What these Wikipedians do not realize is that they are pioneers (I'm hesitant to use the term "revolutionary soldiers") in the realm of knowledge gathering, preservation, and updating. And it is this capability to "instantaneously update", which Wikipedia has over paper-copy encyclopedias, that is the most precious characteristics about it.
The first edition of Encyclopedia Britannica came out in 1768; Wikipedia first appeared in 2001; in terms of readership, we know who is kicking whose butt.
The CNN article can be distilled down to a couple of chilling sentences: "Annalee Newitz, a policy analyst at the civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, said employees often 'don't realize the First Amendment doesn't protect their job.' The First Amendment only restricts government control of speech. So private employers are free to fire at will in most states, as long as it's not discriminatory or in retaliation for whistle-blowing or union organizing, labor experts say."
The problem with blogging is that the words are documented. An employee can badmouth about his company or chat up the company's trade secrets in private settings and probably get away with it, but if he types those gripes or company secrets into his computer and hits the "publish" key, then he'd better realize that those words are permanently stored in a server, and the possibility that they might come back to haunt him is there.
Fans make or break the shows -- an old adage anyone in show biz will tell ya. This article actually serves as an excellent PR piece for actress Jolene Blalock, who dares to defy Hollywood tradition by telling the truth about her own show.
The most telling paragraph of that piece from TechnologyReview.com is: "Our biggest mistake at HP Labs came from being too cautious. We passed on developing Steve Wozniak's cheap little personal computer. Woz was working in HP's lab, on calculator projects, at the time. We knew the computer idea was great, but we couldn't work out how to market it, so we passed."
The retired HP engineer undermined his point that "a marketing person should not run a tech company" by admitting that tech guys, including him, are no marketing genius either.
Tech industry is a cutthroat business, let's face it. Bashing a failed Tech CEO is a popular game these days, that is why a short article like this gets the Slashdot treatment. But, the smarter people are working on weeknights and weekends, at their basements, in their garages, to come up with the next thing, and I bet they do it quietly.
I assume the question is posed to regular folks, but I think big corporations definitely have a role to play in conserving energy. Having worked in corporate America for years, I have one suggestion for them -- scale down orders that require outside van/truck delivery services, and/or create an in-house delivery service composed of fuel-efficient vehicles.
Big corporations order things to be delivered to their front door at the drop of a hat -- the fuel consumption of a delivery van that trucks in a couple of boxes of xerox paper, for instance, is wasteful. Instead, they should start an in-house delivery service composed of hybrid, or any other fuel-efficient, vehicles.
Nothing against the delivery and trucking industries, but if more corporations have their own fleet of fuel-efficient delivery vehicles, more jobs will be created in the computer industry that will help design and manufacture fuel-efficient cars.
The word, "cheap", is used 4 times in the C/Net article that describes Google's "secret of success" -- "buying relatively cheap machines", "cheap commodity PCs", "(Power) becomes a factor in running cheaper operations", "not just buying cheaper components".
They say being frugal is a virtue, which Google has, evidently. What is the lesson here? Holding down the cost and being innovative never fail. I guess.
Press Release: "Not to be outdone, Panasonic, Sony's rival, is coming out with a "BoomBox Phone" -- a giant 200-watt shiny metal of nostalgic beauty complete with a free six-hour cassette recording of best disco hits. The BoomBox Phone is designed to sit comfortably on your shoulder as you make a call with the built-in wireless phone device. There is no better way to chat with your romantic interest with Donna Summer cooing words of love in the background."
There is a fascinating interview of Filo and Yang dated 5/23/1995 that offers some interesting historical tidbits about the company. Here is the link: http://www.sun.com/950523/yahoostory.html
In that 1995 interview, the duo proudly claimed having 250,000 users. Today, that number is a "pathetic" 345 million.
For two geeks from Stanford, they've done well, wouldn't you agree?
Having never heard of this senator from Alaska, I did some research online just now and read a Washington Post article describing his "shakedown" (WaPo's word, not mine) attempt in organizing a $5,000-a-ticket fund-raising event to benefit a "non-profit organization", whose sole beneficiary turns out to be, you guessed it, Senator Ted Stevens. Here is the link to the article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31925-20 04Mar4?language=printer
From the MSNBC article: "Relative youngster Google has been lauded for reaching $1 billion in sales in just six years. Well, Amazon did it in four, Yahoo in five and eBay achieved it in seven. Compare those companies with Wal-Mart, which aged to 18 before it could slap the phrase, 'the billion dollar company' on its annual report; and McDonald's took 24 years to hit the benchmark."
