I've hated GIMP for a long time, after some dreadful user experiences in the 1.x days. Recently I got tired of using VMware for all my graphics editing work, however, and as for once I have some stuff to do that doesn't require CMYK support, I decided it really was time to give free software another chance. Krita turned out to suck even worse than GIMP 1.x, so I gritted my teeth and installed the hated program once more.

I fired it up and decided to open a PNG file. I was presented with an informative dialog box: "The image has an embedded color profile: sRGB built-in. Convert the image to the RGB working profile (sRGB built-in)?"

Okay, so at least it finally has colour management support. That's good. But why is it prompting me to convert when the image profile and the working profile are apparently identical? What exactly does this decision imply? Being somewhat confused, I decided to click on the nice friendly-looking "Help" button.

Oops, looks like I forgot to install the help package. (Why does Ubuntu do this? If I'm installing an application, installing the help files too should be the default action.) So I fixed that and tried again. This time my web browser opened with the GIMP manual. So, what does it say on this subject?

"Eeek! There is missing help", screamed GIMP. "Sorry, but a help item is missing for the function you're looking for. Feel free to join us and fill the gap by writing documentation for the GIMP." It also suggests that I try looking in the online version of the help instead, and provides a handy link. Oops, no, it's a broken link.

This is not the stuff of which positive user impressions are made.

(Thanks to Google I did eventually find some documentation for the dialog box in question, which didn't actually tell me why I was being prompted to convert sRGB to sRGB, but did at least convince me it was safe to click "Convert".)

Next time: either "Mom, why can't I select multiple layers?", or "Manage your own damn windows!", depending on what annoys me most in the meantime.

"A student law clinic is about to cause a revolution" says p2pnet. For the first time in the history of the RIAA's ex parte litigation campaign against college students, a university law school's legal aid clinic has taken up the fight against the RIAA in defense of the university's college students. Student attorneys at the University of Maine School of Law's Cumberland Legal Aid Clinic, under the supervision of law school prof Deirdre M. Smith, have moved to dismiss the RIAA's complaint in a Portland, Maine, case, Arista v. Does 1-27, on behalf of 2 University of Maine undergrads. Their recently filed reply brief (pdf) points to the US Supreme Court decision in Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, and the subsequent California decision following Twombly, Interscope v. Rodriguez, which dismissed the RIAA's "making available" complaint as mere "conclusory", "boilerplate" "speculation". The 2 students represented by Cumberland join the 8 students represented by a prominent Portland law firm, bringing to 10 the number of University of Maine students fighting back in this case.

The RIAA is apparently having an allergic reaction to the request by the State Attorney General of Oregon for information about the RIAA's investigative tactics, in Arista v. Does 1-17, the Portland, Oregon, case targeting students at the University of Oregon. See The Oregonian, December 1, 2007 ("UO suspects music industry of spying") and p2pnet, November 29, 2007 ("RIAA may be spying on students: Oregon AG"). Not only are the record companies opposing the request (pdf), they're asking the Judge not to even read it. (pdf) Commentary: "RIAA scorns Oregon University request".

Anyone still reading this thing? I just signed up at Multiply to track some of you down, my name there is jrishel. Most of my posting is still at rishel.org, and it doesn't look like Multiply has a way to pick up content from wordpress... am I wrong?

Previously, I wrote about Donald Fleischman's solicitation of a minor (male, not that it's relevant other than as part of a interesting GOP pattern). Turns out, this has resulted in the Brown County Republican Party being disbanded. Seems that no one wants to fill his shoes.

I was recently having a discussion with a friend about whether our "system" of medicine in the US is better than ones in Canada, the UK, the EU, etc. For sake of argument, I took the position that it arguably was (although I'm definitely not convinced of that). We came upon an interesting hypothetical example: assume that in system A, half the people get treated right away for disease X and half the people never get treated (because they can't afford to). In system B, everyone gets treated 6 months after being diagnosed with disease X. Now, it turns out that if you're treated for disease X right after first being diagnosed, your survival rate is 90%. If you wait 6 months, however, your survival rate is only 25%. In this hypothetical situation, 45% of the population under system A will survive and only 25% of the population under system B will survive.

My friend agreed that, for this case, system A was a better system—but only if the 50% were chosen randomly and not by whether or not they had more money. I argued (again, really just for the sake of arguing, although I think I have a valid point here) that what family you are born into is random and from there on making good choices (or possibly unscrupulous choices) will make you more likely to be rich, hence using money as a means to divine who gets treated isn't any worse than choosing at random.

I'm curious, what are your thoughts?

The RIAA's latest anti-college round of "early settlement" letters targets 7 out of 8 Ivy League schools, but continues to give Harvard University a wide berth. This is perhaps the most astonishing display of cowardice exhibited to date by the multinational cartel of SONY BMG, Warner Bros. Records, EMI, and Vivendi/Universal (the "Big Four" record companies, which are rapidly become less "big"). The lesson which other colleges and universities should draw from this latest of many acts of cowardice: "All bullies are cowards. Appeasement of bullies doesn't work. Standing up to bullies and fighting back has a much higher success rate."

