http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_community_network You might want to check that.

It's all right if you want to manage a couple of pictures with gimp, but try 100. or 300. For professional of serious amateur work, you need a GUI that can manage that with decent performance.

I wasn't really clear in that sentence.

I do photography for free software related events, and when I have the 300-something RAWs for postprocessing I need something that can let me work with sets of images, not individual images. Currently I use Lightroom because it's the only thing that gets the job done in relaistic time, because of GUI issues. I used RawTherapee before but, despite being the best I could find, it wasn't there yet (I'm talking about 2.3, more or less). With the changes announced for 3.0 I think it may be usable again for that kind of work.

I used digikam before, but with JPEGs, with RAWs it was impossible.

No, I called it the only one, thinking I was right (when I wrote that)

Raw Therapee, Digikam (and showfoto, it's standalone editor) plus the KIPI plugins, gimp can be useful but much more than the others in this particular use. There's also the raw converters like ufraw and dcraw, if you want to touch a RAW fle directly without the fluff of other programs.

But taking decent pictures in the first place can do loads more than what photoshop can. There is a reason people buy DSLR's, expensive lenses (stuff like perspective control lenses or primes) and flashes.

Also, knowing about image processing is way more useful than having a fancy autmagic filter. I personally use Lightroom for big batches of photos but that is because of performance and usability considerations, when RawTherapee is ready I think I'm switching over again (and goodbye to the windows installation in my computer ^_^)

I copy the full announcement:

RawTherapee 3.0 alpha 1 and license changes

January 04, 2010

The first alpha version of RawTherapee 3.0 is available for download. Note that this is not a feature complete version. In V3.0 both major
GUI/workflow and algorithm changes are planned. This alpha version demonstrates the new, much more efficient GUI, but it does not contain
any algorithmic changes yet.

The most significant changes in the GUI are the following:

• multi-tab interface
• the real batch processing support arrived: select multiple images and adjust them together (the multi-adjust behavior of some parameters is selectable in the preferences dialog: they can be either additive or absolute)
• completely re-written editor: preview and detail view are now gone. The main image view can be magnified as required, and only the necessary part of the image will be re-calculated. There is a small navigator, too, and infinitely many detailed views can be opened to investigate fine details.
• 16 bit thumbnails (an option, takes double disk space)
• before/after view in the editor

The only change in the algorithms is:

• the behavior of the exposure controls changed. The "exposure" parameter is what was called "brightness" in previous versions. The "brightness" parameter is now a real brightness control, that shifts the histogram (of course with highlight/shadow protection)

Roadmap of algorithm changes planned for V3.0 (approximately in sequence of implementation):

• new curve editor with parametric curve support
• per-image selectable demosaicing method + brand new demosaicing methods
• new color denoising method
• new luminance denoising method
• automatic C/A correction
• purple fringing correction
• perspective correction
• bad pixel removal

License changes:

I decided to change the license to GPL and thus offer the source code to the open source community. This does not mean that I stop developing RawTherapee. I will invest as much time into the development as till now. I have three motivations for this decision: first, I love playing with image processing algorithms but I'm not keen on GUI development. Recently a huge amount of work had to be invested to develop a usable GUI and I had no time left to play with new algorithms. I hope to involve some new developers who help me to maintain and enhance the GUI. The second reason of licence change was that I am very frustrated by the huge amount of bug reports I can not reproduce (believe it or not, RT is stable on my PC). I hope that with the open source model some talented users can identify the problems and fix the bugs. The third (but maybe the most important) reason of switching to GPL is that our baby reached the age (10 month old) when he needs his father more and more. I dont want to disappoint him :). With more developers involved the development process will hopefully more smooth and wont stop when I am busy.

Some technical details for future developers:

• The SVN and issue tracker is maintained by google code here
• The development discussions are running on the forum
• Patches are to be sent to: patches at rawtherapee dot com
• RawTherapee consists of the following 3 parts:
  • rtexif: the exif/makernote support library. It is quite complete and works well. It needs continuous maintenance, for which I have too few time. The maintenance means to maintain the exif and makernote tag interpretation tables (to follow newest cameras, lenses, etc), for example based on the excellent informations found here.
  • rtengine: this is the image processing library. It has a quite clear calling interface, but the code behind is a bit messy right now, since I am in the middle of a cleanup. If there will be several developers involved in the project, I would prefer to keep the maintenance of rtengine in my hands. The development of this part is what I enjoy the most.
  • rtgui: the graphical user interface. This is a very important part of RT. If there were enough developers involved, I would be happy to hand over the coordination of this part to someone else. Of course, I will maintain it, too, if there are no volunteers.
• I need help to improve the build system, too (but I want to stick with cmake -- autotools is painfully slow on windows)
• Hardcore linux coders: please accept that windows is a primary platform. (I use a linux environment for development, too, but the vast majority of downloads was the windows version)

Seems to me this can help you: http://blag.xkcd.com/2009/02/25/kindle-2/ . Munroe was looking for a portable (as in not heavy), hi-res display laptop. Found two that met his criteria, the Vaio P and the ThinkPad X200s. Original request for help here: http://blag.xkcd.com/2009/02/11/a-math-problem/

But if what you're looking for is a phisically bigger screen, then go desktop.

When I read the word "darwinism" I think about "social darwinism", which was the bullshit interpretation nazis used to justify their bloody stupid actions. It was survival of the fittest all right, they just had a really screwed up idea of what "fit" means... same with "survival", and I think they just skipped the "natural" part of "natural selection".

(note: according to wikipedia, "social darwinism" is an abiguous term which has many interpretations, I just took one of them in this case)

Also, first time I hear the term "darwinism" applied to the actual ideas of darwin. Where I live the words used are "natural selection" or "evolution", and there aren't any asshats meddling in that part of education, you just get taught that if the individuals of a species can't reproduce, the species doesn't survive, period. Is it really that hard to understand?!?!?