I just checked it out, and while it does look like it might have a bright future, it definitely is lacking in some of the basics for the time being. Here my little mini-review:
I loaded up a 600dpi scan of a map I was working on in Photoshop a few days ago. All I wanted to do was straighten the image, crop it, and apply a 1-2 pixel blur to remove the linescreening. The original image is a 28MB TIFF. Just opening this in Pixelmator caused it to choke. It took it about a minute to even load the image. There was no measure tool to get a precise rotation, so I had to set the opacity low on the image and eyeball it using the grid behind the image (not a big deal). It took about a minute for Pixelmator to apply the rotation (takes less than 3 secs in PS). After that, I used the marquee tool to select the map area. Uh oh, no crop tool/crop option. Alright, just copy and paste the selection into a new document. Again, another minute or so for this process. After that, I gave up. I'm sure it would've been able to handle the blur, too, but I expect that to take another 1-2 minutes. So four minutes total to do something that can be done in about 20 seconds in Photoshop. And that's after spending some time familiarizing myself with the interface. I went into this test knowing exactly what I wanted to do and how I was going to do it in the program. Not looking good. On the other hand, if you just want to clean up your digital photographs, it probably does the job with no problems. Again, like I said, it looks very nice and with some more effort will probably turn out to be a nice tool for basic image editing.
...I think every slashdot user could tell you now that the GIMP doesn't have CMYK or have a whole bunch of filters that like one or two graphic designers actually use and no one else never needs.
Yeah, you're absolutely right. Only one or two graphic designers ever need to do anything in CMYK or need to use Spot colors...
Exactly right. The quickest way to work in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and to a lesser degree Quark, is to learn the keyboard shortcuts to switch between the tools and to learn the cmd-ctrl-opt-shift modifiers and how to use them. Often I'll open a document in Photoshop, hit the F key to switch to fullscreen mode, then hit the tab key to hide all the pallets. From there I just use the keyboard and mouse to do my work. If I need the pallets I hit the tab key again to bring them up. If I need the toolbar only, hitting shift-tab will hide everything but the toolbox. As long as they keep a lot of this stuff the same in their redesign, it won't particularly affect me.
Honestly, I've given up on this debate around here (and for the record I fully support these open access policies). I used to work at a nonprofit scientific journal (small 3 person office, 15 AEs, ~45 review board members). Our print run was a little over 20,000. Our operating budget was a bit less than 1M a year. We barely broke even each year, and any extra that was made was funneled back into the next year's operating budget. We were all making average salaries and could easily have been making more in the for-profit world. Slashdotters are all convinced that they know how to run a publication for absolutely nothing. Save your breath. They simply don't want to understand that regularly producing a quality journal has costs, time, and effort associated with it.
...and no, all those nationalities do not count - the baby gets to claim the parents nationality and the destinations nationality.
Not entirely true. It depends on the citizenship laws of each country involved. For instance, simply being born in a country doesn't automatically give you rights to citizenship (I was born in Germany, but neither of my parents are German citizens, so it's not even an option for me). I'm sure there are a few combinations of the above example where someone would have legal rights to citizenship in all four countries.
Yup. The theater down the street from me is 10 bucks a ticket. On the other hand, it's a beautiful theater and they're showing fucking Blade Runner right now! : D
It's been a while since I've used my Blockbuster account, so I might be a few percent off here, but Blockbuster is now charging close to $4.00 (USD) for DVD rentals.
That cheap, huh? Last time I rented a movie at Blockbuster it was something like $6.50 after tax.
Other companies with tighter relationships with the record companies have since come up with far more successful ways to market music online (such as tying the store to a hugely popular MP3 player, for example).
You know you can say "Zune" around here if you want.
He was polling 2.3%, which put him ahead of jokes like Kucinich and Gravel (and serious candidates like Dodd) but far behind Obama and Edwards.
Well, admittedly it had only been a week and a half after he announced his intent to run that his numbers were there. Imagine if he'd had over a year like all the other guys. He'd be at like 120-125% by now.
Also, for 1 dollar a week you are buying a mild emotional high when checking the numbers and a mild emotional low when you find out that math pwned you again.
Yes, but for less than one dollar a day (that's less than the cost of a cup of coffee), you can help change a child's life. Imagine the feeling of joy you'll get when you receive a personalized card in the mail from the child you sponsor. Call the number on your screen right now to make a donation.
Also, FYI, a hardware firewall is just a dedicated software firewall.
I don't know if I buy that. I mean, one has the word "hard" in it, while the other has "soft" in it. Given the choice of the two, the "hard" one sounds far more secure.
I've done plenty of Photoshop and Quark work on older machines with onboard graphics. The trick is making sure they actually have the proper video drivers installed and enough RAM enabled for video in the BIOS.
You could use the same logic to conclude that 512 terabyte solid-state media is on the way.
Have you considered getting a job as a futurist? At this point I can guarantee that your track record will be better than many of the ones actually out there.
