Why would refusing royalties from CD sales (thereby giving more to the record company) be "putting his money where his mouth is"? It seems to me that encouraging people to "steal" his music *is* putting his money where his mouth is, since he just won't make royalties on that music.
He said recently in an interview that he's trapped in a contract and has to produce some number of albums for his label, but after that he'll probably distribute MP3s from his website and accept Paypal donations-- or something like that. I don't have the quote handy.
I'm not a student anymore, but I'm a bit of a digital-age kid, so I'll still offer my thoughts. For me, it has always been a bit of a trade-off. If I type, I can't draw little pictures and arrows all over the place. But if I use a notebook, I can't read my own writing. I grew up typing instead of writing, and my handwriting is horrible if I'm scribbling quick notes.
My solution has been to write notes in a notebook, and then as soon as I get a chance, I review my notes in front of a computer, typing them up. If I review them quickly enough, I have an easier time reading my own writing.
This has a few advantages. First, it gives me the quickness of jotting things down in a very free-form manner while I'm in the meeting, but also the clean final product of typewritten notes. Best of both worlds. Second, I'm effectively writing things twice, and the repetition helps me remember. Finally, when I'm typing my notes up, it gives me a chance to really review my notes, reorganize the ideas, look for connections between things, etc.
It took me years to admit to myself that the extra work of taking notes and copying them was worth it, but it is.
I'm glad the discussion doesn't have to be a fight. I agree that, if you take GIMP to be a replacement for something like MS Paint, it's an *incredibly* good program. Of course, that doesn't say much, for as sucky a program Paint is, but I agree with the idea. GIMP is a good and useful program that gives most non-professionals all of the functionality that they need.
But I have really been yelled at by OSS advocates (I'm being kind here by saying "advocate" instead of "fanatic") who think I'm stupid for insisting that Photoshop is a better tool for professional graphic designers. I myself am a bit of an OSS advocate and I have contributed money to a couple different projects. As an IT manager, I try to use open source software and open standards whenever I'm able to. However, I'm not going to sacrifice my company's success and my own career in order to push the open-source agenda by forcing people to use tools that aren't appropriate for their jobs.
Also, I was originally responding to someone who was claiming that GIMP couldn't displace Photoshop more than it already has, unless Adobe did a better job preventing Photoshop piracy. I don't believe that to be true, and I think that the idea does us all a disservice. It assumes that Photoshop users are immoral idiots, and discourages people from trying to improve GIMP.
I think that the RIAA/MPAA absolutely want a pay-per-device or even a pay-per-listen/pay-per-view business model. In fact, it sometimes seems like they think they deserve to be paid whether you're using their product or not. For example, Universal has demanded to get a cut of consumer electronics (like the Zune and iPod) just on the off chance that those electronics might be used to play music from Universal.
Paid for doing nothing: it's great work if you can find it.
I think it's hard to imagine how kids are perceiving these things. I know kids in their late teens who use computers every day, but who don't really even understand what a command line is. They don't remember what computers were like before Windows 95 came out. They don't really remember there ever not being an Internet, and barely remember what dial-up was like before their parents got cable/DSL.
What I'm trying to point out is the degree to which they take these things for granted. For them, "cut" and "paste" aren't metaphors for anything. It's just what that computing operation is called. It probably just wouldn't occur to them to wonder whether people would really cut up documents and paste them back together, but mostly because working on documents without a computer is unimaginable. You would have to explain to them what it was like before they'd have any idea.
Of course, if you gave them some context and asked why people started calling those computer operations "cut" and "paste", I think the smarter kids would come up with some pretty good guesses. However, I think that a lot of computing metaphors don't occur to younger people as being metaphors any more than we think of the phrase "go to the bathroom" as a euphemism.
Do you actually know many graphic designers? Because I've worked with graphic design firms, ad agencies, media companies, and individual graphic designers.
I know graphic designers who wouldn't understand the concept of bittorrent very easily, let alone how to reconfigure their firewall to allow that kind of traffic. I know graphic designers who wouldn't think to even try to pirate something, haven't heard of the Pirate Bay, and even if they somehow stumbled across it, they would download the torrent tracker file and think, "What the hell do I do with that? That's not Photoshop, is it? It downloaded really quick!!"
A lot of graphic designers don't really have computer backgrounds. They went to art school, and they know how to use a Mac well enough to use Photoshop and check their e-mail. Often, they're willing/able to install Photoshop all by themselves, but generally that's about as advanced as they get.
Are you insisting that volunteers rival or best a commercial program that has the benefit of millions of dollars of research and development and decades of professional input?
