From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V12 #208 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Thursday, June 12 2003 Volume 12 : Number 208 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Safari, so good [Capuchin ] Re: Re: Squidelicious! and the pinhole eyes of the nautilus ["Stewart C. ] Re: Safari, so good [Capuchin ] Advanced text editing in OS X ["Gene Hopstetter, Jr." ] Re: trying to respond to several digests at once... [Jeffrey with 2 Fs Je] Bad vibes, good vibe, confused vibes... ["Rex.Broome" ] Re: Advanced text editing in OS X [Ken Weingold ] RE: Bad vibes, good vibe, confused vibes... ["Rex.Broome" ] Re: Cool PeeCee [steve ] Re: Cool PeeCee [stevetalkowski@mac.com] Re: Safari, so good [Steve Talkowski ] RE: Safari, so good ["FS Thomas" ] RE: Safari, so good [Eb ] Re: Safari, so good [Capuchin ] RE: Safari, so good [Capuchin ] Re: Safari, so good [stevetalkowski@mac.com] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 15:03:04 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: Safari, so good On Wed, 11 Jun 2003, Steve Talkowski wrote: > On Wednesday, June 11, 2003, at 03:41 AM, Capuchin wrote: > > Use the free software over the commercial, regardless of which is > > better suited for the job. > > Sorry, but I'll take Photoshop over GIMP any day. Man, I was JUST (as in moments ago) talking to a friend about much I prefer using the GIMP to Photoshop. I had to use Photoshop on a contract job a week or so ago and it was so tedious and frustrating! Do you realize it's just about totally unscriptable? > > The way you do things matters at least as much as what you do. > > uhm, yeah - that should be somewhat obvious. Well, I guess if you're whole raison d'arte is creating little animated ditties for mall consumption, fostering a culture of secrets, mistrust, and greed is pretty much a prerequisite. After all, if it weren't for the copyright industry, you wouldn't have a job. So buying software is more of a "you scratch my back" deal. J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 18:04:24 -0400 From: "Stewart C. Russell" Subject: Re: Re: Squidelicious! and the pinhole eyes of the nautilus Tom Clark wrote: > > Excellent! As a kid I did this, but with a > cylindrical oatmeal container. being all grown up, I use the tubes from bottles of Laphroaig, Glenlivet and Balvenie. But none of them have worked as well as the CartonCam. It's ironic, but having spent several thousands of dollars on some of the finest/fastest lenses you can buy, I'm having the most fun with a cardboard box and a bit of copper foil with a hole in it. Stewart (don't worry, I'm not going to paint the insides of eggshells with liquid emulsion and use them as cameras, like that barking guy in the Renner book did.) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 15:10:45 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: Safari, so good On Wed, 11 Jun 2003, Eb wrote: > I'm generally quite happy with OSX, though I haven't landed a copy of > Jaguar yet. No more system freezes...yay! Random quibbles, off the top > of my head: [snip] > 5) As the single user of my computer, I find all the > administrative-permissions stuff kind of a hassle at times. Everytime you connect to the internet, you have those permissions to thank for your system and connection's protection form outside invasion. The idea is that remote users may gain access through your connection, but are unlikely to gain privileges other than the privileges of the user managing the connection or running the applications. As long as you keep a separate account for system administration and a regular, unprivileged account for everything else, you're pretty safe. Oh, and also, any kind of virus or something (which may not be in the wild yet, but OSX is becoming popular enough that you just might start seeing them soon) will only have your permissions to destroy things. If you can't write to it, the virus can't modify or delete it. J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 17:11:21 -0500 From: "Gene Hopstetter, Jr." Subject: Advanced text editing in OS X Eb sed: > 3) I hate TextEdit, as opposed to good ol' SimpleText. Open Terminal. Type "vi " and drag the file you want to edit to the terminal window. Hit Enter. Now *that's text editing. Bet you can't do *that* in Windows XP. