Adobe crams public gov't docs into their crappy plugin, calls it 'Open'.

This is Ars. They are polite:

Adobe is pushing hard to get Flash, PDF, and other technologies used to realize recent open government initiatives. The problem is that the technologies fall short of the goal of full accessibility, and cause problems for those seeking to use government-supplied data in any meaningful way.

[From Adobe pushes Flash and PDF for open government, misses irony - Ars Technica]

What, me, polite? Ha. "Adobe's idea of 'Open' is to wrap all public data in the same plugin that 90% of the world thinks is utter shit."

So, after reading some of the hairsplitting, shilling and candy-assing over at Ars, I commented myself.

quote:
Originally posted by pebblesonthemountain:
Ars has been traditionally biased against Adobe products, most specifically Flash and PDF. A higher level of interaction between Adobe and Ars would be a great way to dispel myths, misrepresentations and flat out erroneous comments frequently made by the Ars journalism team that obviously never use Adobe products.

I hope to see you and other Adobe personnel in here in the future to pulpit thump for PDF and Flash since both are exceptionally good products that get bad reputations by people that know less than zero about them.

By 'thump' you mean 'shill', right? Wow, that spiel's better than what I've seen from Adobe Marketing...

Some of us have the sad misfortune of knowing better, let's review what we know about PDF and Flash:

1/ Before the Macromedia acquisition, PDF was a format that was actually useful and lived up to its name. Readable, searchable, and sometimes even editable in Adobe's progressively buggier by version app, Acrobat. Heck, Acrobat used to be the buggiest product Adobe made. That's been supplanted by Flash. I know because http://adobegripes.tumblr.com/ and persistent crashing of the Flash plugin on my Mac tells me so.

2/ Everyone's consternation started when the MBA decided that his newest acquistion, Fuh-lash, had to be embedded in everything. Flash embedded in PDF. PDF embedded in Flash.

Or in the case of the US Gov't 'Open' [Hah!] site, Flash embedded in PDF embedded in Flash that 95% of everyone will Flashblock.

But tut tut, we must make those numbers to pay for, or at least not become levered up to our eyeballs from the last acquisition. So just embed our stuff, not anything useful.

3/ Did I, and a number of commenters here mention, that the world hates Flash? That it's uniquely suited ONLY for sites like 'hamster dance' or SouthPark?

I predict the same time next year Adobe will be embedding spyware ^h^h^h^h^h^h 'analytics' in PDF, and Leonard will be back here defending PDF as 'Open' blah blah blah.

Leonard's right- The original PDF *was* open and useful. I really miss those two nice ol' guys from Palo Alto and their baby.

The fact that he also has to defend, in the same breath all the crapware tech that Adobe M&A'd and shovels into PDF in the same breath is… well it all kinda leaves me speechless. And shows us how desperate Adobe is to remain relevant when they really haven't innovated anything since those two old nice guys left.

It's kind of an 'oh, how the mighty have fallen' feeling.

PDF is a great format as long as you leave 'the new Adobe' and all their mergers and acquisitions out of it.

Of course, soon the rest of the country will feel the same pain that System Admins and IT Personnel in enterprise have felt for years. I don't know whether to lament or break out the popcorn.

[From Adobe pushes Flash and PDF for open government, misses irony - Topic Powered by Eve Community]

Oh, and for those of my readers on Unix / Linux / Mac worried about Adobe's new acquisition: Here's how to flush that shit:

Open your terminal app.

type 'sudo /etc/hosts'

and your password...

and paste this in on another line of that file:

127.0.0.1 omnituretrack.local.com
127.0.0.1 analytic.spamfighter.com #[Omniture]
127.0.0.1 cdn11.sphere.com #[Omniture]
127.0.0.1 http://www.sphere.com #[SphereOmniture]
127.0.0.1 omniture.secure.miisolutions.net
127.0.0.1 html.knbc.com #[Omniture]
127.0.0.1 html.nbc10.com #[Omniture]
127.0.0.1 html.wnbc.com #[Omniture]
# [Omniture][Wildcard DNS]
127.0.0.1 omniture.112.2o7.net #[McAfee.Cookie-Omniture]
127.0.0.1 omniturecom.112.2o7.net
127.0.0.1 omniturebanners.112.2o7.net
127.0.0.1 stats.esomniture.com #[SpySweeper.Spy.Cookie]
127.0.0.1 http://www.omniture.com
# [Omniture via Misc Sites]
127.0.0.1 omniture.chip.de
# [Omniture via Offermatica]
# [Omniture via WebSideStory]

There ya go. 1.8 billion dollars down the shitter. You other folks on the SlumdogOS are on your own. I don't do crapware.