Soapbox

An aphorism often attributed to eugenist and racist Alfred E. Wiggam goes “A conservative is a man who believes that nothing should be done for the first time“. Corporate lawyers (the kind who never see the inside of a courtoom) seem to believe the only way to escape liability is to do nothing. Sometimes, despite their protestations, a company actually does come up with products or services, so they take their revenge in making them as unusable as possible to ensure no one buys them.

I bought a car last December. It is festooned with huge ugly warning signs on the visors. They are painted directly onto the leather and not removable. The car computer shows an annoying disclaimer when started. Every time. And it has to be dismissed manually. My GPS does the same. These are completely mindless ergonomic hurdles that probably do nothing for either safety or even shielding the manufacturer from liability, and make everyone’s life ever slightly more miserable.

During the Macintosh’s development, Steve Jobs famously equated slashing boot times with saving lives. The lawyers with their aggravating disclaimers are doing the exact opposite.

Nearly every computer or software company is guilty:

• Apple has .Mac pushed down our throats everywhere in OS X, starting with the signup process, in iSync, and so on.
• Microsoft pushes MSN services
• Adobe tried to hook up photographers to its stock photo service, and at one point even shilled for Kinki’s
• All PC manufacturers sell out their users to crapware publishers and turn the average PC’s home page into a garish collage reminiscent of the stickers on a racing car.

In the most recent installment, Apple’s iTunes 8 insists on putting links to the iTunes music store and its nasty lossy, DRM-infected music when you browse your own library. The only way to disable them is to disable the iTunes store in parental preferences (one rare instance where lawyers and corporate risk-averseness actually help consumers).

Linux is immune to this phenomenon. Perhaps at some point people will switch just for a respite from the constant marketing pressure.

I started watching the King Arthur Blu-Ray yesterday, courtesy of Netflix. It advances the Sarmatian knight theory about the historical origins for the Arthurian myth.

Interestingly enough, Ossetian is the sole surviving descendent of the Sarmatian language. If the Sarmatian theory is right, the (South) Ossetians fighting for independence from (Caucasian) Georgia, to British (and European) condemnation, are the kin of the Knights of the Round Table…

My primary computer is a dual 2GHz PowerMac G5 until I can upgrade it with a Nehalem Mac Pro, most likely around the end of the year or early next year. I bought it in 2004, along with a 23″ Apple Cinema HD (the old pinstripe plastic bezel kind with an ADC connector). Unfortunately, about a year ago the CCFL backlight on the monitor started turning pink from old age, and thus unusable in a properly color-managed photographic workflow.

I used that as an excuse to splurge on a humongous (and agoraphobia-inducing) HP LP3065 30 inch LCD monitor after reading the glowing reviews. The two features that sold me were the enhanced color gamut (the only way to improve that would be to get a $6000 Samsung XL30, something I am not quite prepared to do), and the fact it has 3 built-in DVI ports, so it can easily be shared by multiple computers (assuming they support dual-link DVI, which unfortunately my basic spec Sun Ultra 40 M2 does not). The fact it was 25% less expensive than the Apple 30″ Cinema Display helped, of course.

About 6 months ago, I discovered there was a fine pink vertical line running across the entire height of the monitor, roughly 25 centimeters from the left. Since I primarily use that monitor for photo (the primary monitor for Mail, web browsing or terminals remains the Apple), at first I worried there was a defect with my camera. I managed to reproduce the problem with my MacBook Pro (they have dual-link DVI, unlike lesser laptops), and called HP support (the 3 year HP warranty was also an important consideration when I purchased).

My first support call in November 2007 went well, and the tech told me I would be contacted to arrange for an on-site exchange. This is a seriously heavy monitor and I did not relish the idea of lugging it back to FedEx, so getting premium support for a business-class monitor sounded an attractive proposition. Unfortunately, they never did call back, and as I had other pressing matters to attend to involving international travel, I just put it out of my mind (it is a very subtle flaw that is not even always visible).

I only got around to calling them back a few weeks ago. Unlike in November, I was given the run-around with various customer service reps in India until I was finally routed to a pleasant (and competent) tech in a suburb of Vancouver (the US dollar going in the direction it is, you have to wonder how much longer before HP outsources those call centers back to the US). The problem is not with Indian call centers, in any case, all but one of the CSRs were very polite (I suspect Indians learn more patience as they grow up than pampered Americans or Europeans would). The problem is poorly organized support processes and asinine scripts they are required to go through if they want to keep their jobs. In any case, the Canadian rep managed to find the FRU number and also told me someone would call to schedule an appointment. Someone did call this time, to let me know the part was back-ordered and they would call me when it becomes available.

This morning, as I was heading for the shower, my intercom buzzed. It was a DHL delivery man with the replacement monitor. I had to open the door to him in my bath robe. Naturally, nobody at HP bothered to notify me and had I left earlier, I would have missed him altogether.

One of the great things about Apple products is that if you live near an Apple store, you can just stop by their pretentiously-named Genius bars and get support for free (though not free repairs for out-of-warranty products, obviously). I now have a fully working HP monitor again, so I suppose I can’t complain too loudly, but the Apple monitor with the sterling support looks like the true bargain in hindsight.

I installed Adobe Creative Suite 3 on my home PowerMac and my MacBook (the license allows you to install it on two computers as long as they are not in simultaneous use). The only real reason I upgraded is to get a native Intel version. I have barely started using it already and I already have peeves:

• Bridge looks butt-ugly, is even slower than before and with a more amateurish interface than ever
• The install procedure is incredibly annoying and Windows-like. There is no justification for an install procedure that chokes if the beta was not uninstalled officially (although I have to give some brownie points due to the fact the cleanup script is written in Python).
• The icons are aesthetically bankrupt. What kind of credibility does Adobe think it has with creative people with such an astoundingly lackluster effort?
• Barely installed and already in need of software updates. The widespread availability of fast Internet connections is no excuse for shoddy release management or a “we’ll patch it post-release” mentality. Speaking of which, the only proper time to interrupt users with a software update dialog is as they are quitting the application, not by getting in the way of whatever task they are trying to get done by starting up the app.
• Don’t clutter my hard drive with legal drivel in twenty different languages. It’s called “Creative Suite”, not “Boilerplate Suite”.
• All the tie-ins to paid add-on services like Adobe Stock Photos or Acrobat Conferencing are incredibly obnoxious, just like those for MSN or .Mac.
• JavaScript in Acrobat is a big security and privacy risk, and should be disabled by default.
• On the plus side, thanks for making a “Design Basic” edition without all the despicable Flash garbage in it. I would actually pay more for the Basic version than for the supposedly premium one infected with Flash and Dreamweaver.

Update (2008-01-01):

It seems Adobe has also crossed a serious ethical line by building in spyware to track on whenever a user starts a CS3 application.

As far as I am concerned, this is the last straw and I will actively start looking for substitutes for Adobe products as soon as I return from my vacation.

Update (2008-01-02):

It seems Adobe does not collect the serial number after all. The apps should nonetheless never call on the Internet except possibly to check for updates. For people like myself who have static IPs, the IP address itself could be used to correlate the analytics with personal information.