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 18:52:07 -0400 From: Steve Talkowski Subject: Re: Safari, so good On Wednesday, June 11, 2003, at 06:03 PM, Capuchin wrote: > On Wed, 11 Jun 2003, Steve Talkowski wrote: >> On Wednesday, June 11, 2003, at 03:41 AM, Capuchin wrote: >>> Use the free software over the commercial, regardless of which is >>> better suited for the job. >> >> Sorry, but I'll take Photoshop over GIMP any day. > > Man, I was JUST (as in moments ago) talking to a friend about much I > prefer using the GIMP to Photoshop. > > I had to use Photoshop on a contract job a week or so ago and it was so > tedious and frustrating! Do you realize it's just about totally > unscriptable? What are you talking about? Photoshop has automating task features, such as Actions (most commands and tool operations are recordable and can be played back), Droplets (an app that applies an action to one or more images and can be used cross-platform), and External Automation using OLE (Windows) or AppleScript (Mac). What type of graphics work do you do that requires total scripting? >>> The way you do things matters at least as much as what you do. >> >> uhm, yeah - that should be somewhat obvious. > > Well, I guess if you're whole raison d'arte is creating little animated > ditties for mall consumption, Nope, not entirely throughout the course of 16 years. Oh, and an Academy Award nominated feature film, an Academy Award winning animated short, and high-end film FX work is a far cry from little animated "ditties"... > fostering a culture of secrets, mistrust, > and greed is pretty much a prerequisite. How do animated films foster secrets and mistrust? You lost me there. You won't find me disagreeing that the big studios are all about the bottom line - money - but plenty of good art has been created in this fashion, it's not exclusive to the film industry. > After all, if it weren't for the copyright industry, you wouldn't have > a > job. Care to elaborate on this rather ambiguous remark? Be careful not to implicate yourself when doing so. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 18:19:54 -0500 From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: trying to respond to several digests at once... Quoting Natalie Jane : > > >I find that my feelings about an artist's music often vary depending on > my > >feelings for the artists personality. > > It kinda depends on the artist. I mean, knowing that Jay Farrar and > Stephin > Merritt are assholes is disappointing - I'd like to think that every > artist > I like is someone I'd want to meet - but I love their music so much that > it > really doesn't matter to me ultimately. I think one reason I try not to allow perceptions of whether so-and-so's an asshole to influence my liking their music is that...I don't know them. Yeah, you can read over and over again how (say) Steve Albini's an asshole...but as we discussed in another context, the press needs hooks, and once established (Strokes/VU) it's very hard to dislodge. For all I know, Albini was an asshole once or twice to some journalist (who themselves may have been an asshole), and every since then, Albini tops the asshole list. I dunno - it could be that you, Natalie, have met Farrar and Merritt several times, and they've consistently proven themselves assholes...but if not, I wouldn't assume. Failings are magnified in the public eye - just imagine yourself at your worst behavior, and imagine the whole world ended up knowing about it. None of this, of course, is to deny the possibility that Steve Albini really is an asshole: that's a pretty consistent record he's built up... ..Jeff, wondering if this post includes the word "asshole" more than any other fegpost... J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html :: it's not your meat :: --Mr. Toad np: s/b Frank Zappa "Broken Hearts Are for Assholes" but isn't. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 16:47:02 -0700 From: "Rex.Broome" Subject: Bad vibes, good vibe, confused vibes... Nora: >>Also Affliction is far bleaker than the Ice Storm. At least the Ice Storm had >>some momment of humor. Just imagine the bleak tone you get at the end of >>the Ice Storm. A better comparison would be "Sweet Hereafter", which, like "Aflliction", is based on a Russell Banks book. "Affliction" was still darker, I thought, since "Sweet Hereafter" at least had multiple (if equally harrowing) viewpoints, which seemed to spread the misery around. Mind you, SA is about the aftermath of a schoolbus-load of kids drowning in an icy lake, and I saw it before I had two kids of my own, so I might well flip-flop on those opinions if I reviewed both films right now. > Man, what an asshole. Does this sneering smuggness carry over into your > real life or is this just an online pose? Hold on, they never finished voting on the asshole thing. Quail said no, Tom wasn't sure, and... oh, wait, you weren't talking to me. Never mind. Sorry. _____ Natalie: >>Knowing that an artist is a cool person, however, does tend to make their >>music more enjoyable to me. Like, Wayne Coyne just seems like a nice guy, >>you know? And I liked the Lips already, but that knowledge is just icing on >>the cake. Y'know, this is really true. I always enjoy stories about artists I like being decent, or, almost as good, down-to-earth human beings. In the same category, I love it when I find out someone whose work I admire