Page and Brin of Google, Filo and Yang of Yahoo were in Stanford Ph. D. program; Jeff Bezos of Amazon graduated from Princeton (EE and CS); Pierre Omidyar, Ebay founder, went to Tufts (CS); Meg Whitman, CEO of Ebay, went to Princeton and Harvard. What's the lesson here? Hitting the books pays. I guess.
The myth of "Google Boys of Company G" continues. The GQ article manages to talk to everybody but the boys, which tells you how Page and Brin know the art of "Robert Redford PR Strategy" -- clam up and keep everyone guessing. My take is that Google's success, so far, has one fundamental basis -- the products it offers are free and, by and large, not sources of headaches, as opposed to the products of often-compared Microsoft which cost consumers money and much grief (horrible security, to name one). Google and Microsoft get roasted frequently in this space, but one notices that only the latter receives genuine wrath -- many Slashdotters are so mad at Microsoft that they simply switch to Linux or Firefox, but I bet only a few would ditch Google altogether. Eric Schmidt, the "playground supervisor" of Google, shines in this piece. I got a kick out of reading that Schmidt stopped the boys from going into low-cost space launchings and banning telephones in a new building. On the other hand, what's wrong with "Google Spaceship"?
Those who still sulk over the fact that "information on the Internet is biased" should find better things to sulk over. Further, what information is not biased? Here I quote Lao-Tse, the "boss" of Taoism, "Everything that can be said is not truth." (a liberal interpretation of the first words from Morality Sutra, namely, Tao De Ching) Having set up that wide premise, yes, Wikipedia contains "biased" information, so do all other encyclopedias, be they leather-bound or Web-based, and we as the consumers of information simply need to keep our critical antenna up. Here, I might sing a "rare praise" for Microsoft, as its Encarta, which is often freely bundled with a newly purchased computer, beats Encyclopedia Britannica handily, and the latter only looks cool in your private library, that is, if you have one.
Michael Gorman's frustration with the "blog people" is based on some bloggers' reactions to his criticism of Google's ambitious project to digitize millions of library books and make them available on the Internet. Clearly, Harvard University, Stanford University, Oxford University, the University of Michigan and the New York Public Library disagree with him, because they have chosen to let their books be digitized by Google. Years from now, Michael Gorman will be remembered more as a reactionary who opposes the technological advancement, and less as a man who is not fond of bloggers. By the way, I posted Gorman's biography on my all-news blog at: http://sundroid.blogspot.com/. There are some interesting facts you might want to know. And I invite slashdotters to visit my other blog, http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/, now that Mr. Gorman has questioned the quality of writing of the bloggers. You be the judge.
Google's "movie" feature benefits Joe and Jane Modem more than anyone else. After some tests, it is clear that quite a bit of search results are from epinions.com and Google's own online "Groups" community. This is not to say that big-name movie critics employed by major papers in New York and Chicago have more insight into the art of cinema, but still, I don't see how this new thing from Google is better than imdb.com or any other movie-centric websites. Of course, we know what that chunk of blank space on the right side of the page is for.
eWeek.com is reporting that "Dozens of blogs hosted by Google Inc.'s Blogger service can install programs that are widely considered to be spyware and adware onto visitors' computers...In many cases, users are discovering the offending sites as they browse among blogs through Blogger's navigation bar. The offending blogs typically prompt visitors to accept downloads through misleading pop-up windows." Here is the link to the article: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1768836,00.as p
TechWorld.com has a fairly detailed article on RedTacton, in which it says this about the concern of electric shocks: "The transceivers, which require a PCMCIA card to connect with an electronic device, use several hundred milliwatts of power and are insulated to avoid electric shocks. As with many items of household electrical equipment, like TVs and kettles, the transceivers do emit very weak electromagnetic fields, but the levels are in compliance with guidelines issued by Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, NTT said." Interesting Read. I have the link to the article on my blog at: http://sundroid.blogspot.com/.
