I use Photoshop and teach it professionally. *You* should not be insulting people who actually use GIMP by making those ridiculous claims. Sure, I've heard maybe one or two GIMP users say they think it's a perfect replacement for Photoshop - completely out of ignorance. But can I tell you how many Photoshop users I've seen who use their Photoshop license-purchase as a reason to bash GIMP without any real experience backing them up? And MOST of them are laughing a bit, then looking at ME for cues that they should keep laughing!
That's not professionalism, that's just mindless consumerism. People like me use Linux day in and day out with Photoshop in a VM because we've decided that if our generation won't put things right as a group, we will do it as individuals. THUS your complaint about many different distros, THUS your complaint about no MSDN. You want your MSDN but you probably despise the virii that come with its core experience. >:-)
First somebody wiki-leaks our super-secret church manual all over the internet. THEN, somebody lets fly a hint about our secret conspiracy network, in what can practically be called a press release to everyone on the internet.
Please, TELL me how we are supposed to run a good conspiracy IN SECRET with all this stuff going on??? Give us some elbow room here, people!
They all do a mixture of both, like any photographer would - printing work sometimes, for competitions or art shows, and using their tools of choice for web graphics and website updates at other times. BTW, you know that GIMP's "niche printing issues" would almost never bother a photographer, right? They are not going to be doing pre-press stuff, and most involved with that sort of printing report back to me that their pre-press people keep asking for JPEGs, which...is what it is, I guess.
The pre-press people I know who would really hate life with GIMP are just about as niched-in as they come, working at places like talented-but-failing T-Shirt printing companies. And I would absolutely hate their job; I watched some friends in that niche use Photoshop once, and it was absolutely painful. I would NEVER in a million years expect serving this niche to be one of GIMP's main priorities.
20-25 per class, 10 classes per year, over 2 years so far, yes (they would still be more or less anecdotal if you really want to pursue that path), and yes. (WHY did I just answer your essay in my spare time? not sure)
I think you may be misunderstanding the power of the TANSTAAFL culture, looking at the rest of your comment. From my POV, people like to verify their consumer DNA from time to time; having a Photoshop box on your shelf and a subscription to an overpriced graphics magazine actually does count for something when all the friends come over.
The most impressively-professional student I had so far was also one of the most ridiculously impressive examples of TANSTAAFL ignorance that I've ever met. He also couldn't figure out how I could design websites with a free text editor and get around paying for Dreamweaver somehow. It felt cheap to him.
I can understand a professional pooh-poohing GIMP, because I've taught Photoshop to professional photographers now for a couple of years, and they love to try GIMP out for a couple of days and then add it to their software sh** list.
Overly flexible use of the word "professional" is the problem. Out of all of my students who can be considered professionals, I've noticed that my students who started out with GIMP and keep using it alongside Photoshop after they learn Photoshop are, as a rule far more professional than all respects than their peers. The people who stick with Photoshop and crap all over GIMP after a short trial period tend to be one or more of the following: 1) spoiled, 2) inexperienced, and 3) exceedingly ignorant of fundamental image editing concepts. In other words, Photoshop is not their tool, it's their job. So instead of spending money on hardware like fast computers and nice cameras, they're dropping major cash for overpriced Adobe seminars and services, not to mention upgrades.
My GIMP-loving students seriously tend to kick butt. They know how pixels and bit depth really work, even if they don't have the bit depth to work with in GIMP. So their results shine regardless.
When I used to live in Russia, there was this incredibly gifted computer hacker who lived in the flat above me. He used to charge my mother and I about half a day's pay just to come back into the flat at night, because he was able to cyber-electronically control the entries to the building. We would sit at work all day, not worried about the industrial chemicals we were breathing so much as this new, digital threat that went beyond our powers of imagination. Though we were strong physically, and even had local mafia connections of our own, this man with the thick eyeglasses, tight jeans, and a sort of mangy, even putrid smell about him, held our lives for ransom with nothing but a few keystrokes and some Zholz Cola.
Sorry, just kidding...I never lived in Russia. But the whole idea of this article seems a bit funny to me.
