Re: GIMP 3.0.0-RC1

On Fri, 3 Jan 2025, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:

On 1/2/25 6:33 AM, D wrote:

  On Thu, 2 Jan 2025, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
 

On 01/01/2025 21:33, rbowman wrote:

wiw, the company I worked for at the times didn't find excellence either
and is gone. Come to think of it every company I ever worked for directly
or on contract is gone. Maybe I'm the kiss of death?

 Companies exist in a phase of 'rising star' 'mature' 'cash cow' and 'death spiral'
 IBM for example died years ago - the company today is just the old business services division.
 No company I ever worked for is extant today in anything like its original form.

 I wonder if a new owner would be able to shake some life into z and p? As it is, IBM seems to be trying to kill those lines hard with high prices.

>
>
 I've got a fair bit of IBM stock ... it's NOT "dead",
 indeed pays pretty good interest. The corp just found
 other ways to make a buck and is large enough to make
 it work.

Bit companies can do a lot of wrong and still survive.

 But its core biz is NOT exactly what it was in the 80s
 and previous.
>
 You still CAN buy an IBM mainframe - up to four linked
 Big Black Z Boxes with impressive specs. Even runs the
 IBM-branded RedHat if you want (many do). If you've
 got a busy global biz, a good way to go.
>
 https://www.ibm.com/z

This is the truth! I've worked with p but never with z. It was nice to have everything integrated in the p environment. It worked pretty well, although had some rough edges.

 Hmmm ... saw something about Plan-9 being ported
 to the Z-Boxes ... they were very proud.
>
 I think IBM still has a future, just not making PCs
 and typewriters. STILL doing good chip work however ...
 but mostly for internal consumption.

It will become just another consulting company, and perhaps, if they have some self-respect, they might keep some of their basic research.

 On the neg  ... IBMs 'AI', "Watson", was originally
 a triumph but seems to have fallen a bit behind the
 proverbial curve of late. It's still very 'biz
 oriented' and has a medical diagnostics branch that's
 quite good, but it's not as 'general' as Chat
 or OpenAI.

I wonder if this is because Watson is actually being sold to paying customers? The novelty has work off, so no one writes about it any longer. OpenAI are good at marketing. They will probably crash the second their models do no longer improve.