And what it takes is democracy. This is a nation that not long ago elected Sonia Gandhi, an Italian-born woman, as their prime minister (although she graciously stepped aside and gave the job to someone else), and that national sense of "harmony" is the greatest asset of Indian people. There has been a dubious comparison between China and India, with the emphasis being put on a major hurdle India has to overcome, namely, its significant population of the poor, as if China had no poor folks -- nothing can be further from the truth. China has a cunning censorship that basically airbrushes its citizens living in poverty out of the rosy pictures of gleaming high-rises and manufacturing facilities in Shanghai and Beijing. The abundant success stories of Indian immigrants in the U. S. will serve as historical anecdotes for this future superpower. Now, here is the commercial -- I wrote a novel that deals with Tibet, and the novel is published in its entirety online at: http://losangelesnow.blogspot.com/ . I will caution that those who prefer not to hear the truth about Tibet should not bother to read it.
I'm old enough to remember attending the very first Star Wars movie in New York City. The excitement back then was hard to describe. It was the late 70s, Hollywood was out of fashion, and European New Wave art films were, as the kids today say, "the shit", but Lucas and an army of film school braves put Hollywood dream-making machine back on the map. Flash forward, 28 years later, Lucas's last two attempts have been textbook examples of how fancy special effects cannot save a bad movie, and now as he limps toward the finish line, surprise, surprise, the French come to the rescue. Speaking of cheeky cinema, I posted a tongue-firmly-in-cheek outline for an animated feature film on my blog: http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/. Check it out only if you got nothing better to do.
PhysOrg.com has an article on the same subject, in which it describes how these 3 robots walk, for instance: "The Cornell robot supplies power to the ankles to push off. When the forward foot hits the ground, a simple microchip controller tells the rear foot to push off. During the forward swing of each leg, a small motor stretches a spring, which is finally released to provide the push." Fascinating stuff. I have the link to the article on my blog: http://sundroid.blogspot.com/, if anyone's interested.
ZDNet UK has an article in which it quotes a Mozilla contributor claiming that Firefox will grab 25% share of the browser market before MS IE7 arrives. Whereas "25" may be a cool-sounding number -- "25 million downloads, 25% market share", perhaps there is a bit of head-swelling thing going on here? The article also mentions that one analyst pours cold water over the claim by saying, "The most dangerous thing that the open source community can do is think that Microsoft is stupid," I have the link to the article on my blog at: http://sundroid.blogspot.com/.
I posted an outline for an animated feature film, titled "Woopster, the Iron Rooster", along with a simple drawing on my blog at: http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/, if my fellow Slashdotters don't mind taking a look. It's about a robot chicken, by the way.
For those of you who wonder what "party plants in the Presidential press pool" refers to in TellarHK's comment, I have a link to a Guardian (a UK paper) article on Jeff Gannon, the fake reporter representing a right-wing news organization who got outed and resigned, on my blog at: http://sundroid.blogspot.com/. By the way, the news is being reported in every major U. S. paper, I picked Guardian because it does not require registration.
PC-related distraction is the best distraction there is in this modern work environment of ours, second only to a pretty female coworker wearing strong perfume and mini-skirt walking by. Why fight it? Love it. In fact, I advocate looking for it, like stopping work to update your blog or write a comment in Slashdot. I am writing this comment, and someone will read it at work, and guess what? Both of us benefit from this little "distraction". Personally, I crave distraction. Distraction is the grease that keeps this human working machine going. Throughout my day, I update my all-news blog, http://sundroid.blogspot.com/, and think about what to write and create for my graphic blog, http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/. At the end of the day, I still get my work done.
I'm not a graphic artist by training, but 5 minutes after I downloaded GIMP I learned how to use it. Mind you, I'm far from being "competent" with the software, but the "stress" of the learning process is exaggerated. I mean, piano lesson is a bitch to a kid who's not too crazy about playing piano, but you cannot stop someone who has a passion for piano from sitting down at the old upright and practicing for hours. And I submit to you that learning how to use GIMP is easier than learning to play piano.
This complaint about "UI problems" with GIMP, or "the lack of integration" issue, is missing the point: open-source software is for the passionate, the commercial-minded people should simply join the proprietary parade.
Using GIMP and a free software called ArtRage, I made some graphics for my blog at: http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/ , if anyone's interested.
Slashdot Mirror
What these Wikipedians do not realize is that they are pioneers (I'm hesitant to use the term "revolutionary soldiers") in the realm of knowledge gathering, preservation, and updating. And it is this capability to "instantaneously update", which Wikipedia has over paper-copy encyclopedias, that is the most precious characteristics about it.
The first edition of Encyclopedia Britannica came out in 1768; Wikipedia first appeared in 2001; in terms of readership, we know who is kicking whose butt.