a lot shares some weird bit of backstory with me; I'd been obsessed with Throwing Muses for years when I found out that Kristin Hersh had a kind of similar background with an appalachian folk-singer father and stuff (nb. at this stage in her career those roots are obvious, but it was not ever so). That kind of thing sort of validates whatever intangible vibe attracted me to the artist's work to begin with. Yeah, when I can get good music and warm fuzzies at the same time, it make it feel good to be alive. _____ Jeme: >>I can't say that I'm sneering, but I've been called smug. I get along >>really well with some pretty great people, though. This right here? Is a pretty confusing assertion to parse. This is what I got from it, although YMMV: gere's someone kind of saying (paraphrased, which is always dangerous): "I might in fact be kind of a jerk, but I seem to interact well with people who in my judgment are not jerks, but do bear in mind that they are only 'not jerks' in my own admittedly potentially jerkish judgment. However, also note that even in said jerkish judgment I am capable of seeing how I myself might be considered jerkish, which lends an air of objectivity to these views". And as pretzel-like as that construction already is, it actually says very little about the speaker's character since it's actually quite easy for unpleasant people to "get along" with the surly, seeing as how the difficulty in the interaction doesn't come from the pleasant people. Pleasant people who can get along with jerks are a much rarer commodity. So the statement boils down to "I have patient friends who put up with a lot of my shit", and even that is self-evident since if these people weren't willing to put up with the guy they wouldn't be the guy's friends anymore. Makes my head hurt. Rex "whew, the heat is off, for now" Broome ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 16:43:12 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: trying to respond to several digests at once... On Wed, 11 Jun 2003, Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey wrote: > I dunno - it could be that you, Natalie, have met Farrar and Merritt > several times, and they've consistently proven themselves assholes...but > if not, I wouldn't assume. I don't know who this Farrar person is, but I'm pretty sure Mr. Merritt still lives here in town and so does Natalie, so the odds aren't real bad. J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 16:55:52 -0700 (PDT) From: Mike Swedene Subject: Cool PeeCee Saw this on screen savers.... http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2735479725&category=179 with the guy's websight: http://www.junkmachine.com/ Enjoy! herbie np -> "Bells, bells, Bells" Christmas In The Stars (Star Wars Christmas Album) now surfing in Safari ===== - --------------------------------------------- Rebuilding my websight: http://www34.brinkster.com/bflomidy/ _____________________________________________ __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM). http://calendar.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 21:01:59 -0400 From: Ken Weingold Subject: Re: Advanced text editing in OS X On Wed, Jun 11, 2003, Gene Hopstetter, Jr. wrote: > Open Terminal. Type "vi " and drag the file you want to edit to the > terminal window. Hit Enter. > > Now *that's text editing. Huh. All that does is paste the path to the file. Or do you mean to drag the highlighted contents of the text file? > Bet you can't do *that* in Windows XP. Actually, there is a vim port to win32. :) - -Ken ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 18:13:28 -0700 From: "Rex.Broome" Subject: RE: Bad vibes, good vibe, confused vibes... ME: >> Mind you, SA is about the aftermath of a schoolbus-load of kids drowning in >> an icy lake "SA" of course standing for "The Sweethere After", I guess. It's a good film, too, in case I was unclear on that point. - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 21:06:26 -0400 From: Ken Weingold Subject: Re: Safari, so good On Wed, Jun 11, 2003, Capuchin wrote: > On Wed, 11 Jun 2003 UglyNoraGrrl@aol.com wrote: > > Wow! That has to be the most annoying, pompous thing that I have read > > in a long long long time. > > That's nothing. You should read some of my posts in the archives. Jeme, that is one of the best things I have ever seen you say. :) - -Ken ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 21:13:24 -0500 From: steve Subject: Re: Cool PeeCee I like this one - - - Steve ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 22:54:00 -0400 From: stevetalkowski@mac.com Subject: Re: Cool PeeCee On Wednesday, June 11, 2003, at 10:13 PM, steve wrote: > I like this one - This one's pretty cool too: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2729209921 And look, it's very own page! http://www.apple-juice.co.uk/lego/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 