It does most of what you want. Camera, quad band GSM, FM receiver, GPS, music player, bluetooth, wifi, etc.
It's only deficiency is that it runs windows mobile, which means you need to reboot it from time to time or else it gets flaky. Oh, it can charge through the USB port on your laptop so you do not even need the charger.
With that and a 15" Macbook Pro (dual boot with XP just in case), I have traveled around the world happily.
I wasn't going to reply so late to this overreplied story, but I just had to when I read your post...
"There are a lot of geeks who are reluctant to admit it, though. Most people pinned their hope on Linux + GNOME/KDE for delivering us from evil."
An Apple monopoly would be even worse than a Microsoft monopoly as Microsoft only has the operating system market. Apple would not only have the operating system market but the hardware market too. While Microsoft is an abomination, Apple would be end of any major advances in computing pretty much forever.
"The memory unused is too small to return to the OS"
What is this "too small" that you are referring to? Computers do not care about things being too small. As a matter of fact, dealing with small things is what they excel at. Why would even one byte of memory be too small to return from the application's point of view? If libc or something is not returning it once the applications calls free(), how is that Firefox's problem?
All applications should return all unused memory to the operating system immediately after it is no longer needed. Even garbage collectors do not save you entirely from this problem. It is not like it takes extreme, or even moderate amounts of effort to call free().
I think I missed something here: 20 thousand copies at $50 a pop makes a million dollars and covers your operating costs... so at $5 thousand per journal subscription, isn't that a markup of 100 times? Even at $1 thousand per subscription, that is still 20 times over what is needed. There seems to be some sort of efficiency or greed problem, or I misunderstood your numbers... which is entirely possible, I have been up for a very long time now.
I am more unsettled by the fact that there could be a person committing horrible crimes that has his birthday or other vital statistics near mine and that I may end being very uncomfortable for a long time.
Oh puhlease. You did not expect this? You do not recall John Ashcroft sending his people around telling local police departments how they could use/abuse new provisions in the PATRIOT act to catch common criminals? It is not about terrorism, it is about control (which translates directly into power).
TLB == Translation Lookaside Buffer, this is a special table of values that a cpu creates to manage memory in such a way as to cause all processes to think they are the only process that exist..
So, PF being twice as fast means that OpenBSD can do intelligent things with network packets twice as fast as before.
TLB stuff being faster means that each time a process is switched out, it takes less time to do so. Do recall that fork() creates a new process, so the TLB needs to be flushed and rebuilt.
I hope this clears up any lack of understanding that you may have had... this was going to be a, "holy cow, you don't know this stuff, you don't belong here post", but I changed my mind after I hit reply.
"OS X isn't significantly more stable than Linux and the BSDs (or even Windows NT)"
I would like to correct your statement:
OS X isn't significantly more stable than Linux and the BSDs (or even Windows NT) on x86 based CPUs.
On PPC, OS X is rock solid. I have a 17 inch Powerbook, 15 Macbook Pro, and several other computers that run XP 64, regular XP, Gentoo, and Ubuntu. I will list stability in order from most stable to least stable:
OS X on PPC (has not crashed once in 2+ years) XP 64 (crashed a few times due to mucking about with drivers, rarely do weird things happen) OS X and Gentoo/Ubuntu on x86 (weird stuff from time to time, one or two crashes) XP32 (crashes from time to time, lots of weird stuff happens)
It seems to me as if the problem with stability is due more to the cpu architecture than the code that runs on top of it. Regardless, OS X is very stable and your rant does a disservice to it.
For what it's worth, I am not and Apple fanboi. I use XP64 as my main (and gaming) OS.
"wouldn't it be safer to have the 3 step process BEFORE the heavy door? I mean whats the point of the door if just anyone can walk through it to get to the security checkpoint."
"The equipment analyzes Web traffic to discern whether it is an email, a movie or a phone call and then carves out the bandwidth needed for transmission."
