As for point 3, I've found that the especially silly looking one that works so that the tube "points out of your forehead" eliminates that problem in an even better way.
I often get (perhaps reasonable) pushback for this, but the level to which CPAP equipment and supplies are gatekept by the industry is absurd. They're a fan tube, a mild heating element, and a sensor, and I'm nearly certain that it would be pretty difficult to harm yourself using one "wrong" -- especially as opposed to other medical items and drugs available OTC.
Also, yes, they're pretty cool. I don't love that I seem to need mine right now, but at least I know a guy. :)
Not at all, even if the data collection is exactly the same. "Where the authority comes from" matters a lot, probably much more than the actual collection itself.
Strongly disagree. The existence of such a collection is a loaded gun for police abuse. It doesn't even require mission creep; simply sifting through the ream of data under an actual warrant "coincidentally" looking for a different POI is going to happen.
Third-party password management as an isolated paid service (i.e. you don't get password management unless you pay specifically for the password management) is just a terribly bad idea all around.
A bad idea for you. My non-technical family members can barely use 1Password and it is the easiest of the lot. The idea you promote is just not realistic.
The inverse also doesn’t mean convenience is a bad idea, just happens 1Password has a strong security model and is convenient.
I end up helping a lot of older people for a variety of reasons with tech - 60s to 90s, family, neighbors, coworkers.
They’re not invalids and have a right to participate in the digital world, even if security requirements have exploded.
Anchoring the trust in stuff like 1Password where we setup domains, their account info, their OTP codes means they get to go to their bookmarked site, FaceID to unlock the PW manager, get automatically logged in, and do what they need.
Being able to let them navigate this world without always having to hand over the paper secrets notebook to random helpers, or lose sheets of paper with passwords, or get caught up in tracking down an SMS code is better for them. Their password manager with the autofill helps somewhat deter phishing links since relying on autofill usually signals something is off, and they call someone they trust.
My point, I guess, was that convenience is basic access for some subset of vulnerable groups of people.
When people had to rotate passwords every month and choose a new one according to insane complex rules and dictionary tests, well, that was not convenient. You would probably say it's good.
Reality: people started writing their passwords on sticky notes by their computer. Possibly the worst outcome.
Why the worst outcome, though? "Sticky notes" are absolutely superior to third-party password managers in regard to "attackers."
Third-party password managers INCREASE your threat surface by orders of magnitude more than sticky notes, period. They change the number of holders of secrets from two to three, and that third one is now a juicy target. This is not theory, this has happened frequently.
Sticky notes (even better, a little private physical notebook) keep this limited to your physical location which is much easier to secure; the grandmas and grandpas I know who do this (I do similar) have a far better track record than anything else.
Its a catch 22, with password requirements getting crazy its hard to remember them. At the same time storing the passwords with a password manager means you are entrusting them for your identity. For the first party sites the passwords are hashed, however for these password manager sites they are at the most encrypted with the encryption keys that the third party already has. This essentially means a rouge password manager or rouge individual in password manager service can run away with your plaintext passwords on scale
But I will say that accomplished names in software that also make bombastic statements against AI are people that were... "opinionated" to begin with, and skirt the line between genius and madness quite often. I am thinking names like Jon Blow.
I'd say that most of the big names probably have nuanced opinions and do their own thing rather than spending time on social media.
If you generate work enough above average to be awarded major international prizes they you are. If everyone produces the same quality from the same AI it will simply move the bar.
If the AI comes up with better ideas, then why would you put yourself at a disadvantage? Especially if people consider it just another tool even if it did all the creative thinking.
Again, it's about 20 years too late, but the rename thing is absolutely correct and I continue to be gobsmacked by the amount of people here who don't get this, especially as I've seen this place slowly move from actually being about "hacking" to being about "tech and business."
While I agree, and I've been hammering this point as a GIMP user for two decades I think the "GIMP is actually a fine name" are increasingly a minority. Its name makes GIMP hostile to user adoption. Anyone who works in a primarily English-spekaing country knows what it's like to try to use GIMP at work, especially in K-12.
It's not like it was an accident, either. GIMP is a backronym because they wanted to name it after the full-body sex slave suit. They shot themselves in the face with that one.
It’s only the British (and influenced by) who have a negative view of the name. The rest of us don’t care, and wish you’d quit bringing it up.
For example there’s a juice company here in the US named ’Suja,’ and it’s obvious they have no Brazilian employees because it means dirty/obscene in Portuguese.
Simple words sometimes mean unfortunate things in other countries. Adults get over them.
This is not true, I am in America and the name has been seriously problematic.
