Posts by that one in the corner

Photoshop FOSS alternative GIMP wakes up from 7-year coma with version 3.0

> "GNU Image Manipulation Program" is clearly a backronym invented to justify an edgelord ableist slur.

> backronym

They were choosing ONE LETTER to go with the "IMP" they already had, rejected "X" and then remembered a word from a film.

> clearly ... invented to justify an edgelord ableist slur.

"edgelord" - (shakes head at the depths being plumbed)

"Justify a slur"? Citation needed. You have definitive proof that they were in a situation where the word was used as slur, that they knew that and that thery deliberately and willfully decided to go with that interpretation? Citation most definitely needed.

You *may* have had a reasonable case for saying "a group of people, I do not know how large it is but I am one, prefer not to use this word in any context and wish to see the program change its name".

But now you are making such unjustified and unproven allegations that you lose all credibility in this matter.

Re: [citation needed]

> So it was quite literally a backronym; starting with the BDSM term and working backwards until they came up with something remotely justifiable to fill it

Working backwards - ONE LETTER that they were deciding upon!

Apparently, the word started out as a slur, then it became used more often to refer to the sexual goings on and, of course, nowadays, is also used to refer to a pretty neat piece of software.

Words do change their meaning over time and we could just let the oldest usage slide into oblivion, but there are those who are determined to keep that in the forefront of our minds.

>> I have never heard it used in that way in the 54 years I've been on this planet

> (references in dictionaries)

> you should probably look it up first before commenting

There are many defintions of words in dictionaries, recording the myriad ways they have been used in the past and in the present; being able to demonstrate a dictionary definition of a word indicates nothing - not a sausage, nada - about whether somebody has ever come across that usage of the word.

> Saves you looking like a gimp.

As would responding to what somebody actually reported in their comment.

Re: ZERO attempt to make GTK4 backwards compatible

Whups - mouso. My comment (currently immediately below yours) was meant to be a reply to this.

Re: names

> It's just easier and less confrontational to choose a non-controversial name in the first place, especially with busy clients who make snap judgements and then move on - often without even telling you why.

If it is truly that damaging to you, yet still a useful enough program to have around that you feel the urge to complain so strongly, you are - and always have been - absolutely at liberty to make your copy no longer announce itself as "GIMP": a few minutes work with an editor on the binary will do the trick, and change the menu/shortcuts of course, if you do not feel up to rebuilding from source.

If you decide that you are going to distribute copies to your clients, all you need do to satisfy the licence is to put the editing into a little script (bash or bat or ..., depending upon your chosen platform) and supply that to them alongside the modified binary. You can even get together with like-minded souls and "start a project" - heck, so long as you go about it sensibly, you might even manage to get your little editing script added as an extra into the mainstream repo, to be used by anyone who wished to. After that, who knows - it may even become the norm to do so. Go on, Be The Change!

As you haven't claimed to have taken steps to fix "the problem" yourself - or I'm sure we'd've heard you complaining instead about the annoyance of having to do that - then it is starting to sound like this whole situation with your supposed clients is - vastly overblown.

Recompiling against a new major version number is expected.

Having to *finally* get around to removing your calls to those bits of the API that were marked as "deprecated" 4 years ago - yeah, ok, guess we gotta.

Looking through the API change log for Good Stuff (that we can put into our dev plan and take care to think about) we'll see a few more things that are *now* marked "deprecated" - ok, put those into the dev plan (but probably use the new stuff first, as that'll be visible to Users and justify our new release).

All of the above, fine and dandy.

But - well, that isn't *quite* the way that the GNOME people think. Have a look at the other comments here about the forced changes to the UI. And to illustrate just how "helpful"(!) GNOME devs are, have a read of their plans announced back in 2016: “Gtk 4.0 is not Gtk 4” … and that’s OK:

> Meanwhile, Gtk 4.0 will not be the final stable API of what we would call “Gtk 4”. Each 6 months, the new release (Gtk 4.2, Gtk 4.4, Gtk 4.6) will break API and ABI vs. the release that came before it. These incompatible minor versions will not be fully parallel installable

Yes, they were *planning* both API and ABI breakage with point releases, on a 6 month schedule. Doesn't seem like much of a reason to try and track point changes in your own app, you'll never get anything else done!