22:57:18 -0400 From: Steve Talkowski Subject: Re: Safari, so good On Wednesday, June 11, 2003, at 06:03 PM, Capuchin wrote: > On Wed, 11 Jun 2003, Steve Talkowski wrote: >> On Wednesday, June 11, 2003, at 03:41 AM, Capuchin wrote: >>> Use the free software over the commercial, regardless of which is >>> better suited for the job. >> >> Sorry, but I'll take Photoshop over GIMP any day. > > Man, I was JUST (as in moments ago) talking to a friend about much I > prefer using the GIMP to Photoshop. > > I had to use Photoshop on a contract job a week or so ago and it was so > tedious and frustrating! Do you realize it's just about totally > unscriptable? What are you talking about? Photoshop has automating task features, such as Actions (most commands and tool operations are recordable and can be played back), Droplets (an app that applies an action to one or more images and can be used cross-platform), and External Automation using OLE (Windows) or AppleScript (Mac). What type of graphics work do you do that requires total scripting? >>> The way you do things matters at least as much as what you do. >> >> uhm, yeah - that should be somewhat obvious. > > Well, I guess if you're whole raison d'arte is creating little animated > ditties for mall consumption, Nope, not entirely throughout the course of 16 years. Oh, and an Academy Award nominated feature film, an Academy Award winning animated short, and high-end film FX work is a far cry from little animated "ditties"... > fostering a culture of secrets, mistrust, > and greed is pretty much a prerequisite. How do animated films foster secrets and mistrust? You lost me there. You won't find me disagreeing that the big studios are all about the bottom line - money - but plenty of good art has been created in this fashion, it's not exclusive to the film industry. > After all, if it weren't for the copyright industry, you wouldn't have > a > job. Care to elaborate on this rather ambiguous remark? Be careful not to implicate yourself when doing so. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 23:36:06 -0400 From: "FS Thomas" Subject: RE: Safari, so good Oh, why do I bother. After an evening of tappas (Spanish for "a little of everything, but not enough of anything) and three bottles of wine, I should know better... > -----Original Message----- > From: Capuchin > Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2003 5:53 PM > To: Nerdy Groovers > Subject: Re: Safari, so good > > > Wow! That has to be the most annoying, pompous thing that I have read > > in a long long long time. > > That's nothing. You should read some of my posts in the archives. Starting off light (and reminiscing on personal experience) that's damned funny. > No, paying for software is just a sad seemingly unavoidable fact of some > people's lives. As someone who's paid to develop software that people (or, in my case, corporations) pay for, I have to say that it's a joyous unavoidable fact. The momentum that keeps the freeware (and, dare I say, to a lesser extent the open source communities) afloat just doesn't, in the end--and by design--pay the bills. It's an unavoidable fact that if you can't take in at least a bit of money for your work you're not going to be around for very long. Not without government assistance, at any rate. > Selling software is evil (as is selling anything that you could copy and > distribute for almost nothing). Software, as everything from water to sex, can be treated as a commodity. If you spice your water right, do a trick with your tongue, or compress a mean .jpg and can charge $5 next to the guy doing it for free, odds are you'll get a few people willing to pony up bills. It's about the ability of the software, not the cost. Photoshop is, hands down, the best image editing software out there. Bar none. GIMP, by it's very name is...well... > I can't say that I'm sneering, but I've been called smug. I get along > really well with some pretty great people, though. Amen to that, brother. - -ferris. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 20:49:03 -0700 From: Eb Subject: RE: Safari, so good >Photoshop is, hands >down, the best image editing software out there. Bar none. I only have Photoshop 4.0.1. What am I missing out on, that's found in later versions? Eb, out the door to the Fruit Bats show ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 16:38:39 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: Safari, so good On Wed, 11 Jun 2003, Steve Talkowski wrote: > On Wednesday, June 11, 2003, at 06:03 PM, Capuchin wrote: > > Man, I was JUST (as in moments ago) talking to a friend about much I > > prefer using the GIMP to Photoshop. > > > > I had to use Photoshop on a contract job a week or so ago and it was so > > tedious and frustrating! Do you realize it's just about totally > > unscriptable? > > What