Adobe Quietly Monitoring Software Use?

henrypijames writes "For months, users of Adobe Creative Suite 3 have been wondering why some of the applications regularly connect to what looks like a private IP address but is actually a public domain address belonging to the web analytics company Omniture. Now allegations of user spying are getting louder, prompting Adobe Photoshop product manager John Nack to respond, though many remain unsatisfied with his explanation."

Comments

Not about spying

[75th Trombone]

To clarify the summary, the biggest issue is not the spying on users; the biggest issue is the deceptive server name, 192.168.112.2O7.net. It's at least meant to confuse unwary users, and possibly meant to confuse misconfigured firewalls.

As someone said on a blog I can't find right now, this is not a story about privacy; it's a story about lies.

Re:Not about spying

[IdeaMan]

Adobe may indeed be the innocent party here, depending on how Omniture code is included into their build.
What I found as a cause for concern is that it is tracking an embedded Opera browser.

Re:Not about spying

[Dachannien]

the deceptive server name, 192.168.112.2O7.net That's the sort of obfuscation we've repeatedly come to expect from purveyors of malware, although normally, malware purveyors take up tactics that target the laymasses rather than the sort of folks who know what the 192.168.0.0/16 subnet is for.

It's almost guaranteed that Adobe was trying to hide something here (to state the obvious). I suppose there's always the possibility that somebody thought they were being playfully clever, but if so, it was done with the same poor judgment one uses if one jokingly tells the TSA guy, "Don't worry, I won't blow the plane up, I promise!"

Re:Not about spying

[Anonymous Coward]

...the deceptive server name, 192.168.112.2O7.net. It's at least meant to confuse unwary users, and possibly meant to confuse misconfigured firewalls. Very very very very misconfigured indeed - so misconfigured that you can't even do that in, say, Linux. If you use Very Dumb Regular Expressions (as in /^192\.168/ dumb) to parse host names, you deserve everything you get. =) It's probably meant to confuse people and people alone.

Re:Not about spying

[pla]

To clarify the summary, the biggest issue is not the spying on users; the biggest issue is the deceptive server name

No. The "biggest issue" here comes from the fact that a software vendor has the arrogance to think they have some "right" to use my network connection in an app having no business connecting to the internet in the first place.

The actual address just raises a few red flags, but I'd consider it just as unkosher if they connected directly to "www.adobe.com".

If they want to download some form of legitimate update or additional content, their bloatware can damned well ask for my permission. Otherwise, I consider this no less than theft of service on Adobe's (or whatever company you want to pick, since we tolerate far too many of them doing this crap) part.



Okay, now cue the trolls and apoligists who will quote part of a EULA that not even its own author ever read.

Re:Not about spying

[tonsofpcs]

I agree, I don't think any application should be using resources on my system without my explicit consent. There is no reason for software to use a network connection without asking me, unless it is software blatantly designed to do so (web browser) - and even those tend to ask me, the default home page for most browsers is a locally generated site. What if Joe User has a limited internet connection that he gets charged by the KB? What if Fred Foobar is using some sort of low bandwidth connection to maintain communication from a remote site and needs 100% of the minuscule bandwidth he has for that communication? There is no reason for software to connect like this.

Re:Not about spying

[Anonymous Coward]

> To clarify the summary, the biggest issue is not the spying on users; the biggest issue is the deceptive server name, 192.168.112.2O7.net. It's at least meant to confuse unwary users, and possibly meant to confuse misconfigured firewalls.

As per "Rules of the Internet: Rule 34: There is Porn of it, no exceptions", and "Rule 35: If there is not porn of it, porn will be made of it".

I hereby propose two new rules for malware:

Rules of Malware: Rule 34: The presence of a zero in your domain name is a prima facie indicator of spyware/spamware/shitware/malware sponsored by a "reputable" vendor, aka "mainsleaze".

This heuristic has held true ever since mainsleaze spammers started flinging shit at me from "m0.net" back in the 90s. (Funny m0.net story - my bank ignored me, but my broker amazingly dropped m0.net after I pointed out that all their client communications were being preemptorily-treated as phishing attempts, and that if they didn't start sending client communications from machines under their own domain I'd transfer my own account. My own account means jack and shit to 'em, but I obviously wasn't the only one enraged by this, and kudos to the broker for realizing they had to dropping m0.net like the spamhaus it was.)

Rules of Malware: Rule 35: In the event of unknown software that violates Rule 34 via the replacement of a zero or one with a "l" (ell) or "o" (oh), it's still mainzleaze malware.

I further propose that 2o7.net be the canonical example of Rule 35 of Spyware.

Ever since Photoshop (6? 7?) phoned home on install, I haven't trusted them and crossed 'em off my vendor list. Giving PDFs the ability to be exploited by Javashit, and the attempt to ubiquitize something as exploit-prone as Flash's runtime, I've been gratified to see that my lack of trust was well-founded. Fuck Adobe.

Re:Not about spying

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah. You're not alone. There's a limit to what consumers are willing to sacrifice for even free content. For example, Juno would exchange free ISP for ad sponsored content on your machine. But at least you knew that up front though. Slowly, but surely, all of our machines are becoming internet based Nielsen boxes, without our knowledge.

In part, that's why I switched back to an anonymous account here.

-- Rob Malda

Re:Not about spying

[BSAtHome]

However, in this case you should block 216.52.17.0/24 to get rid of Omniture...

$ host 192.168.112.2O7.net
192.168.112.2O7.net has address 216.52.17.136
192.168.112.2O7.net has address 216.52.17.207

$ whois 216.52.17.136
[Querying whois.arin.net]
[whois.arin.net]
Internap Network Services PNAP-8-98 (NET-216-52-0-0-1)
216.52.0.0 - 216.52.255.255
Omniture PNAP-SFJ-OMNITU-RM-01 (NET-216-52-17-0-1)
216.52.17.0 - 216.52.17.255

Re:Not about spying

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why is the title of this Slashdot post: "Adobe Quietly Monitoring Software Use"? Hmmm??

Re:Not about spying

[bornwaysouth]

Agree. I installed CS3 on Boxing day. Christmas present, to finally update my Paintshop pro 7. I was annoyed to find some hours later that it was 200 megs into a 370 meg download. It may have subtly asked my permission, but it did not flag the size of the download.

Mind you, keeping size a secret seems to be standard for most updates even where permission is asked for. First the language is bungled. They ask for permission to 'install' updates as if it had already been downloaded. Then when you think, "Ok, may as well be up to date, since it's got the data now. It's a small patch to block a security hole.", it goes off to get 70 megs or so of update for some damn media player I don't use. (I have teenage children. Media players spontaneously generate inside my computer.)

Re:Not about spying

[poopdeville]

I agree, I don't think any application should be using resources on my system without my explicit consent.

You gave it when you explicitly agreed to the EULA.

Re:Not about spying

[Threni]

Also, why is this a surprise? You can see it connecting to the net when it loads up by using your firewall. Doesn't it prompt you to allow the connection? You are using a firewall, right? What else would the app be doing other than informing on your use? Don't all apps which connect to the net do this? What else would they be doing? Loading up a DLL? (That's enough questions - ed.)

Re:Not about spying

[betterunixthanunix]

Ultimately, however, the issue is that nobody except the developers of this product actually knows what the purpose of those connects is. Is it really just for quality tracking and product news/offers? Is it possibly also for the purpose of stopping copyright infringement (that is, illegal software use)? Is it sending your actual activities to Adobe?

This is probably innocuous, but who knows? This is what happens when software is distributed only in binary form -- users pick up on something suspicious, and start to assume the worst, and then that whole mob mentality enters the picture. Suppose you discovered that GIMP was connecting to a strange looking host -- what would you do then?

Re:Not about spying

[poopdeville]

Rule 35 is that if there's no porn of it, it's your duty to make it. Jesus fucking christ noob, lurk moar.

Re:Not about spying

[rhizome]

I agree, I don't think any application should be using resources on my system without my explicit consent.

Beyond that, should it be legal for a company to commercially leverage a user's internet connection? If the company derives profit or business intelligence that increases the value of the company's products, where is the consideration for the money that the user pays to their internet provider to subsidize its operations?

Think of it this way: What if you were crossing a toll bridge or toll road, and once you pay your toll someone comes out and fills your trunk with cargo which you are required to drop off at the end of the toll area. If you contest the cargo, the toll people say, "Well, don't use the bridge/road then. Go around." I don't think that would go over very well.

Re:Not about spying

[Anonymous Coward]

That's sneaky enough for me to add a

address=/2O7.net/127.0.0.1

In the /etc/dnsmasq.conf on my router...

I only use pdf and flash players from them, but who knows what else they are doing, or who else is using it? I can't trust it.

Re:Not about spying

[jimdread]

Suppose you discovered that GIMP was connecting to a strange looking host -- what would you do then?

Edit the source, remove the code that makes it connect to a strange looking host, recompile GIMP, and release a patch for others who don't want their software doing strange things.

Re:Not about spying

[MightyMartian]

Wasn't this Sony's defense. "Well, it's not REALLY our rootkit."

Let's remember this the next time some turd comes around praising the wonders of Flash.

Re:Not about spying

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, let's all switch to svg. Flash is clearly down for the count eh.

Why not grow up and get a life you pathetic little creep.

Re:Not about spying

[Obsidian Butterfly]

Beyond that, should it be legal for a company to commercially leverage a user's internet connection?

It's not "user", it's "consumer".

I trust this clarifies things for you, Citizen.

Re:Not about spying

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been running Vista on a Toshiba laptop. Besides the installed crapware phoning home and Adobe's preinstalled reader, of course, I'm more concerned about those I can't catch. My tinfoil hat tells me that if MS controls your system, it is hiding a bypass API somewhere to elude your its own (and your own paid for) software firewall. How else did those hidden windows updates get installed on unwilling corporate and home machines months back?

Even if that isn't the case, I was pissed off when random windows components had to be blocked.
Media player LAN sharing/search service? OK, I have a single PC --blocked cause I don't want that used as a future net-access backdoor for DRM.
Windows sound recorder? Probably is just testing my local network or some local proxy port for scratchwork --hope it's not Bill G. trying to sample my microphone, like google talk does.
Windows magnifier? What the HELL? Why does THAT need to open a socket?

I caught so many OS programs and utilities doing this that it made me mad, in a single month of owning Vista. XP was never so vociferous. Back in the nineties, nothing ever wanted to open your connection upon launch to check for updates. MS and dobe do it to check if the LAN has many PC's running Word / Adobe under the same serial #, particularly on macs. The problem is, once you click on "trust this app" you never know when they'll use that setting to dial beyond your LAN, unless your routers already know to block traffic --and this power comes for $$$$ unless you have precompiled a list of former, though SUCCESSFULL, outside accesses.

Re:Not about spying

[Travelsonic]

Are you talking about yourself, since methinks that you aren't following your own advice.

Re:Not about spying

[LilGuy]

Under Iowa law this is illegal. Including "spyware" with any product without specifically stating what it is for and how to uninstall it is a felony. Any use of network resources or computer resources without explicit knowledge and approval by the own of the machine and/or network is a felony. Is this covered in the EULA?

Re:Not about spying

[that this is not und]

That's the kind of nonsense AOL clients used to do to their users. And I mean dialup users. It would pop up 'needs to install an update' and the user would click 'ok' and it would start a 45meg download over their 32K dialup connection.

Has Adobe degenerated to the point of being another AOL?

Re:Not about spying

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, am i talking about myself?

Well i haven't heard that one in a long while; not since schoolyard name-calling contests of yore.

Maybe you should grow up a bit too eh!

Re:Not about spying

[sakusha]

They've been saying it since the Nixon/Watergate era, "it's not the crime, it's the coverup."

Re:Not about spying

[MightyMartian]

Ah look, like Microsoft, Adobe now has sub-human cretins defending them. You sir, or madam, or more likely self-fertilizing it, can go, take a stone, shove it in your mouth, and thus ensure future sounds emanating from it have some greater chance of making sense.

Re:Not about spying

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

To clarify the summary, the biggest issue is not the spying on users; the biggest issue is the deceptive server name

No. The "biggest issue" here comes from the fact that a software vendor has the arrogance to think they have some
"right" to use my network connection in an app having no business connecting to the internet in the first place.

The actual address just raises a few red flags, but I'd consider it just as unkosher if they connected directly to "www.adobe.com".

If they want to download some form of legitimate update or additional content, their bloatware can damned well ask for
my permission. Otherwise, I consider this no less than theft of service on Adobe's (or whatever company you want
to pick, since we tolerate far too many of them doing this crap) part.

Okay, now cue the trolls and apoligists who will quote part of a EULA that not even its own author ever read. I'll throw another rock into the pond, here. CS3 has a auto-update feature for all of the apps in your suite. This isn't a surprise. They made it pretty clear it'll do that and you can easily turn it off. That said, this actually surprises me. I knew all about the apps calling home to find updates, but I don't have the foggiest idea what this data's being used for.

In short: I agree. I use a couple of Adobe apps to work on NDA stuff. I don't/b like finding out that it's calling home with data I don't know what they're going to do with.

Re:Not about spying

[jo42]

Complain to abuse@internap.com re: that address range as hosting a spyware server...

Re:Not about spying

[1001011010110101]

Try this for size:

At work, Vista PC , no admin access.
Every time I open a PDF it tries to run an update.
It can't. I have to cancel de elevation MODAL dialog. The only way to disable updates is to complete an update, only then it shows the option to disable it. The other way is to patch something in the registry in H_KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, which, of course, is not possible as a nonadmin user.
Fucking braindead.

Re:Not about spying

[Hal_Porter]

(I have teenage children. Media players spontaneously generate inside my computer.) No wait! I know what's going on! Maybe the TEENAGE CHILDREN are INSTALLING the media players! It's not spontaneous generation at all!

Re:Not about spying

[random0xff]

The whole CS 3 'experience' is just that of extremely bloated software. The updater software especially is terrible. It took them 4 years to understand users don't want folders created under their My Documents folder with names like InDesign_00.1_Update or whatever they came up with to make it scary looking.

Re:Not about spying

[gooneybird]

You know,

Of everyone here who is expressing outrage at this, I wonder how many of your browsers have Adobe's Flash plugin installed? Have you ever read the the freakin' EULA for Adobe Flash? In case you haven't: It basically says: Adobe has the right to monitor anything/everything regarding a user's activities, report those activities back to Adobe, including any data that the user has. You think I am kidding - go read it for yourself....

This is a minor, minor problem compared to the Flash plugin.

And another thing, if you are using Google Apps along with G-drive to store your data, you shouldn't care either, the end result is just about the same thing, only you are just making it easier for Google to get to your data. Actually, you rely on Google (and your ISP), to kindly allow access to your own data. The world is doomed.

Re:Not about spying

[guardian-ct]

I was planning to check the EULA for photoshop to see if this sort of thing was covered. However, in order to read the EULA for photoshop, I have to install Acrobat Reader. If I want to read the EULA for Acrobat Reader, I need to install Acrobat Reader in order to do so, since it's available only in PDF format... Fun, eh? You can't read the other EULAs without either installing some other company's PDF reader, or else agreeing to at least one of the Adobe EULAs. This is one indication of how Adobe thinks about customers.

From the Adobe product EULAs page:
You can access the product license in Adobe® Portable Document Format (PDF) by clicking the version number for the appropriate product(s) below. For your convenience, when available, we have provided you with a selection of languages in which to review the product license. You will need to download Adobe Reader® software, if it is not already installed on your computer, to view and print the license agreements.


I attempted to read the Photoshop EULA, and picked out some interesting third-party bits, but when I tried to paste them in here, I found that it was secured against copying. Yes, the EULA is considered proprietary enough to DRM. Oh, and things like Eulalyzer don't seem to work on it either.

First rule of EULA seems to be: You don't talk about EULA.

Re:Not about spying

[Wylfing]

You haven't used Adobe products lately, I take it. The current crop requires an always-on broadband connection to which the software has unlimited access, so that it can repeatedly ping the authentication servers to make sure you aren't running a pirated copy.

Re:Not about spying

[Jaseoldboss]

Okay, now cue the trolls and apoligists who will quote part of a EULA that not even its own author ever read.

Far from it, Adobe are actually trying to tell you that the no such communication takes place. From here

Bonjour connects to no other servers than your machine's pre-configured DNS server.

"Plus our behavioral analytics partners" I think they meant to say. I don't use Adobe software but I've blocked all traffic to 2o7.net just in case.

Re:Not about spying

[rhizome]

It's not "user", it's "consumer".

Equivalent in this context, or in other words, "you know what I mean."