JASC did manage to slow PSP down with their - let us say, ambitions - but that is nothing compared to what Corel have done to the poor thing! I have a collection of PSP versions going back over the years, but managed to get stuck on PSP8 (far too new!) after being handed files that seem to need it.

IrfanView is definitely always the first call (when on Windows): double-click and - tada! PSP8 - how can it take so looong to start on this PC?! Did I really have that much patience back in 2003?

More fool me, I did buy a PSP 2021 licence - but at least it was from Humble Bundle, in the $1 bundle IIRC (higher tiers being Corel Painter etc - yikes!). For a giggle, I just clicked on the 2021 shortcut, waited, waited, waaaited - and then WinDbg appeared. Hokay. IrfanView it is.

Re: names

The best way to "defuse"[1] a word is simply to keep using it in another situation, one that clearly isn't in any way attached to whatever the perceived "bad" meaning is, until that is the first thing that comes to mind.

The people who try to ban or otherwise hide a word are (deliberately or not) only letting the word keep any power to insult that it (once, may have, in some part of the world) had.

[1] sorry, there must be a better phrase for that; it isn't "reclaiming", that has other implications, but it is the same basic mechanism at work.

Re: [citation needed]

At the risk of being pedantic (!) it started out as the "General Image Manipulation Program", a student project, it was changed to "GNU ..." after it started to grow and the authors talked to Stallman; this is all described in their interview for The GIMP Gazette in 1997 they "also tossed around XIMP (X Image Manipulation Program) following the rule of when in doubt prefix an X for X11 based programs".

All of the main points about this are still in the GIMP documentation on its website: A Brief (and Ancient) History of GIMP.

But, yes, the released versions have always been spelt the same way.

Re: GTK3!? Oh no!

It is sort of unfortunate that GTK is no longer under the control of the GIMP project - it is just weird hearing over so many years how GIMP isn't compatible with the latest versions of The GIMP ToolKit.

Accenture: DOGE's federal procurement review is hurting our sales

The GSA's guidance would determinate contracts

"Would make the contracts determinate" or "would set determinate limits/values/whatever on/in the contracts" or ...

Or do you think he has just said the the GSA would "terminate" any non-critical contracts?

With grammar like that they deserve all they get.

Feds charge three over Molotov attacks on Tesla sites in multiple states

Re: Why not ...

... just park your Tesla for a service or drive it around outside a few times?

Obviously, you want to avoid any harm to people, just to the buildings, so you take care to 'phone in and warn them that there is a Tesla nearby and the threat that poses. Except that making that 'phone call is an act of terrorism.

Which raises the question, how do you legally book a Tesla in for a service?

Re: Double standards?

> The protest at the Capitol was directed at the government. ... If you look at the First Amendment, it specifically states the right of the people to protest and petition the government for redress. It is there in black and white.

You seem to have missed out an important word there, so let's have a look are it in black and white (well, whatever colours your browser does hyperlinks in); emphasis added:

>> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

("petition" means a written request, so again, peaceably - you aren't allowed to use the box of signatures as a literal bludgeon).

Weeks with a BBC Micro? Good enough to fix a mainframe, apparently

Re: "I think that transducer has incorrect coefficients"

Or recognising the half-built Interocitor shoved in a corner.

Seriously, did *anybody* get the full set of screwdrivers needed for that thing?

Oracle JDK 24 appears in rare alignment of version and feature count

Re: Lawyer safety

The JDK is dual licensed, one of which is GPL. The other is Oracle's commercial licence, which removes any "risk"[1] from using the GPL.

If you already have a copy under the GPL, you can keep using that copy.[2]

Oracle are at liberty to stop dual-licensing on a whim, for the entire JDK: the next point release need be nothing more than a licence change.

