Almost without exception, your reviews kick ass. They're informed, well-written, and -- so help me god, this is the most important part -- they don't try to glom onto some larger issue for the sake of a dubious news hook (i.e., everything ever penned by Jon Katz).
Please, keep cranking 'em out (just so long as they don't make you plug "Revolution OS" again. *g*).
It doesn't stop at the software, folks.
on
Spyware Fights Back
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Oh yes, there's more. Much more.
RadLight offers you and your family a whole line of fine merchandise at the RadLight Online Store. If you've ever felt like you've had too much voluntary control over your daily routine, why not try integrating some of their fine products into your lifestyle?
Take, for instance, this fashionable long-sleeve RadLight t-shirt. It's luxuriously soft, 100% cotton -- and it forcibly ejects from your wardrobe any third-party sweaters, jackets, etc. you might mistakenly slip over it on one of those chilly summer nights. No more hassles choosing what to wear, and think of all the closet space you'll free up.
Or how about this bright and cheery RadLight mug? Guaranteed to keep your favorite beverage piping hot... as long that beverage is RadLight-branded Maxwell House Regular Roast. All other liquids will be drained through an emergency discharge valve at the bottom of the mug. (Please note: by filling the cup, the consumer absolves RadLight of all liability for any leg/groin/other scalding that may occur.)
And, of course, there's always RadLight's crowing achievement: extra-roomy RadLight boxer shorts. All-cotton, open-fly, and completely impervious to access by any third parties. That's right, only you or an authorized RadLight employee (or an employee/consultant of any of its licensed subsidiaries and partners) will be able to get at what's behind that RadLight logo. Now how's that for peace of mind?
Don't thank them now. That slightly pained smile on your face will be praise enough.
Confession #1: I still have an all-in-one B&W Mac Classic sitting in a corner of my office.
Confession #2: I use the poor little thing regularly. Honest. Over time, it's become my word processing machine of choice (w/ Word 5.1, of course). Some people can't write unless they're seated in front of a manual typewriter -- yes, I have one of those, too: a cast-iron Royal relic -- but me? I need my Classic.
For whatever reason, it gets me in the writing mood. Maybe it's because the experience is so focused: the WP completely fills the little 9" screen, so there aren't any distractions to worry about. No email. No IM. No surfing. Heck, not even color.
Seriously, I mean the AC's right. The post in question clearly wasn't a troll. Heck, I'd even hesistate to mod the original down as Redundant, seeing as it came only two minutes after the first posting of the song. And come on, given the article topic, it's not like you didn't expect the song to make a showing, right? =)
you're reading it as if it says the material is primarily marketed towards youngsters
Of course not. I'm suggesting the above language is ambiguous enough that it can be read any number of ways. And as we've seen time and time again, ambiguity in law is A Very Bad Thing(tm).
Let's use the same construction, different particulars. Hypothetical Bob runs a hunting shop. Its primary business is selling guns that kill people. Have any of Hypothetical Bob's guns ever been used to kill a person? Probably not. Does that change the validity of the sentence? Nope, since guns can still be used to kill people and Hypothetical Bob does sell the things. But, and here's the kicker, is it ambiguous and possibly misleading to characterize Bob's main business as selling items that kill people? Yes. Bob sells items. and the items may be put to certain ends, BUT those uses are intrinsic to the items themselves, not his sale of them.
Commencing not later than 12 months after the establishment of the new domain under section 102, any operator of a commercial Internet web site or online service that has as its principal or primary business the making available of material that is harmful to minors shall register such web site or online service with the new domain and operate such web site or online service under the new domain.
As written, this is laughably vague. Clearly, no company's primary business would be distributing harmful material to minors. For one thing, the lil' buggers don't have credit cards, so profits might be somewhat hard to come by at first. (Dang, there goes the IPO, Chester. Did you save the receipts on that new office furniture?) More appropriate would be to call it "material intended for adults but which may be judged to have a harmful effect on minors".