This is not surprising, the developers were English-speaking Americans who chose a name to cause offense on purpose, in reference to the full-body sex slave suit in Pulp Fiction: https://www.xach.com/gg/1997/1/profile/1/
I don't know who you claim to represent with "the rest of us", but I can only speak for the experience in America. It doesn't matter whether or not you agree with me, it's a simple fact that the name GIMP has been a barrier to its adoption.
To repeat, it's not a collision, because it was not accidental. Kimball and Mattis named their image editor after the full-body sex-slave suit, on purpose. GIMP is a backronym.
It's also worth emphasizing that "Pulp Fiction" is not an obscure movie, it was actually a very very popular movie from the 1990s and it's still relevant today. It won awards from every organization that gave movies awards. It was recently quoted by the US Secretary of Defense during a prayer, who thought he was quoting the Bible.
While I believe you when you say you're personally not familiar with the usage of the word, it's a word that you can expect most people would recognize.
Do you have any evidence it was done on purpose? The devs have referenced the unfortunate name a few times but I think it is infinitely more likely they chose the name in reference to the poor quality of the software or as a normal acronym
> > Your home page says that you created GIMP to address the lack of free or inexpensive Unix graphics tools. How did you guys actually get together to tackle this? Was it like in Blues Brothers? Were you on a mission from God?
> Spencer was my brother's roommate for four years. (He's been my roommate for the past six months). So I knew who he was when we decided to take the compilers course here together. Big mistake. During one of the impossibly boring assignments we decided we wanted to do something which wouldn't suck. The idea of doing the GIMP actually fell out fairly naturally.
> It took us a little while to come up with the name. We knew we wanted an image manipulation program like Photoshop, but the name IMP sounded wrong. We also tossed around XIMP (X Image Manipulation Program) following the rule of when in doubt prefix an X for X11 based programs. At the time, Pulp Fiction was the hot movie and a single word popped into my mind while we were tossing out name ideas. It only took a few more minutes to determine what the 'G' stood for.
I'm gen Z, we know what Pulp Fiction is. Even the gen alphas do. We just had a crossover in Fortnite, and Pulp Fiction is in the Chainsaw Man opening.
I'm anti-Puritan as well, but there are far better hills to die on. In either case, it's moot, since "gimp" is also used as an ableist slur.
I haven't seen Footloose, but we don't need analogies to fictional movie villains. The facts are that they decided to give GIMP a stupid name, and so they missed out on investment and adoption because of that decision. It doesn't matter what you or I think, I'm just describing something that already happened.
> and Pulp Fiction is in the Chainsaw Man opening.
Not looking to assess how well-known Pulp Fiction is in any particular generation, but Chainsaw Man opening seems to have plenty of obscure references that really say more about its authors than they do about its watchers.
Sorry, a focus on thirty year old movies and "ableist slur"s puts you far outside the mainstream. These are simply not concerns of every day people, and doubly so for the half that voted tRump.
No need to apologize, you didn't know. In either case, it doesn't matter whether or not Pulp Fiction is "mainstream".
It does not matter what you think. It does not matter what I think. No amount of condescending comments online can go back and change it, the name "GIMP" has caused problems for people, including me, when trying to use it in professional and K-12 contexts.
The ways I personally learned people took offense at these words were when I was trying to use GIMP in highschool, asking if I could "use the GIMP" for a project. My instructor, a man who was paralyzed from the waist down, understandably thought I was punking him. I wouldn't learn this until later, but the most reasonable interpretation was that I was being a shithead, as many teenagers are.
When I explained "GIMP was like Photoshop but free", while Photoshop was already installed on the computers, you won't be surprised the conversation ended there and Photoshop won out.
It's not just that the name was insulting. In most peoples minds, nothing good is free, and "Free photoshop clone" was right up there with "Here's a prize for the 1,000,000th visitor" or "Download these free mouse cursors".
Thank you for this. I hate doing "offense aside" but.
Offense aside, you can still understand that this is a bad idea without bringing in the spectre of "is it offensive."
Like I'm saying elsewhere, what if it was called "Poop-edit" or similar? People would quite reasonably not believe it to be quality software, even if it was.
And also, no one would USE IT. That's my point. It really is that simple.
I'm not primarily talking about "being offended." Jokes are fine in some contexts.
I'm saying that if you want people to take your software seriously, it needs a serious name. And that the GIMP people very very stupidly missed a huge opportunity by not doing that.
But I’ve been using gimp productively for almost thirty years, late 90s on SGI. At no point was the name a factor. Can’t force them to change it either.
And in the dictionary I found at least one quite positive definition. Sometimes word have conflicting meanings and we deal with that successfully every day.