No, I'm not insisting anything. I'm trying to inform people, if they're interested, why I think people don't (in some cases "can't") use GIMP. I think my perspective is probably worth hearing, since I'm actually an IT manager working in media, supporting graphic designers, and I've evaluated GIMP for use in my real-life job. I'm not just some kid mouthing off. I'm someone who could have and might have chosen for myself and others to use GIMP, and I wanted to because it would have saved us a lot of money. The problem was that the graphic designers hated using it, it didn't meet all of our technical requirements, and a lot of people commented on the name seeming... possibly offensive. People thought the name was either a sex reference or it was making fun of disabled people.
Sure, it is possible, but if you really want it to happen, put your money where your mouth is and start writing that CMYK support or 32 channel support or whatever it is that snobs keep complaining about.
I'm not a programmer. Sorry, I really would love to be a great programmer capable of tackling those sorts of problems, but I'm really not a programmer.
If you can not write the code, then contribute cash.
I actually have contributed cash in cases where an open source project was working on something that I thought I'd be able to use the result. Part of the problem with GIMP is that I haven't seen any real sign that the project will become anything that has a lot of value for me. That's not to say it is a terrible program, but I can't use it, and I doubt I'd ever be able to. I need Photoshop, GIMP can't replace Photoshop, and there's no point in using both.
For years now, I've been hearing from GIMP supporters that they don't really have any intention of fixing the various things wrong with the GIMP. I keep hearing that the developers like the interface the way it is, and they think the name is great. Nobody seems to even believe me that Photoshop actually produces better quality images.
Whenever I hear people talking positively about GIMP, I always feel like it's written by IT folk and developers who sincerely believe that graphics production and processing is a problem in need of a technical solution. From their point of view, it's as though you just need to make a JPEG, and the interface only needs to be functional, and the output only needs to be correct.
From the standpoint of someone who's done graphic design and continues to work with graphic designers, I'm trying to inform people that, if you want to replace Photoshop, it's a problem in need of an aesthetic solution. The graphics don't just need to be "correct", but they also need to be "pretty". Even if it produces "correct" JPEGs, if the JPEG compression is noticeably worse than the compression produced by Photoshop, then it isn't "good enough".
Anyway, I just don't see the point in giving much of my hard-earned money to people who don't really get it. I'd sooner encourage people who do "get it" to start a fork.
Letting the professionals know that you think something is non-optimal is good feedback. Hearing it over and over again just rings of whining.
Maybe you wouldn't hear so many people "whining" if someone would actually fix the problem. When you have lots of people "whining" about your work on a regular basis, you might want to consider that there's a real problem with your work. If you dismiss it all as "whining", then you probably aren't really much of a "professional".
Someone has actually put their money where their mouth is and changed the GUI and called it GIMPShop.
Yes, I've tried GIMPShop a few times. Unfortunately, they haven't really changed the GUI. It's more like they've renamed the menus items so that things are called what Photoshop calls them, and t
In that vein, it'd be nice if people were considering portability to OSX (as a native carbon or cocoa application) in any attempts to redesign. I know that's not always the easiest thing to do, but there are projects that have figured out ways to do it effectively (Firefox comes to mind).
Yeah, when I hear the words "GIMP UI Redesign" I have a similar thought.
To put it another way, you have a market that is dominated by a product, and the reason that product is dominant is because people like it, and not because of vendor lock-in. Even if you wanted to innovate, wouldn't it make sense to begin with copying the strengths of the existing dominant product? If you wanted your project to attract users, wouldn't you want to make sure that you were replicating the positive features of the competing product that people like?
I mean, I can certainly understand that someone might have their own ideas. If I'm a developer, I might look at Photoshop and say, "Photoshop is doing these things badly, and I don't want to fall into those pitfalls, so I won't replicate those problems." If you think you can do a better job at something, then by all means try. But if you hit the point where you don't have your own vision of how things should work, and you're soliciting suggestions, might you want to also look into copying the success of others?
Yeah, I know. But my point is that Microsoft brings what is essentially not an open spec to ISO and says, "Endorse this as an open spec." Why shouldn't ISO simply refuse until the spec is made reasonable and implementable?
You know, for years I've been listening to people complain that the Free Software and Open Source communities don't ever invent anything on their own. That they simply re-implement other peoples' ideas. I think it's kind of ironic that the number one suggestion for the future of the GIMP is that it be changed such that it simply re-implements other peoples' ideas.
I think you're hearing from two different sorts of people. The people who vaguely insist that free software to do something new and inventive, without having any idea of what that "inventive" thing might be, are probably developers who don't use the software. There seems to be a lot of OSS developers who think that the most important thing for software to do is something "cool" and "inventive", which is usually geeky.