You missed out on the glaring error in your quote... email, "phone calls", etc. are NOT web traffic so analyzing web traffic alone will not buy you much anyways. How the hell could an "inventor" of the internet say something so absurd? That is like calling "the web" the internet.
"And I cant think of a single album, ever, where I've ever wanted to listen to it all, end-to-end, or even give a rat's hairy butt about listening to them in context with each other."
Pink Floyd, The Wall. While there are some "singles" that had massive airplay, the entire "album" is a complete experience.
Honestly, there are many "albums" that are enjoyable from beginning to end. My experience is with older and/or harder rock but I will name a few for you:
Anything by Black Sabbath with Ozzy or Dio singing. Early Iron Maiden such as, Killers, Number of the Beast, Piece of Mind, or Powerslave. Pantera, Vulgar Display of Power. Scorpions, Love Drive and Animal Magnetism. A few albums by Slayer such as Reign in Blood, Hell Awaits, or Haunting the Chapel. Early Metallica. There are MANY more. This is just a small list off of the top of my head.
Out of curiosity, what kind of music do you listen to. Are the artists in that genre not really artists? Look at the groups like the Beatles or Led Zeppelin. They have dozens upon dozens of songs that have all been rated top notch... Speaking of which, why aren't there any more groups like that anymore?
Bullshit. Gold is VERY valuable. For example, gold is an excellent conductor and it does not corrode or oxidize. Gold is great for medical and electronic uses. You may want to perform more research on gold to understand exactly why it is as valuable as it is. Yes, it makes for pretty jewelry (oooh shiny) but that is its most trivial use.
I clicked on the URL in your message. Happily, Firefox with noscript took me to a page that was called "Untitled" with nothing displayed. Once I unmangled the URL, I arrived at the intended page. The anti-phishing feature in Firefox warned me immediately that the site was bad news, I blithely ignored the warning and put in some bogus account info (I do not even have an ebay ID). It took me to a page where I could verify "my" account info such as real name, address, credit card info, etc. I couldn't be bothered to generate fake credit card info so I left the page. It looked pretty legit, but then, I have never used ebay.
"This isn't news. ANY anti-phishing tool that checks to see if a page is a phishing site is going to have to send it SOMEWHERE"
Ummm, no. Firefox currently has two options for anti-phishing, one is to send the data somewhere as you suggest. The other is to download a list of sites and then compare your URLs to that list. Nothing gets sent anywhere and nobody but me knows which sites I go to.
"Actually Tiger is much faster overall than Panther..."
I call shenanigans. I bought a 17" Powerbook about a month and half before Tiger was released. Apple was kind enough to send Tiger to me free of charge anyways. I installed Tiger and it was noticeably slower in many ways. Boot times were longer, moving windows around felt less responsive, etc. I have no experience with even earlier versions so I have to blindly believe that OS X was getting faster all of the time, but that trend stopped with Tiger. I witnessed it myself.
Your point about how people read my words is likely valid. I have pretty much no social skills and my direct manner seems to put many people off. It would be very useful if I could use my verbiage to accurately coordinate how I feel with how people will receive my words. I am somewhat aware of this problem which is why I started my original comment out with an plain English description of what I was trying to accomplish. I guess it did not work. *sigh*
Yes, I did say stop whining or words to that effect quite a bit. Those words come from dealing with many people who refuse to take responsibility for gaining the things that they desire. For example, I have two children and it took many years for them to go from, "I want this", to asking themselves what can they do to best going about getting what it is that they want. Whining is saying, "I want this" over and over and never doing anything to effect the desired results.
It is clear, after endless years of the same complaints, that the GIMP designers have no desire to fulfill anyones needs but their own. This seems perfectly acceptable to me as their time is their own. I have no claim upon their labor and I fail to see how anyone else would have such a claim either.
My comments come at a somewhat inopportune time as the devs are specifically asking for input at this time. I am not trying to discourage input of the type that the devs are asking for.
Regardless, I would like to thank you for attempting to understand that I am trying to say something other than what it seems that you have read. I am frequently misunderstood and it is not your fault, but is my own.
