Now, it's almost the opposite way around; people perceive the light from incandescent bulbs as 'normal,' and bulbs that produce light that's actually similar to the big glowing thing outdoors as "cold" and "harsh."
A thoughtful post, but it's worth pointing out that on a personal level, lights are turned on when it's dark. When it's dark, we want something warm and glowing. And the operative adjective is "golden" rather than yellow. Admittedly, such lighting looks terrible during the day, but it's supposed to, just as lit candles during the day are out of place. Our reactions are entirely primitive in that regard. If you need more "daylight" during the day, well, that's a separate problem I think, which asks for different solutions.
If it was possible to beam pure sunlight into our homes during the evening hours, I'd bet our circadian rhythms would go out of whack in a dramatic fashion.
In the workaday world, indoor day-time lighting is already fluorescent. And most of that (in its current state) sucks.;-) If it was improved, the average person would have a better impression of flurorescents in general, and may be inclined to buy them for use at home, but it wouldn't make them ideal or even appropriate during more intimate moments. Skin looks best under incandescent, which means sex is better in a bedroom at night rather than on a desk in the office. YMMV.
The figure seems particularly large when you consider that around 5,000,000 crimes were reported in England and Wales during the same period. Does one in twelve crimes require a wiretap? Or is it possible that at least some of the surveillance is politically motivated?
More like the submitter did a hack job of citing the relevant figures.
Almost 450,000 requests were made to monitor people's telephone calls, e-mails and post by secret agencies and other authorised bodies in just over a year, the spying watchdog said yesterday.
Irrespective of knowing the content of the requests, I think it's fair to say that the 450K figure doesn't translate into one request for each of 450K different people; it could just as well be 18K requests spread across 25 different agencies for a few individuals who repeatedly get a lot of postal mail.
On the other hand, if there's a million Muslims in Britain, targetting half of them may have indeed been the plan. If Yusuf Islam isn't writing songs anymore, then he might very well be up to no good.
OS X-style package management is best suited for a software ecosystem in which users draw software from a large number of heterogenous third-party sources, while the core OS and iLife suite are maintained and updated by Apple.
Reading the above (which, incidentally, is little different than the traditional Windows ecosystem) raises the question whether this defines what end users demand and expect of package management, which is that they can install anything and everything when and how and from wherever they want.
The article presents the issue as follows:
Mike Hearn... claims that the project did not gain enough popularity... because of the dominating doctrine which states that it's the distributor who should be responsible for the whole operating system. It is kind of similar to another popular opinion: that the administrator (root) should be responsible for the whole machine, and all the administrative operations should be preformed from a separate root account. These kinds of centralized management systems fit to the server market, but they don't really reflect the desktop reality that well. On desktops, the administration is only one of the roles the user plays and waiting for half a year for a new version of an application is often unacceptable. It is often a decade in the free software world! So if the "desktop reality" conflicts with the "server reality", then there may be a problem. I'm inclined to believe that, ignoring the comfortable niche of OS X, the above is mostly rubbish and the problem lies in the desktop reality itself. For example, I doubt anyone could disagree that the prevalent desktop reality of the Windows ecosystem has led to an unending stream of security issues facilitated in part by the bad habits of their users who are encouraged to be just that, desktop users, and similarly encouraged to be oblivious to the underlying reality that administration is a fact of life, irrespective of patience, laziness, or knowledge.
Personally, I don't see a problem with single or multiple centralised management systems, and I certainly don't see a problem with a root account. To say that what's good for the server is good for the desktop is simply redundant, ignoring the questionable premise that there exists such a distinction.
People are free to choose a distribution based on their particular needs and preferences. Perhaps they need to be reminded from time to time of the tremendous effort made on their part by the maintainers and settle for a less than perfect or ideal world?
In response to a question from reporters as to whether cyberattacks originating from other countries, such as...
The only thing missing from the scenario is a mention of Wolf Blitzer in The Situation Room five days a week on a set decorated with prominent background graphics that read "America in Cyberterrorism War with China?" while bombastic music plays in the background, repeating a steady drone of out of context quotes to an equally steady but varied stream of low level government officials, retired military, press pundits, and individuals introduced as cyberterrorism experts.
This, followed up by hour-long episodes of Paula Zhan titled "Why Do The Chinese Hate Us?". If you stay tuned long enough, you'll get to see Lou Dobbs modifying his "America's Broken Borders" show to include the Chinese and call on Congress to fund the building a Cyberwall to keep them out.
Ok, so I use fluxbox, too, and I agree it's configurable (a few minor text files vs. the incomprehensible No You Can't Change That of Gnome). And it's fast.