Re:Not about spying

[HiThere]

Well, *one* of the reasons that I don't have flash installed is because I consider it insecure. The EULA is another. There might be others, but those two are sufficient, so I haven't considered further.

Re:Not about spying

[verbalcontract]

I think privacy advocates are making mountains out of a molehill. This doesn't seem like an underhanded attempt at tricking users. After all, the ".net" at the end gives it away as a URL pretty quickly. Omniture has used the 2o7.net domain for a long time. It's been registered since 2000. http://whois.domaintools.com/2o7.net One could argue that Omniture is just boneheaded in general for using domain for so long that doesn't mean anything, but I wouldn't think of this as directed toward Adobe users. Plus, you have to realize that Omniture is just a web analytics package. It just shows things like page views, clicks, and possibly behavioral data in aggregate. There's no "Spy on Users" or "What's John Doe at 11 Main Street Buying?"

Don't yet have the full story

[Legionary13]

So far, i have not yet read anything about the transmitted data. Finding that data one would reasonably expect to be private without explicit release would be a serious problem. However, we don't have that - or its opposite. John Nack has given the best generic response that he is able, and I won't know what to make of Adobe's actions until we learn more about the data transmitted, probably next week.
As Trombone says the misleading server name is the issue. As I perceive it, this smells bad. Microsoft-style bad to be blunt.

Re:Don't yet have the full story

[fermion]

It is not a misleading server name, at least not anymore. Cognizant web users know 2o7.net, or whatever, is the cookie tracking site, and mostly blocks them. This company though liegitimate, does smell of sleaze. It was one of the first companies to use such social confusion, replacement of the '0' with 'o' so that in the days when one manually entered the domains to block, they would block the wrong domain. They are legitimate, and companies that work with them are legitimate, but the original sleaze factor is always there, and is obviously going to be transfered to clients.

This then leads to the question of why Adobe is using them for applications, which leads to think what has been aquired in the past year or so. I know. Macromedia. You know, that company that produces complicated resources hogging web content that unlike other resource hogging content cannot be filtered by most web browsers. I had hoped that Adobe might soften the rules and ship a flash player that was less user hostile, but no such new player exists. So, can we presume that instead of the user friendly Adbobe culture positively affecting the old macromedia products, that the end user hostile macromedia culture is infecting the adobe products.

OTOH, this product is a web design product, and most web designers get their money from ad revenue, so I would hardly think that the users of the product would have much problem with working with 2o7, kind of a necessary evil sort of thing. I can't imagine why adobe would use them at the design level, but overall I agree that it will be of no big deal to users of the product. To me, it is another step in the downfall of Adobe.

Re:Don't yet have the full story

[MidnightBrewer]

Downfall to be replaced by what? I agree that I'm less than happy with where Adobe has gone culturally in the last few years, but they've got less competition than Microsoft. There is simply nothing to replace them, period. Macromedia was the last thing standing between them and a total monopoly. Now, here we are.

Re:Don't yet have the full story

[indiechild]

"User friendly Adobe culture"? Tell me you can't be serious!

It's the other way around. Now that Adobe has acquired Macromedia, you can expect Macromedia products to get infested with Adobe's bloatware crap. Not to mention the fact that Adobe products have always been much more user hostile than Macromedia's.

Re:Don't yet have the full story

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Downfall to be replaced by what? I agree that I'm less than happy with where Adobe has gone culturally in the last few years, but they've got less competition than Microsoft. There is simply nothing to replace them, period.

This just isn't true. A lot of Adobe's products have valid competitors. Within the Last year or so, several low cost Photoshop competitors have started making headway. Pixelmator provides 75% of Photoshop's functionality for less than a tenth the price. Madcap looks to have a valid Framemaker alternative that has Adobe working on Framemaker once again. Inkscape and OmniGraffle have taken some of Illustrators customers. Quark has ramped up development and provides an alternative to InDesign.

The real problem is most customers for all these products are corporations. It is not too hard to get approval to purchase Adobe Creative Suite which costs a buttload. It is harder to get approval to buy lesser known competitors even though all of them together cost less; and then you have to justify each one separately so you often end up with fewer tools. The average user doesn't care how much the company pays so they don't put in the effort to end up with fewer tools. Maybe if all these companies got together and started offering a competing suite of tools, they'd have a chance, but for now they will cater to the price sensitive contractor market.

Re:Don't yet have the full story

[Typoboy]

2o7.net is a fine name. They explain what it does and why it does it on the site.

It's the 192.168.112.2O7.net which is inexcusably sleazy. What, is it trying to bypass simplistic firewall rules?

*2o7.net is going right into my Pith Helmet rules...

Re:Don't yet have the full story

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it's not a misleading name, because everybody not aware of the latest scams deserves to be scammed right? Serves them right for not being informed about the smallest detail of everything. I hope your dentist, physician, car mechanic, accountant etc. don't start using the same logic on you.

Re:Don't yet have the full story

[Anonymous Coward]

it is not the latest scam. 2o7 has been doing this for years, and the domain is including many ad an tracking filter files. This jut reminds us with the onslaught of apps calling home, it is not enough to just filter the HTTP requests through a browser. Comms must be filtered at the OS level. This is the newest tweak, being only SOP for a couple years.

Re:Don't yet have the full story

[dangitman]

Pixelmator provides 75% of Photoshop's functions? I don't think so. Anyway, why choose Pixelmator specifically, when reviews generally have it pegged at the lower end of the new Core Image based editors - and instead recommend a couple of others above it?

If SONY wasn't innocent for what First4Internet...

[Animaether]

..did with XCP, then Adobe doesn't get to claim innocence for whatever the heck the Omniture code is doing.

No explanation is a good explanation.

[solios]

Simply put, the only things on my machine that should phone out should be voluntarily invoked by me - the user. Namely the web browsers, software update, ssh, etceteras.

Adobe's behavior of late (and it will only get worse) is why applications like Little Snitch exist.

This kind of thing is why I wish The GIMP or similar would get useable* for those of us with hundreds of gigs of Photoshop documents.

* Open, Save, full support for all blending modes, masking modes, layer groups, and fonts/text editing capability up to at least Photoshop CS. I don't need the thing to handle Exactly Like Photoshop, but if it's going to be the "photoshop competitor" every FOSS advocate claims it is (instead of, say, the Paintshop Pro competitor that it actually is), then it ought to at least be able to handle my existing documents as well as OpenOffice handles .doc files.

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[Anonymous Coward]

> but if it's going to be the "photoshop competitor" every FOSS
> advocate claims it is (instead of, say, the Paintshop Pro
> competitor that it actually is), then it ought to at least
> be able to handle my existing documents as well as OpenOffice handles .doc files.

Dude,
suck it up. You chose a product which uses a proprietary format for
storing data. Nobody held a gun to your head and told you to use it.
If you don't like the fact that you paid and are still paying Adobe
to bend you over a barrel and give you one, then you have 1
and only 1 person to blame: yourself.

Be a man and accept you made a bad choice. Try harder next time
to use open formats the next time for your data.

--Johnny hates whiny people who get what they paid for.

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[Anonymous Coward]

Little Snitch looks awesome. Anyone aware of a similar app for Windows, not including ZoneAlarm.

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, pull your head out.

Fact is, for PROFESSIONAL uses, "The Gimp" (what an ASININE name), is trash.

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[setirw]

I usually don't feed trolls, but I feel like wasting a few minutes of my time...

The nature of the computer graphics app forced him to use a proprietary format. Too many people confuse the ills of "proprietary" formats with the ills of "arcane" formats. Like it or not, PSD is the industry standard, and it's only logical that he (and 99.99999% of digital artists) use it.

Now, if he had saved in some odd SGI format circa 1990, I'd agree with you.

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Dude,
> suck it up

Exactly the reason why FOSS gets a bad rap. Advocates would rather tell people why they're stupid, wrong, made a mistake, unethical for using proprietary software, etc. instead of just providing products that people want. The way to convert people is not to tell them, "you put yourself in this mess", the way to convert them is to provide an easy way out of their mess.

Fuck your holier-than-thou mindset, it's not helpful to anyone.

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[solios]

Indeed.

Pity those who have material locked up in SCITEX and other deceased formats.

I love how the FOSS community embraces .doc as a Necessary Evil, but totally froths at the mouth with .psd. Bit of a double standard if you ask me. :)

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[KugelKurt]

While AC/Johnny used harsh language, he's basically right. It's almost impossible for free software projects to support proprietary file formats to 100%. There's another way, though: use Photoshop's batch tool to export your PSD files into an open format. At worst a new file format plugin for PS has to be written. That's probably still easier than reverse engineering the PSD format.

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[padonak]

Kerio Personal Firewall used to be very good until they discontinued the 2.x versions. I'm still using 2.1.5 on all my XP installations.

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[X0563511]

Then don't call it GIMP. Call it "GNU Image Manipulation Program" - of which is the actual name, of which gimp.org actually TELLS you.

I quote:

GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages. (more...)

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[padonak]

Update: Apparently it's now called Sunbelt Personal Firewall or something like that.

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[MMC Monster]

Don'y knock PaintShop Pro (PSP). Last time I used PSP (v9), it did a hell of a lot more than The Gimp does now.

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly you stumbled upon someone who forgot to take his/her meds today.

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[pembo13]

I guess this is why some people are religiously against non-OSS. When you tire of your vendor, you can't simply drop said vendor because of all the data you have in their (often) closed formats.

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[STrinity]

It would be helpful for your and your anyones (who make stupid choices, repeatedly) were to vanish from existence, by murder if necessary. I would breath easy knowing the positive direction society would make on that day.

What would you suggest we do with people who don't know the difference between "breath" and "breathe"?

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[solios]

I haven't used it, to be honest. But I've talked to people who have and from our discussions I came to the conclusion that the GIMP is closer in functionality to PSP than it is to Photoshop - regardless of how close it gets to either. :)

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only did they not take their meds, they're clearly not good at math either. It would take way longer than 1 day to kill all the people who repeatedly make stupid decisions.

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[MMC Monster]

One thing about PSP that is nice is the image rotate tool. You basically draw a line in the picture, and it will figure out how much to rotate the image to make the line horizontal. PSP also has some simple vector-type art tools, like drawing lines and arrows and then moving them around and grouping them and things like that.

In my opinion, it's really not competing with photoshop, but is aimed more at the advanced home user that does not want to spend >>$500 for a drawing package.

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[Keeper Of Keys]

Indeed it is, and still very good (and free). Don't think they offer a Vista version yet.

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[David Rolfe]

One thing about PSP that is nice is the image rotate tool. You basically draw a line in the picture, and it will figure out how much to rotate the image to make the line horizontal. Photoshop does this also -- if you draw a line with the ruler tool it will use the angle of that line as the default in the image rotation dialog for straightening an image. (I use this all the time to rectify crooked scans.)

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[sakusha]

Now, if he had saved in some odd SGI format circa 1990, I'd agree with you.

Gee, it's funny you mention that. A long time ago, maybe Photoshop 2.0 era, I had a client who liked to submit files in .sgi format. He worked on an SGI Irix or something, he didn't have any way to convert them to something I could read.
So I emailed John Knoll to ask how I could read .sgi files in Photoshop. He wrote back and asked for a sample .sgi file for testing. I sent him one, and the next day, he emailed me a brand new .sgi file import plugin. I was amazed, so I emailed him back that I couldn't read Scitex CT files either. He wrote me a plugin for that too, same 24 hour turnaround. They were both publicly released through Adobe.
I don't see any .sgi support in the current CS3 release, but that's probably because it's deprecated. It does have Scitex CT support, though.

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[linuxpyro]

This is a good point, but I wouldn't say that it's his fault. He was just trying to do his job, and went with an industry standard.

Regarding the article, I consider myself lucky that I don't need to rely on Photoshop for any image editing I do.

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[guardian-ct]

You obviously have an in with John Knoll, so please send another sample .sgi file to him for testing. Should be in CS3 soon enough.

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

I love how the FOSS community embraces .doc as a Necessary Evil

FOSS community embraces .doc? Whaaaa? Were you looked in a room during the (numerous) ooxml is evil threads?

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[solios]

If they didn't "embrace" it then *.doc compatibility wouldn't be such a highly touted bullet point of open office, now would it? :|

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[solios]

Precisely.

I use Photoshop because for my needs it Sucks Less than the alternatives. I'll switch to the GIMP when it Sucks Less than Photoshop. The fact that one is free and the other costs hundreds of dollars isn't a factor here. Neither is the "ethics" of free software and open formats. The fact is that FOSS has yet to produce an image editor that Sucks Less than commercial equivalents for my needs. My needs are not simple basic image editing. My needs are industrial strength heavy lifting and a replacement needs to be a drop-in solution with a minimal learning curve. File format compatibility is the one thing I have to have - not some argument about why I made a wrong choice in 1997 when I'd never even heard of the GIMP and Photoshop was The Only Image Editor at my school*. :P

Artists are, by and large, not programmers. I can tell perl from c (on a good day) - just don't ask me to write any. Or compile it. Photoshop is worth the money for me - unlike Knuth, I don't have the time or ability to spend years and years and years developing a "better" FOSS equivalent that does what I need.

Until FOSS advocates realize that people are still buying horribly proprietary software because it does what they need better than FOSS, and until those same advocates stop blaming those users, Linux will never be truly "ready for the desktop" in the Windows or MacOS sense of the term. Be, IRIX, OS/2, sure - but how many grandmothers use OS/2?

* My Pile Of Files doesn't go back that far, fortunately. Only to '98 or so.

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Like it or not, PSD is the industry standard, and it's
> only logical that he (and 99.99999% of digital artists) use it.

Dude,
You seem to have some resentment issues. Please take a few minutes
to cool down, re-read the parent post, then re-read my post carefully
without putting your thoughts/feelings/words into my posting.

> The nature of the computer graphics app forced him to use a proprietary format.
Yes, I agree. Do you agree that he chose to you an application
that uses proprietary formats? Yes or No? No excuses, no prevarications.

> Like it or not, PSD is the industry standard, and it's
> only logical that he (and 99.99999% of digital artists) use it.

That's 100% irrelevant. He's NOT interested in what 99.99999%
of digital artists use. He is trying to ESCAPE from
Photoshop to Gimp. Or didn't you read his posting?

Here, let me remind you what he posted:
> This kind of thing is why I wish The GIMP [gimp.org] or
> similar would get useable* for those of us with hundreds
> of gigs of Photoshop documents.

> but if it's going to be the "photoshop competitor" every FOSS
> advocate claims it is (instead of, say, the Paintshop Pro
> competitor that it actually is), then it ought to at least
> be able to handle my existing documents as well as OpenOffice handles .doc files.

Ok, do you understand that he doesn't want to
use photoshop. That he wants to use GIMP instead?

Now would be a good time for you to say "Oops! My bad.
I didn't read his posting or your posting carefully enough.
Here's my apology for insulting you. Next time I'll be more
careful".

--Johnny is patient with sophmores who need more training.

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[ScrewMaster]

What would you suggest we do with people who don't know the difference between "breath" and "breathe"?

Deprecate them.

Although "breath" instead of "breathe" is an easy typo to make. There are others that abound here ("rediculous", for example, and "interger") which are actual misspellings because I see the same posters use them consistently.

It would be interesting if Slashdot were to automatically spell-and-grammar check all incoming posts: screw up beyond a certain threshold and you get an automatic "-1 Failed English 101" mod. Of course, that means that our English-as-a-second-language peanut gallery would vanish overnight, as well as most of my fellow American programmers and IT people. Hm, maybe that's not such a good idea after all.

Besides, if the only people that would be able to post here can spell and write well, what would the Grammar Nazis do?

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is anyone holding their breath trying to figure out what "your and your anyones" means?

Will anyone join me in a sing along to the GP. It's a cute catchy little song by Dennis Leary ...

Sing along everyone!

*I'm just a regular Joe with a regular job ....*

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[sakusha]

Well, I had met John Knoll personally, but incredibly enough, for a while, he used to read and respond to questions via the AOL Photoshop Forum. That's where I contacted him. But he eventually quit the AOL Forums after he got sick of all the stupid questions. My understanding is that currently, ILM has a policy that employees (like John) are completely forbidden from posting on internet forums like usenet, blogs, etc.

But I don't think .sgi is the lock-in it used to be. As I understand it, back then, Irix apps only output .sgi files, but today, any software worth using would be able to save in other file formats like .tga or .tiff at a minimum.

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[hacker]

I'll switch to the GIMP when it Sucks Less than Photoshop.

And we'll make Gimp suck less than Photoshop when users begin donating dollars, time or patches to support that enormous porting effort.

This is FLOSS... If you want something you have three choices:

1. Do it yourself (code, testing, patches)
2. Pay someone else to do it
3. Pay the project so they can find someone else to do it

How many of these items have YOU donated to the Gimp project to assist in that effort?