Thank you very much for your thoughtful response. You have many good points, especially concerning why you do not do more to get the things that you need changed. I personally would not put any effort towards a project where the goals are completely contrary to my desires.
It certainly seems that GIMP is not for you which is unfortunate. We would all love to have a program that with a little tweaking, could be a Photoshop replacement. I believe that GIMP can replace Photoshop for the people who pirate Photoshop for casual use.
To me, GIMP is more like an extremely advanced MS Paint rather than a professional photo editing program, which is why its perennial inability to be more professional does not bother me.
I would like to thank you for taking my comments as I meant them and not as an attack on you.
Since you are not Mr. Anonymous Coward, I will reply to you.
My point that you seem to be taking a dim view of is that I constantly hear people whine that GIMP is not as good as Photoshop. Yes, the devs want input. I am sure that they would need specific input, not just the popular refrain that they need to be as good as Photoshop.
Despite my words to the contrary, "I am not trying to flame you (or anyone else) but you may hear some slight frustrations in my comment.", you seem to have read more aggressiveness into my comment than I had meant. I even specifically say at the end of my post, "I apologize if you see this as a flame or if you feel that I am personally attacking you.", so I am not entirely certain why you feel this way. Regardless, I fail to see why you do not address the points in my post. I feel that they are valid.
I really appreciate Open Source because if I do not like something, I can do something about changing it. It seems that many people take the same approach to Open Source that they do to proprietary software if they are not happy with it, and that is to complain and not actively seek to change it. I was encouraging the parent poster and any who read my comment to start being more active instead of just complaining. If I were a GIMP dev, I think I would be pretty upset as my time is my own, not yours or anyone elses. If you want a change, make it happen. Such a statement is not aggressive, selfish, uncaring, or rude. It is an encouragement. With so many complaints about how GIMP is not as good as Photoshop, you would think some of those complainers would have actually done something about it. Obviously, they have not.
Again, my words are meant to be concise statements. They are not meant to be seen as being overly aggressive and/or rude.
I am not trying to flame you (or anyone else) but you may hear some slight frustrations in my comment. I chose to reply to your comment specifically only because yours was the most rational that contains the ideas that bother me.
"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."
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? 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. If you can not write the code, then contribute cash. If you do not have cash, then try starting a bounty site where people can contribute cash towards having their favorite feature implemented.
If you can't be bothered to actually make anything happen, then do not be surprised when it does not happen.
"Third, the name "GIMP" rubs professional users the wrong way."
Then don't call it G.I.M.P. and start calling it by its real name, which is "Gnu Image Manipulation Program". Seriously, just because the name can be shortened that does not mean that it should be shortened.
"And finally, the interface isn't very good."
Again, put your money where your mouth is. Letting the professionals know that you think something is non-optimal is good feedback. Hearing it over and over again just rings of whining. Someone has actually put their money where their mouth is and changed the GUI and called it GIMPShop. Try it out... and if you do not like it, go back to step one and do something about it.
I remember when Gnu Image Manipulation Program first came out, there were no free (as in beer) programs that could handle the jpg format. GIMP was a godsend which helped to keep me booting Linux more often than Windows. I have not used GIMP recently but I find it hard to believe that it is less functional than previously, which means that it is just fine for the 95% of us who are not professional or seriously hardcore amateur photo manipulators. So why all of the hate?
I apologize if you see this as a flame or if you feel that I am personally attacking you. That is not my intention. I just want to see a little love tossed to the GIMP guys for the great program that they have given us without asking for anything in return.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.pharosgps.com/gpsphone/
It does most of what you want. Camera, quad band GSM, FM receiver, GPS, music player, bluetooth, wifi, etc.
It's only deficiency is that it runs windows mobile, which means you need to reboot it from time to time or else it gets flaky. Oh, it can charge through the USB port on your laptop so you do not even need the charger.
With that and a 15" Macbook Pro (dual boot with XP just in case), I have traveled around the world happily.
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"Well nothing really makes you better than him to begin with, so you're not generally entitled to better internet than him."
