Re:Why would anyone bother with PhotoShop now ???
on
Gimp 1.2.0 Released
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· Score: 1
Its not open source, and it costs $$$$s.
Why would anyone bother with PhotoShop now ???
on
Gimp 1.2.0 Released
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· Score: 2
I really think its amazing. The Gimp now provides us with every feature that Photoshop does, and then some. Why would anyone PAY for Photoshop now it defies belief.
I honestly think that Gimp is the best advertisment for Open Source we could wish for, and now that PhotoShop is redundant, I look forward to the death of 3DStudioMax !!!:-)
I guess the point about high production costs is valid:
When I pay my $10 to see a movie that cost $25000000 to produce, I am benefiting from the fact that my taste is very similar to many many others. I am leveraging my $10, by the fact that I find the same thing entertaining that "joe average" does.
For art this is a bad thing, because of the lowest common denominator effect. But for people like me with relatively mainstream tastes (WWF, Britney Spears etc) its all good. I get expensively produced movies at a reasonable price.
Its all very well saying "information wants to be free" and going along with all the open-source rhetoric, but at the end of the day unless someone pays the producer of the information to create it, the information won't get created.
Metallica would not bother recording their CDs if they knew that in 10 minutes from its release it would be in Napster.
Maybe thats a good thing:-) but slashdotters should think of the artists need to earn a living when they are busy ripping off everything into MP3 format.
With all the talk of optical computing, quantum computing, genetic computing and the like, its good to see some energy being focussed on proven technology.
I sometimes wonder if the entrenched interests stifle this kind of research, becaust of the dramatic effects it could have on their industries.
Read Bruce Sterling's 'Distraction' and you'll understand what I mean.
The same thing that makes us all like Tolkien is making us like Anime. It really fascinates me that geeks, who have this fiercely individualistic streak, all seem to enjoy the same pastimes !!
It cannot be coincidence. I think the same thing that makes us good at grinding out code makes us appreciate certain kinds of art.
I mean, have you ever met a Unix admin who didn't like the Dead ?
It in the genes. It has to be !!
Larn was the game for me!!!!
Larn totally kicked ass. Kobolds etc. Its amazing, I used to get exactly the same adrenaline rush from playing Larn that I now get from QIII Arena !!!
Its interesting isn't it, that almost all geeks seem to be into fantasy/roleplaying and all like the same kind of stuff, star trek, tolkein etc.
I've lost count of the wasted hours I've spent on some of the old warhammer games, sometimes the line between fantasy and reality became somewhat blurred
The herbal remedies I was partaking of at the time probably did not help, but then, that also goes with being a geek.
Another thing seems to be that it is the Unix geeks above all who seem to have a higher artistic sensibility, and like tolkien more than the average NT geek, for whom the "hitchhikers guide to the galaxy" seems to hold more interest. I suppose it could be because reading tolkien is very similar to the old 'colossal cave' adventures that many of us older geeks cut our teeth on.
Go North
I cannot go north
You have been killed by a Kobold
etc etc etc
I wonder if there is some kind of 'geek gene' that we have all inherited? Tolkein has so many subtle depths and hidden meanings, and thats before you even start to problematize (look it up on google) the text. Was Gandalf a homosexual? Was the hobbit an African-american ? There is just so much to take in.
Could the current popularity of the 'Harry Potter' series of books be due to the recent emergence of the 'cool geek' and 'geek chic' ?
I'm not sure. What I was referring to was the kind of environment where if you run ls in the bsd env you get/usr/ucb/ls and if you run it in systemV universe you get/usr/5bin/ls (in Solaris terms, all off the top of my head).
The cool thing with vmware/plex86 would be that you could run multiple kernels, and fork processes on whichever one was most appropriate for the task at hand.
Kind of like "kernel mode" user-mode linux:-)
Ooops. You are correct of course. Either way, both systems are by now considered obsolete, even though they are still perfectly functional, and in the case of the Amiga, actually better (architecturally speaking) than the PC, especially the graphics subsystems.
Its easier to program them "to the metal" as well.
Thats the one! I really would like my own distro, flabdabix or hubbardix, or something, but then, I have nothing to add to it. No unique selling point. It would be cool to have my own distro though....
This article contradicts the article we saw the other day about the heart monitor running on an amiga 800. When someone uses the word "obsolete" my BS detector starts to ring...
Usually the very same person claiming the technology is obsolete just happens to have some cool hot new replacement.
Its like MP3, what was wrong with minidisc ? The capitalist system may be good at producing lots of choice, but from an environmental perspective, thats a hell of a lot of obsolete technology to dispose of.