Here's something even more troubling. In the section where they attempt to define what's "harmful to minors", here's one of the acceptable standards:
...taking the material as a whole, lacks
serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.
Again, incredibly vague and open to abuse. Under this definition, material which does have scientific, etc. value for adults but doesn't for minors would be fair game, right?
Shit! Time to pull down that AARP website fellers!
Fifty game stations. Zero quarters required. I'm there.
But that takes all the fun out of it. I mean, I can't even imagine playing Street Fighter II without a long row of quarters balanced along the bottom edge of the screen. ("I got next.") That'd be like having a clean floor at a bar: wholly unnatural.
They've got a history of being slow with this sort of thing. Anyone else remember the exquisite agonies of their software installation system?
Not too long ago, you needed both a floppy drive and a CD to install XPress 3.31(?) on your box. The CD contained all the app data, the floppy held the serialization info. (And there was yet another floppy for registration. You'd mail that disk directly to Quark after you were done.) Annoying, but you could live with it. But when Apple decided to go no-floppy across their entire product line -- ouch! Suddenly no one could install Quark on those beyoootiful new G3s for which they'd shelled out so much money. (Or at least not without buying some USB external floppy drives, which were hard-to-find early on.) And for months afterwards, Quark did next to nothing about this very obvious problem.
IIRC, they eventually settled it so you could send them a proof-of-purchase, your original program disks and a vial of blood harvested from a virgin under the full moon's light and get a CD-only version of the installer. But back at the time, it was a HUGE issue for a lot of bureaus and design shops.
1) are these really the tools of choice for a majority of people who make Web sites?
As an interactive production manager out here in NYC, I'd have to say "yes" -- at least on the professional side of things. Photoshop (w/ an assist from Illustrator) are *the* tools of the trade for creating static web graphics. (Don't mind the whimpering you hear from the back of the pack. Those are just the people who insist on using Fireworks...) =)
Why use these "behemoths"? Because they let us put the design in "web design", which is ultimately what we get paid for. But there are still plenty of good solutions for the hobbyist crowd, including Photoshop Elements, which retails at $99 (not counting the $30 rebate for PSP users) and has all the features of Photoshop that a smaller web publisher would need.
2) what percentage of those people actually use the software LEGALLY?
Professional use? Most everyone. Personal use? I'd give 20% as a rough guess. I've got registered copies both at home and at work, but I'm probably an exception to the more general rule.
Tavaré's team suggested that the earliest primates might have been small, nocturnal creatures...
A-ha! Coders!
The news value of this article was what?
on
Revolution OS
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Other than to plug the movie, which has an undeniable cool factor thanks to appearances by a few/.ers, why was this even posted as a story? Where's the news hook?
Is it the possible video release? Nope. That's only mentioned in passing and no real info is given on it.
Is it the local screenings for this year-old movie? Nope. Slashdot isn't the local events pages of your daily newspaper.
Is it the reader review of the film? Nope. The film's a year old and has already been reviewed and reported on quite a number of times already.
If you got the first edition of the original poster (Feb-Dec 1999)...
Yup, bought mine from ya back in the summer of '99. Like I said, it's still on my office wall and still pretty damned handy. I even import the Visibone palette into all my design apps. =)
Honest, I've got the utmost respect for your products, but I just feel this one is a little off the mark for your target audience (of which I am a member). You've extended the metaphor of that safe poster, which is successful in representing a full range of discrete values, to the much broader set of unsafe colors. You can, by neccessity, represent only a sampling these values on the poster, which limits its usefulness as a production tool. I can find a color that's kinda sorta close to what I'm looking for, but I'll still need to go into a desgn app and tweak the color on-screen until it's exactly what I need. In that case, it'd probably be easier to use the app's HSB picker to begin with.
I agree there's a niche that needs to be filled, but maybe a different approach is necessary? For example, I often refer to the Designer's Guides to Color while developing palettes for print projects. I'd kill for a product that takes a similar approach to "unsafe" web colors.