The problem is fluxbox is amateurish. The docs are goofy and incomplete, the wiki seeks to help but doesn't really document anything, the default themes are mostly bizarre (not everyone wants transparent terms and wild wallpaper), the focus model and behaviours are weird but acceptable if they worked, and the menuing system distinguishes itself by a lack of mnemonics (i.e., mouse only).
I've resorted to doing most everything in a single desktop using screen because switching between desktops with multiple xterms flashes the contents of the first window on that desktop before it renders the correct one (for medium values of correct). Then there's the featureless command-line program launcher that doesn't exec itself leaving you with a bunch of/bin/sh processes to keep track of, and the tortured steps forced on the user to do something like resize a window without resorting to a mouse?
Yeah, it's better than Gnome. Or KDE, for that matter. I use fluxbox not because of any features, but because I can get it stay out of my way. That, and the simple configuration that can be backed up and re-used as needed. I'd rather muck about with the Windows registry than spend more effort trying to make sense of how Gnome does things, or why it does things. I think what's required is more than a few patches.
try setting a strong password on a Comcast router...
Could some elaborate on this? My understanding was always that cable and DSL providers provide modems to their customers. Do cable ISPs now manufacture, sell, rebrand or distribute "routers", or is the poster talking about Linksys, Netgear et al. consumer NAT boxes purchased by the user?
As much as the whining on slashdot would have you believe otherwise, the U.S. is a technological leader and a country that millions around the world want to come to. We have some of the best universities in the world. Have you ever noticed the number of foreign student's that come to the U.S. to study?
I'm not sure whether the above is boosterism, chearleading, misplaced patriotism, or just cliched bits gleaned from some expert spouting his interpretation of exceptionalism theory on Fox News. One thing I am sure of, however. You've never studied, or travelled outside the country for any length of time, and most likely don't know anyone who has.
I doubt many Slashdotters are old enough to remember (or otherwise spend their days watching old Looney Toons cartoons), but the Calvin Calculus guy who invented the portable hole I thought was brilliant, but his invention gave me nightmares throughout most of my childhoold. No fear of the dark, fear of strangers, or fear of monsters under my bed -- just a fear of black holes, and before they became fashionable to talk about.
At least that's my excuse for not growing up to be a theoretical physicist.
Yeah, but if Slashdot was a Real Magazine, it would be glossy. And it would smell nice.
Seriously, aside from cologne inserts, there's far more to magazines that distinguish them from websites seeking to usurp their moniker. Last I checked, typographers were using PDF, and web designers were relying on browsers to render their work.
Probably why I don't read The New York Times on line very often. The newsprint version, in addition to "working better", actually looks better, though to be fair, the on-line version gets less ink on my fingers.
Does anyone actually bother reading anything that has sentences sprawling across the entire width of a computer screen? Maybe if newspapers and magazine publishers made everything available in a PDF and we had computer screens sized for such a purpose, but until then, it's just another website. Creative, but still a website.
The company that makes this has a managed service called MobiNET that helps to broker the connection so that even Joe Sixpack can connect anywhere there is a net connection.
Well, I can't comment on how well that product works, but securing network connections doesn't address the issue of securing the data that exists on the laptop.
IIRC, the Veterans Affairs laptop that went missing a few months ago contained a database of records that the VA employee used to perform her claim administration work while visiting vets in their homes. Granted, an encrypted connection to the home office would be the way to go, but hardly feasible in such a case, especially given that much of the country is still on dial-up, if at all.
The government has been very successful in scaring the public into thinking that the terrorism threat is real. The fact is, more people have died from lightning strikes in the past fifty years than from terrorist acts on American soil. This is fueled by...
I agree wholeheartedly, but Death by Terrorism isn't the problem. It's the societal (read "economic", as in shutting down the airlines, for example) effect of terrorism that's the real issue, and governments representing the people are obligated to Do Something About It. In that sense, it's not unlike property crime which is typically treated as more serious than it would seem to deserve.
Regrettably, that "something" typically has the added benefit of giving the government more influence and more control than it would normally have, and we all know those in power are want as much of it as they can get. That's human nature. It's also human nature to offer up power to those we consider our leaders. A tug of war, obviously, but in the end things balance out. The Communist scare outlived the McCarthy era, so I figure the current cycle and all the laws that have since been put into place will last for longer than we think.
Well, Windows uses the ACL system of permissions... does provide more control (that you don't need 99.9% of the time)
I'd add that "not needed" is often synonymous with "never used".
