So what? They are features that are listed separately on the GIMP road map, which I cut/pasted into my post.

I am more than happy to shell out hundreds of dollars every couple of years for a product that saves me scores of hours of work compared to a free alternative, and I'm just a hobbyist. If you're a pro, it's really a no-brainer.

Dude, you've named more than two features yourself. Jesus.

Nobody's saying that GIMP isn't a capable program, but for certain things that are quite common & useful for pros (like adjustment layers) the GIMP ain't there yet. The lack of adjustment layer functionality BY ITSELF pretty much excludes GIMP from being used in pro workflows. And as you yourself point out, GIMP will not be able to implement many features until fully ported to GEGL - which is not a small task.

Further, features such as Filter layers, Layer effects, Non-destructive editing, and "Smart objects" aren't slated until after version 3.0 - IOW, not for years. Photoshop has those things NOW.

My theory has always been that training my employer pays for is to make me a better employee. Training I pay for is to get me a better job. Both you and your employer should ask what the training is really going to do for you. If it's going to get you a new job, yes, every penny should come out of your pocket. If it's for the employer's benefit (and you aren't leaving for a reasonable period), then every penny should come from theirs.

You're not the only one. I looked at this article and thought "You don't have a home datacenter. If you think you do, you don't know what a datacenter is."

This is stupid. If you're going to poke your finger to get a blood drop, disinfect the finger before you poke it, not every surface you're going to come in contact with.

The guy made his very own toilet tweet. If you don't want to announce to the world when you're going to the bathroom (and therefore when you're home, etc), then don't make your toilet tweet.

I was stopped at a traffic light, waiting for a right-on-red opportunity. Lady behind me apparently thinks she's doing the same thing. Rather than waiting for me to go, she waits for the same right-on-red suitable opening in traffic, hits the gas, and runs right into me.

Luckily, I still had my nigh-indestructable car (it had been previously hit on 3 sides in an accident by a semi on a snowy road), and I couldn't find a scratch on it.

So, that's interesting. I pulled statistics for my state, and it bears out what you're saying. In 2010, there was about one reported accident per 478,873 miles. In 2000, 405,000. In 1990, 378,000. And way back in 1960, when I'm sure no one had a cell phone, one in every 313,000.

Is it possible that cell phone use is increasing accident rates but something else is lowering it? Sure, it's possible, but that's just guesswork. Somebody needs to dive deeper into the data to figure it out. Maybe people used to drink and drive more. My data source for alcohol involved crashes only goes back to the mid 2000s. Personally, I almost hit someone because I was messing around with my phone. I learned my lesson. I had some idiot 20something total my car with my kids in it because he was, by his own admission, fishing around on the floor for a CD. You're right, I don't care why you're distracted. Knock it off. Pay attention. My own experience tells me I'm a worse driver if I use my phone. I've heard of plenty of studies that report the same thing. It's also intuitive. If you're not actually looking at the road, it's hard to avoid hitting things.

It doesn't. That's why driving on a revoked license should land you in jail.

It's not a nanny state thing. Nanny state would be preventing you from harming yourself. The problem with texting and driving is you hitting other people. Just last week I had some moron on a 2 lane road drift fully into my lane. Luckily, leaning hard on my horn got him to pay attention again.

If you want to text and drive yourself into a tree, be my guest. It's only if you want to text and drive yourself into someone else that I have a problem with.

You also see enough new things to realize the latest and greatest is sometimes simply the latest. Now and again you see someone re-engineer something that works, and make it into a god-awful monstrosity that may fit the way its creator wants to work very well, but doesn't solve the underlying problem any better than the original. Build toolchains, for example, have had tools come and go, and more times than I want to remember the new and improved versions have simply become one more thing I have to troubleshoot when it doesn't work.

I'm more than happy to learn something new, I just want some reason to believe it's better, not just new.

Humans are now distributed systems, there is no value in memorizing any fact when information is available 24/7 everywhere.

False. Speed. Everything I've been taught is in a book somewhere. You absolutely cannot take someone of equivalent intelligence, hand them a big stack of books, and expect them to perform anywhere near as well. You can't expect them to perform AT ALL. If you think this, you've never been in that situation. My workplace is filled with smart people with advanced degrees. It is laughable to think that the expert software developer can just switch seats with the expert CFD person. They're both intelligent, one just has a wealth of knowledge to draw on that isn't matched by a stack of books on advanced math and physics.

Basically, your method tests whether people are able to teach themselves physics on demand, not if they've actually learned physics.

Why? There's a simple solution when someone offers you a bad deal. Don't take it.

I used to buy insurance for phones. It was a decent deal. I spent a little money, and if the not super likely but possible happened, I was spared $hundreds out of pocket. Then prices went up, and deductibles went up, and before long I was spending too much money. When the not super likely but possible happened, I was out a fairly hefty deductable anyway. I just quit renewing the policy, and quit buying them going forward. I don't need someone to pass a law prohibiting me from doing something dumb. I'm capable of simply declining to do something dumb.

The judges in this matter are in fact appointed for life.