Microsoft to government: "You made the economy SUCK dude"
Government to MS: "So go make some money, that's like your JOB"
MS back: "OK but the economy SUCKS so bad that we're going to start low-intensity patent wars all over the place so we can start raking in dough and building precedents so we can make MORE money later, so don't sue us, k"
Government: "FINE just stop complaining about us and make your stockholders some MONEY morons. And give us a lot of money while you're at it"
I am writing in reference to the "Chinese Exploit Kits" you mentioned on the Slash Dot on 18 February. Please inform me if you have further information on availability of these kits.
I would also be interested in subscribing to your newsletter.
Oh SURE, his informative gets updated to "funny" just after I post a super-serious response. That happens every time I talk to Raelians about UFOlogy, too. They start out with this serious look on their face, then at the end of the discussion they're laughing about it like we all live in some sort of a big comic book. On to the next victim, I guess. Religion has been saved this time.
Really? You're modded +5 informative for a question that gets answered in the first week of any non-denominational, even atheist-leaning comparative religions course? You might start with Victor Frankl and continue from there. Or just GOTO 10 and troll again...I mean, religion-bashing seems to get you great mod points around here, and none of it (that I've ever seen) even approaches 200-level college material...
I find the color screen necessary for comic books, some HTML reading (like computer graphics books), and definitely for showing photos to friends. I could do everything in shades of gray, but I wouldn't consider it until the screen resolution hit at least 160dpi. Even then, I'm sure the goal of e-paper manufacturers will be to go 100% color-capable. I don't see B&W devices, like B&W monitors, sticking around any longer than necessary.
I just spent a week in Boston with the PDA mentioned above. I read and played games the entire flight over, then read every day until I left, and played games and read again all the way back to California. I had about 45 minutes of battery life left by the time I arrived at home. I took my charger but I never used it. So for every anecdote about battery life, I guess there's somebody who opted for the battery that fit their needs in the first place.
"Selling" point is more like it. e-paper by itself may be comfortable to read, but I found that page loading lag more than outweighed that on the 1.0 Kindle I tried out. Those who are interested in the real-fax-quality feature are free to pay the price, though...
Oops, cut my reading paragraph out but never pasted it. I meant to address the issue of reading - having looked at a Kindle and played with it (NOT the 2.0 version, mind you), I found I preferred the reader features I found on my PDA, especially those that come with uBook. Way too many to mention, but I've tweaked the thing to the point where even my picky graphic designer tastes for things like line spacing (leading) and text hinting are accomodated.
>For straight text the Kindle is still the strongest Ebook reader out there for text.
Sorry, I have to disagree there. Looking at the oldest PDA I have a Dell Axim X3i, which I use almost solely for eBook reading, here's what it's got:
-eBook reading via at least 5 different programs for different formats - everything from RTF and TXT to HTML to zipped HTML to CHM to PDF to.lit to just about every format out there. Great support via ebook sales sites (which I never use, being a big fan of PG)
-Wireless internet access
-Internet surfing (Pocket IE, but on my intranet or at my public library it's super-convenient)
-Note-taking and audio note-recording
-MP3 playing
-One week's worth of usage (extended battery)
-NES Games and normal PDA games
-Japanese Kanji dictionary (something I need)
-Astronomy applications for night-time viewing
-Alarm clock that wakes me every morning with the Mr. Rogers theme
-Music composition software (oops, yes, I am a musician)
-Lightweight, small form factor
-Religion-related software (you might not need it)
-...probably other things I missed...
Price:
-Dell Axim x3i on eBay: $75
-New extended-life 2000mA battery $25
-Hard case (life-saver): $15
-2GB SD Card: Already had one
I use this with my Linux laptop by loading everything (.cab files for app installs, etc.) via the SD card.
This is why I don't own a Kindle already. I'm guessing the PDA will last me another 2-4 years. I wouldn't recommend a PDA like this for somebody who's a daft idiot or a usability nazi that ruminates about friends not being able to use their device to look up a phone number when they're lying under an overturned bus, but for Slashdotters with guts and a bias toward making things work, it's perfect.
So...what about my post said that the apps resulting from an easier way to tweak widgets would have to be inconsistent? For every five GTK apps that are wonderfully consistent, I can find you at least one stinker, one horrific mess up that should go back to the drawing board.