Increasingly complex file-level security does come with one major drawback, however... I can look at a file under Linux and instantly tell (possibly with a quick check of the members of a single group) who has what access to it.
That's the key. Unix file permissions are straightforward, standard, and in your face at all times. Granted, Windows has a philosophy of dumbing things down, or obscuring things to give give the user an appearance of simplicity, but past that, ACLs aren't very manageable by users or administrators without undue effort, time, and knowledge. Put another way, the Windows Explorer interface (or any registry tool) doesn't display permission information (requiring the use of tools like xcacls, etc., or rummaging through numerous dialog boxes, instead), and even if it could, few could make sense of it, let alone put it to good use.
Well duh. Only proper official bombs look like bombs. Well even that isn't true because that would suggest every explosive device has the same form/look. They don't. Bombs that are just designed to go boom just look like whatever shape suits their purpose best.
Reading the above reminds me of folks who are quick to criticise a movie to damnation based on something they heard or what they read in the paper.
Have you even see the bloody things? They look like something a 5 year old would enjoy playing with. That opinion is my own, of course, but I'm guessing it's shared at least in part by the constabulatory in the other 9 cities where these bomb lookalikes were placed. I wonder whether the bomb squad folks have any skills, or whether they get any training, or do they get hired simply for their ability to get excited by anything with flashing lights?
If there's any head shaking to be done, it should be at the over-reaction on the part of Boston's finest. They've made themselves look like fools, and turned the idea of protecting the Homeland into something more of a farce than it typically is. And overlong ramblings such as yours about the dangers of bombs only adds to the collective absurdity.
The two guys are complete idiots, of course, but that's another subject. If there's anything interesting or noteworthy about the mess it's the story of how an entertainment company is held liable for the unfortunate outcome an advertising campaign gone bad, and how that blame gets spread around.
I don't think you can specify IP addresses in binary. Decimal, yes. Hexidecimal, yes. Dotted-quad, yes. Binary and octal, no.
A quick copy/paste would settle the matter, doncha think? If it helps, the address resolves to Google. Firefox will take you there, so no guarantees if you're using IE.
With modern fluorescent bulbs, there is no reason not to use them.
Sure. Vista has more features than any other version of Windows, and it's the safest version yet. There's no reason not to upgrade.
Don't mean to sound so critical, but the details matter. If you take a quick read through of the large number of posts reflecting an opposing opinion (for this article, and a related one a few weeks ago), you'd realise that your summary is not entirely accurate, or true.
Advocacy can be good, but only in the context of complete information.
Is there any app that can 'uncompile' a pdf and fit it on a screen width?
No, technical discussions of the format aside.
As an end user, it would help if you consider the format a FINAL format (for viewing, printing, distribution, etc.), and treat the authoring of it as entirely separate. It's really quite obvious, but the modern widespread use of wordprocessing software (which typically combines the two separate steps in an unholy but manageable mess) has led to the confusion. Put another way, your question comes up frequently.
By contrast, those accustomed to separating the two steps (editing text and adding markup, on the one hand, and generating output as postscript, PDF, HTML, formatted text such as man pages, etc., on other), never ask the question and typically scratch their heads when they see it asked. PDFs are typically generated into letter and A4 sizes. Reading them on screen isn't ideal, agreed, but it's unlikely there will ever be a big push for everyone to provide 6x9 or smaller versions. Perhaps one day in the future when screen technology improves and becomes widespread, but not now.
You consolation prize is that you can, with little trouble, extract the text from a PDF. You can use that to re-author a new PDF, or read it as is. But that brings you back full circle to "plain text", doesn't it? The tangential lesson here is there is a reason why *nix users continue to insist on using the command line, and spend much of their time mucking about with text files, and the rest of it arguing about text editors. Text (ascii, if you will), is the lowest common denominator for people and computers. The two get along quite nicely. You could say that processing text is what it's all about. Oddly, enough, computer programs are written in text, and their output is often more text.;-)
There is a book called Unix Text Processing (written by Dale Dougherty and Tim O'Reilly) that was first published in 1987. To a large degree, it's as relevant and useful today as it was back then, years before Microsoft released Windows 95 to the world. If you buy a copy on amazon.com (for under $2.00, typically), you can learn how to make your own PDFs and never have to ask the question again.
So basically you're paying to watch something you dont want to watch, which you yourself paid to get produced, just so you can watch something else you didnt pay to get produced (well, except you did pay to get it produced when you paid for the advertising by buying the advertised product...).
Unless, of course, you participate in a more optimal funding approach typically known for generating better results. Human nature being what it is, participation tends to be low.
On the other hand, I wonder sometimes whether people really do want the advertising.