The people who use the software, on the other hand, usually just want the software to work in easy, predictable, and efficient ways. They want the software to have all the features they need, and have it be simple to use those features in their own workflows without needing some kind of specialized knowledge for that software.
When "Free" and "Open" software succeeds in that, you'll usually find that people start using it.
Re:Will a new GUI finally get more users
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The GIMP UI Redesign
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· Score: 4, Interesting
That's simply not true. Retail versions of CS3 require activation, which discourages the casual pirate. A lot of businesses absolutely will not use pirated software.
If there were a free alternative to Photoshop that did everything Photoshop does as well as Photoshop does it, a lot of people would use it. Photoshop isn't cheap, and it doesn't "come with the computer" (which is how most people get Windows and Office).
There are a couple problems with GIMP. First, it's lacking some things like CMYK support. Also, it gives inferior quality in some cases. I've been in situations, for example, where I really needed to optimize JPEG quality for file size, and GIMP couldn't match the quality of Photoshop. Third, the name "GIMP" rubs professional users the wrong way. And finally, the interface isn't very good.
To anyone who works on the GIMP, I apologize if my post seems offensive. I think the GIMP is a very good program, but the reason professional graphic designers use Photoshop is that Photoshop really is a better program. Not everyone needs Photoshop, but if you do need Photoshop, GIMP might not be a good enough replacement.
Why should the standards body bother to try to fix Microsoft's broken spec at all? Why not just reject it, and say, "Sorry, Microsoft, but here's a list of things you have to fix before we'll look at it again."
One needs to look beyond the statutes and the cases for the law; one also needs to look at Slashdot.
I can't tell how tongue-in-cheek you're being, but I do think that this is right, that in some ways the issues really aren't about the exact statutes. However the laws are worded, copyrights simply weren't intended as a means for large corporations to bully individual viewers of that copyrighted material.
But look at me, I guess I'm preaching to the choir. IANAL, but of course I know that lawyers can't really rely on "I know it's the law, but it's unjust!" Either way, you seem to be doing a good job here, and getting advice from this site seems like a very clever (however unconventional) move.
Can I ask, what do you think the couple most useful pieces of information you got from Slashdot were? What, to you, was the most interesting things you learned?
Yeah, but what I'm really pointing out is that a lot of people really only use the internet for web browsing and e-mail. The most intensive it gets for most people is watching a Youtube video or buying something from iTMS.
I understand. You're a computer geek and you see all the variety of things you can do with a good network. I'm a geek too, and I feel the same way. Most people, however, just want an easy way to look at Youtube from their two computers at home, and one of those computers might be a laptop that they want to be able to take into the other room. Even for the stationary computers, they don't want to have to drill holes in the wall and worry about what happens when they want to move their desk against the opposite wall.
For these sorts of people wireless networks are sufficient, and they also make a lot of sense. When you're doing more intensive things with your network, however, ethernet really is the way to go. I think that's what my original post was saying, but maybe I wasn't clear.
I'm not saying there would never be any reason to string ethernet through people's homes, but it's not necessary for most people. For telephones, most people will use the telephone wiring. Even a lot of VOIP products will use the telephone wires to give a telephone signal throughout the house.
Most of rest of this stuff you mention-- I haven't seen many people so far who really have these things in their house. For "Video networks", most people get the cable guy to string cable to the rooms they want to watch TV. For computer networks, for most people's needs, 802.11n will be enough. People will often string up cables specially for intercom and security systems, if they choose to have those systems at all.
I'm not claiming that no one has those things, but not that many do. I also believe that if we had nationwide 10Gbps internet and 10Gbps networks in people's houses, then people would find ways to use that bandwidth-- maybe even useful, good, non-porn uses. But for the time being, WiFi is fine for general web browsing and checking e-mail (which is what most people use the internet for).
On the other hand, most desktop machines can get along just fine with even 802.11b speeds.
Just for a little background information, I've spent some time working for engineering and media companies where quite a lot of data was pushed back and forth from client machines. 802.11b speeds are not "just fine" at that level. 802.11g speeds aren't really good enough. 802.11n might be getting close, but 1Gbps ethernet is better. Also, you have to be careful with your wireless access points to make sure that they can actually handle the load of 20 or 50 clients being attached at the same time. A lot of AP will slow at that point, meaning you don't get the theoretical bandwidth or even the real-life bandwidth of these devices in a real office environment.
And then, on top of all the rest of that, you have to deal with interference.
Whether it's RAM, processor speeds, or bandwidth, the history of computers has shown the same pattern. As our capabilities increase, we find ways to use the "extra".