But so what? That doesn't say anything bad about GTK regardless. A toolkit is just a toolkit, and it can't enforce interface guidelines. The GNOME people have a good set of guidelines, and the only thing some new features would bring is the need to adjust guidelines to make sure they're up to date. In other words, no news here.
And I don't see you saying that because Trillian sucks, people shouldn't be allowed to use C++.
Or, because some choose to paint their house in garish colors, should we stop selling so many paints? No.We just establish reasonable guidelines for the neighborhood.
Anyway, back to Google Reader, which is far better than any RSS desktop client I've yet used...
Jakub Steiner has recently been wanting access to a CSS-type method of styling GTK apps rather than using the traditional widget-mangling stuff. I totally agree...in fact, look at some of the web apps out there that have already far eclipsed desktop applications in visual design, usability, and just overall experience.
If the desktop is going to make a comeback, things like this JavaScript effort and ideas that have their roots in web-team-on-a-deadline-style efficiency are going to have to be ported over to toolkits like GTK.
I guess Adobe Air and whatnot are trying to enter this arena, but I'd like to see other toolkits that are more widely used gain these capabilities.
BTW, I'm not talking about making every desktop app look different from another. I'm talking about coming up with a "look" to apply consistently - just one that actually looks good.
I don't get it. If you make like $129K or $121K, why don't you just say so, rather than this "over than" stuff? I don't think anybody's going to look at that and think, "hey, maybe he makes $900K! He did say *over*, after all!" That and you're posting as AC, which shouldn't make it a big deal...:D
I worked for a place that gave interviewees - right down to the front desk secretary - an IQ test.
I was hired as part of a sort of package deal (they were stuck with me regardless of IQ, lol) but I found it incredibly scary that this company judged their employees by an IQ test.
For the record, the employees at this company were no brighter than at any other company I've worked for. I had lunches stolen by employees, and the top non-C-level earner in the company was a wreck, taking just about every medication in the book to keep up with the stress. In fact, the company was almost universally hated by the people who worked there, but the pay seemed to be sufficient for them to stay.
What the IQ test came down to was, the guy at the top who was administering the test was constantly reminding everyone in private that he hadn't met someone yet who had a higher score than him. He was defending his little piece of ground, pyschologically speaking. And he was the type that, had he met someone with an IQ higher than him, he probably wouldn't let that person alone until he found a deep character flaw or piece of trivia they didn't know about.
The company had previously gone through related lawsuits, so it's surprising that the collective ego of those at the top was so great that even such a poor hiring policy escaped scrutiny.
Personality testing strikes me as a rather good idea, but it also seems to indicate that corporations are firmly planted in afraid-to-fire-people land now.
s/insights/experience...but you're right, they are clearly beyond saving in this area.:-)
>hugely successful juggernaut of a company
Uhh, yeah. You mean a very rich, successful company. And a company that is going to have one jacked up corporate culture in 15-20 years. We're still waiting to see how that part's going to develop. These companies get so big so fast, full of so much hot air, that we end up paying a creativity tax years down the road as they raise service fees to pay for all the middle managers who got in while the getting was good.
Sure, right now they're a big successful company with a lot of engineering divas and XKCD readers who think that they can literally do anything they want in life, and every door is open to them.
From my experience, immature corporate policy just feeds this crap. Individual personalities will differ; I'm sure there are some fantastic people there. But I'm talking not about money, or about individuals. I'm talking about the company's personality. How deluded it is. How many people are going to get cut once the hubris levels come down a bit. How long they can do no evil when they can't even publish guidelines for duplicating a graphic logo (that I've been able to find...)
>Maybe you should stick to lecturing the indecisive hippies in your class.
Yeah, sure. And you stick to heckling the lecturers of said hippies.~
Slashdot Mirror
Twitter reminds me of hearing people shout to each other in a crowded place, making sure to make not-so-vague references to how cool they are.