Food for thought the next time you recycle that old 486 by putting Linux onto it, not only do you get one up on Gates, and stick it to "the man", you are also being environmentally friendly !!!
Linux is too Cool!!!
What do those '100% Official' comments mean on the redhat boxes ? Is this an endorsement from Linus himself or Alan Cox or some other kernel guru ? Otherwise what stops me from claiming my hypothetical distro (called FlabdabbHubbardux) is 100% official ?
You are of course correct about the 'best' distro. I guess what I really wanted to do would be to eliminate all the (seemingly extraneous) choices for the newbie, but then hey, there's always winblows ME right ?;-)
Perhaps a distro which popped up a drop down menu box with 'bleeding edge', 'mostly stable' and 'rock solid stable' options would be cool. Then the user could choose whether they wanted to be the 31337 |-|4
By making it a point and click choice, we would de-problemetize the choice of distribution for newbies, and thus convert more people to our cause.
Another alternative would be for plex86 or vmware to become part of the kernel. Then you could have a kind of 'switch personality command like on the old Sequent systems (you could choose bsd universe or system V). In this case you could say something like 'redhat ls -l' and the process would get forked in a redhat environment.
Slackware rules, but I also like debian ( and sometimes even Re$hat) What would be really cool would be if someone combined all the best features of say redhat, debian, suse and slackware into one awesome uber-distro.
That would kick ass.
I saw a link once which shows you how to make your own distro, and I did think about maybe creating my own, but it seemed like a lot of work, and I wasn't really sure about which bits of Linux actually are free (as in beer) and which parts are merely free (as in speech).
I've looked at linux.org and the various distro homepages, but apart from reading the individual licenses and then consulting a legal expert, there seems to be no clear way forward.
Or am I just being dense ?
Unfortunately they are hard to come by in Europe due to Sony's rather strange policy to create an artificial shortage.
Never mind, this evil dead game sounds awesome, but I think I'll stick with Q3 Arena for the moment.
It seems as if in the modern world, licenses need to be written under the expectation that they will need to be supported in court at some later date. Indeed, the actions of some software corporations makes me wonder if they see licensing as some sort of business tool, rather than as a way of expressing a gentlemanly agreement of intent between two parties.
As usual the only ones to profit are the greedy lawyers. Geeks like us are made to suffer all the jumping through hoops that go with restrictive licesnes.
More legal information can be found by searching for 'licensing' and 'software' on google.
Good, but he's no Tolkein...
on
The Truth
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· Score: 1
Pratchetts work is good, and I can imagine this "Truth" is probably an interesting read, but I think geeks and slashdot readers might find the Classic fantasy of Tolkein much more rewarding than this 'cyber-fantasy' style of Pratchett.
Also, Tolkein manages to create a rich imaginary world, we can believe in, whereas Pratchett does not.
I would lump Pratchett in the same category as Rankin or Douglas Adams, a lightweight, using Fantasy as a marketing gimmick, rather than treating it with the seriousness it deserves.
Here is my reading list for any aspiring geeks:
Lord of the rings
The Silmarillion
The Hobbit
I would read them in this order too, since I think you will understand Tolkein far more if you read his later works first.
How about a review of 'the Hobbit' ? It would me more in keeping with Slashdot's 'nerd' demographic.
Slashdot Mirror
I honestly think that Gimp is the best advertisment for Open Source we could wish for, and now that PhotoShop is redundant, I look forward to the death of 3DStudioMax !!! :-)
When I pay my $10 to see a movie that cost $25000000 to produce, I am benefiting from the fact that my taste is very similar to many many others. I am leveraging my $10, by the fact that I find the same thing entertaining that "joe average" does.
For art this is a bad thing, because of the lowest common denominator effect. But for people like me with relatively mainstream tastes (WWF, Britney Spears etc) its all good. I get expensively produced movies at a reasonable price.
Capitalism at its finest !!!
Metallica would not bother recording their CDs if they knew that in 10 minutes from its release it would be in Napster.
Maybe thats a good thing :-) but slashdotters should think of the artists need to earn a living when they are busy ripping off everything into MP3 format.
Just a thought for Christmas.
I sometimes wonder if the entrenched interests stifle this kind of research, becaust of the dramatic effects it could have on their industries.
Read Bruce Sterling's 'Distraction' and you'll understand what I mean.
It cannot be coincidence. I think the same thing that makes us good at grinding out code makes us appreciate certain kinds of art.
I mean, have you ever met a Unix admin who didn't like the Dead ?
It in the genes. It has to be !!
