Why did I just read an article about using an iPod that was clearly written by someone born in the early-mid 2000s? I know the original ipod was fun. I was there, gandalf
I've never understood it, but there's a lot of gatekeeping when it comes to older products. Some people think they have more rights to enjoy a product they knew existed for longer and it's really strange behaviour.
I see a lot of younger people wondering why so many people my age liked this or that and it helps to have it in context. Like "what's so great about half life? Every shooter ever is like that!" Ah, but you see, my young friend, that's now. Everything is like Half Life because Half Life changed the landscape. Not really gatekeeping, but you do lose a lot of what made a thing special if you're only looking at it without the historical context.
Why do people get frustrated about that? Someone is experiencing something for the first time, it's the circle of life.
I'm in my mid 30s and my wife bought a record player during the revival of records last decade. Do you think older generations than me found that frustrating? Personally I think it's fascinating to watch technology go full circle generation by generation
Interesting discussion to have witnessed as an outsider.
Is an article written for a a writers expression or a readers enjoyment. (Both?)
I dont think they where frustrated with the writers enjoyment but rather disappointed that the article was a first discovery opinion rather then a veterans rediscovery from a modern point of view which would have been more useful to reflect their own opinion and thus be more personally entertaining. The negativity goed inwards perceiving it as a waste of their time.
Great analysis, you're got it spot on there. It's frustration from learning nothing new from something they thought would be interesting. That probably all boils down to bad the title of the article not being descriptive enough.
To be fair, the 2600 is 47 years old, you'd have to be 52 at a minimum to remember it launching and 42 to remember the NES. I just remember loving my Atari 2600 all the way in the 90s.
I'm 42. I always got systems later than other kids. The Atari was in the house ever since I could form memories, and I finally got an NES in 1990, when the SNES and Genesis/Mega drive were on the horizon.
Then the Atari was already very old by the time you started forming memories, so it would have been your parent's generation. It was 4 years old when you were born.
Naw, no hate. iPods are fuckin rad. Younger generations should definitely get to enjoy older tech. But the author’s observations weren’t really anything I needed to invest my time in reading. I know old iTunes had a visualizer. I don’t know why I read the whole thing anyways
So we can laugh at the fact that they can't find a simple 1394 to USB cable and instead rely on daisy chaining a hundred dollars worth of apple products to make it work...
I didn't buy those adapters, I just used a computer that had a FireWire 400 port. I haven't found any evidence of those direct USB cables working with old iPods.
Yeah, the destructive editing and lack of a content aware fill is made me stop using it and go back to Photoshop. Krita also seems more usable these days in the FOSS world. The name is a lot easier to fix than those missing features, though.
the UI for GIMP is so horrifically bad that I basically refuse to use it. Not like, on principal or anything, if it improves i'd be happy to give it a shot, but because every experience I've had with it has been pretty immediately negative, and finding solutions to problems I have seems more effort than its worth. I want gimp to be good, it's a mature piece of software with a lot going for it, but it also feels like its design is kind of up its own ass, in a sense? It's weird.
It's funny that one thing I really liked about it was the floating windows and toolbar. Then everyone complained and they brought it all together. But now people I work with using software that we pay nearly a million dollars to license are getting all excited becuase they introduced.... floating windows.
The thing is, floating windows were absolutely useless in the age of 13 - 17" CRTs. On modern ultrawide or even just conventional widescreen displays, they make far more sense.
Normally I wouldn’t take comments like this to heart. But I tried the latest beta recently after maybe 15y and wow. You’re totally bang on. I was stunned how bad the UI was. How bad the app was. Upon reading this, it all just sort of makes sense.
I’m sad things are so bad on the Linux front that this is the most highly rated design tool. Linux community deserves better.
The sad thing is like, it's an INCREDIBLY mature piece of software. It's well regarded for a reason. But if a piece of software requires that I fight with it to get it to behave how I want, that maturity has zero value at all. It kind of feels like a microcosm of Linux itself like 10-15 years ago, when I was tinkering with it in middle and high school. It's functional, but it asks you as a user to change how you think about using something like it in the first place while also forcing you to make concessions that seldom seem worthwhile.