@chad: My cell phone cam sux so u can't tell I'm wearing that $200 T-shirt
@all: Anybody know where I can pick up some gaiters? I'm doing Mt. McKinley this weekend
@cybercheese: I know what you mean. I use Gentoo too, and it totally rocks
(which are all lies, of course)
I use Photoshop and teach it professionally. *You* should not be insulting people who actually use GIMP by making those ridiculous claims. Sure, I've heard maybe one or two GIMP users say they think it's a perfect replacement for Photoshop - completely out of ignorance. But can I tell you how many Photoshop users I've seen who use their Photoshop license-purchase as a reason to bash GIMP without any real experience backing them up? And MOST of them are laughing a bit, then looking at ME for cues that they should keep laughing!
That's not professionalism, that's just mindless consumerism. People like me use Linux day in and day out with Photoshop in a VM because we've decided that if our generation won't put things right as a group, we will do it as individuals. THUS your complaint about many different distros, THUS your complaint about no MSDN. You want your MSDN but you probably despise the virii that come with its core experience. >:-)
First somebody wiki-leaks our super-secret church manual all over the internet. THEN, somebody lets fly a hint about our secret conspiracy network, in what can practically be called a press release to everyone on the internet.
Please, TELL me how we are supposed to run a good conspiracy IN SECRET with all this stuff going on??? Give us some elbow room here, people!
return sarcasm;
How did you get modded up for not reading the parent's comment? That's weird.
They all do a mixture of both, like any photographer would - printing work sometimes, for competitions or art shows, and using their tools of choice for web graphics and website updates at other times. BTW, you know that GIMP's "niche printing issues" would almost never bother a photographer, right? They are not going to be doing pre-press stuff, and most involved with that sort of printing report back to me that their pre-press people keep asking for JPEGs, which...is what it is, I guess.
The pre-press people I know who would really hate life with GIMP are just about as niched-in as they come, working at places like talented-but-failing T-Shirt printing companies. And I would absolutely hate their job; I watched some friends in that niche use Photoshop once, and it was absolutely painful. I would NEVER in a million years expect serving this niche to be one of GIMP's main priorities.
20-25 per class, 10 classes per year, over 2 years so far, yes (they would still be more or less anecdotal if you really want to pursue that path), and yes. (WHY did I just answer your essay in my spare time? not sure)
I think you may be misunderstanding the power of the TANSTAAFL culture, looking at the rest of your comment. From my POV, people like to verify their consumer DNA from time to time; having a Photoshop box on your shelf and a subscription to an overpriced graphics magazine actually does count for something when all the friends come over.
The most impressively-professional student I had so far was also one of the most ridiculously impressive examples of TANSTAAFL ignorance that I've ever met. He also couldn't figure out how I could design websites with a free text editor and get around paying for Dreamweaver somehow. It felt cheap to him.
...I didn't mean to imply that the food I had during my recent visit to your country was really that bland. :P
I can understand a professional pooh-poohing GIMP, because I've taught Photoshop to professional photographers now for a couple of years, and they love to try GIMP out for a couple of days and then add it to their software sh** list.
Overly flexible use of the word "professional" is the problem. Out of all of my students who can be considered professionals, I've noticed that my students who started out with GIMP and keep using it alongside Photoshop after they learn Photoshop are, as a rule far more professional than all respects than their peers. The people who stick with Photoshop and crap all over GIMP after a short trial period tend to be one or more of the following: 1) spoiled, 2) inexperienced, and 3) exceedingly ignorant of fundamental image editing concepts. In other words, Photoshop is not their tool, it's their job. So instead of spending money on hardware like fast computers and nice cameras, they're dropping major cash for overpriced Adobe seminars and services, not to mention upgrades.
My GIMP-loving students seriously tend to kick butt. They know how pixels and bit depth really work, even if they don't have the bit depth to work with in GIMP. So their results shine regardless.
When I used to live in Russia, there was this incredibly gifted computer hacker who lived in the flat above me. He used to charge my mother and I about half a day's pay just to come back into the flat at night, because he was able to cyber-electronically control the entries to the building.
We would sit at work all day, not worried about the industrial chemicals we were breathing so much as this new, digital threat that went beyond our powers of imagination. Though we were strong physically, and even had local mafia connections of our own, this man with the thick eyeglasses, tight jeans, and a sort of mangy, even putrid smell about him, held our lives for ransom with nothing but a few keystrokes and some Zholz Cola.
Sorry, just kidding...I never lived in Russia. But the whole idea of this article seems a bit funny to me.