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[dangitman]

There you go again, proving the point of the other poster. Rinse, lather, repeat. I wonder how you expect FOSS to progress with this attitude? Perhaps you don't, but we get so many people telling us here that FOSS is all we need, it's about to take over the desktop, and we're wrong if we don't use it.

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[petermgreen]

4: give up on FLOSS and buy a propietry product that can do what you want now for a price you can afford.

Supporting a FLOSS project that does not yet replace a propietry product for you in the hope it will someday is not generally a good investment of your rescources unless you have a huge number of licenses to amortise those costs over.

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[Anonymous Coward]

When Apple "forces" people to buy a Mac to run OS X, Apple is to blame. When Apple "forces" you to choose between a Mac mini or a Mac Pro for a monitor-less computer, Apple is to blame.

But when the authors of Gimp force their weird crap interface onto their potential users, the users are to blame and are the ones too stupid to learn the crappy interface.

Double-standards indeed.

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Allowing your users to interact with a proprietary format is not embracing it YFI.

Re:No explanation is a good explanation.

[hacker]

There's always Pixel... for $38.00, you get:

• Multi-platform support: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and more!
• Extremely small and fast
• Support for layers, paths, channels, masks and selections
• Color Management support for RGB, CMYK, Grayscale and CIE Lab modes (8-bit and 16-bit)
• Realtime live effects for layers (adjustments, effects), sets of live effects can be saved as layer Styles
• Powerful text editing with spellchecking and support for IME/XIM (Asian languages)
• Includes variety of brushes, including full-color brushes and animated brushes
• Complex support for image slicing and image optimizations (GIF, PNG, JPEG, WBMP)
• Import/Export of Photoshop file format
• And much more

Not firewall related

[addikt10]

There isn't a single firewall that I've ever worked on that could possibly be misconfigured in such a way as to "accidentally" allow traffic to this domain to pass.

Web Proxy? Yeah, OK, maybe, but even then it is a reach...

Re:Not firewall related

[olddoc]

I agree. Two Oscar Seven .net is not a local ip address.
I also agree that Adobe looks like a sleazy scammer who tells me to click on Bankofamerica.com.cn

Re:Not firewall related

[SleepyHappyDoc]

You sure? Back when my home network was simpler, I had a high-up firewall rule to allow all traffic from/to 192.168.*

I would have been tripped up (fortunately, my network is much more complex now, and this hole no longer exists for me).

Re:Not firewall related

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot, but your firewall would have saved you regardless.

Re:Not firewall related

[Antique Geekmeister]

It's designed to confuse log analyzers and casual log readers, not sneak past firewalls.

Re:Not firewall related

[Lehk228]

your router would have DWYM. it would have completely ignored everything before 2O4.com and blocked the connection anyways

Re:Not firewall related

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you write the firewall software yourself, or purchase it?

If it was purchased, the likelihood of an IP rule to "allow all from/to 192.168.*" allowing traffic to .....2o7.net (a DNS address, which doesn't resolve to an IP starting with 192.168) is essentially nil. We're talking about fundamental network stuff here.

If you wrote it, it probably still wouldn't be that stupid.

2o7.net *Not* 207.net

[Zymergy]

Clarification: That is ...'2o7.net' as in 'Two-Ocsar-Seven.net' *NOT* 'Two-Zero-Seven.net'

The Opt-Out "Explanation" page is here: http://www.omniture.com/privacy/2o7

Still, the dubious address http://192.168.112.2o7.net/ appears to be some variation of Social Engineering. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engineering_(computer_security)

This might explain some of Adobe's seeming software bloating (like Acrobat Reader, etc...) http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Acrobat+reader+bloat

Re:2o7.net *Not* 207.net

[ASkGNet]

I've sniffed the data sent to that address. It includes the serial number of the software:

GET /b/ss/mxcentral/1/F.3-fb/[sn-here]?[AQB]&purl=mm&pccr=true&c2=dw&c3=9.0&c4=win&c5=en&c6=full&c7=&c8=&c9=dw_9.0_win_en_full__[AQE] HTTP/1.1
Referer: http://www.adobe.com/startpage/dw_content/dw_90_full_default.swf?prod=dw&ver=9.0&plat=win&lang=en&stat=full&tday=&spfx=&productName=dreamweaver
x-flash-version: 9,0,45,0
User-Agent: Shockwave Flash
Host: 192.168.112.2O7.net

and returns a 2x2 pixel blank GIF.

Re:2o7.net *Not* 207.net

[prichardson]

GIF have their length defined at the start of the file, and bits after that length are ignored. Perhaps there's some hidden data at the end of the file? Try opening it in a hex editor.

Re:2o7.net *Not* 207.net

[Anonymous Coward]

Both 207.net and 2O7.net resolve to the same ip and are owned by the same company.

Re:2o7.net *Not* 207.net

[klui]

They probably go to the same company:

Pinging 192.168.112.207.net [216.52.17.207] with 32 bytes of data:
Pinging 192.168.112.2o7.net [216.52.17.136] with 32 bytes of data:

Re:2o7.net *Not* 207.net

[azrider]

Omniture's Opt-Out Policy:

We offer visitors to certain of our customers' websites a means for controlling the use of session information with respect to the Omniture SiteCatalyst, Omniture DataWarehouse, Omniture Discover and Omniture SearchCenter products using cookies set from Omniture's 2o7.net domain (i.e. that use the 2o7.net cookie to facilitate data collection). If, at any time a customer's website visitor does not wish to allow his/her session visitation information to be aggregated and analyzed by Omniture on such customer sites, he/she may utilize the following opt out mechanism. For customers that use non-Omniture cookies to collect data on their websites, please review the privacy disclosures of such customers for specific details on any and all applicable opt outs on such sites.

It was noted in one of the linked articles that the opt-out action sets a cookie on your machine. If you delete this cookie, you have just opted back in.

So let me get this straight. In order to tell Omniture not to do anything on my machine, I have to give Omniture access to my machine. What sort of half-assed policy is this?

Re:2o7.net *Not* 207.net

[Kris_J]

If it includes the serial number of the software in the format needed during installation, then I hope nobody has an ISP with underpaid staff that can access the logs for their transparent proxy.

Re:2o7.net *Not* 207.net

[risk one]

Ok, so adobe checks which IP's are running products with cracked serials. They're not the first to do this. Like most companies that do it, they're probably just sitting on the data for now, using it for analysis, or just waiting for the rules to change a bit.

It's not unthinkable, though, that they've implemented so me sort of code based on what's in the GIF. They probably send back a GIF to make the communication look more inconspicuous (I've seen apps taken layout elements from the web before), but I wouldn't be surprised if there's also some command in there. It should be possible to route the IP to an internal server, and have the server return some different GIF's.

Re:2o7.net *Not* 207.net

[gordguide]

" ... They probably send back a GIF to make the communication look more inconspicuous ..."

Sending back the .gif file is a way to make sure you are a "real computer" at the particular address their "phone home" data says you are at. If you were spoofing the address, the gif file would not make the trip, so to speak, and they would know that.

They don't really "send back a gif", per se. They send the url to the gif to your computer, your computer goes to the url to fetch the gif, and ... bingo. There's proof. It's exactly the same method used by spammers in eMail. The gif in the eMail is not embedded in the message; your computer has to ask for it at the very moment you display the eMail message. The beauty of this is there is also a time stamp on it, of course.

So, it's a check on the validity of the original data, or, you might say it's a check on the validity of the evidence.

Re:2o7.net *Not* 207.net

[jcaldwel]

Server: Apache/1.3.34

Hmmm... 5 patches behind. ***Goes to read changelog**

Re:2o7.net *Not* 207.net

[Actually, I do RTFA]

In order to tell Omniture not to do anything on my machine, I have to give Omniture access to my machine. What sort of half-assed policy is this?

There are two alternatives. Either Omniture has some way of identifying your machine remotely without your assistance (say, a static IP with your computer having a public IP), and, beyond that, such a method was guaranteed to work across all users, or your machine has to tell them to buzz off. (The third option of making the system opt-in has similar issues of needing to query your machine for the presence of a cookie, but then the parent post would be railing about them talking to his machine without his permission.)

I believe I can safely appeal to community concensus that a permenent public way to ID a specific computer on the internet would be bad. Hence, we are left with cookies. Note, that the page you are visiting assumes that you are already connecting to Omniture's tracking server. So the solution is never to connect, but then it's not really Omniture's problem now is it?

Re:2o7.net *Not* 207.net

[zerocool^]

FYI, they do also own TWO-ZERO-SEVEN (or two-zed-seven for those east of the pond). Check out http://207.net/. I mean, it's still iffy, telling someone 192.168.234.207.net or whatever, but it's not substituting an OSCAR for a ZERO. It's just registering a domain name that's three numerics below the 255 cutoff limit for IP addresses.

~Wx

Re:2o7.net *Not* 207.net

[paving-slab]

FYI zed == zee; zed != zero

Re:2o7.net *Not* 207.net

[Lehk228]

it's going the other way, the URL is what is known and grabbed by the application, sending a gif file that looks like a web page spacer means that an administrator glancing through network logs wouldn't see a funny looking request, just one more successful HTTP file request, just like the million others that day.

Re:2o7.net *Not* 207.net

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess - a Stargate Atlantis fan... Zero Point Module = zee pee emm or zed pee emm depending who's speaking... However that doesn't mean we (across the pond) use zed for zero, we use it for zee...

Re:2o7.net *Not* 207.net

[zerocool^]

Crap, my bad. I meant "Naught". That's right, cause Clarkson and Hammond are always on about the naught-to-60 times. My apologies.

~Wx

Re:2o7.net *Not* 207.net

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason they send a 2x2 gif is ... many anti-webbug programs block 1x1 gifs automatically.

Re:2o7.net *Not* 207.net

[DaleGlass]

Sending back the .gif file is a way to make sure you are a "real computer" at the particular address their "phone home" data says you are at. If you were spoofing the address, the gif file would not make the trip, so to speak, and they would know that.

Incorrect. HTTP works over TCP. TCP connection establishment happens before the GET can be sent, so by the time you can request anything from the webserver, it already knows the IP address isn't spoofed. Of course it could be a proxy, but there has to be an actual computer at that address.

The .gif might have something encoded into it, or be used simply to attempt to slip by monitoring tools. People watching network activity are likely to ignore everything that looks harmless, such as normal HTML and image requests, and pay more attention to strange chunks of binary data.

Re:2o7.net *Not* 207.net

[azrider]

You missed my point (and did not RTFA).
Omniture expects to see a cookie which indicates that I opted out instead of opt-in. The article specifically states that if you delete the cookie you have to opt-out again. The normally accepted method is that if a site is unable to get/set cookies this indicates that the machine has told them to buzz off (your words).

Also, note that the page being visited assumes that you are already connecting to Omniture's tracking server (again, your words), without having been given permission to make this happen. If the page being visited is responsible for verifying that permission has been secured (with the appropriate prior notification) then this might be acceptable. When this action is being taken "under the radar" it is not.

This, coupled with a DNS entry that can only be called misleading is what leads some to condemn this particular practice. It seems to be way to close to what a [mal|spy]ware type process would do.

You are correct in saying "it's not really Omniture's problem". It is Adobe's problem in that the perception is that they are "quietly monitoring software use" according to the title of the article. Hope this helps to remove some of your confusion.

Re:2o7.net *Not* 207.net

[mce]

This kind of opt-out cookie is not new and Omniture is not alone. The ad-sleaze-company par-excellence Doubleclick has supported such an opt-out cookie for many years.

The normally accepted method is that if a site is unable to get/set cookies this indicates that the machine has told them to buzz off

This still applies to and works with Omniture as well. If you block them, they have to buzz off. In general (I don't know whether what follows applies to the Omniture / Adobe case) a local opt-out cookie (or let explicitly me call it a good old-fashioned "flag" instead, to make clear what I'm about to say) could also be used locally to prevent any connection from ever being established. Assuming of course that the local app has the ability to read it and that it actually uses that ability. If the lcoal app is just a standard browser displaying a html page that may be a bit tricky, but if the app has custom code - even if only top of an embedded browser - it can do anything it wants as a long as it can read the cookie from disk. The latter is something it normally always should be able to do.

Re:2o7.net *Not* 207.net

[Actually, I do RTFA]

The normally accepted method is that if a site is unable to get/set cookies this indicates that the machine has told them to buzz off (your words).

How would it know that it could not get/set cookies? Just explain how you think it could work in any other way without keeping a way on the server (which I will contend is more intrusive than a cookie) of identifying a computer. All you do is state it shouldn't work like that. Fine, but it's the best way given the constraints of reality.

Re:2o7.net *Not* 207.net

[verbalcontract]

It was noted in one of the linked articles that the opt-out action sets a cookie on your machine. If you delete this cookie, you have just opted back in.

So let me get this straight. In order to tell Omniture not to do anything on my machine, I have to give Omniture access to my machine. What sort of half-assed policy is this?

How else would Omniture tell who the opt-outs are?

The only other alternative would make tracking opt-in -- but who would opt into tracking? Who would hire Omniture if they'd just be giving glorified Alexa statistics? Instead of seeing an Omniture domain here, we'd be seeing a Coremetrics domain.

Credit where it's due

[75th Trombone]

Here's where I got that "story about lies" quote.

Re:If SONY wasn't innocent for what First4Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Until Adobe make a console that's preventing Microsoft from extending their monopoly to another industry, I think we can all give them the benefit of the doubt.

Phisher's Delight

[bobdotorg]

In an updated post:
http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2007/12/whats_with_adob.html
the Adobe guy says:
the objections seem to center not so much on whether Adobe apps are contacting a server, but rather that the server is named "192.168.112.2O7.net,"

Note the letter O instead of a zero. 2o7.net is registered to Omniture.

WTF? If Little Snitch told me that some app was trying to connect to 192.168.112.2O7.net I would assume it was compromised, and would be debating a complete clean system reinstall of OSX.

192.168.112.2O7.net? Masquerading as an IP from my home DHCP server? Are they serious? From Nigeria? Romania?

Again, WTF?

P.S. for those of you who have not set up a LAN, 192.168.xxx.xxx is typically an IP address for an internal LAN, not something out on the Web.

Re:Phisher's Delight

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that both version of the domain name resolve back to the same IP...

ping -n 1 192.168.113.2o7.net
      Pinging 192.168.113.2o7.net [216.52.17.113] with 32 bytes of data:
      Reply from 216.52.17.113: bytes=32 time=66ms TTL=233

ping -n 1 192.168.113.207.net
      Pinging 192.168.113.207.net [216.52.17.113] with 32 bytes of data:
      Reply from 216.52.17.113: bytes=32 time=69ms TTL=233

Re:Phisher's Delight

[ScrewMaster]

P.S. for those of you who have not set up a LAN, 192.168.xxx.xxx is typically an IP address for an internal LAN, not something out on the Web.

More to the point, the 192.168.x.x address range is one of several that are specifically intended to be non-routable on the Internet. Many people know this, even those who aren't otherwise that network-savvy. This is a blatant attempt to make the address appear safe ("well, I dunno what it's doing, but at least it's only sending to address on my LAN!") Not what one should expect from a major software house, but unfortunately, it is what we are all coming to expect from everyone in the business. Doesn't much matter what they're actually sending to Omni-whatever ... the fact that they're sending anything at all is very bad. Nothing on my system is their business, unless I say it is. Period.

You know, this reminds of something that Jack Valenti once said (about the only thing that sociopath ever said that I agree with): "Just because technology lets us do something, it doesn't mean we should." Now, he was referring to the copying and downloading of DVDs, but his point is still valid. We're seeing too many companies set up to serve larger organizations (Omniture, MediaSentry) using the Internet in unethical if not outright illegal ways. Presumably, this is so the corporation hiring them (in this case, Adobe) has some plausible deniability.

Re:Phisher's Delight

[Neil Hodges]

DNS names are case-insensitive, though.

Re:Phisher's Delight

[Spad]

No, he means Two-Zero-Seven.net resolves to the same IP as Two-Oscar-Seven.net

Re:Phisher's Delight

[ELProphet]

I'm sorry, I didn't realize a company trying to protect it's investments was unethical. As a previous poster found, there is a single GET request with the "registered" serial number, followed by a 2x2 blank gif. The bandwidth usage is negligible, and it's the only secure way to ensure the product is a valid, legal license. With software piracy as it is, business are justified in taking actions like these to lock their investment down.

As to the address used... that's another point. It would be better to say (in the EULA, that you read, which it may, I don't own CS3 and haven't read the EULA) "This product connects to the internet once per run to verify it's authenticity" and connect to authenticate.adobe.com.