You old GPLed copy - gets older. As an individual, you may not care. Which is fine.

[1] Remember, it isn't LGPL, it is GPL - no linking your code to a library (or a JVM) unless you want to GPL your code as well. The "CLASSPATH exemption" may be sufficient, but be very, very careful checking that. Safest just to pay Oracle.

[2] if you intend to pass a copy on to another party, be sure to download everything you need to pass on to them - Oracle aren't responsible for letting them download any missing bits.

VA IT contract cancellation DOGE boasted about ... was due to end in 10 days anyway

> Libs sure are funny.

Exes are hilarious, dlls are satirical - but objs are miserable buggers and makefiles are obsessed with dependent relationships, it's no joking matter.

> It's a shame so many are in IT.

Well, we've tried setting them to work on the farms (build, that is), but now things are rusty, which causes its own problems.

Re: When they realise that DOGE cut out the meat

Scary idea[1], but OTOH the recruitment poster writes itself, assuming he wanted people with experience:

"Ex gov? GovX!"

Although that line would be the only good(ish) thing that could come from that idea.

[1] but believable, fitting in nicely with his current strategy of buying State governments one by one, then to be paid to own the federal government - and without all the fuss and bother of being elected. Which he couldn't be, of course.

What could possibly be done in the last 10 days of a multi-year contract anyway?

Well, apart from all the tidying up and finishing any handover that hadn't been completed, signing off this that and the other, ensuring that both sides have all the legal paperwork completed and rushing around to find those missing TPS Report Cover Sheets so everyone is happy that their organisation won't be caught out by any loose ends come the inevitable audits.

Crossing all the 't's and dotting all the 'i's as they say.

Oh, and maybe triggering any early-termination clauses and reparations.

I'd also suggest they'd miss out on a Last Day get together, where all involved individuals get together and (hopefully) celebrate a Job Well Done, but there are - certain parties around here - who would then just denounce that as wasted expense, despite the clear future value of individuals - as well as companies - parting friends and remembering each other later on when there something that needs doing and they just happen to remember old wozzisname from that job three years ago...[1]

[1] then again, too many companies - and other groups - miss out on those sorts of advantages and just let the connections drop; more fool them.

Ubuntu 25.10 plans to swap GNU coreutils for Rust

Re: License @Rich 2

> One can't make someone put a license on their copyrighted code, just because they've put it in a publicly accessible place.

Very true. The problem is that Rich 2 is repeatedly saying *here* that he wants people to be free to do what they want with his code but he also states that he is explicitly *not* saying that in the code itself. Which just sems rather contrary.

> that's cause to contact the copyright holder and enquire as to what licensing terms might be granted

That can also happen, very true. But you also expect to see the author making that offer first, so it would probably have to be an exceptional circumstance where anyone would consider trying to make that contact. If they even have usable contact details.

> probably counts as "fair use"

Careful, that is not a universally accepted term (really, it is just a US concept and definitely has no meaning in the UK).

> that can not be changed after the fact..

I still use PS/2 keyboards every day, and have spares for when these go phut. With a tiny little USB converter on the plug.

A PS/2 to USB converter is - and always has been - way, way cheaper than getting a new keyboard of decent quality, the sort of thing that might be considered in need of future-proofing.

Re: License @Rich 2

As has already been pointed out to you, by placing a copyright notice on your code you have explicitly stated that nobody is free to use your code (bar for satirical purposes and other "fair use" cases - in those jurisdictions that provide for "fair use", which is not universal).

Having done that, the *only* way you can allow anybody to legally use your code is to give it a licence. Al of the cases I mentioned (and others) are simply those situations where the putative code user has to be deen to be acting in accordance with the law.

You have commented here in a way that makes it clear you have deliberately created this situation - and yet you then declare that wishing to be law abiding is some "artificial constraint". One can only pray that you do not hold a professional position, as that attitude could be very career limiting if you apply it at work as carelessly as you do for your code.

> needed the ability to type faster than 1000 keys per second!