Microsoft to government: "You made the economy SUCK dude"
Government to MS: "So go make some money, that's like your JOB"
MS back: "OK but the economy SUCKS so bad that we're going to start low-intensity patent wars all over the place so we can start raking in dough and building precedents so we can make MORE money later, so don't sue us, k"
Government: "FINE just stop complaining about us and make your stockholders some MONEY morons. And give us a lot of money while you're at it"
Dear Sir,
I am writing in reference to the "Chinese Exploit Kits" you mentioned on the Slash Dot on 18 February. Please inform me if you have further information on availability of these kits.
I would also be interested in subscribing to your newsletter.
Sincerely,
TheModelEskimo
Right, no, I was talking about ba'al, the god of /., in fact one of the few who survived the dot-com crash
Oh SURE, his informative gets updated to "funny" just after I post a super-serious response. That happens every time I talk to Raelians about UFOlogy, too. They start out with this serious look on their face, then at the end of the discussion they're laughing about it like we all live in some sort of a big comic book. On to the next victim, I guess. Religion has been saved this time.
Really? You're modded +5 informative for a question that gets answered in the first week of any non-denominational, even atheist-leaning comparative religions course? You might start with Victor Frankl and continue from there. Or just GOTO 10 and troll again...I mean, religion-bashing seems to get you great mod points around here, and none of it (that I've ever seen) even approaches 200-level college material...
I find the color screen necessary for comic books, some HTML reading (like computer graphics books), and definitely for showing photos to friends. I could do everything in shades of gray, but I wouldn't consider it until the screen resolution hit at least 160dpi. Even then, I'm sure the goal of e-paper manufacturers will be to go 100% color-capable. I don't see B&W devices, like B&W monitors, sticking around any longer than necessary.
I just spent a week in Boston with the PDA mentioned above. I read and played games the entire flight over, then read every day until I left, and played games and read again all the way back to California. I had about 45 minutes of battery life left by the time I arrived at home. I took my charger but I never used it. So for every anecdote about battery life, I guess there's somebody who opted for the battery that fit their needs in the first place.
>point
"Selling" point is more like it. e-paper by itself may be comfortable to read, but I found that page loading lag more than outweighed that on the 1.0 Kindle I tried out. Those who are interested in the real-fax-quality feature are free to pay the price, though...
Oops, cut my reading paragraph out but never pasted it. I meant to address the issue of reading - having looked at a Kindle and played with it (NOT the 2.0 version, mind you), I found I preferred the reader features I found on my PDA, especially those that come with uBook. Way too many to mention, but I've tweaked the thing to the point where even my picky graphic designer tastes for things like line spacing (leading) and text hinting are accomodated.
>For straight text the Kindle is still the strongest Ebook reader out there for text.
.lit to just about every format out there. Great support via ebook sales sites (which I never use, being a big fan of PG)
Sorry, I have to disagree there. Looking at the oldest PDA I have a Dell Axim X3i, which I use almost solely for eBook reading, here's what it's got:
-eBook reading via at least 5 different programs for different formats - everything from RTF and TXT to HTML to zipped HTML to CHM to PDF to
-Wireless internet access
-Internet surfing (Pocket IE, but on my intranet or at my public library it's super-convenient)
-Note-taking and audio note-recording
-MP3 playing
-One week's worth of usage (extended battery)
-NES Games and normal PDA games
-Japanese Kanji dictionary (something I need)
-Astronomy applications for night-time viewing
-Alarm clock that wakes me every morning with the Mr. Rogers theme
-Music composition software (oops, yes, I am a musician)
-Lightweight, small form factor
-Religion-related software (you might not need it)
-...probably other things I missed...
Price:
-Dell Axim x3i on eBay: $75
-New extended-life 2000mA battery $25
-Hard case (life-saver): $15
-2GB SD Card: Already had one
I use this with my Linux laptop by loading everything (.cab files for app installs, etc.) via the SD card.
This is why I don't own a Kindle already. I'm guessing the PDA will last me another 2-4 years. I wouldn't recommend a PDA like this for somebody who's a daft idiot or a usability nazi that ruminates about friends not being able to use their device to look up a phone number when they're lying under an overturned bus, but for Slashdotters with guts and a bias toward making things work, it's perfect.