Sure, nothing makes him better... but the money he/she pays certainly makes him more DESERVING.
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It is a shame that you are at +5 funny as I wanted to give you a +1 insightful.
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Are you kidding me? Someone actually has a patent on sending pictures of pieces of paper through the internet? wtf?
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I wasn't going to reply so late to this overreplied story, but I just had to when I read your post...
"There are a lot of geeks who are reluctant to admit it, though. Most people pinned their hope on Linux + GNOME/KDE for delivering us from evil."
An Apple monopoly would be even worse than a Microsoft monopoly as Microsoft only has the operating system market. Apple would not only have the operating system market but the hardware market too. While Microsoft is an abomination, Apple would be end of any major advances in computing pretty much forever.
Be careful what you wish for, you may get it.
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"The memory unused is too small to return to the OS"
What is this "too small" that you are referring to? Computers do not care about things being too small. As a matter of fact, dealing with small things is what they excel at. Why would even one byte of memory be too small to return from the application's point of view? If libc or something is not returning it once the applications calls free(), how is that Firefox's problem?
All applications should return all unused memory to the operating system immediately after it is no longer needed. Even garbage collectors do not save you entirely from this problem. It is not like it takes extreme, or even moderate amounts of effort to call free().
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I think I missed something here: 20 thousand copies at $50 a pop makes a million dollars and covers your operating costs... so at $5 thousand per journal subscription, isn't that a markup of 100 times? Even at $1 thousand per subscription, that is still 20 times over what is needed. There seems to be some sort of efficiency or greed problem, or I misunderstood your numbers... which is entirely possible, I have been up for a very long time now.
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I am more unsettled by the fact that there could be a person committing horrible crimes that has his birthday or other vital statistics near mine and that I may end being very uncomfortable for a long time.
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Oh puhlease. You did not expect this? You do not recall John Ashcroft sending his people around telling local police departments how they could use/abuse new provisions in the PATRIOT act to catch common criminals? It is not about terrorism, it is about control (which translates directly into power).
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I guess I am screwed then. I use every major operating system out there and a few niche ones as well (AmigaDOS).
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PF == Packet Filter, akin to iptables in Linux.
TLB == Translation Lookaside Buffer, this is a special table of values that a cpu creates to manage memory in such a way as to cause all processes to think they are the only process that exist..
So, PF being twice as fast means that OpenBSD can do intelligent things with network packets twice as fast as before.
TLB stuff being faster means that each time a process is switched out, it takes less time to do so. Do recall that fork() creates a new process, so the TLB needs to be flushed and rebuilt.
I hope this clears up any lack of understanding that you may have had... this was going to be a, "holy cow, you don't know this stuff, you don't belong here post", but I changed my mind after I hit reply.
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"OS X isn't significantly more stable than Linux and the BSDs (or even Windows NT)"
I would like to correct your statement:
OS X isn't significantly more stable than Linux and the BSDs (or even Windows NT) on x86 based CPUs.
On PPC, OS X is rock solid. I have a 17 inch Powerbook, 15 Macbook Pro, and several other computers that run XP 64, regular XP, Gentoo, and Ubuntu. I will list stability in order from most stable to least stable:
OS X on PPC (has not crashed once in 2+ years)
XP 64 (crashed a few times due to mucking about with drivers, rarely do weird things happen)
OS X and Gentoo/Ubuntu on x86 (weird stuff from time to time, one or two crashes)
XP32 (crashes from time to time, lots of weird stuff happens)
It seems to me as if the problem with stability is due more to the cpu architecture than the code that runs on top of it. Regardless, OS X is very stable and your rant does a disservice to it.
For what it's worth, I am not and Apple fanboi. I use XP64 as my main (and gaming) OS.
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"So combining again, we can conclude the Orion Nebula is between 1,327 and 1,346 LY away, or 1,336.5 LY +/- 9.5 LY."
:P
Since your numbers are not scientific, you should just round to 1337 LY.