And if Linux at large can get there, with things like proton and flatpak and Wayland and mature desktop environments and whatever else, gimp can too. But it seems like it's got a contributor base of people that like it's weird eccentricities, and take the UX development companies like Adobe and affinity (now canva) have invested and just shirked it on principal. And like, I get having an aversion to those sorts of companies/projects/developments, there's a lot of dark patterns there that are concerning. But I also feel like the kind of Linux user that defends and possibly enjoys GIMP in its current state is content fighting with their machine and the software on it, and forgets that there's value in taking joy in interacting with your computer. Good UI and good UX are implicitly valuable (not to mention the accessibility benefits, but that's a whole different conversation), and I feel the FOSS space forgets all of that completely. It's a shame.
Yeah spot on. It’s pushing 30. And what’s even more wild is that a road to good UX has already been mapped out. By Sketch. By Figma. By Photoshop. By Pixelmator. By Infinity Design. The list is endless. I haven’t seen anything stay so bad. In fact when I used it some 15y ago, I felt it to have been better than it currently is. The UI was at least close to Ps, which is actually quite intuitive (or used to be around 2019).
UX is gold. I used Sketch for work (we have Macs at the studio) and then were forced to switch to Figma. Since Figma is electron, it can’t hook into the OS like Sketch can. That meant the loss of edge snapping, specifically the handles on the vector lines. I felt that tiny itty bitty little loss in my bones. It made using Figma as a whole belaboured in comparison to Sletch (which I feel is near the pinnacle of UX).
Adobe Ai is also a good example of bad UX. That app is so backwards in the way it works and so eclectic in its feature deployment that you can’t just jump into it like you can say Ps. It feels like say Blender without any 3D knowledge.
There's always been a real stick in the mud attitude with GIMP. No matter how many people cry out about it's confusing UX it's always tried to serve the existing userbase rather than design to expand its usefulness to more people. I think this is a shame and is why GIMP never achieved what Blender has.
I remember trying to use it the best part of 20 years ago when I wanted to make animated gifs. It was so hard to use it was easier to pirate photoshop/imageready. Then a year or so back I tried to use it as I had moved to being a Linux user and was kind of astonished that the UX was still so bloody hostile.
I don't think I'm a moron (though how many morons do... so take this with a pinch of salt) but trying to figure out how to do basic things like cut and paste, cropping etc. without reading documentation just goes hellishly wrong. Any time I take the time to follow a guide on how to use it I'm taken aback by how unintuitive it is and once I'm done I forget it's idiosyncrasies immediately.
I remember "gimpshop" being a thing at one point, which I never got to use but heard it used the processing of GIMP with a more photoshop like UX. Though I believe that project lapsed.
Anyway, yeah it'd be nice in a world where things like GNOME have become such beautiful UXes that projects like GIMP have the courage to revolutionise themselves.
Having spent ages trying to adopt it and failing like 20+ years ago it's just crazy to me that every time I give it another chance, it still doesn't have non destructive editing and is still a non-intuitive UI from hell. It feels like they want it to be like this.
You might have missed the news, Affinity sold out to Canva. Really sucks, Affinity was the only truly good alternative but I put it in the mental "never touch" category immediately when that happened.
This really isn't the article it wishes it were :-\ It kinda reeks of "I've picked a thing I want to argue and now I'm going to make up an argument for it" down to admitting that good sources aren't available (which makes me wonder whether there are no good sources at all or just no good sources that support the author's argument).
Bonus unpoints for the BDSM reference, just because I hate seeing that term held up as a negative or scary kind of thing and I feel like and/or choose to believe that's the point in such an unprofessional article, rather than simply meaning "Look, it means sex stuff and that's unprofessional." So there. Nyeh! 😝
Also, I don't think I've ever heard anyone who actually used or contributed to the GIMP (or intended to) complain about the name. I'm interested in seeing some actual data on that, if there is any. Personally I wouldn't particularly mind a name change but I can't say whether it'd get more attention and interest than it'd lose to irritating people accustomed to the current one.