The CNN article can be distilled down to a couple of chilling sentences: "Annalee Newitz, a policy analyst at the civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, said employees often 'don't realize the First Amendment doesn't protect their job.' The First Amendment only restricts government control of speech. So private employers are free to fire at will in most states, as long as it's not discriminatory or in retaliation for whistle-blowing or union organizing, labor experts say."
The problem with blogging is that the words are documented. An employee can badmouth about his company or chat up the company's trade secrets in private settings and probably get away with it, but if he types those gripes or company secrets into his computer and hits the "publish" key, then he'd better realize that those words are permanently stored in a server, and the possibility that they might come back to haunt him is there.
Fans make or break the shows -- an old adage anyone in show biz will tell ya. This article actually serves as an excellent PR piece for actress Jolene Blalock, who dares to defy Hollywood tradition by telling the truth about her own show.
On her fan site, there are quite a few photos of her without the sci-fi makeup. Here is the link: http://www.hostconnect.org/~jolene/htm/index.html
The most telling paragraph of that piece from TechnologyReview.com is: "Our biggest mistake at HP Labs came from being too cautious. We passed on developing Steve Wozniak's cheap little personal computer. Woz was working in HP's lab, on calculator projects, at the time. We knew the computer idea was great, but we couldn't work out how to market it, so we passed."
The retired HP engineer undermined his point that "a marketing person should not run a tech company" by admitting that tech guys, including him, are no marketing genius either.
Tech industry is a cutthroat business, let's face it. Bashing a failed Tech CEO is a popular game these days, that is why a short article like this gets the Slashdot treatment. But, the smarter people are working on weeknights and weekends, at their basements, in their garages, to come up with the next thing, and I bet they do it quietly.
I assume the question is posed to regular folks, but I think big corporations definitely have a role to play in conserving energy. Having worked in corporate America for years, I have one suggestion for them -- scale down orders that require outside van/truck delivery services, and/or create an in-house delivery service composed of fuel-efficient vehicles.
Big corporations order things to be delivered to their front door at the drop of a hat -- the fuel consumption of a delivery van that trucks in a couple of boxes of xerox paper, for instance, is wasteful. Instead, they should start an in-house delivery service composed of hybrid, or any other fuel-efficient, vehicles.
Nothing against the delivery and trucking industries, but if more corporations have their own fleet of fuel-efficient delivery vehicles, more jobs will be created in the computer industry that will help design and manufacture fuel-efficient cars.
Let's review some interesting facts:
t /04_43/b3905109_mz063.htm).
o s_paternity_dispute/).
1) Patterson sold his QDOS to Gates for $50,000, whereas Kildall sold his company to Novell in 1991 for $120 million, according the Oct/2004 BusinessWeek article (link:http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/conten
2) In his defamation suit, Patterson is asking for $75,000, plus court costs, per the Register piece (link:http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03/03/msd
3) The Register article includes a photo of Patterson's 86-DOS (QDOS) manual with the word, "Programmer", misspelled on the manual's cover.
There is a movie somewhere in there, but it's definitely not about ambition.
The word, "cheap", is used 4 times in the C/Net article that describes Google's "secret of success" -- "buying relatively cheap machines", "cheap commodity PCs", "(Power) becomes a factor in running cheaper operations", "not just buying cheaper components".
They say being frugal is a virtue, which Google has, evidently. What is the lesson here? Holding down the cost and being innovative never fail. I guess.
Press Release: "Not to be outdone, Panasonic, Sony's rival, is coming out with a "BoomBox Phone" -- a giant 200-watt shiny metal of nostalgic beauty complete with a free six-hour cassette recording of best disco hits. The BoomBox Phone is designed to sit comfortably on your shoulder as you make a call with the built-in wireless phone device. There is no better way to chat with your romantic interest with Donna Summer cooing words of love in the background."
There is a fascinating interview of Filo and Yang dated 5/23/1995 that offers some interesting historical tidbits about the company. Here is the link: http://www.sun.com/950523/yahoostory.html
In that 1995 interview, the duo proudly claimed having 250,000 users. Today, that number is a "pathetic" 345 million.
For two geeks from Stanford, they've done well, wouldn't you agree?