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Yeah, but you don't get laid. :)
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"wouldn't it be safer to have the 3 step process BEFORE the heavy door? I mean whats the point of the door if just anyone can walk through it to get to the security checkpoint."
Possibly to trap http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantrap the person inside so the police can be called to arrest them?
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"The equipment analyzes Web traffic to discern whether it is an email, a movie or a phone call and then carves out the bandwidth needed for transmission."
You missed out on the glaring error in your quote... email, "phone calls", etc. are NOT web traffic so analyzing web traffic alone will not buy you much anyways. How the hell could an "inventor" of the internet say something so absurd? That is like calling "the web" the internet.
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"And I cant think of a single album, ever, where I've ever wanted to listen to it all, end-to-end, or even give a rat's hairy butt about listening to them in context with each other."
Pink Floyd, The Wall. While there are some "singles" that had massive airplay, the entire "album" is a complete experience.
Honestly, there are many "albums" that are enjoyable from beginning to end. My experience is with older and/or harder rock but I will name a few for you:
Anything by Black Sabbath with Ozzy or Dio singing. Early Iron Maiden such as, Killers, Number of the Beast, Piece of Mind, or Powerslave. Pantera, Vulgar Display of Power. Scorpions, Love Drive and Animal Magnetism. A few albums by Slayer such as Reign in Blood, Hell Awaits, or Haunting the Chapel. Early Metallica. There are MANY more. This is just a small list off of the top of my head.
Out of curiosity, what kind of music do you listen to. Are the artists in that genre not really artists? Look at the groups like the Beatles or Led Zeppelin. They have dozens upon dozens of songs that have all been rated top notch... Speaking of which, why aren't there any more groups like that anymore?
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"Gold has almost no real value."
Bullshit. Gold is VERY valuable. For example, gold is an excellent conductor and it does not corrode or oxidize. Gold is great for medical and electronic uses. You may want to perform more research on gold to understand exactly why it is as valuable as it is. Yes, it makes for pretty jewelry (oooh shiny) but that is its most trivial use.
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I clicked on the URL in your message. Happily, Firefox with noscript took me to a page that was called "Untitled" with nothing displayed. Once I unmangled the URL, I arrived at the intended page. The anti-phishing feature in Firefox warned me immediately that the site was bad news, I blithely ignored the warning and put in some bogus account info (I do not even have an ebay ID). It took me to a page where I could verify "my" account info such as real name, address, credit card info, etc. I couldn't be bothered to generate fake credit card info so I left the page. It looked pretty legit, but then, I have never used ebay.
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"This isn't news. ANY anti-phishing tool that checks to see if a page is a phishing site is going to have to send it SOMEWHERE"
Ummm, no. Firefox currently has two options for anti-phishing, one is to send the data somewhere as you suggest. The other is to download a list of sites and then compare your URLs to that list. Nothing gets sent anywhere and nobody but me knows which sites I go to.
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"Actually Tiger is much faster overall than Panther..."
I call shenanigans. I bought a 17" Powerbook about a month and half before Tiger was released. Apple was kind enough to send Tiger to me free of charge anyways. I installed Tiger and it was noticeably slower in many ways. Boot times were longer, moving windows around felt less responsive, etc. I have no experience with even earlier versions so I have to blindly believe that OS X was getting faster all of the time, but that trend stopped with Tiger. I witnessed it myself.
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Your point about how people read my words is likely valid. I have pretty much no social skills and my direct manner seems to put many people off. It would be very useful if I could use my verbiage to accurately coordinate how I feel with how people will receive my words. I am somewhat aware of this problem which is why I started my original comment out with an plain English description of what I was trying to accomplish. I guess it did not work. *sigh*
Yes, I did say stop whining or words to that effect quite a bit. Those words come from dealing with many people who refuse to take responsibility for gaining the things that they desire. For example, I have two children and it took many years for them to go from, "I want this", to asking themselves what can they do to best going about getting what it is that they want. Whining is saying, "I want this" over and over and never doing anything to effect the desired results.