Maybe we'll hit a ceiling when we can stream multiple uncompressed full-length movies in real time without bottlenecks. I'm of the opinion, though, that computers (and networks) can never be too fast, too small, or too energy efficient.
The game is to incrementally push the consumer market into a series of screwed up proprietary drivers to push out open standards and ensure that only "enthusiasts" use open source.
It's possible that you're being paranoid on the drivers issue (sorry, don't mean to be insulting, but it's possible). However, I'm sure that the game is to incrementally push the consumer market to new devices. Many hardware companies do this-- they don't want to release a real solution all at once, but instead constantly release incremental improvements. The game is to get you to keep buying more hardware.
Right. There are too many reasons to use ethernet, and security is just one of them. Ethernet is also more reliable, and it's still faster. 802.11n is not running as fast as 1Gbps (which is what both my home and work network are running at). Give it a couple years, and we'll probably all be running 10Gbps networks, and though wireless speeds will improve too, I see no reason to believe that they'll ever catch up. Also, wired connections are more reliable, easier to control, etc.
Now, I don't see much reason to string ethernet through people's homes, at least not most of the time. Use WPA, secure each of your computers (password protect them and firewall any services you aren't using, preferably don't use Windows). You'll be fine, and 802.11n is probably way faster than any internet connection you might have.
Except that, evidently, he didn't turn it off. He just figured that "black screen" meant "off". Also, I kind of wonder about this on the grounds that the iPhone doesn't carry a very large charge. Assuming he left it in standby, didn't do anything, and it checked for e-mail, it would carry the charge for about 2 days. Now, the most the iPhone will check e-mail is every 15 minutes, which means 96 times a day, which means 192 times in 2 days. Assuming he started with a completely full charge, the most the phones would have connected is about 200 times each.
So are 600 quick data connections to download e-mail $4800? An average of $24 per connection? 12 connections per page? Seems like a lot. I wonder if these people possibly might have been charging their cell-phones over the course of the trip and had them on for longer. If they really thought that their phones were off, why would they be charging them?
As long as the relationship STAYS online, it's fine... But meeting the person in real life can be a disaster.
Interesting point. I'm generally the sort of person who would dismiss on "online relationship" as fantasy, since you don't really know who the other person is. For clarification, I would say that some relationship IRL are a fantasy, too. People often don't really bother to get to know each other, but instead build up little images in their own heads about each other. Sometimes this goes to an extreme, and the whole "relationship" isn't really a relationship at all.
Like, you know how the girlfriend you had in elementary school wasn't really your girlfriend? You're not really dating or anything, but it was more like you were putting on a play, trying to act how your little-kid mind thought boyfriends and girlfriends acted. Well, if you pay close attention, sometimes you'll catch some adults doing the same thing.
However, I think this one part of your post convinced me that I was wrong. Online relationships can be a real relationship of a sort. I mean, there are business relationships and casual acquaintances, and those are genuine relationships of their sort. They just don't necessarily have a lot of depth or weight. I think online relationships can be of the same sort of thing. They can be genuine online-relationships, but you shouldn't confuse that with being real friends.
I know some people will think this is an arbitrary distinction, but I have real reason for saying it. I think real friendships are forged over time through presence and actions. The bonding of physical presence can't be replaced with "virtual presence", and also actions can't be replaced with words. You can say all the flowery words you want, but my friends are the people who will pick me up from the gutter when I fall in.
And when I say, "pick me up from the gutter", I do mean that metaphorically, but not in the sense of "boost my spirits". I've known people who talk a good game and will tell you that they care about you, but when you actually need something from them, something that will cost them, they won't do it. The idea of "cost" is important here. Lots of people will say and do all sorts of nice things for you, up until the point where it becomes difficult or costly. It's the difference between someone who will spend an evening with you when you're injured, and someone who will spend an evening with you when you're injured even though they'd like to be out partying instead. It's the difference between someone who will help you up when you've slipped in some mud, and someone who will ruin their favorite pair of shoes helping you up when you've slipped in mud.
I just think that those are the moments that solidify friendships, and they're such complicated moments that I don't think they can be replicated over wires. Even if someone will "spend time with you" online while you're injured, they can still do it at their own convenience, in their own comfy chair. Even if they send you some money (which I think is the height of online trust), they're just sending some money. There's nothing very personal there. It's all detached.
If you really don't know what I mean by all of this, and you don't think that physical presence and real-life actions mean more than virtual presence and virtual actions, then I'm very sorry for you.
The GPL doesn't apply to people "owning" or using the software. It only applies to people who wish to redistribute the software. It's a common misconception, but the GPL is not a EULA. It's a copyright license. Users do not need to agree to the GPL before using the software.