are you talking about? Photoshop has automating task features, > such as Actions (most commands and tool operations are recordable and > can be played back), Droplets (an app that applies an action to one or > more images and can be used cross-platform), and External Automation > using OLE (Windows) or AppleScript (Mac). So which of those would I have used to offset each layer of an image progressively in one direction (4, 8, 16, 32.. pixels), darkening each layer in a similarly geometric progression? > What type of graphics work do you do that requires total scripting? If you have no choice but to do repetitive tasks, the application has a flaw that needs to be corrected. Everything needs scripting. I'm sure I've written on this list at least once about how disappointed I was when a friend got the first CD player I'd ever seen and it DIDN'T have a scripting interface. I couldn't imagine why anyone would bother with a (somewhat) non-linear, digital system and not put some kind of programming interface on the thing. Anyway, what's wrong with the Gimp? > >>> The way you do things matters at least as much as what you do. > >> > >> uhm, yeah - that should be somewhat obvious. > > > > Well, I guess if you're whole raison d'arte is creating little animated > > ditties for mall consumption, > > Nope, not entirely throughout the course of 16 years. Oh, and an > Academy Award nominated feature film, an Academy Award winning animated > short, and high-end film FX work is a far cry from little animated > "ditties"... Of course, the Academy Awards are infallible in their selection of the highest art and culture. No way is the Academy ever swayed by PR, hype, or plain bribery. Just ask James Cameron, Marisa Tomei, Halle Berry, Cher... (And be sure NOT to ask Nicholas Roeg, Jim Jarmusch, Jeff Bridges... or anyone at all who isn't American.) The fella who wrote Phone Booth (forgotten his name at the moment) was asked (in the local weekly, I don't remember if it was a syndicated interview or not) if it was strange to go from B movies (he wrote It's Alive, for example) to this big studio production. He replied something very much like, "It's still a B movie. Hollywood studios make a lot of B movies. Spider-man, for example, was a B movie with a 150 million dollar budget." The point is that this stuff is still just put out for entertainment's sake and anyone that thinks they're producing anything lasting, important, or meaningful is deluding themself. (And most of what I see in the CG animated short world these days is just a shaggy dog story with a little punchline "payoff" tacked onto the end.) > > fostering a culture of secrets, mistrust, and greed is pretty much a > > prerequisite. > > How do animated films foster secrets and mistrust? You lost me there. The entertainment industry (the entire copyright industry, in fact) is built on the absolute requirement that information does not fall into the hands of those who do not pay. These days, that includes the curtailing, subjugation, and outright suppression of technologies that would make it easier for people to communicate with one another and share their ideas and culture. The handful of commercially successful artists are held up as justification for the oppression of the hundreds of thousands of non-commercial artists and the entire rest of human culture and civilization. > You won't find me disagreeing that the big studios are all about the > bottom line - money - but plenty of good art has been created in this > fashion, it's not exclusive to the film industry. Feature film will probably never be a medium of the people, that's for sure. The number of people and amount of money that go into producing even the "low-budget" films are staggering. Part of this is a the self-perpetuating machine of the copyright industry and the tight controls on the means of production that is necessary to keep the film industry profitable, but it's difficult to say how much that is. But, as I wrote above, the little bit of good art that has come from the system doesn't justify the system as a whole. I tend to believe that the scale of the system brings down the over-all level of art and culture by broadening the markets and ignoring the local and the personal. I do believe that one goal of literature (and, indeed, art) is to comment on that which is common to the human condition regardless of local culture or personal orientation, but when ALL of your art and literature is going for that kind of mass appeal, it becomes too abstract and the personal is lost or transmuted into something vague and unimportant like clothing or hairstyles. Maybe that's why so many kids at the mall look like they're dressing up as a stereotype for Halloween. > > After all, if it weren't for the copyright industry, you wouldn't have > > a job. > > Care to elaborate on this rather ambiguous remark? Um, sure. I