Posts by sid1950

GIMP open source image editor forked to fix 'problematic' name

An interesting issue. I've been using GIMP exclusively for about 15 years. Before that I used PhotoShop. Before that CorelDraw, and QuarkExpress. In the commercial software / hardware world advertising is most important. Back in the early days of computers there would be conversations along these lines:

Tech guy: I think we need a Guild xxxx for this project.

Procurement guy: Is it made by IBM?

There was a joke: "What is a computer?", "A big blue box with IBM on the side."

For me the name GIMP hasn't been a problem. 30 odd years ago one of the regulars in my local pub was a young woman with Cerebral Palsy. She was smart and funny, and worked as a software engineer for a security company who specialized in the banking sector. She liked to come into the bar on a busy night and shout "Make way for The Gimp!" very loudly".

However, like a lot of FOSS, the practice of naming applications in a humorous way is great for those who understand, but really difficult for those who don't. GIMP actually stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. Now try to explain GNU! "Its an iterative acronym, it means Gnu is Not Unix" Collapse of stout party! I don't mind trying to explain all this. My experience with computers goes back to 1968! I know and understand most of the history. So in this case, while I will probably continue to use GIMP because I understand and like the UI, I will follow the development of Glimpse with interest. If I'm still around in 10 years, who knows I might be using it then!

I will only ask one thing, please try to use QT for the UI! I use OpenSuse as my main desktop distro with KDE Plasma for the desktop. I consider myself a power user, and I can make it do exactly what I want. For laptops I use LUBUNTU. It works on all my devices, including a 13 year old MacBook. What I have found is that with the newest versions of both distros, QT based apps worked better on Ubuntu, than GTK on OpenSuse, in terms of the amount of dependencies needed. If you have all the needed dependencies installed GTK on rpm, or QT on deb are both seamless. It's just that my experience is that the latest version of QT works really well on deb, without having to have the whole KDE backend.

One other thing to mention here. GIMP is the go-to for the film industry. It was used by WETA for the Lord of the Rings & Hobbit. The reason? Being FOSS, they can write their own plug-ins. The graphics world is being divided into two camps. A commercial camp where procurement is dictated by the "know-nothing" bean counters, and the professional world where the users dictate, and FOSS will eventually rule. I'm retired, after spending 25 years as a Video Editor (initially Video Tape Editor!) and still have friends in the industry. All the London FX houses use FOSS. They all have Linux server farms for rendering. Workstations are either Mac or Linux. Some versions of Avid or FinalCut Pro editing software may run on a Windows workstation, but there are a lot of high-end editing, FX and color grading apps that now run on Linux. And the editing software that I preferred and still regard as the Rolls Royce of editing apps, Lightworks, is available for all platforms. So I have the free version, and use GIMP and Blender for captions & FX.

End of rambling! Good luck with the fork.

Harvard freshman kicked out of US over OTHER people's posts on his social media

Re: So to gain entry into America you MUST......

That doesn't always work. I have a friend who is a geologist and works for an American petrochemical exploration company. His wife is also a geologist and is a professor at a prestigious UK university. She is an expert in plate tectonics and travels round the world giving lectures and attending conferences. Both are White, British, and nominally Christian (attend weddings, funerals, Christmas and have there children baptized). They are now both retired now.

About 10 years they traveled to the US so she could attend an international conference. She was held up by your "Border Patrol" for nearly 5 hours. The reason? She had a stamp in her passport from Iran. Why? In 1987 there was an international geophysics conference int Tehran. Why there? It was the only place that both the Russians (USSR) and US would agree to let there people attend! In the whole world! Her interrogators could not understand this. Eventually he rang his contact at the university holding the conference, they rang a contact at your State Department, the issue was escalated to a fairly high level, a bollocking was issued over the phone, and she was allowed to enter. That is the last time she has visited the US despite numerous invites. She could get a new passport without the stamp, but why should she?

The US seems to have become a Police State without anyone noticing.

Large Redmond Collider: CERN reveals plan to shift from Microsoft to open-source code after tenfold license fee hike

Re: Rock, hard place etc.

Do you know that HTML and the World Wide Web was invented at CER?. Do you know that all the control software, and the data processing software used by the LHC was designed in-house? Nearly all physics is done with Open Source. The place where Windows is used is on the desktop, but I notice that most of the screens you see in control rooms are running Ubuntu or some form of Unix.

Uh-oh .io: Question mark hangs over trendy tech startup domains as UN condemns British empire hangover

Re: Our special role.

Actually the US asked for the site, and they wanted an indefinite lease. The whole thing was done "on the nod", in other words no proper treaty's. The UK just took it from the islanders, and handed it over to the US. I don't think the US is paying the UK anything.

Dozens of .gov HTTPS certs expire, webpages offline, FBI on ice, IT security slows... Yup, it's day 20 of Trump's govt shutdown

Re: Comparison

Oh yeh? How nice the GOP was when Obama was in power! How much help they gave him to pass the things he campaigned for! To use an old Scottish phrase, much loved by Billy Connolly, "Away and F*cking boil yer F***ing Heed! The noo!"

Amazon Prime Music turns the volume down a little too much

Prime Unlimited

I have Prime Music on my Fire TV and that is working at 14:33 in London, UK. Also works on my desktop.

Python joins movement to dump 'offensive' master, slave terms

Historical context

This is an interesting issue. I spent time in the past, "de-gendering" official documents. Personnel ads, staff contracts, club constitutions, promotional material, and such. I always went for simpler, as long as it was unambiguous.

The history of the terms Master and Slave go back a very long way in history. Some of the earliest writings, which seem to be mainly lists of possessions for the purposes of taxation, makes reference to slaves. It was not until the mass kidnapping of Africans for the sugar and tobacco industries in the Americas that the idea of "race" was introduced, giving the terms their modern connotations. I don't know how far back the English words go, but I would think the terms existed in early languages. Certainly they are there in ancient Latin and Greek.

I've never really understood the use of Master and Slave for HDD's. If it referred to having synchronised spindle rotation, then it would make sense as the terms have been used in servo's for at least a hundred years, but it doesn't. Wikipedia has this:

"In parallel ATA hard drive arrangements, the terms master and slave are used but neither drive has control over the other. The terms also do not indicate precedence of one drive over the other in most situations. "Master" is merely another term for device 0 and "slave" indicates device 1."

Any attempt to remove the terms is going to be fraught with problems. Do we need to make it an international standard? That could mean the US imposing it's view on the rest of the world. Do we grandfather in everything before a certain date? There are a lot of uses in the engineering world, including other than servo's. On the railways, locomotives used in multiples have one with a driver, and even if that is not referred to as the "master", all the other loco's are "slaved" to it.

In electronics, would Primary and Secondary suffice for most uses? I think whatever terms are chosen an attempt should be made to synchronise them with other usages. Thought should be given to standardisation, otherwise we are going to end up with not just multiple terminologies in English, but translations into other languages could become quite fraught if the terms translate badly. This is a good example of the unexpected hilarity that ensues when two people for whom English is not their first language try to make puns! https://youtu.be/9reSQXZy77U

However you proceed I wish you the best of luck, and will watch with interest.