Phoning home is neither unethical nor immoral, and should be expected. It would, however, be nice to not try to hide the fact that that's what they're doing.

Re:Phisher's Delight

[DaveWick79]

For one, sending a software serial number, unencrypted, over the internet in plain text is hardly protecting investment, it's almost encouraging piracy using that serial.

Secondly, while not immoral, phoning home is widely considered unethical, especially when it is without the user's knowledge or consent. The EULA is no place to put this, everyone knows that nobody reads these and hiding behind those is just begging for a class action suit.

There are other ways to verify software - look at Microsoft's activation process, which at least is up front, stated on the box, and limits to a small number the amount of systems the product can be installed on. Sure, the other alternative is going entirely to FOSS, but the problem with FOSS applications is that without financial incentive, little to no innovation is being done - people are merely trying to clone functionality of mainstream tools and with few exceptions doing a lousy job of it.

Re:Phisher's Delight

[ScrewMaster]

What's interesting about Adobe is that they already have a Microsoft-style activation process (obnoxious as such things are) so they really have zero excuse for any additional monitoring. They also use that goofy FEAD recomposer to help protect against cracking (not that it appears to have helped.) In any event, I disagree with the GP that it is reasonable for Adobe (or any other company) to use customer resources to protect their intellectual property, to mitigate the effects of piracy with unauthorized communication between the customer's equipment and theirs.

Apparently Adobe is run by yet another bunch of monopolistic assholes that have no incentive (economic or otherwise) to look upon their customers with anything but contempt.

Re:Phisher's Delight

[Lehk228]

adobe, a good company, bought macromedia, a shitty company, they are still shipping a lot of old macromedia code.

Re:Phisher's Delight

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for posting that, seems to be a fairly honest response.

Re:Phisher's Delight

[Jehosephat2k]

What a tangled web we weave, when we practice to deceive.

might not be Adobe misleading...

[Junta]

It's not necessarily adobe's fault that the address is misleading. Who knows what the code is calling the address, and the filtering application doesn't know either, it just reverse lookups the IP address and gets that answer from DNS. However, the response isn't that reassuring 'why, of course we do it, shut up, big deal, we act just like a web browser does when you connect to our site, so what's the big deal?' ignoring the fact that people aren't explicitly trying to use a web browser, they're rying to use an application.

As to the address, it's certainly suspicious that Omniture chose such a misleading looking domain name for one of their servers. I'm not even sure what they were expecting to pull off. If someone is knowledgeable to recognize that as a private network, they are almost certainly knowledgeable enough to recognize there being no point to connect to such an address (chances are it wouldn't exist), even if they didn't notice the .net. 192.168 is so small it tends only be used in small environments where technical users have a high chance of understanding the full lay of the land, they'd probably know how licensing is working at the site and the point of all the 'server' role systems. They probably would also wonder why they see an ip address instead of the usual DNS lookup in the dialog, prompting noticing the suffix. 10. might have been a riper target, it's generous address space means it might be used in an environment where a technical user could mistake it for an internal company server (i.e. a license server).

Any firewalling rules wouldn't be fooled by such a stunt as well, so trying to trick it into one zone versus another seems a stretch..

Re:might not be Adobe misleading...

[Ralph Yarro]

It's not necessarily adobe's fault that the address is misleading. Of course it's their fault. They shipped the software.

Would you actually take this attitude with other industries? "Oh this item I bought does [bad thing], well it's not necessarily the manufacturer's fault, I expect they just plug random components in with no idea what's going to happen."

If they don't know what domains the software they ship contacts then yes, that's their fault.

This is very common

[no-body]

that any application you downloaded and installed calls "home" over the Internet in some way or other without common users even noticing it.

I have an old version of Kerio (very sorry that it vanished) which serves very well in putting every attempt of programs to go out on the network on display.
Recent discoveries: a PDF printer driver "calls home" every time I print a document through it.

Adobe (reader) is pretty bad in checking for updates or whatever it tries to do on the Internet and M$oft of cause always accesses some port 123 when starting XP.

In essence - unless you really are behind every program, you have no privacy!
And - with NTFS allowing stealth handles, who knows what is installed, not even talking about Vista.

FBI now openly talking about a kitchensink database on everyone with everything, I think the game is lost....

should take care of unemployment though - two people necessary to track every "normal" citizen

Re:This is very common

[ptbarnett]

M$oft of cause always accesses some port 123 when starting XP.

Port 123 (both UDP and TCP) is the NTP port.

Double-click on the time on the right end of your taskbar to open the Date and Time Properties dialog box, then click on the Internet Time tab.

I believe it defaults to time.windows.com. I change mine to us.pool.ntp.org.

Re:This is very common

[no-body]

my goof & paranoia = regrets

Re:This is very common

[xMilkmanDanx]

Kerio still has a firewall, though I believe they're part of sunbelt software now and you have to search a little to find their free version.

Re:This is very common

[Anonymous Coward]

>> FBI now openly talking about a kitchensink database on everyone with everything, I
>> think the game is lost....

I think that, considering the FBI's record of abysmal failure in IT projects & applications, that the FBI _might_ have such a database ready sometime around 2015 or so. And then they will have to integrate with what they have at the time, that's probably another five years or so. Try Google on "fbi information technology failure" and you'll get a good sample.

Re:This is very common

[innocent_white_lamb]

I believe it defaults to time.windows.com. I change mine to us.pool.ntp.org.
 
You do? I actually set time.windows.com as the timeserver on my Fedora boxes. I figure Microsoft can afford the bandwidth, and I enjoy the irony.

Re:This is very common

[mako1138]

Yeah, I'm still using Kerio 2.x. Too bad it doesn't work on 2003 Server.

Re:This is very common

[no-body]

What's good about 2003 Server? Was this a free download at one point? Many people seem to use it. 180 day trial as I see it now.

With the Kerio - kerio.com goes to a different company with $ 500 enterprise products. sunbelt-software.com has the free kerio (sunbelt) firewall, versions are:

From their docs:

Q: What were the dates of the different Kerio Releases?

A:
SKPF 4.3.246 - May 22, 2006 (translations for several languages are not complete but this is being resolved)
SKPF 4.2.3.912 December 15, 2005
KPF 4.2 July 21, 2005
KPF 4.1 September 14, 2004
KPF 4.0 August 18, 2003

Re:This is very common

[petermgreen]

I suspect the vast majority of people who run server 2K3 as their desktop OS are either pirating it or at the very least using MSDN software outside the terms of the MSDN EULA. Server 2K3 would be prohibitively expensive for use as a desktop OS.

As for why they do it some claim it is more stable. Some probablly want the server features (e.g. multiple terminal services sessions at once). Some probablly want the support for more processors or ram (32 bit server editions of windows have supported enabled for more than 4GB of physical address space, 32 bit desktop editions don't). Some like the fact that the default configuration is far more locked down and so on.

Re:This is very common

[mako1138]

AFAIK 2K3 does not have an "easy" pirated version available, like how XP has corporate versions that don't require activation. I got 2K3 through my university program; like you say it's prohibitively expensive to buy for a workstation.

I ran 2K3 up until a few months ago, when I had a disk crash. In my mind, 2K3 has the improvements of XP over 2K, without the extra fat, plus some incremental improvements. Apart from that I don't have any compelling arguments, besides bragging rights.

Re:This is very common

[mako1138]

Nah, I got 2003 free through my university. No particularly good reasons for using it.

I'm using Kerio 2.x because starting with 3.x they pretty-fied it and started adding non-firewall security "features", like script blocking and whatnot. All I want is a simple rule-based firewall, no more and no less.

Re:This is very common

[petermgreen]

I would guess that by your "university program" you mean MSDNAA and reading the EULA for that seems to indicate that by using it as your main desktop OS you would be in breach unless you only used your machine for academic work on software related courses (like hell anyone does that). If so you would come under the category of people using MSDN software outside of thier MSDN agreement that I mentioned.

How do I block it?

[LordNimon]

In OS X, is there an easy way to block all outgoing communication to *.2o7.net? Can I do that on my router (DGL-4300)?

Re:How do I block it?

[Wonko the Sane]

This site is targeted at windows users, but it is applicable to almost any OS. Download their hosts file and append it to your /etc/hosts file. (unless OS X puts that file in some other location)

Re:How do I block it?

[Neil Hodges]

You could try using IPFilter on Mac OS X, which is the same one that's provided with many BSDs (including OS X). I couldn't tell you exactly what to do, since I use IPTables to do that stuff on Linux.

Re:How do I block it?

[jaredmauch]

Easiest way is to set up a dns zone for 2o7.net with a * in it pointing to 127.0.0.1. I do this, not because the tracking stuff of the various websites, but because their servers are slow, and much like the slow web-ad servers that make your web browsing painful, 2o7.net does nothing but bring down your page load time.

If you have a squid or similar proxy setup, just block 2o7.net in there. If you're willing to spend some time with your osx box, install squid, and put all your stuff through it and watch all the sites that you're actually hitting. You may find a lot of cache hits and other things you get as a result and speed things up overall. Add this to flashblock, or just disabling plug-ins and your web surfing will be much happier.

Re:How do I block it?

[owlnation]

In OS X, is there an easy way to block all outgoing communication to *.2o7.net?

Get Little Snitch, it's a wonderful little app. And it's essential if you are running anything Adobe.

Re:How do I block it?

[krazytekn0]

almost all routers let you block all data from certain hosts...
here's a link to your manual
http://ftp.dlink.ru/pub/Router/DGL-4300/Manual/DGL-4300_manual_06292005.pdf

Re:How do I block it?

[canuck57]

Blocking 2o7.net is relatively easy if you have a DNS and/or firewall. I have been blocking 2o7.net both privately and professionally for years as this is hardly the first time 2o7.net has been involved in surveillance of users, in fact it is what they do.

If you have DNS, create a zone file db.2o7.net, db.2o7.com and other tracking domains. In the zones, resolve a wild card address to 127.0.0.1. By putting it in your in-house DNS you can black hole their domains. Also consider reverse zones, as a lookup, even reverse can spill information.

Next is the firewall, simply block their IPs and name servers. I usually block the who netblock(s).

Remember, it does not take much to use DNS as a way to send out information. Just do a lookup of pcyourpassword.domain.com and out it goes. More sophisticated methods can be less obvious, say encode it and make it look like a cable modem pool or something.

So if you don't trust a domain like 2o7.net, don't just block the http, block everything.

Re:How do I block it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical slashdot nerd. Go fuck yourself.

Re:How do I block it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Edit /etc/hosts. You need an adminstrator account (or sudo) to do it. Add a line that looks like this:

127.0.0.1 2o7.net

(Also works for things like ad.doubleclick.net)

Re:How do I block it?

[Fyre2012]

would using Squid offer any advantages over using, Little Snitch for such purposes?
I've never thought of using squid like that, and have never looked into what can be done with a web proxy, but i'm curious if it would be more valuable than Little Snitch alone.

Re:How do I block it?

[smoker2]

What's wrong with the hosts file ?
1 line and you're done :

127.0.0.1 2o7.net 2o7

Re:How do I block it?

[causality]

In OS X, is there an easy way to block all outgoing communication to *.2o7.net? Can I do that on my router (DGL-4300)?

Don't take this the wrong way please, but if this is a serious question then perhaps you should not be administering that machine and that network.

No, I'm not saying that just to give you grief (yes, I am indifferent to any that is caused) but because there are many network-related security threats and blocking a single domain to solve the problem is something of a whack-a-mole game. It would be well worth your time to find out more about what your router and OS can and cannot do and how they can be made more secure. While an extreme stance on this is not necessary (no one expects you to become security expert but you can learn a lot without going nearly that far) I will say that there is simply no substitute for taking responsibility for your own security, online and off.

Re:How do I block it?

[causality]

would using Squid offer any advantages over using, Little Snitch for such purposes?

Well, Squid is a Web (TCP port 80 and friends) proxy only, whereas Little Snitch is a general monitoring app that can alert you to just about any outgoing traffic much like an outgoing firewall. So, they would work well when used in combination, since Squid can be used to control HTTP traffic in very specific ways beyond "is application X allowed to connect to site Y?" Not to mention that with a Web browser, of course you want it to be able to connect to TCP port 80 and you probably don't want to be prompted at every attempt to connect to a new Web site (it would drive you nuts), so a Little Snitch user would probably just allow the browser to use that port regardless of the site and then Squid would be the better tool to specifically control this.

Re:How do I block it?

[prshaw]

Is this a reasonable answer to someone who may just use the computer to edit their photos for publishing and checking email? Is this a good way to respond to someone asking for help with their router?

You are saying they need to learn more about their router, and yet when they asked about it you say they should not be using their computer because they don't know the answers. They are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

Re:How do I block it?

[Anonymous Coward]

FU

Re:How do I block it?

[causality]

Is this a reasonable answer to someone who may just use the computer to edit their photos for publishing and checking email? Is this a good way to respond to someone asking for help with their router?

I wish this were a reasonable thing to say, but due to the realities of how often hosts are compromised "is having your data or your identity stolen, participating in a botnet, and having your computer spied on a reasonable price to pay for just using the computer to edit photos and checking e-mail?" is unfortunately a more pertinent question.

You are saying they need to learn more about their router, and yet when they asked about it you say they should not be using their computer because they don't know the answers. They are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

That isn't what I said at all, but you got upset and that is what you decided to hear. That's understandable, hell I've done that myself, but please allow me to clarify. What I said is perhaps he should not be administering that computer and network, which is not at all the same thing as saying he should never use them. Most people who have their own computers and their own network equipment know somebody, somewhere who is more skilled than they are and could assist with such things while they are learning more about it. It's just a matter of whether you choose to be proactive and prevent threats or whether you choose to be reactive and not give it a second thought or put any effort into it until something bad happens. Personally, I prefer the former.

That's all. Maybe not what you would have preferred me to say, but look around and you'll see that many, many users rely on Microsoft or Norton or McAfee or others to take care of security for them, and what we get for that are things like botnets and identity theft and anonymous spammers because absolutely none of those are a good substitute for a knowledgable user.

Judging from the disproportionately negative reactions from a relatively mild, non-inflammatory post, I begin to suspect that the real problem here is that people want the non-zero (yet hardly staggering) amount of effort needed to be a tougher target to be a zero amount and resent someone who tells them that this is not the nature of the situation. Guess what? If I could wave a magic wand and make everyone's network absolutely secure, I would. Since I can't do that, being honest about the reality of the situation is the best I can do.

Re:How do I block it?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's insufficient to block the addresses mentioned (192.168.112.2o7.net doesn't match the 2o7.net line you have). With that, you're not blocking much more than the opt-out page for Omniture.

Opt-out site

[seer]

http://www.omniture.com/privacy/2o7#optout This is the site to install an "opt-out cookie". I'm going to go ahead and guess it might help to visit this site within the embedded Opera browser in CS3. Who knows where that thing keeps it's cookies. Granted, getting this info from a comment on a post to a blog is not the way to have a good opt-out policy. Something in the installer would be nice.

Re:Opt-out site

[Anonymous Coward]

You trust that shitbag outfit to honor the cookie?

Re:Opt-out site

[dangitman]

That only opts out of tracking from your web-browser, not the applications being discussed here. How is setting a cookie in your browser going to stop Adobe products or iTunes from being tracked?

Why is this an issue?

[BarnabyWilde]

Anyone with a (personal) firewall can control this "phone home" behavior.

Re:Why is this an issue?

[Anonymous Coward]

The issue is precisely that Adobe and the people they do business with have gone out of their way to mislead people into allowing the behaviour. And address starting with 192.168.xxx.xxx looks like it's on your local network. Someone with just enough knowledge to understand that, i.e. an ordinary non-expert user who is actually making an effort to be security conscious, is likely to tell their firewall to allow the activity because they think it's all local. This probably legal, but it's seriously unacceptable behaviour.

Re:Why is this an issue?

[Spad]

Because nobody should have to.

Remember the good old days when you didn't have to monitor every single application on your PC to ensure that it wasn't sending back personally identifiable data to some random 3rd party?

Re:Why is this an issue?

[vertinox]

Anyone with a (personal) firewall can control this "phone home" behavior.

And everyone should have locks on their doors.

But its still going to piss me off if I come home and forgot to lock my doors and you're sitting on my couch eating my milk and cookies.

Re:Why is this an issue?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is an issue because that crappy Adobe Software is crashing when you you disallow network connections (happened with Bridge).

Re:Why is this an issue?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last I checked my door required a key only from outside. Generally I'd like to trust the software I run.

Re:Why is this an issue?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last I checked my door required a key only from outside.

You're never gonna get women to put out that way.