Literally the only times I've heard anybody say anything about it was basically when they first learn about it and giggle for a few minutes, then get on with their lives.
I think the only way the name could be any sort of issue was if they were explicitly trying to be "family friendly," which would imply that it's intended for either christian mothers or advertisers (we all know how the children feel about sex jokes), which, since this is Lemmy and we're talking about FOSS software, I'm sure I don't have to explain why that's a stupid idea.
To add to this, I've been using GIMP on and off for a decade and I've never given any thought to the name. It's all capitalized. I didn't think it was a backronym, I thought it was just an acronym.
I've used this in professional settings (I used to work in academic molecular bio), and I was very evangelical about it. Especially because we're not doing high-level artistic work, we just sometimes need something for processing microscope images or making graphics for scientific publications.
I'd say to any and everyone, "You know, you don't have to pay an annual subscription fee for Photoshop: there's this free, open-source program called GIMP that does most of what you need and you don't have to pay a thing! Want me to install it for you?"
I didn't even think to be embarrassed about the name, and no one ever seemed to care in conversation. As others have said, the bigger impediments are people's attachment to commercial software and interface challenges. This is just an absolutely silly complaint to make.
the author of the article wrote an article a while ago about how they think steam is enshittifying and becoming bad because they got rid of mac support and some people didn't like steam in the 2000s, so I think this person just takes controversial opinions randomly and writes about them.
As far as the article goes, the word gimp isn't necessarily seen as problematic because of its sexual reference but rather as a derogatory term for disabled people. And just because many people agree that they don't care, doesn't mean we shouldn't care. Democratic decisions fall flat when they deal with issues of minorities. The large majority of people doesn't care about disabled people. So basing ethical considerations on the majority's opinion is really no good idea. Same goes for other discriminatory language and slurs where always the same arguments are presented. I think the article does a great job of portraying the gatekeeping biases of such discussions.
Idunno where you got the idea that I'm for slurs or against disabled people but it's kinda insulting, especially when you took "sometimes said as a derogatory word" and ran it like it's the whole point or the article over the complaint that got its own paragraph (the Pulp Fiction bit) and shared the same sentence the disability bit is in, or the one that got the whole rest of the article (that it's vaguely unprofessional). In fact I'm getting more irked every time I go look for evidence that I've misinterpreted it. Reading through a couple crap anecdotes to one that actually says something, we get a VP smirking at the name, which makes me wonder whether that person's just a hateful prick smirking at a disability term or one of the many who giggle at any reference to anything associated with sex. The other three are just "some people dislike the name." I conclude that the article does not take issue primarily with the name being an abusive term and wonder why you'd say that.
I muchly dislike careless use of abusive terms (I've probably got an essay or two ranting over the usage (and existence) of "crazy" and "insane," for example) so I really don't disagree that abusive terms should be treated much more seriously.
My entire point was that the author seems to be throwing things at the wall hoping something sticks, not seriously worrying some spooky scary BDSM critter (hi, it's me :3 ) is gonna tie them up (of course not, the ropes are for me :3 ), nor that anyone's getting bullied by the tool's name or it's irritating old wounds or really anything at all. I don't think they're taking any of this seriously. If the term's abusive in a way that can't be neutralized by taking it from abusers and making it something else (an arguably valid thing to do) then that's worth actual serious discussion and not just part of one sentence in a six-page essay.
tl;dr: The article barely even mentions anything about disability and, I think, does so more as an excuse for itself than out of any serious concern for anyone. My complaint/point is, to be clear, exclusively that the article is crap and not that abusive terminology is okay. The article has failed to demonstrate any actual problem with the name itself other than handwavey "some people say" that it's vaguely unprofessional.
It seems like the consensus of this thread is that the name isn't holding it back. That was my thinking going into it, but the article makes some very valid points such as the name (being related to a sexual and sometimes derogatory word) making it a non-starter in some organizations.