Larn was the game for me!!!!
Larn totally kicked ass. Kobolds etc. Its amazing, I used to get exactly the same adrenaline rush from playing Larn that I now get from QIII Arena !!!
Its interesting isn't it, that almost all geeks seem to be into fantasy/roleplaying and all like the same kind of stuff, star trek, tolkein etc.
I've lost count of the wasted hours I've spent on some of the old warhammer games, sometimes the line between fantasy and reality became somewhat blurred
The herbal remedies I was partaking of at the time probably did not help, but then, that also goes with being a geek.
Another thing seems to be that it is the Unix geeks above all who seem to have a higher artistic sensibility, and like tolkien more than the average NT geek, for whom the "hitchhikers guide to the galaxy" seems to hold more interest.
I suppose it could be because reading tolkien is very similar to the old 'colossal cave' adventures that many of us older geeks cut our teeth on.
Go North
I cannot go north
You have been killed by a Kobold
etc etc etc
I wonder if there is some kind of 'geek gene' that we have all inherited? Tolkein has so many subtle depths and hidden meanings, and thats before you even start to problematize (look it up on google) the text.
Was Gandalf a homosexual? Was the hobbit an African-american ? There is just so much to take in.
Could the current popularity of the 'Harry Potter' series of books be due to the recent emergence of the 'cool geek' and 'geek chic' ?
I'm not sure. What I was referring to was the kind of environment where if you run ls in the bsd env you get /usr/ucb/ls and if you run it in systemV universe you get /usr/5bin/ls (in Solaris terms, all off the top of my head). :-)
The cool thing with vmware/plex86 would be that you could run multiple kernels, and fork processes on whichever one was most appropriate for the task at hand. Kind of like "kernel mode" user-mode linux
Ooops. You are correct of course. Either way, both systems are by now considered obsolete, even though they are still perfectly functional, and in the case of the Amiga, actually better (architecturally speaking) than the PC, especially the graphics subsystems.
Its easier to program them "to the metal" as well.
Usually the very same person claiming the technology is obsolete just happens to have some cool hot new replacement.
Its like MP3, what was wrong with minidisc ? The capitalist system may be good at producing lots of choice, but from an environmental perspective, thats a hell of a lot of obsolete technology to dispose of.
Food for thought the next time you recycle that old 486 by putting Linux onto it, not only do you get one up on Gates, and stick it to "the man", you are also being environmentally friendly !!!
Linux is too Cool!!!
What do those '100% Official' comments mean on the redhat boxes ? Is this an endorsement from Linus himself or Alan Cox or some other kernel guru ? Otherwise what stops me from claiming my hypothetical distro (called FlabdabbHubbardux) is 100% official ?
You are of course correct about the 'best' distro. I guess what I really wanted to do would be to eliminate all the (seemingly extraneous) choices for the newbie, but then hey, there's always winblows ME right ? ;-)
Another alternative would be for plex86 or vmware to become part of the kernel. Then you could have a kind of 'switch personality command like on the old Sequent systems (you could choose bsd universe or system V). In this case you could say something like 'redhat ls -l' and the process would get forked in a redhat environment.
That would kick ass.
I saw a link once which shows you how to make your own distro, and I did think about maybe creating my own, but it seemed like a lot of work, and I wasn't really sure about which bits of Linux actually are free (as in beer) and which parts are merely free (as in speech). I've looked at linux.org and the various distro homepages, but apart from reading the individual licenses and then consulting a legal expert, there seems to be no clear way forward.
Or am I just being dense ?
Where did I mention PS2 ? Nowhere. I am talking about it being hard to find a PlayStation in Europe.
Unfortunately they are hard to come by in Europe due to Sony's rather strange policy to create an artificial shortage.
Never mind, this evil dead game sounds awesome, but I think I'll stick with Q3 Arena for the moment.
As usual the only ones to profit are the greedy lawyers. Geeks like us are made to suffer all the jumping through hoops that go with restrictive licesnes.
More legal information can be found by searching for 'licensing' and 'software' on google.
Also, Tolkein manages to create a rich imaginary world, we can believe in, whereas Pratchett does not.
I would lump Pratchett in the same category as Rankin or Douglas Adams, a lightweight, using Fantasy as a marketing gimmick, rather than treating it with the seriousness it deserves.
Here is my reading list for any aspiring geeks:
Lord of the rings
The Silmarillion
The Hobbit
I would read them in this order too, since I think you will understand Tolkein far more if you read his later works first.
How about a review of 'the Hobbit' ? It would me more in keeping with Slashdot's 'nerd' demographic.