Re:Why is this an issue?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck your doors, I am satan I come in through the chimney

Re:Why is this an issue?

[Anonymous Coward]

By the way, you're out of milk. thx

Re:Why is this an issue?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Last I checked my door required a key only from outside.

You're never gonna get women to put out that way.

Actually, I've had less success since installing double-keyed locks. I think it strikes women as somewhat creepy, but it's really just because the door has glass as part of it.

Re:Why is this an issue?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mis-spelt Santa.

Anti Piracy?

[cheese-cube]

Couldn't this just be some new anti-piracy feature similiar to WGA? Adobe's Given that a it is rather easy to download a pirated copy of CS3 and the fact that an actual retail copy costs quite a bit of money I would say that this is a plausible explanation.

Re:Anti Piracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then let Adobe call home to Adobe once a day/week/month/ with what's needed to verify authenticity. Don't let Adobe call "Mass Advertiser Analytics Firm From Hell" whenever it starts or just plain ol' chooses to with whatever info it feels like giving away.

Firewall

[QuoteMstr]

# Block access to Omniture -- spyware vendors
block from any to 216.52.17.0/24

Um, no, we can't

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you have issues with Microsoft, doesn't mean you give Adobe a free pass.

As for responsibility.

Analogy: If Ford used a third party airbag in their cars that regularly deployed when you hit 70mph, who would be held responsible? Ford, the third party or both?

Re:Um, no, we can't

[Anonymous Coward]

As for responsibility.

Analogy: If Ford used a third party airbag in their cars that regularly deployed when you hit 70mph, who would be held responsible? Ford, the third party or both?

Definitely the correct interpretation,

This falls squarely under the rubric of, "... and the horse you rode in on."

Re:Um, no, we can't

[Anonymous Coward]

If Ford used a third party tire in their cars that may fail when under-inflated on a hot surface, who would be held responsible? Ford, the third party (example, Firestone) or both?

Re:Um, no, we can't

[Anonymous Coward]

That's totally different. In a car, there's the unbeatable "Won't somebody pleeeeaaaaase think of the chiiiiiildren???" argument.

Minicity troll, don't bother.

[ScrewMaster]

Bugger off.

Consequentialism? Puh-leaze!

[BorgCopyeditor]

Now, by "foreseeable consequences" do you mean those that are accurately predicted, or those that can be reasonably expected. If it's the latter, then you're not really a strict consequentialist. If it's the former, then you can hardly make any moral judgments at all (given how indefinite the chain of consequences of a given act is).

Re:Consequentialism? Puh-leaze!

[fm6]

Like in the dictionary: "being such as may be reasonably anticipated" (Merriam-Webster). So I guess I'm a "strict consequentialist". Congratulations on finding a pretentious label for my opinion, but no points for actually contributing to the discussion, since you forgot to explain why "consequentialism" is such a bad thing. Let's hear it in your own words please; I'm bored with people who can't defend their opinions.

Re:Consequentialism? Puh-leaze!

[DeadChobi]

I think he said it in his post. Let me repeat what he said, because I'm a whore. Strict Consequentialism is an untenable moral stance because it is impossible to predict all the consequences arising from a single action. Thus, what you might think of as a "little white lie" may actually result in some catestrophic life changing event for someone else. The tragedy of your moral stance is that you would not care because to you nothing bad happened as a result of your lie.

Re:Consequentialism? Puh-leaze!

[BorgCopyeditor]

Perhaps my boring you will make you want to think about something else, which might lead you down a path toward molecular pharmaceutical research, which might then lead to your developing medicines that improve many millions of people's lives!

Is that a reasonable anticipation? No. Is it a possible consequence? Not bloody likely, but the question is whether it's possible. It is, in fact, possible, but there's no meaningful way it could work into our decision-making or even our retrospective assignment of credit or blame. Ergo, "actual or foreseeable consequences" are not a sufficient sign of the wrongness or rightness of an action.

It's not the only argument against consequentialism, nor even the best, but I think it's good enough to defeat the simplistic view you put forward. Since you're complaining about people who don't explain their views, notice that in your original post, you did nothing to explain why only consequences are legitimate things to point to when we want to know whether an act is wrong; you just asserted it.

Re:Consequentialism? Puh-leaze!

[adminstring]

It can go even further: an act which, as far as you can tell, is purely beneficial may end up having negative consequences. You could help an old lady across the street and she could therefore avoid getting run over, and two weeks later she might introduce two people who end up being the parents of the next EVILPERSON$. So unless you are willing to put a limit on the length of the chain of consequences you consider, you end up being unable to make any moral decisions, because any seemingly good decision could have severe negative consequences.

This is easily remedied by only considering the reasonably foreseeable consequences of your actions, which is what GP was suggesting.

You missed my point..

[Junta]

My point was that hypothetically, a reverse dns lookup for an third party's ip address could be misleading without the knowledge of the first party. You sign up for a service with me, and you use www.analytics.example.com as the calling address. Later on, I decide I want to be sneaky, and the reverse lookup for www.analytics.example.com becomes 10.117.1.2O.example.com. Is it your fault I did that? Not really. This isn't the case in Adobe's example, now that I've looked at it, but it's a plausible scenario.

All that aside, going to www.adobe.com in firefox, then doing a view source, ctrl-f for 192.168 reveals that it appears in that form verbatim in the html served from adobe's website. On the surface it does appear to not be the case I described. The only way they'd be unaware of the misleading address is if they include code verbatim on their site from a third party without even reviewing it, which would be a horrible excuse.

GIMP vs Paintshop PRO or Photoshop

[sd.fhasldff]

if it's going to be the "photoshop competitor" every FOSS advocate claims it is (instead of, say, the Paintshop Pro competitor that it actually is

GIMP *is* competing primarily with Photoshop. This isn't a matter of which commercial application's feature set it most closely resembles. It's a matter of what users actually USE.

Photoshop is the default application for doing any kind of drawing or photo editing. It might be total overkill, it might not be the best choice or whatever, but that's irrelevant. Ask yourself this instead: How many people do you think PAY hundreds of dollars for Adobe Photoshop for their own personal at-home use?

Face it, Photoshop is the standard because it's pirated so much. This isn't a question of "lost sales", since 90% of Photoshop pirates (and I'm extrapolating from people I know of, so flame away) wouldn't DREAM of laying down that amount of cash. If they were forced to go legal, they would probably buy Paintshop Pro - an application that probably suits their needs much better anyway. (So if anyone is losing sales when Photoshop is pirated, it's probably Corel).

To summarize: GIMP competes primarily with *illegitimate* Photoshop users.

Re:GIMP vs Paintshop PRO or Photoshop

[mrbcs]

To summarize: GIMP competes primarily with *illegitimate* Photoshop users.
I agree.. for different reasons:

I've been known to use open source programs. I always had an older version of Paint Shop Pro around and have tried out GIMP ( I $%#$$ hate that interface!)

When required to use Adobe ImageReady to build websites using the companies existing templates, I gladly bought and registered Photoshop 6. I thought it only fair that if I was going to make money from a program, the least I could do was pay for it. I looked at it also as karma. I did know a guy that pirated it and tried to do websites... but he didn't do very much. I spent $300. for Photoshop 6 (ebay). In three years I figure I did about $12,000 for this company that I could not have even tried to do with anything else.

Bonus is, I still use the same version and really don't need anything else.

Re:GIMP vs Paintshop PRO or Photoshop

[Lost Engineer]

An interesting aside to this: part of the reason that many companies are having their software phone home is that they consider buying on eBay to be piracy, assuming it's second hand of course. What if the next version just shuts itself down when it finds out it's on a different machine? This has been standard operational procedure for Windows for a while now.

Re:GIMP vs Paintshop PRO or Photoshop

[mrbcs]

I don't know if they still do, but at the time I think Adobe (macromedia for sure) would let you un-register so that you could sell the product to someone else. It will be interesting to see if they do in fact stop these options. I thought this fell under rights of first sale. (I'm in Canada so things are different here)

Adobe needs competition.

[owlnation]

Competition. That's the only solution to this. Adobe has become a very arrogant and supply-side centric company over the past few years. Or rather, an even more arrogant company than it always was.

It has almost no competition in most markets it trades in. Where it did have competition, it bought it out with the Macromedia purchase. That's a problem. It's not just this privacy/lying issue, it's price fixing, it's bloated features, it's the product delays (the universal binary versions), it's the (a la Microsoft) packaged versions that make it hard to get standalone versions.

I use Adobe Software every day (always firmly controlled by Little Snitch from install I may add). I don't like using it, it is not the best they can do, but it is the best available. I use it, but I will jump ship tomorrow.

I really, really, really want to use products from a better company. Surely there MUST be developers out there who can make better products than Adobe.

Re:Adobe needs competition.

[Skapare]

Surely there MUST be developers out there who can make better products than Adobe.

Yes there are. But until we ditch our monopoly-centric competition-busting big-business-oriented lawyer-profiting patent system (and all the patents issued under it), and adopt one that does not award patents to anything even remotely obvious, or anything that someone educated and experienced in the field could come up with if asked to, it will be very hard to produce such competitive software products.

FYI, the kind of patent system I would envision is not one that specifically needs to address patents in software. Instead, it would be one that requires a strong test of clear innovation through unique intellectual insight. Do that, and we'll see lots of the more obvious innovations springing up everywhere faster and faster, creating a more competitive economy. Stuff that is obvious does not need a patent system to make it happen; what it needs is a patent system that doesn't stand in the way.

Re:Adobe needs competition.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I really, really, really want to use products from a better company. Surely there MUST be developers out there who can make better products than Adobe.

If you're looking to replace Illustrator, try Inkscape.

If you're looking to replace Framemaker, MadCap is releasing Blaze very soon.

If you're looking to replace Adobe Acrobat Pro, there are about 10 different companies with products on the market.

If you're looking to replace InDesign, you could try Quark (but I'm not sure I'd recommend it).

If you're looking to replace Dreamweaver, there are several comparable editors depending upon your needs and platform

If you're looking to replace Photoshop, you can replace it on the low end with Pixelmator and for automated tasks with GraphicConverter or Gimp. For one off photo touch ups on the very high end, there really isn't a lot of competition yet.

I guess what I'm saying is, there is a competitor for most of their products for most workflows. A big part of the problem is the corporate culture that makes it so easy to get approval to buy Adobe CS suite for $2500, and so hard to get approval to buy a $60 copy of Pixelmator, which will be just as useful, but save the company money... and why should an employee bother to fight for savings for their company when it will give them fewer toys to play with?

Re:Adobe needs competition.

[mobby_6kl]

> patent [..] patents [..] patents [..] patent [..] patents [..] patent [..] patent

Richard Stallman, is that you?

Re:Adobe needs competition.

[that this is not und]

The part that bugs the hell out of me is that Adobe are the people with what's rapidly becoming the 'gatekeeper' of the web, namely Flash.

And it's risky to say bad things about Flash on Slashdot these days. Lotsa them geeks got lotsa their lives tied up in that particular leviathan.

Re:Adobe needs competition.

[ScrewMaster]

Adobe has become a very arrogant and supply-side centric company over the past few years.

Microsoft, Adobe, Autodesk and the MathWorks people have a lot in common in that regard, and for much the same reason. They're not hungry enough, because they got enough people to invest in their complicated and proprietary ways of doing things. It takes time, but once you've reached that point, it's very hard for a competitor to unseat you because switching is perceived as risky and expensive. This is especially true with applications that generate or manipulate lots of data: after a while you look at your archives and realize that you're screwed. You'll never be able to change.

Re:Adobe needs competition.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

The part that bugs the hell out of me is that Adobe are the people with what's rapidly becoming the 'gatekeeper' of the web, namely Flash.

I don't know. They aren't nearly as detrimental as MS being the gatekeeper of the Web. Currently IE not being able to run SVG, forcing developers to turn to proprietary solutions. The alternatives are Flash and Silverlight. Personally, I'd rather opt for the former since otherwise, we still have MS holding back the Web. We know what they will do because they've been doing it for a decade. At least there is hope with Adobe.

Re:Adobe needs competition.

[Skuld-Chan]

Keep going - Adobe has about 100 products.

Inkscape (like the gimp actually) doesn't have the print/pre-press features needed to actually work in a professional print environment. Doesn't support color profiles, doesn't seem to support cmyk workflows, color management etc etc.

If Madcap honestly believes they can replace FrameMaker - I honestly say let them at it. Personally I think they should focus on stabilizing their current products so that they actually work. Frame may have a lot of problems, but one thing the competition needs to consider however is it's outlasted all of the competition - since 1986 and every product that claimed it was going to kill Frame.

Acrobat - unless you need some of the advanced features in the product I'll agree with you. I don't know of any 3rd party PDF app that supports every feature Acrobat does however (things like scripting, annotations, 3d annotations, forms, xfa forms, color management [there's that word again], dynamic link creation [think pdfmaker or framemaker], preflight preview, etc etc)

Quark - Adobe actually looks like a saint compared to what Quark does to their customers. Also the product last I checked doesn't support opentype, or unicode yet - something even FrameMaker now supports.

Dreamweaver - meh - who cares. I'll agree there's plenty of competitors that work just as well.

Photoshop - again - I say the market is ready for the taking - except no-one has... like FrameMaker they've had since 1987 to do this.

Lastly - CS3 for 2500 - or Pixelmator. Mind you the 2500$ version comes with every Adobe app they make (including the video apps After Effects, Encore and Premier).

Re:Adobe needs competition.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Keep going - Adobe has about 100 products.

Rather than listing everything listed their major products. Can you think of any that don't have a competing program?

Inkscape (like the gimp actually) doesn't have the print/pre-press features needed to actually work in a professional print environment. Doesn't support color profiles, doesn't seem to support cmyk workflows, color management etc etc.

CMYK in Inkscape works fine for me and it has, in fact replaced Illustrator for all the PR graphics at the last company I worked for. It seems fine for making graphics to pull into Quark or InDesign for pre-press.

If Madcap honestly believes they can replace FrameMaker - I honestly say let them at it. Personally I think they should focus on stabilizing their current products so that they actually work. Frame may have a lot of problems, but one thing the competition needs to consider however is it's outlasted all of the competition - since 1986 and every product that claimed it was going to kill Frame.

Framemaker is dead, they just don't know it. The product has been virtually abandoned by Adobe and is so far behind in so many areas it isn't funny. Adobe has ramped up development again, but I had a nice chat with those developers and don't have a lot of hope. The entire team is from India and they didn't seem to even understand half of the common feature requests when asked bout whether they were on the roadmap.

Acrobat - unless you need some of the advanced features in the product I'll agree with you.

If you need one of the advanced features, you're probably using a dedicated tool to create your PDFs, whether that is forms or 3D. Realistically, most people have Acrobat simply because it came in a bundle.

Quark - Adobe actually looks like a saint compared to what Quark does to their customers. Also the product last I checked doesn't support opentype, or unicode yet - something even FrameMaker now supports.

Maybe they treat customers badly, but they are valid competition. By the way, you're out of date. Quark has supported both Unicode and OpenType since version 7, which came out in early 2006.

Photoshop - again - I say the market is ready for the taking - except no-one has... like FrameMaker they've had since 1987 to do this.

Pixelmator is new, but has been gaining ground rapidly among independent contractors. Gimp exists and works for some workflows. I think Adobe's achilles heel here is they're trying to maintain parity for Windows and the Mac with an ancient, bloated code base, while other, more agile companies can rapidly recreate the majority of Photoshop's features using CoreGraphics, as well as some features not yet in Photoshop.

Lastly - CS3 for 2500 - or Pixelmator. Mind you the 2500$ version comes with every Adobe app they make (including the video apps After Effects, Encore and Premier).

That's my point. It's easier for me to get the boss to sign off on the $2500 version of CS3 than it is to get them to sign of on a $60 copy of Pixelmator.

Re:Adobe needs competition.

[Skuld-Chan]

CMYK in Inkscape works fine for me and it has, in fact replaced Illustrator for all the PR graphics at the last company I worked for. It seems fine for making graphics to pull into Quark or InDesign for pre-press. It does? Where is the ink manager? The only color controls I can find are for rgb. Also - everything I've outputted from it - according to my preflight tools is rgb. Also everything I've outputted from it is uncalibrated as well. I guess thats ok if you don't need color to be exact though (which most people don't).

