Sinabro

On Adobe Blog:

Photoshop has been accreting power & users for the better part of two decades. The once-little app has proven almost endlessly adaptable to new needs and workflows, but all that morphing has a price. In many cases we’ve traded simplicity for power, and not all the pieces look like part of a cohesive whole. In fact, I sometimes joke that looking at some parts of the app is like counting the rings in a tree: you can gauge when certain features arrived by the dimensions & style of the dialog.

I’ve always felt that Adobe is one of those companies that continue to innovate—even when they hold a virtual monopoly in the market.

Even so, and even with their continued innovation, I URGE YOU TO BOYCOTT their product, until it is free. DON’T USE Photoshop. USE GIMP, the free image editor. Unless you need a very specialized feature in Photoshop, GIMP will fill your needs just as well, and really, it only takes a day or so to learn through the interface difference.

I dream of a day when every published software is free and proprietary software is limited to in-house applications and slums.

On ComputerWorld UK:

Microsoft may not have beaten French Linux vendor Mandriva in a large deal to supply Nigerian elementary schools with laptop computers and software after all.

Mandriva had closed a deal in mid-August to provide a customised Linux operating system and support for 17,000 Intel Classmate PCs intended for Nigerian schools, but found out last week that the company deploying the computers for the government, Technology Support Center (TSC), planned to wipe the computers’ disks and install Windows XP instead.

Huh. Maybe there’s some good left in this world after all.

BTW, with all these GNU/Linux embrace of the third world, REMEMBER: Microsoft isn’t only making your life inconvenient by breaking formats and ignoring standards—when they break interoperability with other operating systems in order to maintain their monopoly, THEIR ARE STARVING ORPHANS in Nigeria.

On Slashdot

Electronic Arts will donate the original SimCity city-building game to each computer in the non-profit One Laptop Per Child humanitarian initiative, which designs, manufactures and distributes inexpensive laptops to children around the world with the goal of giving every child in the world access to modern education.

That brings back memories. This was the very first game that I was really addicted to. Oh, how mad it made my dad …

I do hope the fancier graphics of more modern games don’t overshadow this gem.

Ars Technica reports

The Federal Trade Commission has slapped several companies with $7.7 million worth of penalties for not following the requirements of the National Do Not Call (DNC) Registry. The Department of Justice brought the charges against parties on behalf of the FTC, which have resulted in six settlements and another complaint that will be filed in a federal district court.

Here’s one good thing that U.S. goverment has been doing lately—really just about the only good thing I can say has been done under the Bush administration. And see how profitable it’s been for the government!

The rest of the bureaucracy should take hints from this operation. When you stand up for the consumers, the people, it really pays—unlike when you lie in a bed with corporate scums.

Ars Technica reports:

Criminals have plenty of reasons for wanting to encrypt their e-mail, and services like Hushmail offers such encryption in a strong form; not even the company can view the messages sent through its systems. Under most circumstances.

But there are cases when it can read the messages, and when that happens, those messages can then be subpoenaed by law enforcement. An alleged California supplier of anabolic steroids found that out the hard way earlier this year when Drug Enforcement Agency officers collected his supposedly “secure” e-mail from Hushmail.

That’s why you should NEVER trust anyone else (not even your alter ego, a la Fight Club) when it comes to truly sensitive material.

Encrypt it yourself with a public key encryption or a symmetric cypher, and force everyone you communicate with to use public key encryption (such as implemented in GnuPG) for sensitive communique.

Anyone who doesn’t keep such due diligence deserves to be busted for whatever illegal scam he was running.

Ars Technica reports

The PIRATE Act is back, and this time it means business.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) yesterday introduced the Intellectual Property Enforcement Act (PDF), with Leahy saying, “The PIRATE Act has passed the Senate on three separate occasions; this should be the Congress in which it becomes law.”

Guess who’s on my shitlist now? Yes. Mr. “Soon-to-be -ex-Senator” Leahy.

And let’s not forget these immoral monopolistic cartels commited to stifling art and terrorizing American consumers in the name of profit. I haven’t so far THIS strongly about this issue … but these pseudo-criminals go too far. Here I swear a solemn oath to avow not a cent from my pocket will go towards members of these monopolistic cartels, RIAA and MPAA being heads among them: “I will never buy a single track of music unless I can be sure 100% of money goes to the artist (or at least 0% of the money goes to the record label). I will never pay to see a movie. I will risk living in a cultural barren-land, rather than let these bastards and true PIRATES thrive on my blood.”