Given the language's general trend away from functional programming and Guido's flat-out refusal to implement TCO, I think starting with an implementation, showing interest (if it exists), and then trying to standardize via PEPs is probably a reasonable route to go.

That's rather the point of macros - giving programmers the ability to new features to a language.

Macros aren't solely used to implement high-level features, mind you - in CL they're introduced without much hassle to work out gruntwork as well precisely because an elided form in s-expressions seems just as natural as the original forms.

Although that level of fragmentation you do talk about is plausible - I'd find it simultaneously disheartening and worth a bit of a chuckle. (I'm reminded of all of the concurrency abstractions CL seems "capable of" hosting with minimal friction - but none with definite thrust.)

Can someone please translate this lawsuit into common language. It looks pretty interesting, but I'm not familiar with the laws on money transmission. Thanks!

This group of people knowingly broke the law and profited from it. I chose to obey the law and forgo profits. I would like some profits, hopefully conveyed by legal means, to make me whole.

I wouldn't consider capitalism an economic system. It is more of a description of the behavior of organisms. Free markets naturally produce monopolies just like humans have monopolized Earth. Once the monopoly is achieved, the motivation to innovate diminishes along with the entity's competitiveness. Eventually, someone will challenge the monopoly-holding alpha entity and the cycle continues. It happens in economies, societies, ecosystems, and any domain where evolution takes place.

what about Gimp and Inkscape for alternatives? Both are free software.

Gimp - Raster Graphics - http://www.gimp.org/ Inkscape - Vector Graphics - http://inkscape.org/

Gimp is really one of the most incredible pieces of open-source/free software I have used.

But, it's primary advantages (open source, powerful) are what have led to its limited use. Like many open source projects, the interface is designed pragmatically, like emacs or vi, but this is a problem -- no professional has the time or the money to learn a complex UI.

The same goes for LibreOffice. Extremely powerful with a ton of untapped potential, but untapped nevertheless due to a dated and unintuitive UI. Inkscape and Scribus are better in this regard, and I've seen many professionals use them with outstanding results.

I've been able to create vectors with Inkscape without much difficulty. I can't say the same about Gimp. If someone really had the time and the dedication, they could re-engineer the entire frontend of Gimp from scratch for each platform, while leaving the excellent backend in place, but I doubt any sane individual would be able to do so without the help of the original developers due to the lack of full documentation available.

Still, it's worth trying. It's got 90% of the features of Ps but with 100% fewer dollars paid for it.

It's that godawful UI that kills it for me. It's plenty powerful and since I don't do print anymore, having or not having CMYK doesn't really matter as much. But I'm not going to waste the time learning a UI that's not native to any platform when platform alternatives are available.

One might be able to say the same thing of PS, but it has the weight of history and industry acceptance behind it.

Also, the name is not liable to cause embarrassment in some circles. At least PS is a marketable name.

But mostly it's that UI.

The UI is native to Linux based Operating Systems using a GTK based Desktop Environment (Gnome Shell, Ubuntu Unity and a few others).

Honestly, I've used both for about as long as each other, I find both to be equally annoying to use. Much prefer to use Inkscape or Fireworks, but fireworks doesn't come installable as a Deb and doesn't work natively on a Linux based Operating System so I don't care for it.

I had to use Gimp professionally once (long story short, a sudden web banner EMERGENCY came up and Gimp was all I had available) and it was terrible. I don't doubt it would've been easier and less painful had I been familiar with the UI but it just seemed so poorly designed. It is the best free graphics software out there, maybe, but it's hardly a worthy replacement for photoshop yet (although it is getting better.)

Yep.

I think that it is more of an issue with conditioning. As you and others have mentioned, one could indeed learn Gimp's UI with enough practice. However, I'd say that someone who picked up Photoshop, or MS Word, or any complex piece of software for the first time, then it would be a horrible UI.