I have it installed on all our computers at work for basic image editing, but we're a small business and never gave it much thought. I can absolutely see it being problematic in a school setting, however. More to the point, Adobe has ably demonstrated: get them hooked on your software in school and you'll dominate the market. Imagine if kids had been learning GIMP instead of Photoshop all these years.
Anyway, I've got no dog in this fight. Just pointing out what I see as a valid point in the article.
Also, I like their original name possibility of IMP much better. The mascot could have been a cute little imp instead of ... whatever it is now.
My very large organisation has Gimp available for basic image manipulation. I've tried to get them to use Paint.NET instead, but nooooo... Apparently we like hitting nails with jackhammers around here
I mean it's just a browser. Bit of fiddling with the saved password and your go to go again to never look back. If they value their users they will improve again like Firefox did in the background over years.
I only hope a good search engine will appear again. I don't like the alternatives.
Surely anyone who feels that it’s an urgent problem can make a fork which is fully identical in every way except for the logo and name and branding
Since the amount of effort that would be required for that would be infinitesimal compared to what was already done to make the software
And then produce all these good things which you say are being held back
Or, wait, did you mean you wanted someone else to do that because you feel that it’s super important enough to insist that someone else should do it but not important enough to do yourself?
As I recall someone made the same lame argument about the name being divisive, a fork was created called Glimpse and it fell on its face not long after it was formed.
Things like this are a waste of energy, nobody cares that it's called gimp.
Yeah, I mean glimpse seems fine; in general it seems completely fine if someone says "hey I think this is a problem for some percent of people who have weird priorities in life because they are corporate or weird thinking, I support the idea to solve it and make a friendly name for them"
It's just that if the response is "yeah that percent of people are not our problem, we just want to make this project and we did, thank you and good day", then you need to be able to say "ok I will make the fork to fix it then" instead of writing up a big blog post demanding that they need to obey you on what your opinion of the priorities for their own project should be.
I mean, just because you don't care doesn't mean nobody does.
If I was running a school where students with physical challenges attended, I would not feel comfortable asking them to use software called Gimp, so I would just avoid it.
That said, I would avoid it anyways in favor of Krita, I'm just saying.
Plenty of words have multiple meanings, but I rarely think of them when I'm using a word to mean a specific thing. I know the meanings of gimp, but I never think of them when using GIMP; perhaps because it's capitalized and I always assumed it stood for something (and it does).
But anyway, and more importantly than that, what you describe is a problem that you might run into with any word.
A small subset of the world population can view it as an insult, but for the vast majority it means nothing. Sort of like the word "negro" in Spanish, which some English people take offense to when they hear it. I even searched "gimp" in 3 different search engines, and the first 2 to 5 results were always the GIMP. Most people have no other concept for the word.
Let me put it this way: you say you'd favor Kira, but how do you know that there aren't some kids in Egypt, or Russia, or someone else in the world, that take offense to the word "Kira"?
The name holds it back more than you know. No EP or AD wants to put "The GIMP" on their software list for a project. I have to have a conversation with someone ensuring we're good on all our licenses, and they ask, "What is this GIMP thing?" Answering it makes me sound like an unprofessional jackass. The company would rather just pay Adobe.
I don’t even want to tell people I use it because of its name. I would never bring it up in a work setting in this day and age when I look at Slack and see everyone list their pronouns.
The fact they haven’t clued into this is just wild to me. A shame it throws the work of so many people under the bus.
Also, to call it after the Pulp Fiction character is insane to me. Let alone that everyone on the team signed off on it. What were the second choices? Diarrhea? Herpes? Like dafuq.
Or some edgelord trying to get people to watch 2 girls 1 cup back in the day. The scene in the movie was deeply disturbing. It actually made my partner at the time cry because she had been SAed before. Even for me, I did not enjoy and while the movie was amazing, the scene only took away from the film (I know the entire thing was hyper violent and disturbing).
