn't install it to do my coding, but just to give it a try as a desktop. Well, I'm infected now. Eventually I decided to compile my C++ sources with gcc. It's still a console app, I'll add the UI layer later, so it should compile with gcc as it did with Borland tools. Man, what a shock! Not a single module survived without a warning. When things finally compiled, the program behaved all wrong.
If you use one single development tool you tend to assume things such as all int's are signed or fopen() defaults to "binary" mode. These things stick to your knowledge of the language and you end up coding as if they are part of the specification, although you "officially" know they are not.
I assume you code in a way that separates user and machine interface from the business rules (sorry for the cheesy expression). If you have a test framework to call the latter, you should compile it with different tools and compare the outputs. What I did was switch from Windows to Linux every other day. The first build of the day was pretty error prone in the beginning but as I became more careful I finally managed to get things right the first time around.
Try looking them up on Merriam-Webster. I surelly did it back then, and that's why I said (something like) "distorted by common usage". The M-W entry mentions that the word initially meant "house of manufacture". Let's not engage in a fruitless discussion here. There are those who say language is made by people and those who say there must be rules or things turn into anarchy. I'm more inclined to stick to the etymological meaning of words, because if everyone does so I can be sure that what I write means what I think to those who read it, while allowing for "evolution" (which generally comes from misusage, like in "computer hackers") brings in all sort of confusion. OTOH, languages are living bodies and you can't just "freeze", so one has to accept change. I'm just not very permissive on that. As to "steep", I think it means "very inclined", as opposed to "shallow". And I have no idea what this "classic 1922 meaning" thing means, but that's probably my fault, for I don't speak English well (not my mother tonge and I've been to the U.S. only twice, for a few days).
Agreed. It has always bugged me too. This is one of the expressions/words that I just don't use because they mean something but almost anyone understands them the other way around. Someone pointed here in/. in the past that "arsenal" is where weapons are made, not stored, so it is a dead word for me now, despite being distorted by commom usage. It may be OK if you think of it as an analogy to a walking path, but in a technical environment we tend to think of a steep curve as a representation of a function. And sure, the variable one has control of his time or effort, and you won't draw your graphs with the independent variable in the vertical axis, right?
Re:Can someone give 1 good reason to use C++ over
on
Who's Afraid Of C++?
·
· Score: 2
I think I can give you one. When you program in C++ you can do anything you can do in C plus (no pun intended) a lot more. You can write functions and/or tools in a style that touches and feels the hardware. Then you can objectify things so as to have much cleaner (thus safer) code in upper levels.
This is one approach, the one I regretably followed. I just mentioned that way of doing things because you sound a bit like a die-hard C programer, and maybe you'll feel more comfortable with this small subset of C++. The best path of course would be to think different (tm) from the very beginning, using the STL and programming generically when there is a need.
But the real good reason to use C++ in my opinion is its power and flexibility (that multi-paradigm thing, if you like long words). I don't think there is any other language that can be so easily adapted to one's personal needs or the needs of a given project. Even if your need is to be close to the machine. And the tradeoffs are small too. With today's compilers (I use Borland 5.0 and GNU gcc) there is little difference in the code produced. Some (very credible) people claim that in some circumstances C++ will produce even smaller and faster code than C, but I haven't been able to duplicate that experiment.:)
This is all pretty obvious and well discussed in many places, there must be someone arguing the same thing, even as I type, so maybe I missed the point in your question.
I think the problem is more than just layers and stuff. The only reasons keeping me from ripping Windows off my box are two pieces of software:
- Nikon view 600. I just can't make the GPhoto driver for the Nikon Coolpix 600 work.
- Corel Photopaint. If you are used to do your work in software like this (or PSP or PhotoShop) you really see how much Gimp still has to evolve.
I don't use Gimp much, just for q'n'd work when I don't want to reboot, but a few areas really need improvement:
- Valid file formats. This is a bug and is unmistakable. Last time I tried I couldn't get valid TIFF's from Gimp. While I was writing a TIFF reader I even took a look a Gimp's source but couldn't make much sense out of it, for I'm not familiar with the code and it's not small.
- User interface. I can see the point in that dry minimalist interface, considering that when you are doing graphics, screen space is at premium price. But people who do real graphic work in general have access to large monitors, so having a UI that is a bit friendlier, more informative and more intuitive is certainly worth a bit of screen area. Anyway, with Corel PP or PS you can always maximize the window client area. And those small menus (if I use Gimp it's over KDE) really suck, but I bet Gimp zealots can use them even if they are blank.
- Tool control. One just can't compare the flexibility Corel PP gives to that of the Gimp tools.