It is clear, after endless years of the same complaints, that the GIMP designers have no desire to fulfill anyones needs but their own. This seems perfectly acceptable to me as their time is their own. I have no claim upon their labor and I fail to see how anyone else would have such a claim either.
My comments come at a somewhat inopportune time as the devs are specifically asking for input at this time. I am not trying to discourage input of the type that the devs are asking for.
Regardless, I would like to thank you for attempting to understand that I am trying to say something other than what it seems that you have read. I am frequently misunderstood and it is not your fault, but is my own.
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Thank you very much for your thoughtful response. You have many good points, especially concerning why you do not do more to get the things that you need changed. I personally would not put any effort towards a project where the goals are completely contrary to my desires.
It certainly seems that GIMP is not for you which is unfortunate. We would all love to have a program that with a little tweaking, could be a Photoshop replacement. I believe that GIMP can replace Photoshop for the people who pirate Photoshop for casual use.
To me, GIMP is more like an extremely advanced MS Paint rather than a professional photo editing program, which is why its perennial inability to be more professional does not bother me.
I would like to thank you for taking my comments as I meant them and not as an attack on you.
Since you are not Mr. Anonymous Coward, I will reply to you.
My point that you seem to be taking a dim view of is that I constantly hear people whine that GIMP is not as good as Photoshop. Yes, the devs want input. I am sure that they would need specific input, not just the popular refrain that they need to be as good as Photoshop.
Despite my words to the contrary, "I am not trying to flame you (or anyone else) but you may hear some slight frustrations in my comment.", you seem to have read more aggressiveness into my comment than I had meant. I even specifically say at the end of my post, "I apologize if you see this as a flame or if you feel that I am personally attacking you.", so I am not entirely certain why you feel this way. Regardless, I fail to see why you do not address the points in my post. I feel that they are valid.
I really appreciate Open Source because if I do not like something, I can do something about changing it. It seems that many people take the same approach to Open Source that they do to proprietary software if they are not happy with it, and that is to complain and not actively seek to change it. I was encouraging the parent poster and any who read my comment to start being more active instead of just complaining. If I were a GIMP dev, I think I would be pretty upset as my time is my own, not yours or anyone elses. If you want a change, make it happen. Such a statement is not aggressive, selfish, uncaring, or rude. It is an encouragement. With so many complaints about how GIMP is not as good as Photoshop, you would think some of those complainers would have actually done something about it. Obviously, they have not.
Again, my words are meant to be concise statements. They are not meant to be seen as being overly aggressive and/or rude.
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I am not trying to flame you (or anyone else) but you may hear some slight frustrations in my comment. I chose to reply to your comment specifically only because yours was the most rational that contains the ideas that bother me.
"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."
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? 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. If you can not write the code, then contribute cash. If you do not have cash, then try starting a bounty site where people can contribute cash towards having their favorite feature implemented.
If you can't be bothered to actually make anything happen, then do not be surprised when it does not happen.
"Third, the name "GIMP" rubs professional users the wrong way."
Then don't call it G.I.M.P. and start calling it by its real name, which is "Gnu Image Manipulation Program". Seriously, just because the name can be shortened that does not mean that it should be shortened.
"And finally, the interface isn't very good."
Again, put your money where your mouth is. Letting the professionals know that you think something is non-optimal is good feedback. Hearing it over and over again just rings of whining. Someone has actually put their money where their mouth is and changed the GUI and called it GIMPShop. Try it out... and if you do not like it, go back to step one and do something about it.
I remember when Gnu Image Manipulation Program first came out, there were no free (as in beer) programs that could handle the jpg format. GIMP was a godsend which helped to keep me booting Linux more often than Windows. I have not used GIMP recently but I find it hard to believe that it is less functional than previously, which means that it is just fine for the 95% of us who are not professional or seriously hardcore amateur photo manipulators. So why all of the hate?
I apologize if you see this as a flame or if you feel that I am personally attacking you. That is not my intention. I just want to see a little love tossed to the GIMP guys for the great program that they have given us without asking for anything in return.
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