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Why would refusing royalties from CD sales (thereby giving more to the record company) be "putting his money where his mouth is"? It seems to me that encouraging people to "steal" his music *is* putting his money where his mouth is, since he just won't make royalties on that music.
He said recently in an interview that he's trapped in a contract and has to produce some number of albums for his label, but after that he'll probably distribute MP3s from his website and accept Paypal donations-- or something like that. I don't have the quote handy.
I'm not a student anymore, but I'm a bit of a digital-age kid, so I'll still offer my thoughts. For me, it has always been a bit of a trade-off. If I type, I can't draw little pictures and arrows all over the place. But if I use a notebook, I can't read my own writing. I grew up typing instead of writing, and my handwriting is horrible if I'm scribbling quick notes.
My solution has been to write notes in a notebook, and then as soon as I get a chance, I review my notes in front of a computer, typing them up. If I review them quickly enough, I have an easier time reading my own writing.
This has a few advantages. First, it gives me the quickness of jotting things down in a very free-form manner while I'm in the meeting, but also the clean final product of typewritten notes. Best of both worlds. Second, I'm effectively writing things twice, and the repetition helps me remember. Finally, when I'm typing my notes up, it gives me a chance to really review my notes, reorganize the ideas, look for connections between things, etc.
It took me years to admit to myself that the extra work of taking notes and copying them was worth it, but it is.
I'm glad the discussion doesn't have to be a fight. I agree that, if you take GIMP to be a replacement for something like MS Paint, it's an *incredibly* good program. Of course, that doesn't say much, for as sucky a program Paint is, but I agree with the idea. GIMP is a good and useful program that gives most non-professionals all of the functionality that they need.
But I have really been yelled at by OSS advocates (I'm being kind here by saying "advocate" instead of "fanatic") who think I'm stupid for insisting that Photoshop is a better tool for professional graphic designers. I myself am a bit of an OSS advocate and I have contributed money to a couple different projects. As an IT manager, I try to use open source software and open standards whenever I'm able to. However, I'm not going to sacrifice my company's success and my own career in order to push the open-source agenda by forcing people to use tools that aren't appropriate for their jobs.
Also, I was originally responding to someone who was claiming that GIMP couldn't displace Photoshop more than it already has, unless Adobe did a better job preventing Photoshop piracy. I don't believe that to be true, and I think that the idea does us all a disservice. It assumes that Photoshop users are immoral idiots, and discourages people from trying to improve GIMP.
I think that the RIAA/MPAA absolutely want a pay-per-device or even a pay-per-listen/pay-per-view business model. In fact, it sometimes seems like they think they deserve to be paid whether you're using their product or not. For example, Universal has demanded to get a cut of consumer electronics (like the Zune and iPod) just on the off chance that those electronics might be used to play music from Universal.
Paid for doing nothing: it's great work if you can find it.
I think it's hard to imagine how kids are perceiving these things. I know kids in their late teens who use computers every day, but who don't really even understand what a command line is. They don't remember what computers were like before Windows 95 came out. They don't really remember there ever not being an Internet, and barely remember what dial-up was like before their parents got cable/DSL.
What I'm trying to point out is the degree to which they take these things for granted. For them, "cut" and "paste" aren't metaphors for anything. It's just what that computing operation is called. It probably just wouldn't occur to them to wonder whether people would really cut up documents and paste them back together, but mostly because working on documents without a computer is unimaginable. You would have to explain to them what it was like before they'd have any idea.
Of course, if you gave them some context and asked why people started calling those computer operations "cut" and "paste", I think the smarter kids would come up with some pretty good guesses. However, I think that a lot of computing metaphors don't occur to younger people as being metaphors any more than we think of the phrase "go to the bathroom" as a euphemism.
In short, yes.
Do you actually know many graphic designers? Because I've worked with graphic design firms, ad agencies, media companies, and individual graphic designers.
I know graphic designers who wouldn't understand the concept of bittorrent very easily, let alone how to reconfigure their firewall to allow that kind of traffic. I know graphic designers who wouldn't think to even try to pirate something, haven't heard of the Pirate Bay, and even if they somehow stumbled across it, they would download the torrent tracker file and think, "What the hell do I do with that? That's not Photoshop, is it? It downloaded really quick!!"
A lot of graphic designers don't really have computer backgrounds. They went to art school, and they know how to use a Mac well enough to use Photoshop and check their e-mail. Often, they're willing/able to install Photoshop all by themselves, but generally that's about as advanced as they get.
Are you insisting that volunteers rival or best a commercial program that has the benefit of millions of dollars of research and development and decades of professional input?