Not so much the geeks (let alone the nerds) but the gamers: get your base to fire at a kHz rate and those Space Invaders are going down!

Re: License @Rich 2

> But I don’t see a need for a license. Licenses are what company lawyers fret about.

So your intent is to release code and prevent companies from using it? And also to prevent anyone who doesn't mind companies using their code from making any use of your code? And possibly any post-grad work that is intended to be published and shared. Definitely not anything that anybody hopes to spin-off from academic work (obviously, as that goes straight into the "company" category).

But without having to bother actually, you know, writing that out explicitly, just leaving a trap for the unwary.

An interesting approach.

Still, at least you avoided the trap of saying that you had released your code into "Public Domain" :-) It gets bothersome having to point out that PD is not a worldwide concept.

Tesla Cybertruck recall #8: Exterior trim peels itself off, again

Re: Glue?

Well, Musk has a good supply of those nowadays; just gotta stop Donald getting them wiped away.

Re: "environmental embrittlement"

Vertical rain? NO! Don't leave your cybertruck in the rain!

US tech jobs outlook clouded by DOGE cuts, Trump tariffs

Re: Spending

Just the simplest point, as I don't want to confuse you more:

> What contracts? We were talking about credit cards

When you are a Big Boy and learn about credit cards, you will find that they involve you in a contract.

> Again I have no idea what you are talking about

Go back and read your own posts. Ask an adult to help.

Re: Spending

> From the link in your post-

Did you not spot that that is the link from *your* post, all I did was add the hyperlink markup that so eludes you?

> Couple that with the the link I originally posted...

Which doesn't add anything extra, does it? Other than a straightforward statement of the issue: "Job cuts and economic uncertainty are hurting the local economy, the new analysis suggests."

> That seems to be the implication of DOGE reigning in the cards showing a visible economic effect on the local DC economy.

Ah, just so long as it is having an effect, no matter that the effect on the local econom

>> As indicated by DOGE's own silence over whether cancelling these is going to save a single buck: "The department, however, did not say how much money the federal government would actually save by deactivating these cards—a question that was asked over and over by X users responding to the department's announcement."

> Instead Bank of America has pointed the finger at DOGE cuts for the local credit card spending dropping enough to be economically visible.

Yup, just sidestep actually answering the question - have there been any savings made at all by DOGE's wasteful and profligate use of taxpayer's money to cancel these contracts?

> Awesome. And that <5% seems to have a noticeable effect on the local DC economy then.

Awesome? Government workers see DOGE spaffing funds on pointlessly cancelling these cards, which shows once more how little thought is put into DOGE's actions and causes, not surprisingly, Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt amongst those government workers - with the very predictable reaction that they are pulling back from spending on all but the very basics.

I could ask just *why* you are so happy that people are cutting back on such spending and the resulting damage that that has on the local economy - why are you happy that DOGE's actions are damaging the lives of the people who just happen to be working in the shops, the restaurants, the cinemas. Those people are The American People - aren't they the ones that DOGE is supposed to be helping?

Still, at least you've dropped your fantasy claims that these cards were only supporting spending above the government workers' wages.

Re: Spending

DOGE Cuts Off 200,000 Government Credit Cards: What To Know - ok, now what in that do you believe indicates that government workers are getting any stipend for entertainment, restaurant eating or anything at all other than use

All that is in there is, again, the indication that DOGE is wasting money to cancel cards that are unused (or whatever they define as "unnecessary" - strangely undefined): and as has been pointed out before, <5% of the cards issued have been cancelled, which is a triviality from the point of view of running the departments. As indicated by DOGE's own silence over whether cancelling these is going to save a single buck: "The department, however, did not say how much money the federal government would actually save by deactivating these cards—a question that was asked over and over by X users responding to the department's announcement."

But, no, ignoring totally what the news report *you* have linked to actually says, you are somehow - and we all note that you haven't tried quoting from that article - bending it to mean that all these credit cards - these UNUSED credit cards - were somehow being used to pay for restaurant meals AS AN EXTRA to the employee's wages.