Having never heard of this senator from Alaska, I did some research online just now and read a Washington Post article describing his "shakedown" (WaPo's word, not mine) attempt in organizing a $5,000-a-ticket fund-raising event to benefit a "non-profit organization", whose sole beneficiary turns out to be, you guessed it, Senator Ted Stevens. Here is the link to the article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31925-20 04Mar4?language=printer
From the MSNBC article: "Relative youngster Google has been lauded for reaching $1 billion in sales in just six years. Well, Amazon did it in four, Yahoo in five and eBay achieved it in seven. Compare those companies with Wal-Mart, which aged to 18 before it could slap the phrase, 'the billion dollar company' on its annual report; and McDonald's took 24 years to hit the benchmark."
Page and Brin of Google, Filo and Yang of Yahoo were in Stanford Ph. D. program; Jeff Bezos of Amazon graduated from Princeton (EE and CS); Pierre Omidyar, Ebay founder, went to Tufts (CS); Meg Whitman, CEO of Ebay, went to Princeton and Harvard. What's the lesson here? Hitting the books pays. I guess.
The myth of "Google Boys of Company G" continues. The GQ article manages to talk to everybody but the boys, which tells you how Page and Brin know the art of "Robert Redford PR Strategy" -- clam up and keep everyone guessing. My take is that Google's success, so far, has one fundamental basis -- the products it offers are free and, by and large, not sources of headaches, as opposed to the products of often-compared Microsoft which cost consumers money and much grief (horrible security, to name one). Google and Microsoft get roasted frequently in this space, but one notices that only the latter receives genuine wrath -- many Slashdotters are so mad at Microsoft that they simply switch to Linux or Firefox, but I bet only a few would ditch Google altogether. Eric Schmidt, the "playground supervisor" of Google, shines in this piece. I got a kick out of reading that Schmidt stopped the boys from going into low-cost space launchings and banning telephones in a new building. On the other hand, what's wrong with "Google Spaceship"?
Those who still sulk over the fact that "information on the Internet is biased" should find better things to sulk over. Further, what information is not biased? Here I quote Lao-Tse, the "boss" of Taoism, "Everything that can be said is not truth." (a liberal interpretation of the first words from Morality Sutra, namely, Tao De Ching) Having set up that wide premise, yes, Wikipedia contains "biased" information, so do all other encyclopedias, be they leather-bound or Web-based, and we as the consumers of information simply need to keep our critical antenna up. Here, I might sing a "rare praise" for Microsoft, as its Encarta, which is often freely bundled with a newly purchased computer, beats Encyclopedia Britannica handily, and the latter only looks cool in your private library, that is, if you have one.
Michael Gorman's frustration with the "blog people" is based on some bloggers' reactions to his criticism of Google's ambitious project to digitize millions of library books and make them available on the Internet. Clearly, Harvard University, Stanford University, Oxford University, the University of Michigan and the New York Public Library disagree with him, because they have chosen to let their books be digitized by Google. Years from now, Michael Gorman will be remembered more as a reactionary who opposes the technological advancement, and less as a man who is not fond of bloggers. By the way, I posted Gorman's biography on my all-news blog at: http://sundroid.blogspot.com/. There are some interesting facts you might want to know. And I invite slashdotters to visit my other blog, http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/, now that Mr. Gorman has questioned the quality of writing of the bloggers. You be the judge.
Google's "movie" feature benefits Joe and Jane Modem more than anyone else. After some tests, it is clear that quite a bit of search results are from epinions.com and Google's own online "Groups" community. This is not to say that big-name movie critics employed by major papers in New York and Chicago have more insight into the art of cinema, but still, I don't see how this new thing from Google is better than imdb.com or any other movie-centric websites. Of course, we know what that chunk of blank space on the right side of the page is for.
eWeek.com is reporting that "Dozens of blogs hosted by Google Inc.'s Blogger service can install programs that are widely considered to be spyware and adware onto visitors' computers...In many cases, users are discovering the offending sites as they browse among blogs through Blogger's navigation bar. The offending blogs typically prompt visitors to accept downloads through misleading pop-up windows." Here is the link to the article: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1768836,00.as p
TechWorld.com has a fairly detailed article on RedTacton, in which it says this about the concern of electric shocks: "The transceivers, which require a PCMCIA card to connect with an electronic device, use several hundred milliwatts of power and are insulated to avoid electric shocks. As with many items of household electrical equipment, like TVs and kettles, the transceivers do emit very weak electromagnetic fields, but the levels are in compliance with guidelines issued by Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, NTT said." Interesting Read. I have the link to the article on my blog at: http://sundroid.blogspot.com/.