Framemaker is dead, they just don't know it. The product has been virtually abandoned by Adobe and is so far behind in so many areas it isn't funny. Adobe has ramped up development again, but I had a nice chat with those developers and don't have a lot of hope. The entire team is from India and they didn't seem to even understand half of the common feature requests when asked bout whether they were on the roadmap. I'll admit I'm a Adobe FrameMaker partner - I haven't heard this from anyone at Adobe, but I'll certainly forward this post on and see how they respond. I do know a lot of the customers I work with are all companies every single person who ever reads this post has heard of and they use it pretty religiously. Even then - I agree (as I did in the previous post) the market is ripe for the picking and I welcome madcap to come in and stir up the pot - its just they've had a hard time even competing with their former product robohelp.

Anyhow I admit I'm a bit behind on Quark. Its in the same boat as Frame though - not a single bit of it is developed here in the US.

Ironically the one advantage you cite over Pagemaker Adobe has in InDesign - they dropped their old PageMaker codebase as it was unmaintainable and started fresh with InDesign.

There are products Adobe has no competition over - Flash for example. It make suck to the eyes of people here on Slashdot - but its an animation tool being used outside the web as well - for instance a lot of tv graphics on nbc are made with flash. Its also been used in motion pictures.

What I find odd though is I work in the print industry and I've never heard of any of these tools (except inkscape and gimp - mostly from reading slashdot). I guess my nose is buried :(.

Re:Adobe needs competition.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

It does? Where is the ink manager?

You have to go to the color selector and set the mode to CMYK.

Ironically the one advantage you cite over Pagemaker Adobe has in InDesign - they dropped their old PageMaker codebase as it was unmaintainable and started fresh with InDesign.

Sadly, InDesign seems to be being developed by the lowest bidder or something. I submitted a bug report four years ago for a feature that caused a crash (the program on OS X and the machine with Win2K, it worked cross platform). The bug was repeatable. It worked every time on every OS and it is still broken. Framemaker may be old and unable to move forward, but at least it is moderately stable.

There are products Adobe has no competition over - Flash for example.

Presumably Silverlight will be competing with that very soon, not that it will be better, just that it might make Adobe treat customers better.

What I find odd though is I work in the print industry and I've never heard of any of these tools

Probably most people on Slashdot wouldn't know what InDesign is. It is all a matter of what you work with and learn. I've done some consulting in a lot of fields so I probably have a better chance of having seen a given tool. Some of what I mentioned are quite new, gaining share only in last month or two.

EULA

[slashdotmos]

I didnt see it posted and I dont read most EULAs, but as long as this has a line about the 'phoning home' process then all is ok. Now if they never post anything in the EULA then that is a big problem! You accept anything the software does when you click I agree. You dont have to agree and use the software. Anytime I think about EULAs, I think they are made to legal like that noone is going to read it and those that do will most likly just say 'yea whatever, i want to use the software'. Which reminds me of the one software that had a written reward in the EULA and after like 5 years (or longer, i dont remember) and a lot of users some guy saw a lil statement that said the the effect 'email us this code and we will send you $5000'

I am Immanuel Kant

[Anonymous Coward]

Incorrect.

Re:If SONY wasn't innocent for what First4Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

These are two very different things. Sonys rootkit caused real and lasting damage to users systems and is illegal under the criminal
laws of most nations. This is a common piece of spyware. While morally repugnant it cannot be compared to the act by Sony and causes no damage
(necessary for breach of the Computer Misuse Act 1990 in the UK) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Misuse_Act_1990

It's not helpful to conflate this with ordinary spyware - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyware

Not defending this behaviour of course, in fact since these companies have elected to break the law I have no moral compunction advocating someone write a DDOS virus to reduce Omnitures servers to a smouldering pile of silicon dioxide. Any corporation attacking public and private computer systems for their own profit motives is entering a battle they will lose.

That sounds like REALLY intuitive market research

[Cathoderoytube]

So basically it's easier to set up this complicated system for tracking mouse clicks and system usage that surreptitiously reports back to home base which I imagine probably looks something like...

1:00pm paintbrush selected
1:03pm eraser selected
1:07pm paintbrush selected
1:08pm save file hm_build_001.psd 9.3mb
1:10pm program idle
2:45pm paintbrush selected

As opposed to going out and saying to the customers
'What do you like about Photoshop? What tools work? What would you change? please limit your responses to 500 words. We appreciate your business and look forward to providing superior digital imaging software till the day god comes down from the heavens and smites you all for making sinful images'

What god damned mook of a market researcher thought a blow by blow report of what a customer clicks on while working on a project is superior to actually talking to the customer?

Slimey behavior! Shame on Adobe!

[Anonymous Coward]

Several points:

1. The user never knew that the application was contacting a remote (and unidentified to the user) server.

2. If you check, the server is obfuscated by a private-IP-like address. Deception is being used.

3. The process to opt out involves A: Figuring out what is happening first, B: knowing to look at the provacy policy page at the server's owner, and C: Allowing the deception-using server to put an opt-out cookie on your computer.

4. Shame, shame, shame on Adobe for employing this deliberately deceptive method of data collection. Shame. Shame.

Local apps shouldn't secretly access the Internet

[dpbsmith]

This seems so simple.

If Adobe and other companies want to retain their paying customers' trust, their applications shouldn't be doing unexplained things behind the user's back.

If they want to pop up a window saying "To insure better product quality, we would like to have this application send information to internet address thus-and-such. To read a detailed description of the information we send and how we use it, press 'details.' To allow us to do this, press 'allow.' If you do not want us to do this, press 'no,'" then everything would be cool.

But if an application does stuff we don't expect it to do, and they don't even mention it in advance, it's not terribly paranoid to assume that the reason is that they're doing something they don't want us to know about.

Firewall, anybody?

[garry_g]

Even having nothing to hide (read: de-centralized backup copies) and using mostly Linux, running a personal firewall that not only controls incoming, but also outgoing software is a total must nowadays. For Windows, there are several, even freeware (e.g. Ashampoo does a pretty good job), or things like Apparmor under Linux ... So with any program suddenly requesting internet connection, just deny it once, or for good ...

I guess that's the curse of the ever-growing number of always-on internet users ... guess one of these days, you won't be allowed to even launch your commercial apps without the software's main server confirming you're not running a pirated copy. Then, if the company dies, all the programs die with it ...

Re:Firewall, anybody?

[Anonymous Coward]

guess one of these days, you won't be allowed to even launch your commercial apps without the software's main server confirming you're not running a pirated copy. Then, if the company dies, all the programs die with it ...

*chough* Steam *chough*

It's about beaing sneaky

[Skapare]

I absolutely agree that the software vendor thinking that they have some right to do this spying is very arrogant and serious. But think about this. The fact that the connection is structured to LOOK like something connecting internally only goes to show that not only are they doing this, but they are doing this with the intent to try to obscure it. It would be one thing if they were on the up and up about it. But they would not need to do this 2o7.net stuff if they were. They could connect to "reg7.adobe.com" or some such name. But no ... they tried to add a layer of obfuscation to it.

They know they are spying on you because they are doing it. But they also know you won't like it. And that is obvious from the effort to hide and obscure it. Doesn't that make it at least twice as bad, if not triple or worse?

Re:It's about beaing sneaky

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

Don't people often punish their kids to the nth degree for some wrongdoing, and to the 2nth degree for the same wrongdoing plus lying about it?

New App Needed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do we now need a firewalling app that accesses a central list of "phone-home" addresses to automatically block similar to the advert lists that AdBlock uses?

Who will be the first to register ad0b3.com?

[Skapare]

Who will be the first to register ad0b3.com? Or maybe 4dobe.com or 4d0be3.com?

Rushing to defend PSP

[Joce640k]

Paint Shop Pro 9.0 is much better than the GIMP (which is a total mess if you ask me).

Paint shop Pro 10 was where it all went badly wrong. Corel bought it out - and we all know what happens to things that Corel buys. You think Adobe downloading advertising is bad? Online registration an invasion of privacy...? PSP 10 required you to create a "Corel Web Account" and then "log in" before it would even run.

PSP 9.0 though? A fine piece of software. I'm still using it.

Re:Rushing to defend PSP

[solios]

I hear that.

I used Photoshop 5.5 since its release. OS X 10.5 and Apple's move to Intel processors has forced me to upgrade - if it wasn't for that, I'd still be slogging along running Classic on top of OS X. PSCS has added a couple of things I like, but overall most of the bullet-point features are largely unused. I haven't heard anything "bad" about CS3, but I haven't heard anything good, either - this is the first point in favor of NOT ugprading.

(and for those who are all OMFG WHY U NOT PHOTOSHIP IN QUAD XEON MAC, well... doing computer graphics legally costs money. A frightful, disgustingly MASSIVE amount of money. A few hundred dollars buys PSCS3 or a good deal of food. And food doesn't ping a webserver. Yet.)

Re:Rushing to defend PSP

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I hear that.

I used Photoshop 5.5 since its release. OS X 10.5 and Apple's move to Intel processors has forced me to upgrade - if it wasn't for that, I'd still be slogging along running Classic on top of OS X. PSCS has added a couple of things I like, but overall most of the bullet-point features are largely unused. I haven't heard anything "bad" about CS3, but I haven't heard anything good, either - this is the first point in favor of NOT ugprading.

There's plenty good about CS3. I dunno if there's anything good enough to make you run out and purchase an upgrade, but it has some nicities. They've upgraded the UI to be a little more low-real-estate friendly. This is a blessing and a curse. It's a curse because if you take advantage of it, you'll have to memorize some icons and do a little more clicking to get to what you want to get to. It's easy to get sucked into fighting with it. But if you work with it instead of against it, there are some okie benefits to it. It's a blessing because the UI is a good deal more dockable, so you don't end up with your palettles blocking your work area. For me, that's great. I hate zooming in only to have the window expand and be blocked by the palettes, making selection or transformations very difficult. I hated it for the first week and now I wish I had CS3 at work instead of CS2. YMMV.

There are a couple of other features that have become indispensible to me between CS and CS3 that I'm not sure the big braggy bullet-point features on the web actually have mentioned. First is the upgrade to the layer selection model. Instead of using the horrible 'linking' system in CS3, you can actually ctrl or shift click layers to add/subtract them from a selection and work on them. This is one of those things that you don't really discover the value of until you're taking it for granted. I wanted to hang myself when I was stuck on PS7 for a few days on a project without that feature.

Smart Objects is the other one. It's funny, I read all about them, watched the videos etc, and still didn't get them until I started fiddling with them myselves. Basically, a smart object takes whatever layers you have selected, and stores it just like a .PSD within a .PSD. Then, when you move them around or clone them or whatever, they are instanced into your project. Non-destructively. This is a lousy explanation so I'll try to paint you a picture here, so to speak:

1. Create a layer of a leaf.
2. Turn that layer into a Smart Object
3. Clone that layer several times around the screen.
4. Go to each of those clones, make them bigger, smaller, roate them, or whatever.
5. Double click on one of the clones. It'll open what appears to be a new Photoshop file containing only the leaf.

6. Modify the leaf... change its color.. add a dropshadow.. do whatever you want.
7. Click save and return to your original image
8. Notice that ALL of the leaves in your scene now reflect that change you made.
9. Go to any of the leaves you rotated or scale and choose transform again. Notice that it remembered where you transformed it? That's because it didn't make the change permenant. That's what I mean by instancing.

I personally like using Smart Objects to work on something that's really high res, but something I'll want to scale down later. Textures are a good example. A lot of the textures I create end up being 512 by 512, but I often work at 2048. Since Smart Objects are non-destructive, I can have that 512 file but keep the original 2048 image around. I also use it if I'm fuzzy on just how small I want to shrink something. This way I don't lose the original.

I'm also a layer pig. I use a ton of layers for a ton of different purposes. CS3 kicks CS's rear pretty solidly in that regard, partly because of the new selection modes I mentioned earlier and partly because of Smart Objects that I sometimes use just for organizational reasons.

I

Re:Rushing to defend PSP

[MarcoAtWork]

don't forget the upgrades to bridge, those were worth the CS2 -> CS3 upgrade price alone for me (and that's saying a lot, given how much the upgrade was!).

Re:Omniture = Bad

[Antique Geekmeister]

Hello, editors of Slashdot? The faked URL's to Minicity are a continuing problem. Can you arrange to add a new moderation categary of "Minicy", or "fake URL", because they're really a pain.

They can change the IP address

[Skapare]

They can change the IP address since they are using a hostname. You need to also add the domain name "2o7.net" (you know, number two, letter oh, number seven, dot net) as a zone in your resolving/caching DNS server, with a wildcard labeled "A" record pointing to somewhere that will be a dead end under your control, like 127.0.0.1.

Re:They can change the IP address

[QuoteMstr]

True, but this blocks their entire netblock. It'd be slightly more difficult for them to change /that/. Blackholing the DNS is on the list though.

Re:Omniture = Bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Omniture will be in damage control as soon as this secret report from a recent high-level staff meeting are leaked [dwarfurl.com][presswatch.org]

You moron. You realize that anyone knows that those [URL] tags will have them set to display, and its just a LITTLE suspicious that there are two of them in that case?

People run their machines with default HOSTS?!

[Tumbleweed]

Please do yourself a favour and download this HOSTS file:

http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm

And use it. That domain has long since been blocked. Jeez, people. Old news.

Re:People run their machines with default HOSTS?!

[that this is not und]

I've never liked having to tell my TCP/IP stack that it needs to parse through a 600K+ hostfile. That defeats part of the whole purpose of DNS. I haven't used that HOST file solution in awhile, but last time I did I remember it slowing down DNS lookups. Or I think I remember that. Maybe it was on a broken-by-design Windows box, I can't remember.

Re:People run their machines with default HOSTS?!

[Tumbleweed]

I've never had a slowdown problem after installing that HOSTS file. I even sped things up later by using a local DNS program called Treewalk.

Re:People run their machines with default HOSTS?!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had the same expreience with slowdowns on a friend's Windows XP box, with the same hosts file. I've never noticed such problems with linux, solaris or IRIX systems, although all of them read and parse the hosts file on demand and do not use a centralized cache or other tricks to speed things up. Personally I've switched away from using a hosts file to a bind nameserver that has e.g. *.2o7.net, so I won't need exact matches.

Adobe is an evil monopoly just like Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Adobe is an evil monopoly just like Microsoft. ...and I will point that out again and again until it finally dawns on the rest of you.

This time

[nurb432]

Even if this gets out, they will just move subnets and still catch 90% of the non technical users.

This really should be brought up to the courts.

Re:This time

[adminstring]

How about a bogus entry in the hosts file to cause the name to resolve to localhost - something like this:

127.0.0.1 192.168.112.2O7.net

Adobe doesn't deserve your business!

[wshwe]

This is another reason not to buy Adobe's bloated overpriced software!!!

Re:Omniture = Bad

[X0563511]

You might try contacting them directly rather than posting, especially this deep in the thread. Your chances of being noticed are low, I would imagine.

Try "help@slashdot.org" (referenced in the reply page)

I've also seen "pater@slashdot.org" but I think that's taco - wouldn't bother him directly for something like this.

So many are asking "Why do they want to know?"

[IonOtter]

It's simple, really?

The CEO's all read "Virtual Light" by William Gibson, and they ALL want to be Costa Rica.

Rydell finished his cornflakes.

'You ever been to Costa Rica, Rydell?'

'No.'

'It's fucking beautiful, man. Like Switzerland.'

'Never been there.'

'No, I mean what they do with data. Like the Swiss, what they did with money.'

'You mean the havens?'

'You got it. Those people are smart. No army, navy, air force, just neutral. And they take care of everybody's data.'

A practical question

[dwalsh]

Do the XP/Vista firewalls ask you the first time an app like this tries to make an outbound connection? Can you set them to or do you need to install a 3rd party firewall?

Re:A practical question

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Do the XP/Vista firewalls ask you the first time an app like this tries to make an outbound connection? Can you set them to or do you need to install a 3rd party firewall?

In XP it is either on by default or I turned it on so long ago I forgot how. I believe you can also give blanket permission for any app to use a specific port for UDP or TCP transmission. I think you can even combine these (Adobe can use port XXX because that is how I get updates, but not YYY because that connects to marketing.)

I wouldn't be surprised if it was off by default. The vast majority of windows security holes seem to be based on bad default settings.

I use a 3rd party firewall now, so maybe it changed since I used it last however.

value but no payment

[wikinerd]

So, not only users pay for Adobe products, not only these products are closed-source, but the user is also feeding the business of a profit-making analytics company as well as helping some marketing guys in Adobe justify their bonuses without the user getting any payment. User software usage data have value, so why should the user give up their usage data with no payment? Why should Adobe users give all this value for free without something in return? We do this with free software like Gimp (via ingimp), but I see no reason why one should help closed-source shops this way. One could say that users are paid in terms of better software releases, but I call bullshit: if Adobe was so concerned about this they would make their stuff free. We all know very well that there is no business reason (apart from legalities over code copyright belonging to third parties etc) to keep the code hidden, since making money with free software is not only possible but many times easier (and more ethical, since the user is not coerced in any way). This is the best way to conduct business: Create value without coercion. The popularity of a free software package can quickly be monetised, for example soon-to-be-a-Dr Drupal founder recently got $7 million out of the blue. I actually could go on to even say that not making a piece of software free is stupid from all perspectives (business, ethical, etc).