Individual adults absolutely do, but "systems, PR, and institutions" DO NOT, and that is the important lesson that so many people here aggressively dodge.
I personally can download this software and use it on my computer.
Now, can I recommend it to my class? Through zero fault or opinion of my own, it still might be a very bad idea for me professionally.
Maybe I don't like how sensitive people are. TOO BAD, it doesn't matter in this context.
The clowns who refuse to rename GIMP keep missing a huge opportunity.
I’ve had GIMP recommended as a free photo editing tool in many classes. Just saying that’s while you may not feel comfortable with recommending it, many others do.
> Anyone who works in a primarily English-spekaing country knows what it's like to try to use GIMP at work, especially in K-12.
Over the many times this topic was brought up here, plenty of people from English-speaking countries have said that no, they’ve never had a problem with it.
Yes, some people did have a problem with it. It's a valid point to bring up. But that does not mean their experience must have been shared by literally everyone else, or even the majority of people in similar circumstances.
That's fair, it's likely not _everybody_ would have a problem. But _enough_ people would. There are contexts where I've had no problems (e.g. in an office where every cubicle had at least one Linux machine, plenty of people had already heard of GIMP).
I think if GIMP had a different name, it would have had less friction in its adoption (or a higher "R-number"), Adobe would be less extractive (for having viable FOSS to compete with), and GIMP would have had more investment (in terms of money and dev hours). I'm certainly happy GIMP isn't completely abandoned, at the very least.
But what it DOES mean is -- okay, is it really worth it to KEEP it, or might you be able to get adoption, fans, traction, possibly more developers etc. etc. if you were to change it?
What is the strong motivation behind keeping the name and was it valid?
(No. The answer is no, it was not. There's no real good reason to keep it compared to the potential upsides.)
There was a short lived project to fork and rebrand under Glimpse with improved UI, but it's been inactive for years. All the links I find are forks of forks, 404s, and parked domains.
I hear that objection and it's a decent one, but that one just isn't as well known. Even as an American, I'm not thrilled that "offensive in America" matters more, but it does.
I have the impression that many of the people who know ‘gimp’ as a slur only do because some of the others feel a need to bring it up every single time GIMP is mentioned anywhere ever.
Respectfully, that's kind of a ridiculous "impression," easily refuted by many of us who have wanted to recommend GIMP to people.
And again, it's called "reading the room." Even if you don't care about it being "offensive" or a "slur," names still matter. Like, if the word "poop" was in the name of some otherwise good software.
> Respectfully, that's kind of a ridiculous "impression," easily refuted by many of us who have wanted to recommend GIMP to people.
Is it though? Almost every time the topic is discussed, I see someone in the comments only then learning that the word is also known by some as a slur.
> Like, if the word "poop" was in the name of some otherwise good software.
Except that ‘poop’ is a common word with a single common meaning. ‘Gimp’ is not a common word and has several different meanings, one of them a slur, another kinky, and others probably innocuous (if even more uncommon). Many people (even among native English speakers, though let’s not forget about the rest of the world) only know the word as the name of the program. The two don’t really compare.
I think "Do people commonly understand 'gimp' as a derogatory word?" is the wrong question.
The right question is, "Did _enough_ people understand 'gimp' as a derogatory word to harm its adoption?" and the answer is probably yes.
The people complaining about GIMP's name are the ones who love and use it, who have seen the name cause problems. There's a modicum of grief for the counterfactual (of how much better GIMP might be if it didn't set up artificial barriers for itself), and the frustration with people who obstinately don't see the problem.
I think both questions are good to ask. Another follow-up question would be ‘how big is the damage to adoption’, since the answer could range from ‘barely perceptible’ to ‘devastating’. An answer closer to the latter would, in my opinion, make a great reason for a name change.
People who never hear about GIMP in the first place are never going to use it.
Someone asks, "How did you make that?" and your answer is PhotoShop and not GIMP. That's one less person who might use GIMP, and one less person who might introduce GIMP to other people, and so forth.
The difference is that git was among the best-in-class and developed and used by the people behind Linux, and that the word 'git' wasn't as offensive as 'gimp'.
If GIMP had feature-parity with Photoshop, and had been adopted by Condé Nast or ILM, and had a less-offensive name like "Dumm" or "Silly Image Editor", then this would be more comparable.
"Names don't matter" is obviously a silly stance. Pre-emptively dismissing people who disagree as "not serious" when you're taking a stance like this does not make an argument in favor of your stance.
Names are something that clearly matter to people, and that impacts anyone working with people.
Password protection by a for-profit (where the password protection is the product that you can't have unless you pay for it) is a fundamentally stupid and dangerous business model.
reply