And what it takes is democracy. This is a nation that not long ago elected Sonia Gandhi, an Italian-born woman, as their prime minister (although she graciously stepped aside and gave the job to someone else), and that national sense of "harmony" is the greatest asset of Indian people. There has been a dubious comparison between China and India, with the emphasis being put on a major hurdle India has to overcome, namely, its significant population of the poor, as if China had no poor folks -- nothing can be further from the truth. China has a cunning censorship that basically airbrushes its citizens living in poverty out of the rosy pictures of gleaming high-rises and manufacturing facilities in Shanghai and Beijing. The abundant success stories of Indian immigrants in the U. S. will serve as historical anecdotes for this future superpower. Now, here is the commercial -- I wrote a novel that deals with Tibet, and the novel is published in its entirety online at: http://losangelesnow.blogspot.com/ . I will caution that those who prefer not to hear the truth about Tibet should not bother to read it.
I'm old enough to remember attending the very first Star Wars movie in New York City. The excitement back then was hard to describe. It was the late 70s, Hollywood was out of fashion, and European New Wave art films were, as the kids today say, "the shit", but Lucas and an army of film school braves put Hollywood dream-making machine back on the map. Flash forward, 28 years later, Lucas's last two attempts have been textbook examples of how fancy special effects cannot save a bad movie, and now as he limps toward the finish line, surprise, surprise, the French come to the rescue. Speaking of cheeky cinema, I posted a tongue-firmly-in-cheek outline for an animated feature film on my blog: http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/. Check it out only if you got nothing better to do.
PhysOrg.com has an article on the same subject, in which it describes how these 3 robots walk, for instance: "The Cornell robot supplies power to the ankles to push off. When the forward foot hits the ground, a simple microchip controller tells the rear foot to push off. During the forward swing of each leg, a small motor stretches a spring, which is finally released to provide the push." Fascinating stuff. I have the link to the article on my blog: http://sundroid.blogspot.com/, if anyone's interested.
ZDNet UK has an article in which it quotes a Mozilla contributor claiming that Firefox will grab 25% share of the browser market before MS IE7 arrives. Whereas "25" may be a cool-sounding number -- "25 million downloads, 25% market share", perhaps there is a bit of head-swelling thing going on here? The article also mentions that one analyst pours cold water over the claim by saying, "The most dangerous thing that the open source community can do is think that Microsoft is stupid," I have the link to the article on my blog at: http://sundroid.blogspot.com/.
I posted an outline for an animated feature film, titled "Woopster, the Iron Rooster", along with a simple drawing on my blog at: http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/, if my fellow Slashdotters don't mind taking a look. It's about a robot chicken, by the way.
For those of you who wonder what "party plants in the Presidential press pool" refers to in TellarHK's comment, I have a link to a Guardian (a UK paper) article on Jeff Gannon, the fake reporter representing a right-wing news organization who got outed and resigned, on my blog at: http://sundroid.blogspot.com/. By the way, the news is being reported in every major U. S. paper, I picked Guardian because it does not require registration.
PC-related distraction is the best distraction there is in this modern work environment of ours, second only to a pretty female coworker wearing strong perfume and mini-skirt walking by. Why fight it? Love it. In fact, I advocate looking for it, like stopping work to update your blog or write a comment in Slashdot. I am writing this comment, and someone will read it at work, and guess what? Both of us benefit from this little "distraction". Personally, I crave distraction. Distraction is the grease that keeps this human working machine going. Throughout my day, I update my all-news blog, http://sundroid.blogspot.com/, and think about what to write and create for my graphic blog, http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/. At the end of the day, I still get my work done.
I'm not a graphic artist by training, but 5 minutes after I downloaded GIMP I learned how to use it. Mind you, I'm far from being "competent" with the software, but the "stress" of the learning process is exaggerated. I mean, piano lesson is a bitch to a kid who's not too crazy about playing piano, but you cannot stop someone who has a passion for piano from sitting down at the old upright and practicing for hours. And I submit to you that learning how to use GIMP is easier than learning to play piano. This complaint about "UI problems" with GIMP, or "the lack of integration" issue, is missing the point: open-source software is for the passionate, the commercial-minded people should simply join the proprietary parade. Using GIMP and a free software called ArtRage, I made some graphics for my blog at: http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/ , if anyone's interested.