by 
Updated on December 10, 2021
Here’s a look at some media and technology stories of interest from the past week.
Media
Disney’s 2019 D23 expo = a ton of TV, movie, and Disney+ news
Disney’s biannual D23 expo took place last weekend, and gave us a lot of news. To list a few of the multiple announcements:
- A “Glee”-esque series about a school performing “High School Musical.”
- A TV show based on the gay teen romance film “Love, Simon.”
- A live-action prequel film about “101 Dalmatians” villain Cruella De Vil.
- On the Marvel Cinematic Universe side of things, we’re getting “The Eternals” and “Black Panther II.” Among the other MCU news:
- A TV series featuring Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur.
- A She-Hulk TV show for Disney+.
- Ms. Marvel is getting her own TV series, plus eventual movie appearances. As I wrote earlier this week, this could help make up for the MCU losing Spidey, as Kamala Khan’s a rising superhero star.
- A reboot of “Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends.” In this case, the “Amazing Friends” are Miles Morales and Gwen Stacy (as Ghost-Spider). No word on any cameos by Iceman and Firestar.
Technology
“Glimpse,” a GIMP fork with a less problematic name, debuts
For years, the program GIMP (which stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program) has been a mainstay in the open source software landscape. GIMP has been a popular image editing program (and alternative to Photoshop).
That said, the program’s name is also an example of open source software’s occasional lack of marketing skills. In this case, the word “gimp” is also A) an insult and B) um, a type of fetish. Thus, despite its proponents’ promotional efforts, GIMP’s name alone is enough to keep it from being taken seriously or used in many schools/offices. (Looking at my Xubuntu Linux install, GIMP is listed in the menu under its full name, rather than by its acronym.)
Efforts to get a different, better name for GIMP haven’t succeeded. GIMP’s backers adamantly refuse to consider a new name. Their own FAQ answers this, with a response that: A) they’re against “sterilization of language” (huh?), B) they’ve had the name for years and it gets search engine traffic, so why change?, and C) if you don’t like it, make your own fork. The fact they need a FAQ section to address (and basically brush off) complaints about their software’s name being both problematic and making it harder for others to promote the program says a lot.
Fortunately, one group’s taken up the idea of forking GIMP. Glimpse is a fork of GIMP that’s gained some attention recently. Besides having a less juvenile name, Glimpse also promises to fix some of GIMP’s usability issues. While the name still has trademark concerns (a brief search shows a few other software programs also go by that name), hopefully it ends up being where LibreOffice is today (after it was forked from OpenOffice).
Photo by WOCinTech Chat (Flickr / CC BY / cropped from original)