No, I'm not insisting anything. I'm trying to inform people, if they're interested, why I think people don't (in some cases "can't") use GIMP. I think my perspective is probably worth hearing, since I'm actually an IT manager working in media, supporting graphic designers, and I've evaluated GIMP for use in my real-life job. I'm not just some kid mouthing off. I'm someone who could have and might have chosen for myself and others to use GIMP, and I wanted to because it would have saved us a lot of money. The problem was that the graphic designers hated using it, it didn't meet all of our technical requirements, and a lot of people commented on the name seeming... possibly offensive. People thought the name was either a sex reference or it was making fun of disabled people.
Sure, it is possible, but if you really want it to happen, put your money where your mouth is and start writing that CMYK support or 32 channel support or whatever it is that snobs keep complaining about.
I'm not a programmer. Sorry, I really would love to be a great programmer capable of tackling those sorts of problems, but I'm really not a programmer.
If you can not write the code, then contribute cash.
I actually have contributed cash in cases where an open source project was working on something that I thought I'd be able to use the result. Part of the problem with GIMP is that I haven't seen any real sign that the project will become anything that has a lot of value for me. That's not to say it is a terrible program, but I can't use it, and I doubt I'd ever be able to. I need Photoshop, GIMP can't replace Photoshop, and there's no point in using both.
For years now, I've been hearing from GIMP supporters that they don't really have any intention of fixing the various things wrong with the GIMP. I keep hearing that the developers like the interface the way it is, and they think the name is great. Nobody seems to even believe me that Photoshop actually produces better quality images.
Whenever I hear people talking positively about GIMP, I always feel like it's written by IT folk and developers who sincerely believe that graphics production and processing is a problem in need of a technical solution. From their point of view, it's as though you just need to make a JPEG, and the interface only needs to be functional, and the output only needs to be correct.
From the standpoint of someone who's done graphic design and continues to work with graphic designers, I'm trying to inform people that, if you want to replace Photoshop, it's a problem in need of an aesthetic solution. The graphics don't just need to be "correct", but they also need to be "pretty". Even if it produces "correct" JPEGs, if the JPEG compression is noticeably worse than the compression produced by Photoshop, then it isn't "good enough".
Anyway, I just don't see the point in giving much of my hard-earned money to people who don't really get it. I'd sooner encourage people who do "get it" to start a fork.
Letting the professionals know that you think something is non-optimal is good feedback. Hearing it over and over again just rings of whining.
Maybe you wouldn't hear so many people "whining" if someone would actually fix the problem. When you have lots of people "whining" about your work on a regular basis, you might want to consider that there's a real problem with your work. If you dismiss it all as "whining", then you probably aren't really much of a "professional".
Someone has actually put their money where their mouth is and changed the GUI and called it GIMPShop.
Yes, I've tried GIMPShop a few times. Unfortunately, they haven't really changed the GUI. It's more like they've renamed the menus items so that things are called what Photoshop calls them, and t
Incredibly easy to get if you're a computer geek who knows how to pirate software. Not if you're a graphic designer and a casual pirate.
In that vein, it'd be nice if people were considering portability to OSX (as a native carbon or cocoa application) in any attempts to redesign. I know that's not always the easiest thing to do, but there are projects that have figured out ways to do it effectively (Firefox comes to mind).
Yeah, when I hear the words "GIMP UI Redesign" I have a similar thought.
To put it another way, you have a market that is dominated by a product, and the reason that product is dominant is because people like it, and not because of vendor lock-in. Even if you wanted to innovate, wouldn't it make sense to begin with copying the strengths of the existing dominant product? If you wanted your project to attract users, wouldn't you want to make sure that you were replicating the positive features of the competing product that people like?
I mean, I can certainly understand that someone might have their own ideas. If I'm a developer, I might look at Photoshop and say, "Photoshop is doing these things badly, and I don't want to fall into those pitfalls, so I won't replicate those problems." If you think you can do a better job at something, then by all means try. But if you hit the point where you don't have your own vision of how things should work, and you're soliciting suggestions, might you want to also look into copying the success of others?
Yeah, I know. But my point is that Microsoft brings what is essentially not an open spec to ISO and says, "Endorse this as an open spec." Why shouldn't ISO simply refuse until the spec is made reasonable and implementable?
You know, for years I've been listening to people complain that the Free Software and Open Source communities don't ever invent anything on their own. That they simply re-implement other peoples' ideas. I think it's kind of ironic that the number one suggestion for the future of the GIMP is that it be changed such that it simply re-implements other peoples' ideas.
I think you're hearing from two different sorts of people. The people who vaguely insist that free software to do something new and inventive, without having any idea of what that "inventive" thing might be, are probably developers who don't use the software. There seems to be a lot of OSS developers who think that the most important thing for software to do is something "cool" and "inventive", which is usually geeky.