- Anti-alias. If I have to explain this, it won't make much difference to you. Just take a look at the Gimp icon itself on a dark background. Horribly haloed.
There are more small annoyances, as well as there are annoyances with PP as well (I don't like the concept of objects replacing that of layers), but one gets used to these. I'm not using any bleeding version of Gimp, so a few of these issues may have received some attention lately. My point is there is a long way to go before Gimp can be seriously considered as a replacement for PP or PS. I agree with that college mentioned in a post above (assume you read oldest first) that considered it not prudent to teach Gimp.
Slashdot Mirror
in a random sample of 50 photos of people's faces, BAIR blocked ... how many? ... 34.
Maybe that slogan should be: "now your children can only see 32% of the web," period.
Maybe they should have an option where if it finds a pornographic image it replaces it with a math exercise. For instance, instead of "Pamela Anderson Nude!" you could get "What percentage of 50 is 34? (answer 68%)"
Who was it who said Artificil Intelligence is no match for natural stupidity? :)
Eu diria "o perfume de um são-paulino paciente"!
I've watched Corinthians games since I was a little kid,
I hope the damage is revertible! :-)
I've got a hard time accepting the fact that the Corinthian soccer team is better known than a book of the Bible!
I don't know what the original poster meant, but the *word* "Corinthians" only names the Bible book in English, while the name applies to the soccer team in whatever language you are addressing it.
While there are lot of non-Christian soccer fans out there, how many follow the leagues on the Iberian Penninsula?
Please, would you elighten us all on what the Iberian Peninsula has to do with this discussion?
There are millions of Christians in the world who have never heard of the Corinthians as a soccer team, but could probably quote you passages from the Two books in the New Testament!
I'll tell you what. I remember, as a child, going to church and wondering whether St. Paul had any business writing to the Corinthians (the book name in Portuguese is Coríntios), why not to the other team supporters. I was very young of course, but in Brazil and in many places in South America (except for our so beloved Argentinian brothers) children hear about the soccer team way before the bible book. And that's not out of lack of religiosity but because sports are in the news! And "Esporte Clube Corinthians Paulista" was founded in 1910! It has maybe 10 million supporters in the State of São Paulo alone. An interesting note is that it was named after an English team that played once in Brazil in the begining of the century and impressed the Brazilians a lot. To put things in a more U.S. perspective, imagine Miami Dolphins disputing some charity on dolphins.com; you'll get the picture.
I would like to add: a) this "Corintiao" thing makes no sense, it definitely sounds different; b)I'm not for this decision; c) Corinthians suck!
The program is painfully slow to start and close. It's a memory hog. Has horrible UI. Concept are counter-intuitive. Menu option names are cryptic. Gadgets are the worst I've ever seen. I haven't yet figured out how to see the headers. Even the sender's full address isn't shown in the mailbox window. Parts are translated, parts are not. I could go on with this all day long.
And maybe exploits aren't commom because of the small installed base.
At least with cars, they know that the oil needs to be changed every 5000 or so KM, and that when the tread on the tires is bare, those need to be replaced. People are still using IE 3.0! Users generally too lazy to upgrade software, even if there's a known security issue.
Emphasis was mine. This is precisely the problem: I am 100% sure that no one of the other 12 computer users at my office have the faintest idea that there may be security problems related to e-mail clients. We use Lotus Notes (yuck!) here, so I don't mind educating people on this new hole (I've never heard of any LN exploit) and I still think this is a problem to be dealt with by the sysadmins, which I'm not. The point is that most people don't keep insecure versions because they are lazy, they just can't imagine they are at risk. They just trust MS. Now, if I could just figure out why...
please crack one of these so-called "Black Boxes"?
Well, now that Kevin Mitnick can log-in again, I think it's just a matter of time... :)
I don't think this is going to help much, except for allowing for the existence of a parallel hidden Internet, much in the way there are hidden forums in some weblogs... Take a look at how things work in Brazil (you may prefer BabelFish)
Once I really had to take a look at a company's website and they had the sad idea of registering as www.company.ind.br. I just couldn't find it! As a rule, nobody uses TLD's other than com.br, org.br and a very few net.br.Actually it can't.
Good that you asked this question, because many who are going to d/l it may have the impression that PP8 lacks this functionallity.
The equivalent concept in PP is "objects". You can have many, select which you work on, show or hide, control their transparency, apply drop shadows and merge. Every time you create a new text a new object is created. It's a little clumsy at first but works fine.
I like PP very much, it is one of the very few reasons why I still have a DOS partition. For those with the bandwidth, enjoy!
In fact, two related questions here:
1 - What kind of software runs the show? I assume you have at least software for positioning, a stellar body database and image processing/enhancing software. Which are those? Any other interesting bit about this?