Re:How do I block it? [OT]

[causality]

So I write a brief post that says, in essence, that in the face of this and other security threats there is no single "magic" solution, but rather, that good security requires informing yourself and understanding the devices that you work with and it gets modded "Redundant". What a waste of a perfectly good mod point. If it bothers you so, I'll explain that the reason why "I am indifferent to any [grief] that is caused" is because I was not being malicious, cushioning someone else's ego is not my concern, and I was honestly saying how I felt about the matter.

If you don't like what I said, or the tone with which I said it, or the fact that I'll apologize for neither, abusing the moderation system to show your resentment is a poor substitute for actually expressing yourself and telling me why you feel that way. Had you done so, you may have caused me to rethink my previous point or to learn something new, or otherwise accomplished something better than subtracting one point from the post on the grounds of imaginary "redundancy". I wish this point were redundant! If it were, perhaps people would stop looking for band-aid solutions and become more informed about security.

Posted with no "karma bonus" since this isn't directly related to Adobe's software and whether it phones home.

metered connections

[wikinerd]

Some Internet connections are metered, usually based on the data volume (per kb). If Adobe uses your network connection to transmit data, then this means that some bandwidth (however small) that you pay for is wasted, especially if one is using an Adobe program a lot. Yes, it may be only a few bytes, but the principle holds true: Adobe may be using some of your metered Internet connection. Is this explained in their agreement? There are a lot of reasons why one should dislike this, apart from privacy.

Re:metered connections

[greyhueofdoubt]

Yeah, and we should bill Macromedia for their cpu-intensive (and thus power-hungry) plugins. Electricity isn't free.

And I should bill Betty Crocker because the cost of their cake mix doesn't take into account the electricity that my oven will use.

And Peter Jackson, since his movies were so long that they required 20% more electricity to watch. That money comes from somewhere, folks.

-b

Re:metered connections

[Jerry Smith]

Yeah, and we should bill Macromedia for their cpu-intensive (and thus power-hungry) plugins. Electricity isn't free. And I should bill Betty Crocker because the cost of their cake mix doesn't take into account the electricity that my oven will use. And Peter Jackson, since his movies were so long that they required 20% more electricity to watch. That money comes from somewhere, folks.

Before purchase of above items you could've expected the extra costs. Common sense.
Before purchase of an Adobe product few people would've expected that Adobe would be Quietly Monitoring their Software Use in such an obscure way. Yeah?

Re:metered connections

[greyhueofdoubt]

No, I agree that the monitoring part is bad. That is totally out of line.

I was arguing against the people who were upset that the program was using a few bytes of their bandwidth. We're talking about enough data to send a cookie here, not streaming video.

The freaking apollo mission could handle this much data. Adobe is in the wrong here, but it makes us nerds look over-reactive and childish to complain that 1Kb of our monthly 8Gb connection is being 'stolen'.

It is laughable that we would even consider suing Adobe for $5.7220459 × 10-5 per user.

-b

For The Confused(0 vs. o)

[Symbolis]

First up, 2-Oscar-7.net

symbolis@symbolis-desktop:~$ whois -H 2o7.net

Whois Server Version 2.0

Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net/
for detailed information.

      Domain Name: 2O7.NET
      Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC.
      Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
      Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com/
      Name Server: NS1.DAL.OMNITURE.COM
      Name Server: NS1.SJ1.OMNITURE.COM
      Name Server: NS1.SJ2.OMNITURE.COM
      Status: clientTransferProhibited
      Updated Date: 27-jun-2006
      Creation Date: 29-sep-2000
      Expiration Date: 29-sep-2010

>>> Last update of whois database: Sun, 30 Dec 2007 01:07:05 UTC http://www.internic.net/
for detailed information.

      Domain Name: 207.NET
      Registrar: MARKMONITOR INC.
      Whois Server: whois.markmonitor.com
      Referral URL: http://www.markmonitor.com/
      Name Server: NS1.DAL.OMNITURE.COM
      Name Server: NS1.SJ1.OMNITURE.COM
      Name Server: NS1.SJ2.OMNITURE.COM
      Status: clientDeleteProhibited
      Status: clientTransferProhibited
      Status: clientUpdateProhibited
      Updated Date: 28-dec-2006
      Creation Date: 11-jul-1996
      Expiration Date: 10-jul-2012

>>> Last update of whois database: Sun, 30 Dec 2007 01:07:05 UTC http://www.markmonitor.com/

        Administrative Contact:
                Domain Admin (NIC-14522673) Omniture
                550 East Timpanogos Circle Orem UT 84097 US
                dnsadmin@omniture.com +1.8017227000 Fax- +1.8017227001
        Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
                Domain Admin (NIC-14522673) Omniture
                550 East Timpanogos Circle Orem UT 84097 US
                dnsadmin@omniture.com +1.8017227000 Fax- +1.8017227001

        Created on..............: 1996-Jul-10.
        Expires on..............: 2012-Jul-09.
        Record last updated on..: 2006-Dec-30 03:02:52.

        Domain servers in listed order:

        NS1.SJ1.OMNITURE.COM
        NS1.SJ2.OMNITURE.COM
        NS1.DAL.OMNITURE.COM

Re:For The Confused(0 vs. o)

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait a minute. Do anyone notice that 207.net and 2O7.net are both linked to omniture.com?

Adobe does not even associate to their process

[Anonymous Coward]

This one really has me pissed off. Especially after spending $1000 for a CS3.

Just go to MSCONFIG and look for ##Id_String1.6844f930_1628_4223_b5cc_5bb94b879762## - as a running process.

No mention of Adobe here, and the first time I saw it, I thought my box was owned. Well come to find out, it was just Adobe spying on me.

!!! And HEY ADOBE !!! STFU - Somehow I missed the small print on page 900 of your EULA saying you could spy on me.
Serves me right for paying for your software.

You had best pray that there is never a good OS alternative.

--------- Maybe I could throw in the new Windows Genuine Advantage that also monitors other software ID's on my box.......

I wouldn't call it quietly...

[LilGuy]

I noticed something odd from the first moment I fired up CS3 and tried to create a new image. It hung for a few moments and then I noticed some heavy network use. This happens every single time I fire up CS3. I knew about this quite a while ago, but never did sniff to see what exactly was happening. I did disable my network connection once to see if it would still allow me to create a new image, which it did.

from 2 OH 7.net

[Acecoolco]

What is 2o7.net? 2o7.net is a domain used by Omniture to help provide portions of its Omniture SiteCatalyst and Omniture SearchCenter products. Specifically, this domain is used by Omniture to place cookies, on behalf of its customers, on the computers of visitors to customers' selected websites. Omniture Acts on Behalf of our Customers Omniture acts as a limited agent to each of its Customers only for the purpose of providing Internet data hosting Web and optimization products and services. Any information obtained by Omniture from the customer's websites is and will remain customer property, and will be treated by Omniture as proprietary and confidential information of the customer. As such, Omniture will not disclose such information to any third party, unless specifically and rightfully instructed to do so by the customer. Omniture will not review, share, distribute, print, or reference any session data of visitors to the customer websites except as requested by the customer or as may be required by law. Individual records may at times be viewed or accessed only for the purpose of resolving a problem, support issue, billing, or as may be required by law. Customers are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality and security of their usernames and passwords to log into their accounts. It is very important that you review the respective privacy policy of each website that you visit, because such privacy policies govern the use of information on those websites, including our customer's use of Omniture products and services where applicable. If you would like more information about Omniture and our privacy practices, please visit our Privacy Center. Opt-out Method We offer visitors to certain of our customers' websites a means for controlling the use of session information with respect to the Omniture SiteCatalyst, Omniture DataWarehouse, Omniture Discover and Omniture SearchCenter products using cookies set from Omniture's 2o7.net domain (i.e. that use the 2o7.net cookie to facilitate data collection). If, at any time a customer's website visitor does not wish to allow his/her session visitation information to be aggregated and analyzed by Omniture on such customer sites, he/she may utilize the following opt out mechanism. For customers that use non-Omniture cookies to collect data on their websites, please review the privacy disclosures of such customers for specific details on any and all applicable opt outs on such sites. Click Here To Opt-Out of 2o7.net Cookie Tracking Now.

Re:from 2 OH 7.net

[Acecoolco]

Sorry forgot plain old text

What is 2o7.net?

2o7.net is a domain used by Omniture to help provide portions of its Omniture SiteCatalyst and Omniture SearchCenter products. Specifically, this domain is used by Omniture to place cookies, on behalf of its customers, on the computers of visitors to customers' selected websites.
Omniture Acts on Behalf of our Customers

Omniture acts as a limited agent to each of its Customers only for the purpose of providing Internet data hosting Web and optimization products and services. Any information obtained by Omniture from the customer's websites is and will remain customer property, and will be treated by Omniture as proprietary and confidential information of the customer. As such, Omniture will not disclose such information to any third party, unless specifically and rightfully instructed to do so by the customer. Omniture will not review, share, distribute, print, or reference any session data of visitors to the customer websites except as requested by the customer or as may be required by law. Individual records may at times be viewed or accessed only for the purpose of resolving a problem, support issue, billing, or as may be required by law. Customers are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality and security of their usernames and passwords to log into their accounts.

It is very important that you review the respective privacy policy of each website that you visit, because such privacy policies govern the use of information on those websites, including our customer's use of Omniture products and services where applicable.

If you would like more information about Omniture and our privacy practices, please visit our Privacy Center.
Opt-out Method

We offer visitors to certain of our customers' websites a means for controlling the use of session information with respect to the Omniture SiteCatalyst, Omniture DataWarehouse, Omniture Discover and Omniture SearchCenter products using cookies set from Omniture's 2o7.net domain (i.e. that use the 2o7.net cookie to facilitate data collection). If, at any time a customer's website visitor does not wish to allow his/her session visitation information to be aggregated and analyzed by Omniture on such customer sites, he/she may utilize the following opt out mechanism. For customers that use non-Omniture cookies to collect data on their websites, please review the privacy disclosures of such customers for specific details on any and all applicable opt outs on such sites.

Click Here To Opt-Out of 2o7.net Cookie Tracking Now.

that night was the darkest of all

[Anonymous Coward]

if you use closed source software, I don't care if it's from Microsoft, Apple, nvidia, ATI, Real, etc., if the software is closed source (as most commercial software continues to be today) and you can't obtain the source and compile the program yourself YOU ARE FUCKED. You don't know what the program is capable of, no matter how hard the creators of the program stroke their e-penis about how they care about security and privacy. Do you want freedom and security? Go open source where you can audit the programs you use or pay someone to do it for you. Support the FSF and put yourself in control. Stop using these closed source programs, REFUSE to buy from them.

Bad assumption.

[Anne Honime]

I don't need the thing to handle Exactly Like Photoshop, but if it's going to be the "photoshop competitor" every FOSS advocate claims it is [...]

I won't speak in the name of others, but clearly The Gimp is not a competitor to photoshop. If PS was to be competing against The Gimp, Adobe would have to release native file format information, plus access to the code. For those among FOSS supporters like me, failing on both counts is a total show stopper for even considering a switch, much like the burden of your previous work is to you.

The Gimp is like the plank cabin you build on your grounds : there might be holes, it might not be completely comfortable, and the roof might even leak, but nevertheless, you're the king in your own private kingdom, because you're considered to be the owner of the place. PS is more like a rented flat : nice view, good furnitures, central heating, but if your landlord happens to be a complete moron, and suddenly decides to lock all the doors at 9 pm, you're fscked, and either you're in by the curfew, or you're homeless for the night.

You decide what's acceptable to you.

Re:Bad assumption.

[Anonymous Coward]

What a DUMB analogy. If my landlord decided to lock me out by an arbitrary curfew, I would make two calls: One to the police, one to a locksmith. When I rent an apartment I *do* have rights.

Re:Bad assumption.

[JohnBailey]

What a DUMB analogy. If my landlord decided to lock me out by an arbitrary curfew, I would make two calls: One to the police, one to a locksmith. When I rent an apartment I *do* have rights. And how about when you rent... sorry.. License software? To continue with the analogy, what if the government decides to remove your rights as a tenant?

So the landlord can increase your rent. -- Charge more for the next version while phasing out support for the current version.

Do repairs when they feel like it, while forbidding you to do any repairs or decorating. And opting out of any liability when their unqualified cousin rewires your flat and you electrocute yourself. -- Refusing access to the source code, or refusing others access to the source code, denying any responsibility for their badly tested software or patches screwing up your business, but providing an expensive API license if they feel like it.

And have the right of unannounced access at a time to suit them to make sure you are not breaking the rental agreement by subletting or carrying out illegal modifications/repairs. -- Installing spyware to monitor use of their software on your computer, and not doing it as an opt in service.

And all you can do is suck it up and pay, or move out?

The software industry in general has already has done the above, and nobody seems to be complaining except for us crazy open source fanatics.
We FOSS supporters may have a leaky roof from time to time, but if we have the skills or someone who is willing to do the job has the skills to repair the roof, it doesn't leak for long. The closed source defenders are turning up in court as character witnesses for abusive landlords. Kinda makes you wonder who is getting the better deal.

Re:Bad assumption.

[dangitman]

PS is more like a rented flat : nice view, good furnitures, central heating, but if your landlord happens to be a complete moron, and suddenly decides to lock all the doors at 9 pm, you're fscked, and either you're in by the curfew, or you're homeless for the night.

What? Please explain to me how Adobe could suddenly stop me from running Photoshop.

Did we not know this already?

[krazytekn0]

I thought that this was common knowledge, too bad, I could have broke the story the day I got CS3. Is everyone here really surprised that their computer software is trying to spy on them? Use little snitch or something similar on windows if you don't want to do the configuration manually. But seriously, stop giving these companies access to your bandwidth! They don't need it and are probably just using it to do something you don't want them to do anyway.

It's about software freedom

[jbn-o]

The biggest issue here is the lack of software freedom Adobe's users have to suffer from, and how any questionable activity of Adobe's proprietary software is a direct result of that lack of freedom.

With free software one doesn't have to trust that the software does the right thing. If one wants, one can inspect the software themselves or get someone else to do that job for them. If one finds that the software does something besides what the user wants, that user is allowed to change the program (or get someone else to change it for them) and make the program work as desired. Proprietary software is licensed so that users are denied any freedom to inspect or modify the program. If you figure out how to modify the program so it won't misbehave anymore, you can't legally help your community by sharing a copy of that modified program.

Proprietary software is untrustworthy by default and it is the lack of software freedom that is the main issue here.

Re:Omniture = Bad

[LocalH]

Preferences -> Comments -> Display Link Domains? -> Always show link domains

Problem solved.

Adding more non-free software won't help.

[jbn-o]

This kind of thing is why I wish The GIMP or similar would get useable [...]

Perhaps you should consider not making more documents you can't use fully in freedom. It will never be easier to do this than it is right now. Also, instead of contributing more money to Adobe (who apparently doesn't deserve your loyalty or money), you could give The GIMP's developers some money and help justify their time spent on making The GIMP more compatible with Photoshop documents.

Adobe's behavior of late (and it will only get worse) is why applications like Little Snitch exist.

It would seem that the proprietary software in question isn't doing anything now it didn't do months ago. This is not a recent change in the proprietary software, only our collective discovery of this questionable contact with an outside computer is new.

Also, your recommendation of "Little Snitch" is unwise because that program is proprietary. You identify the root problem correctly—a lack of software freedom (hence recommending free software such as The GIMP makes sense). Adding another black box to the mix won't help. There's no way to know that Little Snitch isn't problematic in its own way; there's no reason why users deserve less freedom with Little Snitch than with any other program they run on their computers. For all we know Little Snitch communicates something without user consent, or introduces problems all its own (security holes of various sorts, keylogging, etc.) which essentially allow a different proprietor to spy on the user or collect information that would be useful in gaining access to their accounts (thus becoming impostors).

On the GIMP.

[David Rolfe]

(I'm not the AC to which you responded. That said...)

GIMP was funny when Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis named it, haw haw. If they'd imagined even for a moment that their school project would ever reach the point where non-geeks would be using free software they would have called it 'the General Image Manipulator' (later 'GNU Image Manipulator') and pronounced it 'jim'. Then self-respecting professionals in the design industry wouldn't gag on their own vomit every time they said "I really wish I could use the gimp and free myself from adobe's shackles."

