Adobe Reader lossage
in [UK Mac]
|
From: Peter Ceresole on 25 Apr 2010 15:49 D.M. Procida <real-not-anti-spam-address(a)apple-juice.co.uk> wrote: > No, Google is the new Microsoft. In a way, Google is really the new IBM, > except that when Microsoft used to be the new IBM, it did it so much > that people stopped remembering what the IBM was. Now Microsoft is > starting to become what the actual IBM became after Microsoft became the > new IBM, but people still remember it. Golly. Nice convolution. -- Peter
From: Pd on 26 Apr 2010 06:43 D.M. Procida <real-not-anti-spam-address(a)apple-juice.co.uk> wrote: > No, Google is the new Microsoft. In a way, Google is really the new IBM, > except that when Microsoft used to be the new IBM, it did it so much > that people stopped remembering what the IBM was. Now Microsoft is > starting to become what the actual IBM became after Microsoft became the > new IBM, but people still remember it. As an analogy, that fails in so many ways. The sort-of similarity is that Google is as ubiquitous as a search engine as Microsoft was as a personal computer operating system. I think the single biggest difference is that Google actually innovate, and seem to care about that elusive quality "quality". Google Wave and Buzz suck though. They are the Zune of Google. Another similarity is that neither of them really give a toss about users as individuals with their silly personal desires for privacy and control. -- Pd
From: Ben Shimmin on 26 Apr 2010 06:51 Pd <peterd.news(a)gmail.invalid>: [...] > As an analogy, that fails in so many ways. The sort-of similarity is > that Google is as ubiquitous as a search engine as Microsoft was as a > personal computer operating system. > > I think the single biggest difference is that Google actually innovate, > and seem to care about that elusive quality "quality". Google Wave and > Buzz suck though. They are the Zune of Google. > > Another similarity is that neither of them really give a toss about > users as individuals with their silly personal desires for privacy and > control. Neither Microsoft nor Google give much of a damn about design, either. b. -- <bas(a)bas.me.uk> <URL:http://bas.me.uk/> `Zombies are defined by behavior and can be "explained" by many handy shortcuts: the supernatural, radiation, a virus, space visitors, secret weapons, a Harvard education and so on.' -- Roger Ebert
From: Rowland McDonnell on 26 Apr 2010 07:00 D.M. Procida <real-not-anti-spam-address(a)apple-juice.co.uk> wrote: > Richard Tobin <richard(a)cogsci.ed.ac.uk> wrote: > > > I installed Adobe Read because I needed to read a multi-document PDF > > file. Now it wants to update itself. I tell it to go ahead, and > > it displays "Installing update..." but nothing happens. > > > Does anyone know how to get it to either install the update or go > > away? > > No, I don't either. > > Does anyone remember Adobe when instead of being rubbish, they were > inventing PostScript and programs like Illustrator and Photoshop? I don't recall Adobe inventing PostScript. In fact, I'd bet that no-one here had heard of Adobe until some years after the founders had come up with `the universal printer lingo'. Not sure when that was, exactly - I recall having read in the past that PS was assembled at `the end of the 70s', but the Wikip article says 1982. That could be to avoid the previous employer of the folks who did the creative work trying to nab rights to it, on the grounds that an employer of creative people usually has a contract to `own' all the creativity of that person while they're under contract. [Wage slavery in one of its more odious manifestations, is that, and one reason I'll never work for IBM or similar. No-one's ever got me to sign a contract like that, not even when I wrote for publication. They thought they had, but they hadn't...] Anyway, there you go: 1982 at the latest, `no-one' had heard of Adobe at the time it came up with Adobe, so nyer. Adobe didn't come up with PhotoShop - that was a student at Umich. Not sure about the history of Illustrator - I think that might actually have been a pukka Adobe project. PostScript was `the product Adobe was created to market' and therefore pre-dates Adobe. Photoshop was the product of a bright student, marketed and developed by Adobe. Illustrator looks like the only actual `really good original development from Adobe'. Wikip says: "Adobe Illustrator was first developed for the Apple Macintosh in 1986 (shipping in January 1987) as a commercialization of Adobe's in-house font development software and PostScript file format. " So that's ONE decent software package developed by the firm - and a whole load of cruddy treatment of customers and fascist privacy invasions since... Rowland. P.S. InDesign's not at all shabby, not at all. But it was a project inherited from Aldus that Adobe didn't really bother continuing with until it noticed that Aldus Pagemaker had lost almost all its market share due to lack of development... The Wikip page on InDesign is wrong on many counts - it's a long way from the first DTP package to offer the features listed on the Wikip page. TeX got there first on ALL the features listed as `firsts' in history of InDesign AFAICT. Cross-platform DTP, that's what TeX is, built-in cross-platform scripting, the ability to run *ANY* code (JS or otherwise[1]) from inside TeX (or not, if forbidden under user control). (and I've not corrected it on account of having no urge at all to dig up the proofs required to deal with Wikip's braindead regular editors) [1] Well, TeX can tell the host machinery to try to execute any code just so long as you tell it where the file is and turn on the ability to do so (it's a security risk otherwise). Whether the host will do so or not depends on whether or not you're asking an Intel GigaBollox MutantFruit[2] CPU to execute 6502 code or doing something sensible instead. [2] It's multicore, right? So if it's fruit, it's mutant fruit. Right? Right - obvious, right? -- Remove the animal for email address: rowland.mcdonnell(a)dog.physics.org Sorry - the spam got to me http://www.mag-uk.org http://www.bmf.co.uk UK biker? Join MAG and the BMF and stop the Eurocrats banning biking
From: Rowland McDonnell on 26 Apr 2010 07:12
D.M. Procida <real-not-anti-spam-address(a)apple-juice.co.uk> wrote: > Jim <jim(a)magrathea.plus.com> wrote: > > > D.M. Procida <real-not-anti-spam-address(a)apple-juice.co.uk> wrote: > > > > > Does anyone remember Adobe when instead of being rubbish, they were > > > inventing PostScript and programs like Illustrator and Photoshop? > > > > I know what you mean. Nowadays they seem to be the New Microsoft. > > No, Google is the new Microsoft. MS is the death of great ideas, the place good ideas go to be castrated, put down, mutiliated with plastic surgery to make 'em fit the corporate image and so lose whatever greatness they had in the first place... Etc. Google's actually a source of some genuinely new ideas that are really useful, and it's company policy to nurture the development of such ideas outside the constraints of traditional US corporate bullshit. And aside from that: Google's not remotely interested in wiping out the competition - ruling the world, yes; wiping out competition, no. Nor throwing chairs around the office in a fit of aggressive pique. Monkey-boy Ballmer indeed... So I'm not sure what you mean by your claim - there does not appear to be any obvious connection at all between MS and Google. > In a way, Google is really the new IBM, If and only if you mean `IBM back in the days before PCs, when IBM was THE source for business computing kit'. Except that it wasn't, even then, that was always a myth. > except that when Microsoft used to be the new IBM, it did it so much > that people stopped remembering what the IBM was. Erm? > Now Microsoft is > starting to become what the actual IBM became after Microsoft became the > new IBM, but people still remember it. I don't see that - I see MS falling apart, failing to adapt. Back in the 1980s and early 1990s IBM re-shaped itself into a what it was always trying to be, a `business solutions provider'. I don't think MS has ever had any sort of a plan except to wipe out ther competition and take over the world, which can't work, so it's floundering. I don't see that MS /could/ make an IBM-style turnaround. I see MS's influence withering away to `not very much at all' in the next 20-30 years. Rowland. -- Remove the animal for email address: rowland.mcdonnell(a)dog.physics.org Sorry - the spam got to me http://www.mag-uk.org http://www.bmf.co.uk UK biker? Join MAG and the BMF and stop the Eurocrats banning biking |