Slashdot Mirror
Now, it's almost the opposite way around; people perceive the light from incandescent bulbs as 'normal,' and bulbs that produce light that's actually similar to the big glowing thing outdoors as "cold" and "harsh."
;-) If it was improved, the average person would have a better impression of flurorescents in general, and may be inclined to buy them for use at home, but it wouldn't make them ideal or even appropriate during more intimate moments. Skin looks best under incandescent, which means sex is better in a bedroom at night rather than on a desk in the office. YMMV.
A thoughtful post, but it's worth pointing out that on a personal level, lights are turned on when it's dark. When it's dark, we want something warm and glowing. And the operative adjective is "golden" rather than yellow. Admittedly, such lighting looks terrible during the day, but it's supposed to, just as lit candles during the day are out of place. Our reactions are entirely primitive in that regard. If you need more "daylight" during the day, well, that's a separate problem I think, which asks for different solutions.
If it was possible to beam pure sunlight into our homes during the evening hours, I'd bet our circadian rhythms would go out of whack in a dramatic fashion.
In the workaday world, indoor day-time lighting is already fluorescent. And most of that (in its current state) sucks.
More like the submitter did a hack job of citing the relevant figures.
Irrespective of knowing the content of the requests, I think it's fair to say that the 450K figure doesn't translate into one request for each of 450K different people; it could just as well be 18K requests spread across 25 different agencies for a few individuals who repeatedly get a lot of postal mail.
On the other hand, if there's a million Muslims in Britain, targetting half of them may have indeed been the plan. If Yusuf Islam isn't writing songs anymore, then he might very well be up to no good.
Reading the above (which, incidentally, is little different than the traditional Windows ecosystem) raises the question whether this defines what end users demand and expect of package management, which is that they can install anything and everything when and how and from wherever they want.
The article presents the issue as follows: Mike Hearn
Personally, I don't see a problem with single or multiple centralised management systems, and I certainly don't see a problem with a root account. To say that what's good for the server is good for the desktop is simply redundant, ignoring the questionable premise that there exists such a distinction.
People are free to choose a distribution based on their particular needs and preferences. Perhaps they need to be reminded from time to time of the tremendous effort made on their part by the maintainers and settle for a less than perfect or ideal world?
78% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Actually, more recent studies have shown that cigarettes are the leading cause of statistics.
In response to a question from reporters as to whether cyberattacks originating from other countries, such as ...
The only thing missing from the scenario is a mention of Wolf Blitzer in The Situation Room five days a week on a set decorated with prominent background graphics that read "America in Cyberterrorism War with China?" while bombastic music plays in the background, repeating a steady drone of out of context quotes to an equally steady but varied stream of low level government officials, retired military, press pundits, and individuals introduced as cyberterrorism experts.
This, followed up by hour-long episodes of Paula Zhan titled "Why Do The Chinese Hate Us?". If you stay tuned long enough, you'll get to see Lou Dobbs modifying his "America's Broken Borders" show to include the Chinese and call on Congress to fund the building a Cyberwall to keep them out.
Because I want full configurability blah blah
/bin/sh processes to keep track of, and the tortured steps forced on the user to do something like resize a window without resorting to a mouse?
Ok, so I use fluxbox, too, and I agree it's configurable (a few minor text files vs. the incomprehensible No You Can't Change That of Gnome). And it's fast.
The problem is fluxbox is amateurish. The docs are goofy and incomplete, the wiki seeks to help but doesn't really document anything, the default themes are mostly bizarre (not everyone wants transparent terms and wild wallpaper), the focus model and behaviours are weird but acceptable if they worked, and the menuing system distinguishes itself by a lack of mnemonics (i.e., mouse only).
I've resorted to doing most everything in a single desktop using screen because switching between desktops with multiple xterms flashes the contents of the first window on that desktop before it renders the correct one (for medium values of correct). Then there's the featureless command-line program launcher that doesn't exec itself leaving you with a bunch of
Yeah, it's better than Gnome. Or KDE, for that matter. I use fluxbox not because of any features, but because I can get it stay out of my way. That, and the simple configuration that can be backed up and re-used as needed. I'd rather muck about with the Windows registry than spend more effort trying to make sense of how Gnome does things, or why it does things. I think what's required is more than a few patches.
try setting a strong password on a Comcast router...
Could some elaborate on this? My understanding was always that cable and DSL providers provide modems to their customers. Do cable ISPs now manufacture, sell, rebrand or distribute "routers", or is the poster talking about Linksys, Netgear et al. consumer NAT boxes purchased by the user?