See, to most adults gimp has the admittedly slang meaning (and connotation) of either a cripple (a limping limper), or the object of a masochist's pleasure (i.e., they've at least seen Pulp Fiction).

"I'd rather not use gimped software 60 hours a weeks to do my job."

"Uh-oh, management is looking for a gimp to blame this death-march on."

Limping and ass-rape don't warrant serious consideration to professionals. If GIMP had a moniker that didn't embarrass CTOs, we might see the sort of progress that industrial adoption has brought us in the kernel, Apache, etc.

Er, I meant sadist...

[David Rolfe]

or the object of a masochist's pleasure Obviously I meant the object of a sadist's pleasure... oops, use preview for proofreading folks!

Re:Er, I meant sadist...

[Palpitations]

oops, use preview for proofreading folks! I thought everyone already knew that. You must be new here.

Oh... Wait...
Carry on then.

Re:Er, I meant sadist...

[Palpitations]

Heh, flamebait? I guess I forgot my sarcasm tags... I suppose the "everyone makes mistakes, and it really shouldn't be a big deal" subtext was a bit subtle, and not even the preview button can help me out with that. *shrugs*

Re:If SONY wasn't innocent for what First4Internet

[Animaether]

I didn't mean to come across as saying that rootkits (personally I don't consider that SONY thing a rootkit, but I can see how it can certainly aid building actual rootkits via simple viruses/trojans. Then again, if you get one of those, you're mostly screwed anyway.). All I meant was that no company should be able to claim innocence / hide behind a third party software provider's code. They choose to use that code; be it in binary form or otherwise, and thus they should be the ones responsible.

Others using 2o7.net

[Anonymous Coward]

Form my logs, here's how others use 2o7.net:

msnbc.com - msnbcom.112.2o7.net (notice the prefix)

cnn.com - cnn.122.2o7.net (notice 122)

So, why not adobe.112.2o7.net? What's there to hide?

Nobody would notice

[commodoresloat]

it's illegal to go 70 mph; nobody would ever find out about it if Ford did that since we all would obey the law.

Re:Nobody would notice

[Roger W Moore]

it's illegal to go 70 mph; nobody would ever find out about it if Ford did that since we all would obey the law.

70 mph is the standard motorway speed limit in the UK, 120 or 130 km/h in most of the rest of Europe (which are both over 70 mph) and unlimited on parts of the German autobahn (or used to be). Even in the US the limit is 75 mph on your motorways in some states. Since I'm assuming that you'd know the speed limit in your own country I'm now curious to know where you live since I would guess that this covers a good fraction of Ford's market.

Re:Nobody would notice

[MonkeyBoy]

As someone who drove home to be with family over the holiday, let me assure you that just because the speed limit may be 70-75mph in some parts of the US, that doesn't mean that people are actually going to do 70-75mph.

Drivers with Iowa plates, for instance, loved to follow a truck doing 60mph in the right lane (the maximum speed for trucks on the highway I was driving). As soon as a car came up in the left lane doing 70mph, they would flip over to the left lane and accelerate up to 61-63mph, all at the very last second so that the driver in the left lane would need to make a panic brake to avoid plowing into them. Sometimes when they passed the truck they wouldn't change back over to the right lane again.

Since our police can't be bothered to enforce traffic laws that don't involve speeding, this kind of poor driving is, unfortunately, becoming all too common.

Re:Nobody would notice

[Deathanatos]

Tennessee is a place where the speed limit is legally 70mph, and the people actually do drive 70-75mph. Perhaps things in Iowa are different, but the grandfather's point still stands: 70mph does happen.

Re:Nobody would notice

[Total_Wimp]

Just wanted to add that no matter what the posted speed may be on public roads, you may legally drive whatever speed you'd like on private property in the U.S.

Re:Nobody would notice

[AlterTick]

it's illegal to go 70 mph; nobody would ever find out about it if Ford did that since we all would obey the law. The posted limit on many US interstate highways is 75, you fucking dunce.

Re:Nobody would notice

[rdoger6424]

there are a few places where you can go 70 (I believe that stretches of highway in montana are 75). Besides, the chip inside the car kills the engine when you go above 120

Re:Nobody would notice

[Anonymous Coward]

Every car is different, yours maybe 120 but that value is not some type of accepted standard that everyone uses.

Re:That sounds like REALLY intuitive market resear

[Josh Triplett]

What god damned mook of a market researcher thought a blow by blow report of what a customer clicks on while working on a project is superior to actually talking to the customer?

A good one. Asking someone to describe their experiences with software will give you some useful high-level information, like "I want a feature that does this", or perhaps "I don't find such-and-such intuitive". However, if you want to know things like "which tools do people actually use, and how often", or "do people often look in menu X for something we put in menu Y", or "do people do a multi-step task by hand that we could make easier", or "which tools should we put on the toolbar by default and which should we stick in menus", watching real usage could provide you with data that you can't get from a survey.

(This ignores for the moment the ethical issue at hand. If you want this kind of data, do an opt-in usability study, or get people to use the software in a controlled environment.)

Really Really Important Data

[Nom du Keyboard]

According to this screenshot from Uneasysilence, launching Adobe CS3 triggers communication between your computer and behavioral analytics firm Omniture...Adobe confirms the function, saying they use information gleaned about user behavior to gain "business insight into how to create better user experiences.

So Adobe counts how many times you start your program. Wow, that must really help them figure out how to make starting the program a better experience for the user.

Try gimpshop

[jpetts]

http://www.gimpshop.com/

on my "personal" computer!

[blankoboy]

I purchase software that is intended for a particular use on my "personal" computer (whether it be PC or Mac). I do NOT purchase software so the vendor can track my usage, include 3rd party tool bars or other. Software that is not network related should not have any network component involved whatsoever. Why should image editing software have any network functionality whatsoever, I am not forking over my hard earned $$ for this. If I want to download and install an update you can notify me via email or other, I don't want your app dialing home to check for an update and checking my system stats and usage.

Software companies are now clearly overstepping the boundaries of acceptability. This has behavior subtly creeping it's way into applications in recent years. They start with the "do you want to this application to check for updates automatically"? Then comes "activation", then 3rd party bundled toolbars - Acrobat reader, among many other non-Adobe apps come with opt-in 3rd party toolbars which you can opt out of but WTF is it doing there in the 1st place? I won't install any app that has such software bundled in for fear that it's doing something despite my opting out of the toolbar.

These companies will not learn their lesson and back off until we have sufficiently voted with our wallets. I will say that Adobe will never again get a dollar out of my wallet.

This is nothing new

[Waccoon]

Illustrator 6 on the Mac used to probe your Mac network for duplicate instances of itself. I'd rather an application on someone else's computer on the network not try to find out what software I'm using on my machine, but then, MacOS was such crap that it allowed applications to do such things in the first place.

This is also why I don't like the idea of "always on" broadband connections. I shouldn't need a full firewall to shut off net access to a specific program.

Re:This is nothing new

[ceejayoz]

MacOS was such crap that it allowed applications to do such things in the first place. Sorry, which major operating system forbids outgoing local network connections for all applications by default, again?

John Nack is an arrogant ass

[Coward Anonymous]

He may be a great program manager but if I were Adobe I would stop him from blogging as quickly as I could. Here are some choice quotes from his responses to user comments. With responses like these I wouldn't believe anything he has to say:

[Are you saying you can't figure out how to remove applications? That's really saying something. --J.]
[You're a complete moron, and I don't have time to bother poking holes in your litany of ridiculous assertions. --J.]
[Sorry to hear that things aren't going well, Ryan. Have you called tech support? If not, why not? --J.]
[What sucks is how gullible, lazy, and reckless people prove to be. --J.]


And on and on it goes...

acroread stays resident

[brilanon]

The other day I closed a Firefox tab with a PDF in it and half an hour later I found out acroread was still running and holding my CPU at 100% utilization and 91 degrees C instead of 51

so beware

CS3 does phone home, and I block it

[Ralph Spoilsport]

I installed it, and then had Little Snitch block it for ever. Everytime I start up an Adobe app,the "Adobe Updater" app comes on. You don't notice it, and it stays on, because I blocked it. I'm on a Mac and so when I opt/apple/esc it's there in the list of running apps. I go to the far right of my Dock, and there's the icon for the app with an X. I click on it and it bitches at me,

"No Internet Connection. Please check your internet settings and or firewall."

I just click "Cancel" and it goes away.

Adobe sucks.

RS

Solutions

[Anonymous Coward]

A. Don't use Adobe.
B. If you do use Adobe, use a good firewall like Zone Alarm set to its highest security level.

Re:Solutions

[Jerry Rivers]

"Don't use Adobe."

And what are the alternatives? Gimp? That's not a professional quality app yet and doesn't support CMYK. Quark XPress for page layout? OK for legacy files, trying hard to stay in the game, but has fallen out of favour with many agencies, designers and commercial printers for a variety of reasons. Freehand for vector work? That's owned by Adobe now so you might as well use Illustrator (which Adobe would prefer you do) unless you want to try and get away with an app that has basically become the redheaded stepchild of their software lineup.

This is what happens when a single company basically crushes and buys out it's competition. You end up with an increasingly arrogant, unresponsive and less diligent behemoth that basically does whatever the hell it wants, customers be damned because they have little or no choice. This is what's happening with Adobe, now that is basically the only game in town.

Stay tuned for more public complaints about this company.

Re:Solutions

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on what you want to do, I guess. I've had my computer for years. It has an Adobe folder on it with Acrobat inside. I've never used it. I've never even clicked the icon. It appears to be necessary for reading PDFs, which I've never done.

Adobe Acrobat (and plugins) suck - so use Foxit

[StupidKatz]

For those stuck on Windows, dump Acrobat and use Foxit's PDF software.

I finally stopped the "install new Adobe, spend minutes ripping out tons of useless, bloated plugins and turning off stupid options" routine after that last PDF vuln that Adobe's crap automatically trashed your machine over, but Foxit at least had the good sense to ask 'trash machine? y/n'.

Good justification for a crack

[EdIII]

This is why I only use cracked software. Even if I purchase the software, which all of mine actually is, i run it cracked with lot of firewall rules.

I have never trusted any software company that attempts to make an outbound connection for ANY reason. Certain programs being an obvious exception like web browsers.

The fact that behavior like this is now coming from Adobe provably, is no surprise to me at all. Adobe has been almost militant in it's defense against piracy. If they had their way, all computers would be hooked up to a central database and run only authorized code decided by a "high council" of software developers.

I know some may say that the "jury is still out", but I don't believe that any of this was done without Adobe's knowledge or consent. After all, any software developer would be stupid and negligent if it subbed out development work or services to a 3rd party without verifying the functionality of the code or auditing the services.

In any case, for a company with Adobe's reputation, this is very damaging.

Re:Good justification for a crack

[Cheesey]

This is why I only use cracked software. Even if I purchase the software, which all of mine actually is, i run it cracked with lot of firewall rules.

Cracked software might be even worse - who knows what else the crack is installing? Cracks seem to be an ideal way to distribute malware: after all, you have to run the program!

I think instead that it's a good argument for free software, or for putting all of your Windows/Mac boxes on a private LAN without an Internet connection.

Re:Good justification for a crack

[EdIII]

That really depends on where you are getting it. Unfortunately, that is a VERY valid point lately with torrents being the main distribution channel for most pirated "releases".

It did not use to be that way though. Software would be released, a Pirate group would crack it and package it up, and then it would be released on relatively controlled channels. You could trust a Pirate group more than the corporation. They, by their very nature, were concerned with their reputation.

Releases also contained authenticity measures which would allow you to download CRC files through alternate channels and verify the releases.

UNTIL Bittorrent, I had never even heard of a piracy release being used as a vehicle for virus or malware infection.

To counteract that, you have to be very selective of the torrents that you download. Only download those torrents which contain the original release files. I would recommend not using torrent at all, but using an IRC channel and forming some contacts to get FTP connections.

For years, that is what I did. I will not lie, I pirated the hell out of everything. However, what I did use and liked, I PAID for. I know that may sound crazy to some people, but I WANTED the software box for my library, I WANTED to compensate the coders. After all, I code programs myself. I like being able to eat after a hard days work of coding.

It was with the internet that corporations started using 2-way communication between programs to offer "services", "features", and IP PROTECTION. Once I heard about Paperport, Double Click, and several others being caught doing what they did, I decided it was just too risky for my privacy and security to not take serious measures against it.

So although I don't condone Pirating a piece of software and then not ultimately paying for it..... Pirates are really the only people that can offer us reliable cracks to programs. In a sense, Piracy allows us all to anonymously evaluate software without being forced to expose us to unscrupulous corporations behavior. Once we decide to purchase it, it then further allows us to use it without fear of what data is being sent back and forth between that corporation.

I just wish there was something similar to GameCopyWorld.com, that could provide a warehouse of SAFE cracks for commercial software.

To those that would say I am immoral to even talk about and endorse Piracy in its smallest measure I ask, "Why should we all be afraid of running commercial software and be forced to run firewalls at all?"

In the end it is the corporations behavior itself that is so absurd. Which is worse? The corporations or the pirates?

suxx0rz

[rice_burners_suck]

This is a CONSPIRACY! They are deliberately writing software code to do this! It's a graphics package not a piece of spyware. That is the suxx0rz.

I don't know about you, but....

[raehl]

I'll take the roof that doesn't drop cold water on me throughout the night.

Let me know when I can be master of a kingdom with a roof that doesn't leak.

More than spying?

[Timothee]

I have the definite impression that after installing CS3 trial, other related softwares started behaving differently: Flash asked my firewall access permissions, Dreamweaver stopped remembering my sites' keys, etc. I'm I alone and paranoid? Why did Macromedia sell their souls (and ours) to Adobe in the first place?

Re:Omniture = Bad

[chartreuse]

Works for redirection services like TinyURL, eh? That's not problem solved, that's problem whuh?

CMYK Support for The Gimp

[Murrquan]

You have some very good points! There are several plugins that provide CMYK support for the Gimp, like this one: http://cue.yellowmagic.info/softwares/separate.html I don't know how good they are, since I don't use the Gimp on a regular basis. But it might be worth looking into, if that's what you're needing.

Re:CMYK Support for The Gimp

[Anonymous Coward]

its not just CMYK support that is lacking on gimp. designers and production studios need full control over color profiling and export file options that can handle parameters for PDF format. gimp does not have support for production workflow used on digital printing. until then, open source software like gimp will always be limited to amateur designers and home users.

Not just network utilization...

[simpl3x]

As a user of Adobe's suite, my personal problem is that I have tried to track weird network access on my computer. Also, although the applications have become more stable, I get plenty of strange behavior and lock-ups due to the network closing a connection.

This becomes about productivity and the software messing up my computer as much as the resources used to connect. Some people were dismissing Apple's authentication system rumors, and as a person who does purchase the software I use, I would love nothing more than for this crap to be relegated to history. Do I trust Apple more than some of these small companies, may be a question implying the lesser of two evils, but the choice in this instance would be nice.

I ditched Quark because of their annoying authentication practices, but am stuck with this crapware now!

WRONG

[JackMeyhoff]

The biggest issue is them deceiving the user by not being open about the monitoring and giving us an option to opt out (or opt in by default), seriously, no wonder you people are losing your rights, you do not know what they are in the first place.

John Nack: Master of Tact

[CJ COS]

I love the comment where he tells the blogger bagging on Adobe for spying on him:

[Be sure to thank your mother for the continued use of her basement. -J]

He spent quite a bit of time answering people on his blog, in his own way. That's either commendable, or reckless; I haven't quite figured out which yet.

Adobe's big mistake was using an opt-out instead of an opt-in. You can go into Prefs and make the splash screen not load, among disabling the other Internet-using functions. But those are only pseudo-"opt-out" measures. On initial program start (right after install), it should say "We're going to use the Internet for X, Y, and Z, please click Yes or No if you want us to do that. You can always change it in Preferences. Here's the list of features that will not work if you click No:..."

Whatever their slip-ups end up being, I can tell you for sure that the execs from Omniture will be called onto Adobe's carpet Monday morning.

Re:Bad assumption.: But when you move out...

[HiThere]

But when you move out you've got to leave all of your books, movies, records, and business records behind.

(You've got to complete the analogy.)

Not Just Adobe

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure you all are aware, but Slashdot is a big analytics user as well. Ask the marketing guys at SourceForge, Inc. if, money being no object, they'd want to use Omniture's service instead of Google's.

<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
    _uacct = "UA-32013-5";
    _udn = "slashdot.org";
    urchinTracker();
</script>

Disable automatic updates in Adobe CS3 apps

[Anonymous Coward]

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb402251 mac & win