I can’t even imagine referring to it let alone thinking back on it fondly. I always thought GIMP was an acronym. This news shook me because I’m actually on the contributor list.
Also, I would never admit its origin in this day and age. I’m still in shock learning this!
I guess you can't quantify how much the name has helped it. How many people remember it because of its quirky name. Without knowing both numbers it's hard to know if it's a net positive or negative.
No one. No one remembers it fondly because it’s got a “quirky” name. That’s not how software works. People use software because it’s useful. Not because it’s edgy or has memorable branding. I would rather a competent design tool period. The name is irrelevant. We aren't selling cookies or an energy drink. We are empowering people to get things done. You think your spoon with a hole in it is going to sell because you call it “Faggot”?
Most of the world does not have English as a first language and thus the meaning of the word "gimp" is not widely known. Personally I do agree that the name is dumb, but it's a very English as a first language issue. My daughter is learning to do basic stuff with GIMP in school because it's free. The name is not an issue because nobody knows what a gimp is.
I'll use the cliche meme of "I was today years old when I learned where the name comes from". Just made the connection when I read this article, and I love Pulp Fiction.
But I too am not a native English speaker. Just always accepted the clunky acronym as the reason for the name.
Great explainer about the changes, and reasons why it actually behooves Google to continue to allow ad blockers in some form. All that said...this still reaffirms my decision to go Firefox, always and forever, to get the most complete privacy options.
The problem is considerably smaller if you consider that the software is used by a lot more people than English speakers (both L1 and L2+). For these, "gimp" is not some sex stuff, but rather that critter chewing on a brush. And even for L2+, the word "gimp" is often missing from our vocabs.
As others said in this thread, the actual problem holding GIMP back is called user interface. It has improved, but it's still awful.
I am not a native speaker and I never associated gimp with a sex meaning, even if my vocabulary is pretty expanded.
It could be called "DesirePix 2.0" or "SeductionStudio 4.0" but the main problem is that it gives a worse user experience than using Adobe Photoshop 5.0 on windows 95, on every single aspect. Features, speed, UI, ease of use, and so on
Disclaimer: it's not that I'm denigrating the devs, making a program like gimp is super fucking hard and as a lousy programmer I could never be able to make it better. Ideally, it would need some talented designers to develop a more usable UI.
I see comparisons to photopea, but that's a UI clone of Photoshop and that is not really wanted. It also didn't come with technical debt from the 90s
Definitely not. Gun ownership should be abolished like slavery was. A knife has good use for cutting and cooking, but a gun, especially in private hands, has absolutely no reason to exist.
Plus it's kind of impossible to understand how you see police brutality and the way they responded to the George Floyd protests and think, "Yeah, these guys should be trusted with the only guns in existence."
Like have you already forgotten about Uvalde? If the cops hadn't been there to cower behind their cars and stop people rescuing their kids then less kids would've died.
First: Is "every redneck yokel and his dumb brother is allowed to own an arsenal" in anyway better than a government monopoly in that regard?
Second: This would of course need properly selected and trained policemen, not those trigger-happy yokels that the US uses instead.
My position is from a country where "Police Brutality" is seen as an American or other third world country thing. We don't allow every random idiot to own a gun. We have properly trained police. We therefor also don't have issues like Uvalde and George Floyd. For an American, it is hard to draw a straight line between those factors, but in the rest of the civilized world, it is the standard.
So sorry for assuming you were talking about the US when you talked about school shootings.
I come from a country like that too, but if you think police brutality doesn't happen in your country then again: political bubble.
Go ahead, tell me what country you're from and I'll burst it for you.
I used to say the same thing about my country, Australia, where they've recently been imprisoning whistleblowers who expose clear government abuse. EDIT: They've also been doing racist colonial violence since day 0 and they have never stopped.
There is no such thing as a state that can be trusted with violence. They always use it to oppress.
You provided exactly zero reasoning for most of your statements and have now taken a condescending position. People like you are why we can't have nice things in the world.