So, precisely what part of YOUR citation backs up YOUR claims?

Come on: give us a quote from the article you have cited.

Re: Spending

>> Or you seem to think that government workers should only get enough pay to cover the absolute basics."

> Wtf are you talking about? They get a wage, this is on top of.

What, you are now claiming that government workers have been getting extra stipends, above their wages, for going to restaurants - dare I say, but: Citation Needed!

And then, oh dearie me, we're back at this sort of foolishness[1]:

>> If your job does not pay you enough to budget any discretionary spending on entertainment

> Are you claiming they dont get paid enough for their work?

No. You == codejunky. This is obvious from the fact I was responding to - and directly quoted - a line you wrote about your claimed job. And you were soliciting for donations for your entertainment budget. From a poor AC who doesn't even have the funds to afford a proper nickname on The Register - is there no limit to your shame?

[1] Here, let me help you. Start with this:

See John. See John Run. Run, John, Run.

Re: Spending

> . But you seem to think on top of that the nations taxpayers should fund the local economy of discretionary spending on top of the wage.

Or you seem to think that government workers should only get enough pay to cover the absolute basics.

> I have a job just as they do... So why dont you send me some money for my entertainment?

If your job does not pay you enough to budget any discretionary spending on entertainment, you ought to spend more time on it rather than putting so much effort into posting here.

Time to ditch US tech for homegrown options, says Dutch parliament

Re: @MiguelC

"Same with the climate change debate which the reg now doesnt have any debate"

How about we "Teach the controversy" then?

UK's biggest mobile operator starts 3G switchoff, hopes it won't catch out April fools

> in the north they don't use cellular

Too modern for us, cannae lad; if dipole is small enough to into t'attic, let alone in't coalhole, then we'll be having none of it.

Chimera Linux ghosts RISC-V because there's no time for sluggish hardware

You're confused?

Pity the poor Chimæra itself - made up of three different parts and the goat in middle breathes fire: must be hell on the other two if it snores!

Breathes fire: so that'd be the gaming goat, Devuan the bold lion biting into systemd, leaving - um, a snake in the grass distro, shedding its RISC-V skin.

Names, bank info, and more spills from top sperm bank

Re: this hacking news is hard to swallow

'Ere, I was writing with that!

No, no - you can hang onto it now.

Crew-9 splashes down while NASA floats along with Trump and Musk nonsense

Re: actually, n0

You forget, Bob USUALLY SHOUTS ENOUGH to be mistaken by pollsters for an entire township of pollees, crying out in unison.

Re: Trumpistan?

Don't mention Trumpton!

Da Don will only misunderstand "Pugh, Pugh" and before you know it we'll be in laser live fire situation.

'Once in a lifetime' IT outage at city council hit datacenter, but no files lost

Re: Only one thing could have made local councils in the UK worse....

This all went on in Loxley House - so this is what happens when the Sheriff wins and kicks out Robin from the ancestral pile, we are left with nothing better than the effete Norman sensibilities. No more the stout hearts of the Sons of Wayland[1] and the Daughters of Boudicca.

[1] ok, he is Germanic and a bit Norse, but close enough.

Re: a risk assessment has been carried out and it was deemed safe to hold the meeting

You need my new paper, with rounded corners.

Just ignore the Apple lawyers.

Re: Did they try turning it off and on again?

> You usually test turning off one IT system

You usually test - inadequately, in that case.

> It's very rare that you test turning off your entire IT estate and then bring it all back online.

Because, as we all know, losing electric power to an entire building - or entire section of the local grid - never happens. On the contrary, systems only ever lose power one at a time.

(Haven't bothered counting how many power cuts our locality has had so far in 2025, definitely more than four; probably ought to put the UPS stats onto a dashboard. Add that to the list).

Show top LLMs some code and they'll merrily add in the bugs they saw in training

Re: rather than anything that might be described as intelligence

> you would not believe the grief I get for saying that elsewhere

There is a time and a place...

"Are you the expecting Dad? Come quickly!" "It's multi dimensional!" "Mummy, you're sure you want him here?"