2 - What computer/OS platform do you use? Is it basically off-the-box or did it need major tweaking to meet your needs? If so, how were those needs special?
Access is denied in my computer, it may have been fixed. I'm not running as Admin.
Sure, I had to try this. The tray is gone even as I type, everything gets minimized to a standard issue Windows minimized box right above where there used to be a tray. So, it must have been fixed in some SP.
I'll try to use the computer as long as I can before rebooting, just for the kick.
I'll quote you one more time:
Perhaps you would rather the US and USSR had fought a pitched battle in Western Europe?
I'll tell you: I'd prefer they had. That would be a lot more decent than sponsoring wars and coups all around the world (as they did in my country), and that applies to both parties. Now, I can't read your comment in any other way than implying that it has been better that they didn't. I still think that is a dumb point of view. If you don't think this way, I suggest you be clearer next time or accept the risk of being misinterpreted and flamed.
I am not American and I don't live in the U.S. (hence the nick!). As to hating Americans, I'll tell you what: They are not inherently better or worse than most people in the world. And their government just looks after the interests of those who feed their mouths, just like any other.
Personal attack? Your comment says it all...
About the xoxo part, I really hope you are a nice looking lady.
Between 1950 and 1995 most such ventures were part of the not quite war between the US and USSR. Perhaps you would rather the US and USSR had fought a pitched battle in Western Europe?
Congrats! You managed to express the dumbest point of view out of the hundreds in this discussion. May I ask you why the lives of Egyptians, Nicaraguans, Vietnamese, etc, are more expendable the those of Europeans? Maybe it's for the same reason the US (absolutely needlessly) dropped the bomb in Japan and not in Germany: the latter are white people!
For the sake of clarity, what I mean by "it can be fixed" is that one has to configure MS Proxy to accept requests from non-NT clients.
I did my own search and what I found is that it is probably an authentication issue, having to do with MS-Proxy expecting NT hashes instead of LAN hashes, which your Linux client is probably sending. I read in more than one place (unfortunately I can't give you a link) that it *can* be fixed, but nobody seems to know how!
I'm not an NT network administrator, I'm probably missing something, I may be downright wrong, but if I am I would like to hear from more enlightened people.
Just one thing that must be noted if someone intends to use compressed air: there are many kinds of compressed air: Oil-flooded, oil-free and dry.
Oil-floded air is the one you obtain from oil-flooded screw compressors, the cheapest and most simple design for pressures between 50-200 psi. This is the most common type for medium to large compressors. Those we see in the street supplying air for concrete breakers are almost all screw compressors, but they are largely employed in industrial plants as well. This is not bad per se, for some tools benefit from it, some even demand extra lubrication in the air line. You don't want to use this kind of compressed air in your computer! Check with your maintainance staff before using it. If you are in doubt, blow some air through a white cloth for some 5-10 seconds and look at it: it it is yellowish or brownish, forget using it.
Oil-free compressed air comes from oil-free screw compressor (a different design with synchronized screws that do not touch each other) or piston compressors. Tire repair shops generally use the later. There are other less common designs. You can also have oil-free air if you pass oil-flooded air through special filters. It has some oil, but it is acceptable. If you use this, allow for a few hours for the more sensitive components to dry.
When you compress air it heats up a lot, then it cools down and a lot of water condenses. Dry air is the one that has passed through an aftercooler and an air dryer. These are actual filters, do not confuse these with watertraps, which only remove the bulk of it. This is the air you really want to use.
Last, be careful about air pressure. If the line pressure is above 50psi, don't bring the nozzle too close to whatever you are trying to clean.
And who would these grammar usage people be?
Or maybe you meant "We have to think about GRAMMAR usage, people!" :)
-------------------------------
Congratulations, Hemos! I wish you both my best.
I'm addressing the original poster here.
It seems you were wise enough not to mention what language or environment you and your friend use!
The reason is portability. Not in the sense that your code should run in different OS's. I'm talking about that commonsense rule that states that portable code tends to be cleaner and have less bugs. If you are writing code that has to be compiled in different environments you educate yourself a lot.
When I first installed Linux I was in the middle of a project. I didn't install it to do my coding, but just to give it a try as a desktop. Well, I'm infected now. Eventually I decided to compile my C++ sources with gcc. It's still a console app, I'll add the UI layer later, so it should compile with gcc as it did with Borland tools. Man, what a shock! Not a single module survived without a warning. When things finally compiled, the program behaved all wrong.
If you use one single development tool you tend to assume things such as all int's are signed or fopen() defaults to "binary" mode. These things stick to your knowledge of the language and you end up coding as if they are part of the specification, although you "officially" know they are not.