Anyway, didn't mean to come off as a carping ingrate there. I thoroughly appreciate your products, use them daily, and owe you untold amounts of gratitude. Thanks for all the hard work!
If one disregards the facts that I typed it in lower case, abused an ellipsis for dramatic effect, and generally went to town on the "o" key, sure it is.
"No, don't make me do it." is a perfectly acceptable sentence written in the imperative mood.
Only reason I mentioned it in the first place -- I usually don't -- is that it pains me when/. editors don't take a second to proofread or fact check articles before posting them to the site as official content. (kgarcia already mentioned that English isn't his/her first language, so I'm certainly not trying to poke fun at him/her.)
This is tyranny! You're trampling all over my free speech rights! I won't stand for this a second long--
Hey, wait.
If this bill goes through, the government's gonna need a lot of extra help winnowing all that porn from the chaff, right? I mean, jeez, it could take years...
Heck, I've got a years-old copy of the "safe" poster hanging on my office wall right now. But this new "unsafe" version really seems like it's fulfilling a need that doesn't exist.
The "safe" poster was truly handy for picking common palettes along HSB (hue/saturation/brightness) lines. e.g., "Wow, that's the perfect web-safe shade of blue. Now if I could only find a more subdued version of the same exact hue to use elsewhere in my site."
Once you break free of those 216-color constraints, however, you're probably much better off using any color picker's HSB sliders to create your site palette. Not only do you give yourself more flexibility, but you avoid potential problems caused by picking a color that looks great on a CMYK printed poster, but looks entirely different on an RGB monitor.
What do you mean "The company's not around anymore"?
Ugh, my bad. I'd read reports at a few different design sites -- here's one -- that the company had tanked and future purchases were going to be at-yer-own-risk (much like buying 3DFX cards; god I loved my Voodoo 5500...).
...the $1K+ figure sounds about right for what you've described. Seriously, scanning is one of those times when you really do get what you pay for... especially at larger flatbed sizes, when controlling vibration of the scanning elements becomes more of a problem.
However, if you're dead-set on going down that low-cost road, your best shot would probably to pick up a few Plustek OpticPro A3-i scanners on clearance somewhere. (Here for instance.) The company's not around anymore, so you'll be on your own for support, but at $175.00 per unit, that might be a risk you'd be willing to take.
I am curious as to what the university so desperately needs to scan at 11x17, though...
Sigh... okay, okay. Let me get the basket of apples and oranges out of the garage, cuz it looks like it's comparin' time again. =)
The simple fact that a site exists does not necessarily mean its primary (or even secondary) purpose is to communicate quantifiable little bits of information to someone in the most efficient manner possible. In some cases -- an interactive artist's portfolio, to use a self-serving example -- how the site communicates is as/more important than what it communicates. (Kinda the same way you'll go to a swanky restaurant both for the ambiance and the food. Presentation still counts for a lot sometimes.)
But, yes, you're right -- there are tons of sites that slap completely unnecessary layers of Flash crap over what should be simple informational resources. And those people should be covered with honey and fed to rampaging packs of wild boars. But to deny a portion of the population legitimate use of a tool just because some other maroons decide to misuse it -- hey! That almost sounds like the other end of the whole DeCSS mess. Cool! =)
There's several reasons why, but the most obvious to me is the name. Flash, flashing lights and glitter, style over substance.
Might as well say you don't like GNOME because the name implies it's gonna be short on the usability front.
There are tons of good uses for Flash. (I say this as both a designer and coder who uses the app every day, mind you.) For those times when the experience is the content, rather than just the conduit for it, Flash provides a tidy, cross-platform (with obvious exceptions) and server-independent way to deliver exactly that. Just because the Geocities EULA mandates that all user must abuse the hell outta it doesn't necessarily make it bad.