So...what about my post said that the apps resulting from an easier way to tweak widgets would have to be inconsistent? For every five GTK apps that are wonderfully consistent, I can find you at least one stinker, one horrific mess up that should go back to the drawing board.
But so what? That doesn't say anything bad about GTK regardless. A toolkit is just a toolkit, and it can't enforce interface guidelines. The GNOME people have a good set of guidelines, and the only thing some new features would bring is the need to adjust guidelines to make sure they're up to date. In other words, no news here.
And I don't see you saying that because Trillian sucks, people shouldn't be allowed to use C++.
Or, because some choose to paint their house in garish colors, should we stop selling so many paints? No.We just establish reasonable guidelines for the neighborhood.
Anyway, back to Google Reader, which is far better than any RSS desktop client I've yet used...
Jakub Steiner has recently been wanting access to a CSS-type method of styling GTK apps rather than using the traditional widget-mangling stuff. I totally agree...in fact, look at some of the web apps out there that have already far eclipsed desktop applications in visual design, usability, and just overall experience.
If the desktop is going to make a comeback, things like this JavaScript effort and ideas that have their roots in web-team-on-a-deadline-style efficiency are going to have to be ported over to toolkits like GTK.
I guess Adobe Air and whatnot are trying to enter this arena, but I'd like to see other toolkits that are more widely used gain these capabilities.
BTW, I'm not talking about making every desktop app look different from another. I'm talking about coming up with a "look" to apply consistently - just one that actually looks good.
"over than." sigh. I hope this vista upgrade finishes soon so I can go to bed.
I don't get it. If you make like $129K or $121K, why don't you just say so, rather than this "over than" stuff? I don't think anybody's going to look at that and think, "hey, maybe he makes $900K! He did say *over*, after all!" That and you're posting as AC, which shouldn't make it a big deal... :D
I worked for a place that gave interviewees - right down to the front desk secretary - an IQ test.
I was hired as part of a sort of package deal (they were stuck with me regardless of IQ, lol) but I found it incredibly scary that this company judged their employees by an IQ test.
For the record, the employees at this company were no brighter than at any other company I've worked for. I had lunches stolen by employees, and the top non-C-level earner in the company was a wreck, taking just about every medication in the book to keep up with the stress. In fact, the company was almost universally hated by the people who worked there, but the pay seemed to be sufficient for them to stay.
What the IQ test came down to was, the guy at the top who was administering the test was constantly reminding everyone in private that he hadn't met someone yet who had a higher score than him. He was defending his little piece of ground, pyschologically speaking. And he was the type that, had he met someone with an IQ higher than him, he probably wouldn't let that person alone until he found a deep character flaw or piece of trivia they didn't know about.
The company had previously gone through related lawsuits, so it's surprising that the collective ego of those at the top was so great that even such a poor hiring policy escaped scrutiny.
Personality testing strikes me as a rather good idea, but it also seems to indicate that corporations are firmly planted in afraid-to-fire-people land now.
>Clearly the lack of keen insights such as yours
...but you're right, they are clearly beyond saving in this area. :-)
s/insights/experience
>hugely successful juggernaut of a company
Uhh, yeah. You mean a very rich, successful company. And a company that is going to have one jacked up corporate culture in 15-20 years. We're still waiting to see how that part's going to develop. These companies get so big so fast, full of so much hot air, that we end up paying a creativity tax years down the road as they raise service fees to pay for all the middle managers who got in while the getting was good.
Sure, right now they're a big successful company with a lot of engineering divas and XKCD readers who think that they can literally do anything they want in life, and every door is open to them.
From my experience, immature corporate policy just feeds this crap. Individual personalities will differ; I'm sure there are some fantastic people there. But I'm talking not about money, or about individuals. I'm talking about the company's personality. How deluded it is. How many people are going to get cut once the hubris levels come down a bit. How long they can do no evil when they can't even publish guidelines for duplicating a graphic logo (that I've been able to find...)
>Maybe you should stick to lecturing the indecisive hippies in your class.
Yeah, sure. And you stick to heckling the lecturers of said hippies.~