didn't mean it to be ambiguous. I'm just saying that you work for the copyright industry. It's your job to produce information that can be kept from people who don't pay. > Be careful not to implicate yourself when doing so. I don't see how I could. What do you mean by that? J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 21:47:37 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: RE: Safari, so good On Wed, 11 Jun 2003, FS Thomas wrote: > > From: Capuchin > > No, paying for software is just a sad seemingly unavoidable fact of > some > > people's lives. > > As someone who's paid to develop software that people (or, in my case, > corporations) pay for, I have to say that it's a joyous unavoidable > fact. The momentum that keeps the freeware (and, dare I say, to a > lesser extent the open source communities) afloat just doesn't, in the > end--and by design--pay the bills. It's an unavoidable fact that if you > can't take in at least a bit of money for your work you're not going to > be around for very long. Not without government assistance, at any > rate. I think you totally misunderstand the system, sir. I've worked on free software for a living... without government assistance (except the usual corporate welfare, of course). People NEED software and people can PRODUCE software. That relationship means, in this economic system, money can be made. But you don't have to SELL THE SOFTWARE to make that happen. Writing software is like any other form of skilled labor with the exception that its fruits are not scarce AFTER their production. The scarcity in the software equation comes BEFORE the software is written. So you get paid to write software, but there's no reason to charge for the software once it's written. I worked for a company that, as a side-effect of its actual business in providing finitely reproducable services, produced software. That software was shared with the world through CPAN and a few other distribution outlets. Many of the patches we got back from the community using our work were from programmers in the pay of companies that competed with us in those finite markets. > > Selling software is evil (as is selling anything that you could copy > > and distribute for almost nothing). > > Software, as everything from water to sex, can be treated as a > commodity. No, the scarcity of software is 100% artificial. The scarcity of sex and water are real. > If you spice your water right, do a trick with your tongue, or compress > a mean .jpg and can charge $5 next to the guy doing it for free, odds > are you'll get a few people willing to pony up bills. There's a distinction here that you're missing. The spiced water is only the amount you can fit in the spiced jug. The trick of the tongue can only be reproduced by your tongue and the availability of the trick is limited by your lifespan and willingness to perform. The JPEG compression is a routine that is independent of you and infinitely reproducable after you've written it. Once it's out of your head and on a disk, there is no scarcity and therefore no market value. However, scarcity can be created by using the coercive power of the state and its threats of force to prohibit the otherwise free and natural copying of the software. > It's about the ability of the software, not the cost. The ABILITY of the software is something the software can do whether you (the programmer) are there or not. And that ability can be reproduced with a simple command or click of the mouse. The programmer's market value is in the programs he has not yet written. The programs already written may flow freely from one to another without cost or burden to any in the path. > Photoshop is, hands down, the best image editing software out there. > Bar none. GIMP, by it's very name is...well... That's really a silly thing to say without some kind of comparison (based on something other than names, of course). > > I can't say that I'm sneering, but I've been called smug. I get along > > really well with some pretty great people, though. > > Amen to that, brother. Power, brother. J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 01:45:33 -0400 From: stevetalkowski@mac.com Subject: Re: Safari, so good On Wednesday, June 11, 2003, at 07:38 PM, Capuchin wrote: > So which of those would I have used to offset each layer of an image > progressively in one direction (4, 8, 16, 32.. pixels), darkening each > layer in a similarly geometric progression? Uhm, Actions. But, you don't use Photoshop so never mind. >> What type of graphics work do you do that requires total scripting? > > If you have no choice but to do repetitive tasks, the application has a > flaw that needs to be corrected. Uhm, Actions. But, you don't use Photoshop, so never mind. > Everything needs scripting. I'm sure I've written on this list at > least > once about how disappointed I was when