*ZIP* Okay, there. All done pissing in the wind... =)
I remember way back in my college days -- that'd be the early '90s -- the same debate was raging between artists like Garth Brooks and music stores that chose to sell used CDs. Upshot being that said artists would refuse to stock their product in such stores and, even more effectively, would divert promotional money away from 'em. (You know those big cardboard standees and other knicknacks you see when you walk into your local record store? They're a halfway decent revenue source on their own... or at least they were back in my days of record shop clerking. And you start to notice the pinch when those promos stop arriving...)
Thing is, you really don't hear these complaints from musicians any more. Why? Because: (1) someone eventually noticed that the big music boom of the '90s neatly coincided with the big boom in used CDs; sales weren't being cannibalized, or at least not noticably; (2) digital music formats continue to move the battlefield from issues of resale to those of duplication; Garth's original worries are no longer as pressing.
I can see the whole used books thing following a similar path over the next couple of decades. I wholeheartedly believe that used books help develop audiences for authors -- hook them on older books at an afforable pricepoint and they'll be more willing to buy the newest must-have title by that author at full price. Eventually, the powers that be will realize this and ease off the "anti-used" pressure somewhat. Moreover, once a company successfully gets viable ePaper out on the market, we'll see a shift of the debate from resale to duplicaiton, just like with CDs.
So in the meantime -- sit back, enjoy the debate, and know that this too shall pass.
Ah, good ol' ImageReady, the Cousin Oliver of the Adobe Bunch; no one really wants him hanging around, but no one has the heart to tell the lil' feller to leave.
Actually, from reading Adobe's product page, you'd think all of ImageReady's features had finally been folded into its parent app, seeing as there's no mention of IR anywhere. It was only after reading this MacCentral article that I realized the unwelcome guest was back yet again. Ugh.
For anyone who does a lot of web work in Photoshop, having to jump back and forth between the two apps is both an inconvenience and a resource hog, particularly since they duplicate many of each other's features. (So much so that the only time I fire up ImageReady these days is to bang out an animated GIF. Everything else can be done better by hand -- image slicing, rollovers -- or in Photoshop itself.)
All that said, of course I'm going to upgrade; the OS X support alone is worth it. (Photoshop and Flash were my last real reasons for running OS 9 day-to-day.)
As strongly as I may disagree with Sarah Gordon's conclusions, I simply can't bring myself to brand her proposed methods as a violation of our "free speech" rights.
She's not suggesting that laws be enacted to restrict the spread of educational virii. (Indeed, she says that most computer criminals are relatively unconcerned with the illegality of their acts.) Rather, she wants to make the distribution of them moral anathema. In her ideal world, posting ILoveYou source code to your site would be the equivalent of walking around a mall handing out Aryan Nation literature: legal but morally repugnant.
Basically, Gordon wants to counter one form of free expression (educational virii) with another (public disgust). Yup -- free speech operating as intended.
Do I agree with her opinions? Dear god, no. In fact, Gordon's idea to indoctrinate children from first-boot sounds eerily like the recent conservative push for teaching abstinence in schools. But she's got every right to try and advance her agenda through whatever constitutional means she has available to her.
Slashdot Mirror
Please, keep cranking 'em out (just so long as they don't make you plug "Revolution OS" again. *g*).
RadLight offers you and your family a whole line of fine merchandise at the RadLight Online Store . If you've ever felt like you've had too much voluntary control over your daily routine, why not try integrating some of their fine products into your lifestyle?
Take, for instance, this fashionable long-sleeve RadLight t-shirt . It's luxuriously soft, 100% cotton -- and it forcibly ejects from your wardrobe any third-party sweaters, jackets, etc. you might mistakenly slip over it on one of those chilly summer nights. No more hassles choosing what to wear, and think of all the closet space you'll free up.
Or how about this bright and cheery RadLight mug ? Guaranteed to keep your favorite beverage piping hot... as long that beverage is RadLight-branded Maxwell House Regular Roast. All other liquids will be drained through an emergency discharge valve at the bottom of the mug. (Please note: by filling the cup, the consumer absolves RadLight of all liability for any leg/groin/other scalding that may occur.)