I prefer basing my opinions on logic, arguments, and facts over feelings. Your inability to articulate a response to certain arguments shows why this is still a debate. Further, you're relying on the idea that something is crazy to you, therefore it should be to everybody, but that's not how it works. There's racist people that use this exact type of reasoning to support their racism.
E.G.
"Black people are less than white people"
logical counterpoint
logical counterpoint
"WTF do you need a reasoning that black people are less than white people"
If your position is really stronger, then it shouldn't be hard for you to make arguments in favor of it.
So you completely accept the state’s monopoly on violence
That's the whole point of the state. And no, you guys are not fighting the US army with its armored vehicles, rockets, bombs, drones, etc. with your guns.
The Joyful Journey: Finding Fun in the Humble Car Tire
In the realm of fun and recreation, the car tire might not be the first thing that comes to mind. Yet, in its simplicity lies a world of enjoyment waiting to be explored. From childhood games to creative DIY projects, the car tire has proven itself to be a versatile and endlessly entertaining object.
One of the most enduring uses of the car tire for fun is in outdoor games. Picture a group of children in a neighborhood, gathered around a worn-out tire lying on the ground. Suddenly, the tire becomes a portal to adventure as they engage in a game of tire rolling. With a simple push, the tire sets off, rolling down streets and alleys, chased eagerly by its young owners. The thrill of competition and the joy of movement unite in this timeless activity, fostering friendships and creating lasting memories.
Moreover, the car tire serves as a key component in many classic playground games. Who hasn't experienced the exhilaration of swinging on a tire swing, soaring through the air with the wind in your hair? The tire swing epitomizes the essence of carefree fun, offering a sense of freedom and weightlessness as it arcs back and forth. Similarly, tire obstacle courses challenge both physical agility and mental acuity, as participants navigate through a series of tires laid out on the ground, testing their speed and coordination.
Beyond structured games, the car tire also sparks creativity and innovation in DIY projects. In the hands of a skilled craftsman or artist, the tire transforms into a canvas for expression. From colorful tire planters adorning gardens to funky tire ottomans enhancing living spaces, the possibilities are as diverse as the imaginations that conceive them. Repurposing old tires not only reduces waste but also infuses a sense of whimsy and character into everyday surroundings.
Furthermore, the car tire's versatility extends to the realm of sports and fitness. Tire flipping, a popular exercise in strength training, challenges individuals to lift and flip heavy tires, building muscle and endurance in the process. Meanwhile, tire drag races offer a dynamic and engaging way to improve speed and agility, as participants sprint while pulling a weighted tire behind them. These unconventional workouts inject an element of playfulness into traditional fitness routines, motivating individuals to push their limits while having fun.
In addition to physical activities, the car tire lends itself to artistic pursuits, such as tire painting and sculpture. Artists around the world have embraced the tire as a medium for their creative visions, transforming ordinary rubber into extraordinary works of art. Whether adorned with intricate designs or repurposed into striking sculptures, these tire-based artworks captivate audiences with their ingenuity and craftsmanship.
In conclusion, the car tire may seem like a mundane object at first glance, but upon closer inspection, its potential for fun and enjoyment knows no bounds. From childhood games to DIY projects, from sports to art, the tire proves itself to be a source of endless amusement and inspiration. So, the next time you see a discarded tire lying by the roadside, don't overlook its potential for fun – seize the opportunity and embark on a journey of joyful exploration.
easy enough to resolve, since the G stands for GNU just pronounce it the same as that, and since GNU stands for GNU'S not UNIX, it pronounces G the same as GNU, which pronounces G the same as GNU, which pronounces G the same as GNU, which pronounces G the same as GNU, which pronounces G the same as GNU
Firefox auto-updates with the snap version, whereas it doesn't with most package manager versions. So if it updates while you're using it, it won't let you open new tabs without restarting it (Firefox, not the machine), which can interrupt your workflow. On other distros, that only happens when installing updates manually, which isn't an issue because you're aware of it.
This is second hand info though since I don't use Ubuntu, so YMMV.
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