The people who use the software, on the other hand, usually just want the software to work in easy, predictable, and efficient ways. They want the software to have all the features they need, and have it be simple to use those features in their own workflows without needing some kind of specialized knowledge for that software.
When "Free" and "Open" software succeeds in that, you'll usually find that people start using it.
That's simply not true. Retail versions of CS3 require activation, which discourages the casual pirate. A lot of businesses absolutely will not use pirated software.
If there were a free alternative to Photoshop that did everything Photoshop does as well as Photoshop does it, a lot of people would use it. Photoshop isn't cheap, and it doesn't "come with the computer" (which is how most people get Windows and Office).
There are a couple problems with GIMP. First, it's lacking some things like CMYK support. Also, it gives inferior quality in some cases. I've been in situations, for example, where I really needed to optimize JPEG quality for file size, and GIMP couldn't match the quality of Photoshop. Third, the name "GIMP" rubs professional users the wrong way. And finally, the interface isn't very good.
To anyone who works on the GIMP, I apologize if my post seems offensive. I think the GIMP is a very good program, but the reason professional graphic designers use Photoshop is that Photoshop really is a better program. Not everyone needs Photoshop, but if you do need Photoshop, GIMP might not be a good enough replacement.
GIMPShop may be more Photoshop-like than GIMP, but I wouldn't call it Photoshop-like.
Why should the standards body bother to try to fix Microsoft's broken spec at all? Why not just reject it, and say, "Sorry, Microsoft, but here's a list of things you have to fix before we'll look at it again."
One needs to look beyond the statutes and the cases for the law; one also needs to look at Slashdot.
I can't tell how tongue-in-cheek you're being, but I do think that this is right, that in some ways the issues really aren't about the exact statutes. However the laws are worded, copyrights simply weren't intended as a means for large corporations to bully individual viewers of that copyrighted material.
But look at me, I guess I'm preaching to the choir. IANAL, but of course I know that lawyers can't really rely on "I know it's the law, but it's unjust!" Either way, you seem to be doing a good job here, and getting advice from this site seems like a very clever (however unconventional) move.
Can I ask, what do you think the couple most useful pieces of information you got from Slashdot were? What, to you, was the most interesting things you learned?
Yeah, but what I'm really pointing out is that a lot of people really only use the internet for web browsing and e-mail. The most intensive it gets for most people is watching a Youtube video or buying something from iTMS.
I understand. You're a computer geek and you see all the variety of things you can do with a good network. I'm a geek too, and I feel the same way. Most people, however, just want an easy way to look at Youtube from their two computers at home, and one of those computers might be a laptop that they want to be able to take into the other room. Even for the stationary computers, they don't want to have to drill holes in the wall and worry about what happens when they want to move their desk against the opposite wall.
For these sorts of people wireless networks are sufficient, and they also make a lot of sense. When you're doing more intensive things with your network, however, ethernet really is the way to go. I think that's what my original post was saying, but maybe I wasn't clear.
I'm not saying there would never be any reason to string ethernet through people's homes, but it's not necessary for most people. For telephones, most people will use the telephone wiring. Even a lot of VOIP products will use the telephone wires to give a telephone signal throughout the house.
Most of rest of this stuff you mention-- I haven't seen many people so far who really have these things in their house. For "Video networks", most people get the cable guy to string cable to the rooms they want to watch TV. For computer networks, for most people's needs, 802.11n will be enough. People will often string up cables specially for intercom and security systems, if they choose to have those systems at all.
I'm not claiming that no one has those things, but not that many do. I also believe that if we had nationwide 10Gbps internet and 10Gbps networks in people's houses, then people would find ways to use that bandwidth-- maybe even useful, good, non-porn uses. But for the time being, WiFi is fine for general web browsing and checking e-mail (which is what most people use the internet for).
On the other hand, most desktop machines can get along just fine with even 802.11b speeds.
Just for a little background information, I've spent some time working for engineering and media companies where quite a lot of data was pushed back and forth from client machines. 802.11b speeds are not "just fine" at that level. 802.11g speeds aren't really good enough. 802.11n might be getting close, but 1Gbps ethernet is better. Also, you have to be careful with your wireless access points to make sure that they can actually handle the load of 20 or 50 clients being attached at the same time. A lot of AP will slow at that point, meaning you don't get the theoretical bandwidth or even the real-life bandwidth of these devices in a real office environment.
And then, on top of all the rest of that, you have to deal with interference.
Whether it's RAM, processor speeds, or bandwidth, the history of computers has shown the same pattern. As our capabilities increase, we find ways to use the "extra".