And, of course, there's always RadLight's crowing achievement: extra-roomy RadLight boxer shorts . All-cotton, open-fly, and completely impervious to access by any third parties. That's right, only you or an authorized RadLight employee (or an employee/consultant of any of its licensed subsidiaries and partners) will be able to get at what's behind that RadLight logo. Now how's that for peace of mind?
Don't thank them now. That slightly pained smile on your face will be praise enough.
Confession #2: I use the poor little thing regularly. Honest. Over time, it's become my word processing machine of choice (w/ Word 5.1, of course). Some people can't write unless they're seated in front of a manual typewriter -- yes, I have one of those, too: a cast-iron Royal relic -- but me? I need my Classic.
For whatever reason, it gets me in the writing mood. Maybe it's because the experience is so focused: the WP completely fills the little 9" screen, so there aren't any distractions to worry about. No email. No IM. No surfing. Heck, not even color.
Sorry, Japan. I'm keeping my lil' box. =)
Seriously, I mean the AC's right. The post in question clearly wasn't a troll. Heck, I'd even hesistate to mod the original down as Redundant, seeing as it came only two minutes after the first posting of the song. And come on, given the article topic, it's not like you didn't expect the song to make a showing, right? =)
Of course not. I'm suggesting the above language is ambiguous enough that it can be read any number of ways. And as we've seen time and time again, ambiguity in law is A Very Bad Thing(tm).
Let's use the same construction, different particulars. Hypothetical Bob runs a hunting shop. Its primary business is selling guns that kill people. Have any of Hypothetical Bob's guns ever been used to kill a person? Probably not. Does that change the validity of the sentence? Nope, since guns can still be used to kill people and Hypothetical Bob does sell the things. But, and here's the kicker, is it ambiguous and possibly misleading to characterize Bob's main business as selling items that kill people? Yes. Bob sells items. and the items may be put to certain ends, BUT those uses are intrinsic to the items themselves, not his sale of them.
As written, this is laughably vague. Clearly, no company's primary business would be distributing harmful material to minors. For one thing, the lil' buggers don't have credit cards, so profits might be somewhat hard to come by at first. (Dang, there goes the IPO, Chester. Did you save the receipts on that new office furniture?) More appropriate would be to call it "material intended for adults but which may be judged to have a harmful effect on minors".
Here's something even more troubling. In the section where they attempt to define what's "harmful to minors", here's one of the acceptable standards:
Again, incredibly vague and open to abuse. Under this definition, material which does have scientific, etc. value for adults but doesn't for minors would be fair game, right?
Shit! Time to pull down that AARP website fellers!
Just checking.
But that takes all the fun out of it. I mean, I can't even imagine playing Street Fighter II without a long row of quarters balanced along the bottom edge of the screen. ("I got next.") That'd be like having a clean floor at a bar: wholly unnatural.
Not too long ago, you needed both a floppy drive and a CD to install XPress 3.31(?) on your box. The CD contained all the app data, the floppy held the serialization info. (And there was yet another floppy for registration. You'd mail that disk directly to Quark after you were done.) Annoying, but you could live with it. But when Apple decided to go no-floppy across their entire product line -- ouch! Suddenly no one could install Quark on those beyoootiful new G3s for which they'd shelled out so much money. (Or at least not without buying some USB external floppy drives, which were hard-to-find early on.) And for months afterwards, Quark did next to nothing about this very obvious problem.
IIRC, they eventually settled it so you could send them a proof-of-purchase, your original program disks and a vial of blood harvested from a virgin under the full moon's light and get a CD-only version of the installer. But back at the time, it was a HUGE issue for a lot of bureaus and design shops.