Slashdot Mirror
I just checked it out, and while it does look like it might have a bright future, it definitely is lacking in some of the basics for the time being. Here my little mini-review:
I loaded up a 600dpi scan of a map I was working on in Photoshop a few days ago. All I wanted to do was straighten the image, crop it, and apply a 1-2 pixel blur to remove the linescreening. The original image is a 28MB TIFF. Just opening this in Pixelmator caused it to choke. It took it about a minute to even load the image. There was no measure tool to get a precise rotation, so I had to set the opacity low on the image and eyeball it using the grid behind the image (not a big deal). It took about a minute for Pixelmator to apply the rotation (takes less than 3 secs in PS). After that, I used the marquee tool to select the map area. Uh oh, no crop tool/crop option. Alright, just copy and paste the selection into a new document. Again, another minute or so for this process. After that, I gave up. I'm sure it would've been able to handle the blur, too, but I expect that to take another 1-2 minutes. So four minutes total to do something that can be done in about 20 seconds in Photoshop. And that's after spending some time familiarizing myself with the interface. I went into this test knowing exactly what I wanted to do and how I was going to do it in the program. Not looking good. On the other hand, if you just want to clean up your digital photographs, it probably does the job with no problems. Again, like I said, it looks very nice and with some more effort will probably turn out to be a nice tool for basic image editing.
...I think every slashdot user could tell you now that the GIMP doesn't have CMYK or have a whole bunch of filters that like one or two graphic designers actually use and no one else never needs.
Yeah, you're absolutely right. Only one or two graphic designers ever need to do anything in CMYK or need to use Spot colors...
Exactly right. The quickest way to work in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and to a lesser degree Quark, is to learn the keyboard shortcuts to switch between the tools and to learn the cmd-ctrl-opt-shift modifiers and how to use them. Often I'll open a document in Photoshop, hit the F key to switch to fullscreen mode, then hit the tab key to hide all the pallets. From there I just use the keyboard and mouse to do my work. If I need the pallets I hit the tab key again to bring them up. If I need the toolbar only, hitting shift-tab will hide everything but the toolbox. As long as they keep a lot of this stuff the same in their redesign, it won't particularly affect me.
Some people make tiny rice-sized probes to look at someone's insides while others simply go the Goatse route...
Honestly, I've given up on this debate around here (and for the record I fully support these open access policies). I used to work at a nonprofit scientific journal (small 3 person office, 15 AEs, ~45 review board members). Our print run was a little over 20,000. Our operating budget was a bit less than 1M a year. We barely broke even each year, and any extra that was made was funneled back into the next year's operating budget. We were all making average salaries and could easily have been making more in the for-profit world. Slashdotters are all convinced that they know how to run a publication for absolutely nothing. Save your breath. They simply don't want to understand that regularly producing a quality journal has costs, time, and effort associated with it.
I dunno. I've seen people argue that America simply couldn't have a 100% mortality rate, because America is too good for that...
...and no, all those nationalities do not count - the baby gets to claim the parents nationality and the destinations nationality.
Not entirely true. It depends on the citizenship laws of each country involved. For instance, simply being born in a country doesn't automatically give you rights to citizenship (I was born in Germany, but neither of my parents are German citizens, so it's not even an option for me). I'm sure there are a few combinations of the above example where someone would have legal rights to citizenship in all four countries.
Sweet. Now I'll be able to brag that my computer has a 256MB BIOS!
Yup. The theater down the street from me is 10 bucks a ticket. On the other hand, it's a beautiful theater and they're showing fucking Blade Runner right now! : D
It's been a while since I've used my Blockbuster account, so I might be a few percent off here, but Blockbuster is now charging close to $4.00 (USD) for DVD rentals.
That cheap, huh? Last time I rented a movie at Blockbuster it was something like $6.50 after tax.
Other companies with tighter relationships with the record companies have since come up with far more successful ways to market music online (such as tying the store to a hugely popular MP3 player, for example).
You know you can say "Zune" around here if you want.
He was polling 2.3%, which put him ahead of jokes like Kucinich and Gravel (and serious candidates like Dodd) but far behind Obama and Edwards.
Well, admittedly it had only been a week and a half after he announced his intent to run that his numbers were there. Imagine if he'd had over a year like all the other guys. He'd be at like 120-125% by now.
I always just see a bunch of dots.
Also, for 1 dollar a week you are buying a mild emotional high when checking the numbers and a mild emotional low when you find out that math pwned you again.
Yes, but for less than one dollar a day (that's less than the cost of a cup of coffee), you can help change a child's life. Imagine the feeling of joy you'll get when you receive a personalized card in the mail from the child you sponsor. Call the number on your screen right now to make a donation.
So it'll hang up on you if you say "Can you hear me now?" Verizon won't be too happy about that...
And we thought the days of dongles were gone...
It's getting regular users to expect "Beta" to mean "1.0" and when Beta turns out to actually mean Beta, they get all pissy.
You prefer that users expect 1.0 to mean 'beta'?
Also, FYI, a hardware firewall is just a dedicated software firewall.
I don't know if I buy that. I mean, one has the word "hard" in it, while the other has "soft" in it. Given the choice of the two, the "hard" one sounds far more secure.
Viewers are still going to go to YouTube and still click their ads
Okay, I get the first part, but the second confuses me. Does anyone actually do this?
I've done plenty of Photoshop and Quark work on older machines with onboard graphics. The trick is making sure they actually have the proper video drivers installed and enough RAM enabled for video in the BIOS.
Do East German sex-change patients shed more or something?
So wait. How many human hairs are in a Volkswagen Beetle?
I hadn't thought to look for a touch typing tutor on Linux, but now I have and KTouch looks like it's pretty decent.
What? The regular 'touch' command isn't good enough for you?
You could use the same logic to conclude that 512 terabyte solid-state media is on the way.
Have you considered getting a job as a futurist? At this point I can guarantee that your track record will be better than many of the ones actually out there.
Well, seeing as how they skipped right over 256GB devices, I'd say it is a major advance!