"Excuse me, sir, but is this your vehicle?" "Markov Chain!" "Of course, sir; now blow gently"

Do AI robo-authors qualify for copyright? It's still no, says appeals court

Re: Of course it's Stephen Thaler again.

Maybe he is cleverer than anyone knows: he has already solved "upload the human mind and live forever" and is now making sure he can still make a living from within his shiny metal carapace.

Flang-tastic! LLVM's Fortran compiler finally drops the training wheels

I found a book on Fortran in an academic bookshop in Brighton and just read it for fun (!) before I had any access to a computer. When that did come, it was in the form of CESIL, which was a bit if a let down.

At Uni, we did do some Fortran for a few weeks, mixed in with use of the four-colour pen plotter to jazz things up a bit: at last, my book learning paid off and my room got a few machine-drawn posters.

As a post-grad, Fortran really came into its own: you could be paid for teaching it to the undergrads!

France offers US scientists a safe haven from Trump's war on woke

Re: les queer studies?

> that taxpayers are funding

Citation?

User complained his mouse wasn’t working. But he wasn’t using a mouse

Re: Bright and warm days

Harlan have you been waiting to ask that?

(Icon: Soldier)

Re: Confused Mouse

I've seen a serial mouse for a BBC Micro have its DIN plug squashed onto the composite video BNC connector("well, they are both round"). Apparently it fell out a few times but then they got it to stay, before complainng it didn't work.

I would have laughed, but they were borrowing my computer and peripherals!

GCC 15 is close: COBOL and Itanium are in, but ALGOL is out

> It could also matter if one were trying to put this stuff into a CI/CD pipeline.

I'll admit that I've never been involved in anything that was claimed to be "CI/CD", the closest I've come is just having an automated build machine keeping a beady eye on the master source repository and firing off a fresh build whenever there is a commit. As soon as that build is done, everyone would be (able to) use ths outputs. Across various teams and projects, the first using RCS because CVS was still not invented.

In none of those setups, the build would take "generate C then compile the C"[1] in its stride - the worst issue being making sure you knew how many C modules were going to be generated.

Given that, can anyone say if Liam is right and such transforms, generally or in particular with respect to GnuCOBOL, why a CI/CD pipeline would have trouble?

[1] In this context, nothing special about C of course, and the generating pipeline could be anything required: take a Pic file, use it to generate a BMP, convert that to hex and wrap it into a C static array - of course, these days you'd do your watermark logo starting from SVG...

> the ghastly two-level syntax used for description was impenetrable to anyone trying to learn the language,

I found myself reading the Wikipedia page on W-grammars earlier today and I remembered why my lecturer thought I'd be intrigued by it; little things like

> The consistent substitution used in the first step is the same as substitution in predicate logic, and actually supports logic programming; it corresponds to unification in Prolog

Yay! Your grammar representation is insanely powerful, could itself be used to write complete programs (but not in a form that most programmers were used to) and, as a formalism for defining a language, having your grammar being formally undecidable is - not really appreciated. Yes, you want something more powerful than Backus Naur, but it is posible to go too far...

The only ALGOL variant I've actually coded in (so far - the compilers mentioned in TFA are in the notebook, one day, Real Soon Now) was SIMULA-67, which was great fun. Shame I never got to use in the outside world, but it was a good introduction to OOP.

Re: OMG - COBOL

I, for one, was overjoyed to get hold of the Forth-83 ROM for my BBC Micro. So much easier than loading the cassette Forth into the Atom and '83 had a round-robin task scheduler, great fun. A lot easier to write library code in than BASIC, even BBC BASIC.

But then again, I also enjoyed using the microProlog ROM so was clearly having a masochistic streak at the time.

> Algol-68 is the only language that I've been formally taught.

Ah ha, we have an expert among us! Come in, come in, welcome to the party.

Um, do you think you could take a look at this? (lifts fanfold to show a nasty little rash of syntax errors) I looked it up on the web and I may have twisted a W-grammar.