As an interactive production manager out here in NYC, I'd have to say "yes" -- at least on the professional side of things. Photoshop (w/ an assist from Illustrator) are *the* tools of the trade for creating static web graphics. (Don't mind the whimpering you hear from the back of the pack. Those are just the people who insist on using Fireworks...) =)
Why use these "behemoths"? Because they let us put the design in "web design", which is ultimately what we get paid for. But there are still plenty of good solutions for the hobbyist crowd, including Photoshop Elements, which retails at $99 (not counting the $30 rebate for PSP users) and has all the features of Photoshop that a smaller web publisher would need.
2) what percentage of those people actually use the software LEGALLY?
Professional use? Most everyone. Personal use? I'd give 20% as a rough guess. I've got registered copies both at home and at work, but I'm probably an exception to the more general rule.
A-ha! Coders!
Is it the possible video release? Nope. That's only mentioned in passing and no real info is given on it.
Is it the local screenings for this year-old movie? Nope. Slashdot isn't the local events pages of your daily newspaper.
Is it the reader review of the film? Nope. The film's a year old and has already been reviewed and reported on quite a number of times already.
So what's left exactly?
Yup, bought mine from ya back in the summer of '99. Like I said, it's still on my office wall and still pretty damned handy. I even import the Visibone palette into all my design apps. =)
Honest, I've got the utmost respect for your products, but I just feel this one is a little off the mark for your target audience (of which I am a member). You've extended the metaphor of that safe poster, which is successful in representing a full range of discrete values, to the much broader set of unsafe colors. You can, by neccessity, represent only a sampling these values on the poster, which limits its usefulness as a production tool. I can find a color that's kinda sorta close to what I'm looking for, but I'll still need to go into a desgn app and tweak the color on-screen until it's exactly what I need. In that case, it'd probably be easier to use the app's HSB picker to begin with.
I agree there's a niche that needs to be filled, but maybe a different approach is necessary? For example, I often refer to the Designer's Guides to Color while developing palettes for print projects. I'd kill for a product that takes a similar approach to "unsafe" web colors.
Anyway, didn't mean to come off as a carping ingrate there. I thoroughly appreciate your products, use them daily, and owe you untold amounts of gratitude. Thanks for all the hard work!
"No, don't make me do it." is a perfectly acceptable sentence written in the imperative mood.
Only reason I mentioned it in the first place -- I usually don't -- is that it pains me when /. editors don't take a second to proofread or fact check articles before posting them to the site as official content. (kgarcia already mentioned that English isn't his/her first language, so I'm certainly not trying to poke fun at him/her.)
Ahem. Use as many as when referring to countable nouns, as much as when referring to uncountable ones. For example:
"As many as 10,000 mummies..."
"... as many as 7 mummies per bundle..."
rather than:
"As much as 10,000 mummies..."
"... as much as 7 mummies per bundle."
Yup, those years of Catholic schooling left me with emotional and grammatical scars. (And the aforementioned fondness for schoolmarm outfits.)
Hey, wait.
If this bill goes through, the government's gonna need a lot of extra help winnowing all that porn from the chaff, right? I mean, jeez, it could take years...
Hmmm, where'd I put that copy of my resume...? =)
The "safe" poster was truly handy for picking common palettes along HSB (hue/saturation/brightness) lines. e.g., "Wow, that's the perfect web-safe shade of blue. Now if I could only find a more subdued version of the same exact hue to use elsewhere in my site."
Once you break free of those 216-color constraints, however, you're probably much better off using any color picker's HSB sliders to create your site palette. Not only do you give yourself more flexibility, but you avoid potential problems caused by picking a color that looks great on a CMYK printed poster, but looks entirely different on an RGB monitor.
Ugh, my bad. I'd read reports at a few different design sites -- here's one -- that the company had tanked and future purchases were going to be at-yer-own-risk (much like buying 3DFX cards; god I loved my Voodoo 5500...).