That headline comes from CBC News. Other headlines used to break this story include Ex-White House aide: Bush, Cheney involved in misleading media, Bush 'involved' in CIA leak case, and (just to be "fair and balanced") Former Aide Blames Bush for Leak Deceit. The former aide for those interested is Scott McClellan. Basically, he's saying that when he gave the speech in 2003 saying that they didn't know that Libby had leaked the information about Valerie Plame, it wasn't true. Of course, McClellan is pure as the driven snow, as he didn't know it was a lie, although Rove, Libby, Cheney, Card and Bush knew it was a lie. For those who want to argue that it wasn't Libby who leaked the information because someone else leaked the information first, it is possible for a boat (or story) to have more than one leak. For those who want to argue that Libby was only convicted of obstruction of justice, it was that obstruction that made it hard to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed treason. Finally, for those who want to argue that Plame wasn't really undercover, I feel compelled to warn you that aluminum foil doesn't have the same benefits as tin foil in protecting your minds from CIA thought devices. (They're the ones trying to tell you that she really was undercover.)

Big brother is at it again. The Department of Homeland Security is issuing new regulations requiring reporting on, and guarding of, hundreds of common chemicals with "terrorist applications" (such as propane, hydrogen peroxide, chlorine, ...). This impacts farms, universities, industries from pool supplies to medicine to janitorial, small business, startups, and the general public.

Ohio University, in Athens, Ohio, has found the key to getting the RIAA to stop inundating it and its students with "settlement" letters. According to the university's student online publication, the university paid $60,000, plus $16,000 per year "maintenance", to Audible Magic, the business partner of the RIAA's all-purpose expert witness Dr. Doug Jacobson, for its "CopySense" filtering software. Once it made the payments, the letters stopped. This of course raises a lot of questions as to the 'disinterestedness' of Dr. Jacobson, whose deposition in the UMG v. Lindor case was the subject of interesting Slashdot commentary.

Per the police report, Washington State Representative Richard Curtis (Republican) (representing La Central) was having his sexual orientation used in an effort to black-mail him. In the House, he has acted against gay rights, making this another example of presumed hypocrisy. I'm a little ashamed to admit that I'm experiencing a some schadenfreude here. Of course, this is an excellent time to introduce people to this comic strip if they haven't already seen it.

Edit: <ignore>He's a State Representative for Louisiana, not Washington (as I originally wrote), per this source.</ignore> Strike that previous statement. He represents La Central in Washington State, not central Louisiana. I really need to read for comprehension better.

Judge David G. Larimer, presiding in Rochester, New York, has denied an RIAA application for default judgment on the ground that the RIAA's evidence was insufficient, in that it contained no details of actual downloads or distributions, and no sufficient evidence that defendant was in fact Kazaa user "heavyjeffmc@KaZaA". The decision (pdf) concluded that "there are significant issues of fact regarding the identification of the defendant from his alleged "online media distribution system" username". (In case you're unfamiliar with the term "online media distribution system", that's because it is a term the RIAA coined 4 years ago to describe p2p file sharing accounts in its lawsuits; the term is not known to have been used by anyone else anywhere else.) In August a similar RIAA default judgment motion was denied on the ground that the pleadings failed to allege sufficient factual details supporting a claim of copyright infringement, in a San Diego, California, case, Interscope v. Rodriguez.

The Slashdot and Groklaw communities were so helpful in preparing for the deposition of the RIAA's "expert" witness, Dr. Doug Jacobson, we thought we'd come back and ask for your thoughts on what documents and/or data to request from the RIAA's 'investigator', MediaSentry, Inc. The documents we have so far are just printouts, which were used at Dr. Jacobson's deposition, specifically exhibits 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14. Of course we have some ideas of our own about what to demand, but we want to leave no stone unturned. For the technical minded among you, this is your chance to be a part of bringing the RIAA's litigation campaign down.

The Interscope v. Rodriguez decision dismissing the RIAA's boilerplate complaint, and the $9250-per-song-file verdict in Capitol v. Thomas, have inspired some new dismissal motions in RIAA cases. In Charleston, South Carolina, Catherine Njuguna has moved to dismiss on the basis of the legal insufficiency of the RIAA's complaint and on constitutional grounds due to the excessive damages sought by the RIAA, while in Brooklyn, New York, MS victim Rae J Schwartz has moved to dismiss based solely on the complaint's failure to state a claim under Rodriguez and the Supreme Court decision, Bell Atlantic v. Twombly.

From the no-longer-news dept of the Wonkette:

As the nation slips into a new "Not So Great Depression," Republicans are embracing a new kind of Compassionate Conservatism that should appeal to poverty-stricken people who've lost their homes, jobs and traditional abhorrence of homosexuality and pedophilia. Leading the new effort is Wisconsin Republican leader and Brown County GOP Chairman Donald Fleischman, currently facing charges of child enticement, contributing to the delinquency of a child and exposing himself to a child -- all because he (allegedly) wanted to show his love to a runaway boy!

Of course, this one is much worse than the Larry Craig one as it involves a teenager and an abuse of Fleischman's authority. What I don't know yet is to what degree hypocrisy is involved. Was this guy a log-cabin Republican, or one of the typical self-loathing closeted Republicans who push anti-homosexual agendas in an effort to hide their own sexuality?