The education system (at least here in Australia) heavily focuses on Adobe and Microsoft products, so high school kids are familiar with them from a youngish age. If they were taught general principles of word processing or photo editing, perhaps with a few different programs, then I feel that everybody would be better able to cope with different UI's much more easily.

Incidentally, (as a non-professional) I found Gimp much easier to grok than Inkscape or Scribus (coming from a Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign education/background).

It's probably the same in other countries but to provide some perspective on the situation: A teacher will say "Microsoft Word" and not "Word Processor". When and if you refer to the software as "Word Processor" and not "Microsoft Word" said teacher generally gets upset or confused. Same goes for Spreadsheet, Presentation and Database.

It's not just a UI issues. Gimp is missing features I use in Photoshop all the time. live real time Layer Effects are one of my most used features in Photoshop. Without them I can't get work done. AFAIK gIMP has no similar feature.

I feel like Krita is unfairly overshadowed by Gimp; Gimp is probably more powerful for advanced use cases, but Krita has a much more familiar UI and I've found it perfectly adequate for home use.

I think the hacker community, just like any creative community, suffers from a bit too much evangelism and misdirected nerd rage. It's important that we understand our common goals and keep those in mind as we interact with each other. What are these goals?

For me... - learning how to solve real-world problems using software - sharing ideas and reflecting my perspective in the conversation - understanding how others think about SW topics, more learning - criticizing decisions in order to improve my critical thinking skills and knowledge - getting feedback from my own ideas to see how well they stand up

I realize that some of these are somewhat redundant, but I feel they differ in nuance. In general it is about _improvement_.

Also, some people are just way too sensitive and need to realize that an attack on one's idea is not an attack on oneself. I have general respect for all people, but I might think your idea is stupid.

The best thing we can do is make sure we do our best to absorb hostility and respond with objectivity.

I am really happy to see this article. I was just talking to a friend about how much I dislike Markdown and how it has become the de facto markup.

Can you explain to me why wiki markup is universally reviled?

I find Creole to be great text markup. It feels really natural to use and it expresses the intended meaning whether it's rendered using HTML or displayed in plain text. I really like this statement by Christoph Sauer on the Creole website: http://wikicreole.org/wiki/ChristophSauer

I agree that Creole or any other formatting markup is not going to solve everyone's problems. However, I think that whenever Markdown is a good choice, Creole is a better one.

That statement is nothing special, both Markdown and asciidoc claim to be a formalisation of the plain text conventions you already use. IMHO most of the alternatives mentioned in this comment thread understand their goals and the design space well enough, and many are definitive improvements over Creole's MediaWiki-inspired, committee-designed syntax. They also win in featurefulness (Markdown and Textile have html embedding, asciidoc and ReST have extension mechanisms), which is important for a wiki.

For me, the reason is that Creole (and formats like it), feels like markup. Writing Markdown feels like writing text.

I was used to most of the conventions from Markdown mostly as-is from writing plain text for a couple of decades before I first saw Markdown.

Whenever I come across Creole-style formats, I cringe - it means I need to think about the markup instead of think about just writing.

I had a hard time understanding the article. Can someone explain why putting an image of the prison's master key on an inmate pamphlet makes any sense? Someone went through the trouble of putting that exact key on the cover--it wasn't coincidental. Did the designer think it was a way of teasing the inmates with the key to their freedom?

This is a good point. No one seems to be able to answer why that picture was taken and then chosen as the cover of the welcome to prison booklet.

I bet somebody originally wanted an aerial shot of the prison, but someone else wisely objected because that would be bad security move - giving prisoners a map of the area...

At first blush, I think one could easily have the attitude that a picture of a key is no more dangerous than a picture of a gun. The vulnerability is clear but not completely obvious. Especially when prisoners can also see the real keys, as guards no doubt have to use them near prisoners from time to time.

Given the description of the key looking like an E, the picture could have been an image of an ancient old key and the actual key was an ancient old key. Old locks with that E style shape are very easy to open due to being so warn. We used to pick them at school using modified spoons and such like. I'd hope the prison wasn't like this though.