I assume you code in a way that separates user and machine interface from the business rules (sorry for the cheesy expression). If you have a test framework to call the latter, you should compile it with different tools and compare the outputs. What I did was switch from Windows to Linux every other day. The first build of the day was pretty error prone in the beginning but as I became more careful I finally managed to get things right the first time around.
While we're talking about those screenshots, would anyone tell me (and possibly others) what window manager is that nice one?
Try looking them up on Merriam-Webster.
I surelly did it back then, and that's why I said (something like) "distorted by common usage". The M-W entry mentions that the word initially meant "house of manufacture".
Let's not engage in a fruitless discussion here. There are those who say language is made by people and those who say there must be rules or things turn into anarchy. I'm more inclined to stick to the etymological meaning of words, because if everyone does so I can be sure that what I write means what I think to those who read it, while allowing for "evolution" (which generally comes from misusage, like in "computer hackers") brings in all sort of confusion. OTOH, languages are living bodies and you can't just "freeze", so one has to accept change. I'm just not very permissive on that.
As to "steep", I think it means "very inclined", as opposed to "shallow". And I have no idea what this "classic 1922 meaning" thing means, but that's probably my fault, for I don't speak English well (not my mother tonge and I've been to the U.S. only twice, for a few days).
Agreed. It has always bugged me too. This is one of the expressions/words that I just don't use because they mean something but almost anyone understands them the other way around. Someone pointed here in /. in the past that "arsenal" is where weapons are made, not stored, so it is a dead word for me now, despite being distorted by commom usage. It may be OK if you think of it as an analogy to a walking path, but in a technical environment we tend to think of a steep curve as a representation of a function. And sure, the variable one has control of his time or effort, and you won't draw your graphs with the independent variable in the vertical axis, right?
I think I can give you one. When you program in C++ you can do anything you can do in C plus (no pun intended) a lot more. You can write functions and/or tools in a style that touches and feels the hardware. Then you can objectify things so as to have much cleaner (thus safer) code in upper levels.
:)
This is one approach, the one I regretably followed. I just mentioned that way of doing things because you sound a bit like a die-hard C programer, and maybe you'll feel more comfortable with this small subset of C++. The best path of course would be to think different (tm) from the very beginning, using the STL and programming generically when there is a need.
But the real good reason to use C++ in my opinion is its power and flexibility (that multi-paradigm thing, if you like long words). I don't think there is any other language that can be so easily adapted to one's personal needs or the needs of a given project. Even if your need is to be close to the machine. And the tradeoffs are small too. With today's compilers (I use Borland 5.0 and GNU gcc) there is little difference in the code produced. Some (very credible) people claim that in some circumstances C++ will produce even smaller and faster code than C, but I haven't been able to duplicate that experiment.
This is all pretty obvious and well discussed in many places, there must be someone arguing the same thing, even as I type, so maybe I missed the point in your question.
His question is more on-topic than yours.
I think the problem is more than just layers and stuff.
The only reasons keeping me from ripping Windows off my box are two pieces of software:
- Nikon view 600. I just can't make the GPhoto driver for the Nikon Coolpix 600 work.
- Corel Photopaint. If you are used to do your work in software like this (or PSP or PhotoShop) you really see how much Gimp still has to evolve.
I don't use Gimp much, just for q'n'd work when I don't want to reboot, but a few areas really need improvement:
- Valid file formats. This is a bug and is unmistakable. Last time I tried I couldn't get valid TIFF's from Gimp. While I was writing a TIFF reader I even took a look a Gimp's source but couldn't make much sense out of it, for I'm not familiar with the code and it's not small.
- User interface. I can see the point in that dry minimalist interface, considering that when you are doing graphics, screen space is at premium price. But people who do real graphic work in general have access to large monitors, so having a UI that is a bit friendlier, more informative and more intuitive is certainly worth a bit of screen area. Anyway, with Corel PP or PS you can always maximize the window client area. And those small menus (if I use Gimp it's over KDE) really suck, but I bet Gimp zealots can use them even if they are blank.
- Tool control. One just can't compare the flexibility Corel PP gives to that of the Gimp tools.
- Anti-alias. If I have to explain this, it won't make much difference to you. Just take a look at the Gimp icon itself on a dark background. Horribly haloed.
There are more small annoyances, as well as there are annoyances with PP as well (I don't like the concept of objects replacing that of layers), but one gets used to these. I'm not using any bleeding version of Gimp, so a few of these issues may have received some attention lately. My point is there is a long way to go before Gimp can be seriously considered as a replacement for PP or PS. I agree with that college mentioned in a post above (assume you read oldest first) that considered it not prudent to teach Gimp.