Seems like they had a reversal of fortune. =)
However, if you're dead-set on going down that low-cost road, your best shot would probably to pick up a few Plustek OpticPro A3-i scanners on clearance somewhere. (Here for instance.) The company's not around anymore, so you'll be on your own for support, but at $175.00 per unit, that might be a risk you'd be willing to take.
I am curious as to what the university so desperately needs to scan at 11x17, though...
The simple fact that a site exists does not necessarily mean its primary (or even secondary) purpose is to communicate quantifiable little bits of information to someone in the most efficient manner possible. In some cases -- an interactive artist's portfolio, to use a self-serving example -- how the site communicates is as/more important than what it communicates. (Kinda the same way you'll go to a swanky restaurant both for the ambiance and the food. Presentation still counts for a lot sometimes.)
But, yes, you're right -- there are tons of sites that slap completely unnecessary layers of Flash crap over what should be simple informational resources. And those people should be covered with honey and fed to rampaging packs of wild boars. But to deny a portion of the population legitimate use of a tool just because some other maroons decide to misuse it -- hey! That almost sounds like the other end of the whole DeCSS mess. Cool! =)
Might as well say you don't like GNOME because the name implies it's gonna be short on the usability front.
There are tons of good uses for Flash. (I say this as both a designer and coder who uses the app every day, mind you.) For those times when the experience is the content, rather than just the conduit for it, Flash provides a tidy, cross-platform (with obvious exceptions) and server-independent way to deliver exactly that. Just because the Geocities EULA mandates that all user must abuse the hell outta it doesn't necessarily make it bad.
*ZIP* Okay, there. All done pissing in the wind... =)
Thing is, you really don't hear these complaints from musicians any more. Why? Because: (1) someone eventually noticed that the big music boom of the '90s neatly coincided with the big boom in used CDs; sales weren't being cannibalized, or at least not noticably; (2) digital music formats continue to move the battlefield from issues of resale to those of duplication; Garth's original worries are no longer as pressing.
I can see the whole used books thing following a similar path over the next couple of decades. I wholeheartedly believe that used books help develop audiences for authors -- hook them on older books at an afforable pricepoint and they'll be more willing to buy the newest must-have title by that author at full price. Eventually, the powers that be will realize this and ease off the "anti-used" pressure somewhat. Moreover, once a company successfully gets viable ePaper out on the market, we'll see a shift of the debate from resale to duplicaiton, just like with CDs.
So in the meantime -- sit back, enjoy the debate, and know that this too shall pass.
Actually, from reading Adobe's product page, you'd think all of ImageReady's features had finally been folded into its parent app, seeing as there's no mention of IR anywhere. It was only after reading this MacCentral article that I realized the unwelcome guest was back yet again. Ugh.
For anyone who does a lot of web work in Photoshop, having to jump back and forth between the two apps is both an inconvenience and a resource hog, particularly since they duplicate many of each other's features. (So much so that the only time I fire up ImageReady these days is to bang out an animated GIF. Everything else can be done better by hand -- image slicing, rollovers -- or in Photoshop itself.)
All that said, of course I'm going to upgrade; the OS X support alone is worth it. (Photoshop and Flash were my last real reasons for running OS 9 day-to-day.)
She's not suggesting that laws be enacted to restrict the spread of educational virii. (Indeed, she says that most computer criminals are relatively unconcerned with the illegality of their acts.) Rather, she wants to make the distribution of them moral anathema. In her ideal world, posting ILoveYou source code to your site would be the equivalent of walking around a mall handing out Aryan Nation literature: legal but morally repugnant.
Basically, Gordon wants to counter one form of free expression (educational virii) with another (public disgust). Yup -- free speech operating as intended.
Do I agree with her opinions? Dear god, no. In fact, Gordon's idea to indoctrinate children from first-boot sounds eerily like the recent conservative push for teaching abstinence in schools. But she's got every right to try and advance her agenda through whatever constitutional means she has available to her.
On the other hand, it's nice to see that "suckered into paying good money for Daikatana" rose to 8% on the FBI's compaint list this year.