Maybe we'll hit a ceiling when we can stream multiple uncompressed full-length movies in real time without bottlenecks. I'm of the opinion, though, that computers (and networks) can never be too fast, too small, or too energy efficient.
The game is to incrementally push the consumer market into a series of screwed up proprietary drivers to push out open standards and ensure that only "enthusiasts" use open source.
It's possible that you're being paranoid on the drivers issue (sorry, don't mean to be insulting, but it's possible). However, I'm sure that the game is to incrementally push the consumer market to new devices. Many hardware companies do this-- they don't want to release a real solution all at once, but instead constantly release incremental improvements. The game is to get you to keep buying more hardware.
Right. There are too many reasons to use ethernet, and security is just one of them. Ethernet is also more reliable, and it's still faster. 802.11n is not running as fast as 1Gbps (which is what both my home and work network are running at). Give it a couple years, and we'll probably all be running 10Gbps networks, and though wireless speeds will improve too, I see no reason to believe that they'll ever catch up. Also, wired connections are more reliable, easier to control, etc.
Now, I don't see much reason to string ethernet through people's homes, at least not most of the time. Use WPA, secure each of your computers (password protect them and firewall any services you aren't using, preferably don't use Windows). You'll be fine, and 802.11n is probably way faster than any internet connection you might have.
Except that, evidently, he didn't turn it off. He just figured that "black screen" meant "off". Also, I kind of wonder about this on the grounds that the iPhone doesn't carry a very large charge. Assuming he left it in standby, didn't do anything, and it checked for e-mail, it would carry the charge for about 2 days. Now, the most the iPhone will check e-mail is every 15 minutes, which means 96 times a day, which means 192 times in 2 days. Assuming he started with a completely full charge, the most the phones would have connected is about 200 times each.
So are 600 quick data connections to download e-mail $4800? An average of $24 per connection? 12 connections per page? Seems like a lot. I wonder if these people possibly might have been charging their cell-phones over the course of the trip and had them on for longer. If they really thought that their phones were off, why would they be charging them?
As long as the relationship STAYS online, it's fine... But meeting the person in real life can be a disaster.
Interesting point. I'm generally the sort of person who would dismiss on "online relationship" as fantasy, since you don't really know who the other person is. For clarification, I would say that some relationship IRL are a fantasy, too. People often don't really bother to get to know each other, but instead build up little images in their own heads about each other. Sometimes this goes to an extreme, and the whole "relationship" isn't really a relationship at all.
Like, you know how the girlfriend you had in elementary school wasn't really your girlfriend? You're not really dating or anything, but it was more like you were putting on a play, trying to act how your little-kid mind thought boyfriends and girlfriends acted. Well, if you pay close attention, sometimes you'll catch some adults doing the same thing.
However, I think this one part of your post convinced me that I was wrong. Online relationships can be a real relationship of a sort. I mean, there are business relationships and casual acquaintances, and those are genuine relationships of their sort. They just don't necessarily have a lot of depth or weight. I think online relationships can be of the same sort of thing. They can be genuine online-relationships, but you shouldn't confuse that with being real friends.
I know some people will think this is an arbitrary distinction, but I have real reason for saying it. I think real friendships are forged over time through presence and actions. The bonding of physical presence can't be replaced with "virtual presence", and also actions can't be replaced with words. You can say all the flowery words you want, but my friends are the people who will pick me up from the gutter when I fall in.
And when I say, "pick me up from the gutter", I do mean that metaphorically, but not in the sense of "boost my spirits". I've known people who talk a good game and will tell you that they care about you, but when you actually need something from them, something that will cost them, they won't do it. The idea of "cost" is important here. Lots of people will say and do all sorts of nice things for you, up until the point where it becomes difficult or costly. It's the difference between someone who will spend an evening with you when you're injured, and someone who will spend an evening with you when you're injured even though they'd like to be out partying instead. It's the difference between someone who will help you up when you've slipped in some mud, and someone who will ruin their favorite pair of shoes helping you up when you've slipped in mud.
I just think that those are the moments that solidify friendships, and they're such complicated moments that I don't think they can be replicated over wires. Even if someone will "spend time with you" online while you're injured, they can still do it at their own convenience, in their own comfy chair. Even if they send you some money (which I think is the height of online trust), they're just sending some money. There's nothing very personal there. It's all detached.
If you really don't know what I mean by all of this, and you don't think that physical presence and real-life actions mean more than virtual presence and virtual actions, then I'm very sorry for you.
The GPL doesn't apply to people "owning" or using the software. It only applies to people who wish to redistribute the software. It's a common misconception, but the GPL is not a EULA. It's a copyright license. Users do not need to agree to the GPL before using the software.