a friend got the first CD player > I'd ever seen and it DIDN'T have a scripting interface. And just how many average users were going to take advantage of that when they were first released? It took quite awhile for them to even be integrated with computers. > I couldn't imagine why anyone would bother with a (somewhat) > non-linear, digital > system and not put some kind of programming interface on the thing. Apparently, a huge amount did, thus making the CD format extremely popular. You are aware how non-linear has totally revolutionized the film, commercials and video world? (not to mention that technology filtering down to the masses - hey, iMovie comes FREE with OSX) > Anyway, what's wrong with the Gimp? For starters, the name. It reminds me of that creepy scene in Pulp Fiction. > The point is that this stuff is still just put out for entertainment's > sake and anyone that thinks they're producing anything lasting, > important, > or meaningful is deluding themself. *sigh* Do I even need to bother listing all the great directors from the past who made this a valid art form? > (And most of what I see in the CG animated short world these days is > just > a shaggy dog story with a little punchline "payoff" tacked onto the > end.) Toy Story I and II? hmm, no shaggy dog there. A Bug's Life? - nope, no dogs in that one. Monster's Inc.? Well, Sully WAS shaggy... Finding Nemo? Fish Ice Age? Yes, lots O shaggy characters. Shrek? ehh - er, the donkey has hair Oh wait, you referred to shorts - hmmm, Sony Pictures "Chubb Chubbs" had shaggy creatures in it. Yeah, I guess it did have a corny punchline tacked on - didn't care for this one myself. Our Oscar winning short, Bunny, was about "where do you go when you die?" (hey, actual RH reference!) Oooh, and Tom Waits did the music for it. He's not a sell out, is he? > The entertainment industry (the entire copyright industry, in fact) is > built on the absolute requirement that information does not fall into > the > hands of those who do not pay. Information? Dude, it's entertainment - you said it yourself. Do you think everything should be free? > These days, that includes the curtailing, > subjugation, and outright suppression of technologies that would make > it > easier for people to communicate with one another and share their ideas > and culture. Thank God for the Internet! (oops, wrong again, you have to PAY to PLAY) > The handful of commercially successful artists are held up as > justification for the oppression of the hundreds of thousands of > non-commercial artists and the entire rest of human culture and > civilization. Man, where do you GET this stuff? > Feature film will probably never be a medium of the people, that's for > sure. The number of people and amount of money that go into producing > even the "low-budget" films are staggering. You obviously haven't worked on a true "low-budget" film before... > Part of this is a the > self-perpetuating machine of the copyright industry and the tight > controls > on the means of production that is necessary to keep the film industry > profitable, but it's difficult to say how much that is. This is just plain misinformed. You can buy (or rent, if you don't want to contribute to corporate greed) a relatively cheap mini-DV camcorder, shoot your own film and edit it on your home computer. This has EMPOWERED many artists, just like Postscript and a Laserwriter empowered the desktop publishing folk, etc. Of course, you still have to pound the pavement to get it distributed, but wait - there's this thing called the "Internet" where short independent films are starting to thrive and be seen. Uh oh, if you've ever visited www.ifilm.com or perused a music video online you've already "paid" for it. Though, I suspect you're an avid "file-sharing" kind of guy and pride yourself on cheating the system (and those who spent time to create what you so readily "deserve" for free) Do you really live in a vacuum? Why do you even bother to use a computer and the internet? Why am I grabbing bait from Jabba-The-Hutt?!? http://www.fegfotos.com/gallery/jabba.htm > I do believe that one goal of literature (and, indeed, > art) is to comment on that which is common to the human condition > regardless of local culture or personal orientation, but when ALL of > your > art and literature is going for that kind of mass appeal according to WHO? > Um, sure. I didn't mean it to be ambiguous. I'm just saying that you > work for the copyright industry. It's your job to produce information > that can be kept from people who don't pay. Not entirely true (there ya go again with those general assumptions) - I also work on commercials that people can view on basic, non-cable TeeVee. Oops, they have to pay for the electricity to power the damn things. ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V12 #208 ********************************