As much as the whining on slashdot would have you believe otherwise, the U.S. is a technological leader and a country that millions around the world want to come to. We have some of the best universities in the world. Have you ever noticed the number of foreign student's that come to the U.S. to study?
I'm not sure whether the above is boosterism, chearleading, misplaced patriotism, or just cliched bits gleaned from some expert spouting his interpretation of exceptionalism theory on Fox News. One thing I am sure of, however. You've never studied, or travelled outside the country for any length of time, and most likely don't know anyone who has.
How does one go about disposing of a black hole?
Easy. You just roll it up and take it with you.
I doubt many Slashdotters are old enough to remember (or otherwise spend their days watching old Looney Toons cartoons), but the Calvin Calculus guy who invented the portable hole I thought was brilliant, but his invention gave me nightmares throughout most of my childhoold. No fear of the dark, fear of strangers, or fear of monsters under my bed -- just a fear of black holes, and before they became fashionable to talk about.
At least that's my excuse for not growing up to be a theoretical physicist.
Analog here. Many tubes, and an analog ...
;-)
And you get a warmer picture than the rest of us, right?
Yeah, but if Slashdot was a Real Magazine, it would be glossy. And it would smell nice.
Seriously, aside from cologne inserts, there's far more to magazines that distinguish them from websites seeking to usurp their moniker. Last I checked, typographers were using PDF, and web designers were relying on browsers to render their work.
Probably why I don't read The New York Times on line very often. The newsprint version, in addition to "working better", actually looks better, though to be fair, the on-line version gets less ink on my fingers.
Does anyone actually bother reading anything that has sentences sprawling across the entire width of a computer screen? Maybe if newspapers and magazine publishers made everything available in a PDF and we had computer screens sized for such a purpose, but until then, it's just another website. Creative, but still a website.
The company that makes this has a managed service called MobiNET that helps to broker the connection so that even Joe Sixpack can connect anywhere there is a net connection.
Well, I can't comment on how well that product works, but securing network connections doesn't address the issue of securing the data that exists on the laptop.
IIRC, the Veterans Affairs laptop that went missing a few months ago contained a database of records that the VA employee used to perform her claim administration work while visiting vets in their homes. Granted, an encrypted connection to the home office would be the way to go, but hardly feasible in such a case, especially given that much of the country is still on dial-up, if at all.
The government has been very successful in scaring the public into thinking that the terrorism threat is real. The fact is, more people have died from lightning strikes in the past fifty years than from terrorist acts on American soil. This is fueled by ...
I agree wholeheartedly, but Death by Terrorism isn't the problem. It's the societal (read "economic", as in shutting down the airlines, for example) effect of terrorism that's the real issue, and governments representing the people are obligated to Do Something About It. In that sense, it's not unlike property crime which is typically treated as more serious than it would seem to deserve.
Regrettably, that "something" typically has the added benefit of giving the government more influence and more control than it would normally have, and we all know those in power are want as much of it as they can get. That's human nature. It's also human nature to offer up power to those we consider our leaders. A tug of war, obviously, but in the end things balance out. The Communist scare outlived the McCarthy era, so I figure the current cycle and all the laws that have since been put into place will last for longer than we think.
Well, Windows uses the ACL system of permissions ... does provide more control (that you don't need 99.9% of the time)
I'd add that "not needed" is often synonymous with "never used".
Increasingly complex file-level security does come with one major drawback, however... I can look at a file under Linux and instantly tell (possibly with a quick check of the members of a single group) who has what access to it.
That's the key. Unix file permissions are straightforward, standard, and in your face at all times. Granted, Windows has a philosophy of dumbing things down, or obscuring things to give give the user an appearance of simplicity, but past that, ACLs aren't very manageable by users or administrators without undue effort, time, and knowledge. Put another way, the Windows Explorer interface (or any registry tool) doesn't display permission information (requiring the use of tools like xcacls, etc., or rummaging through numerous dialog boxes, instead), and even if it could, few could make sense of it, let alone put it to good use.
Well, how many people run AV on their linux/BSD boxes?
Huh?
For starters, lots of people.
How else to protect Windows systems?
Well duh. Only proper official bombs look like bombs. Well even that isn't true because that would suggest every explosive device has the same form/look. They don't. Bombs that are just designed to go boom just look like whatever shape suits their purpose best.
Reading the above reminds me of folks who are quick to criticise a movie to damnation based on something they heard or what they read in the paper.
Have you even see the bloody things? They look like something a 5 year old would enjoy playing with. That opinion is my own, of course, but I'm guessing it's shared at least in part by the constabulatory in the other 9 cities where these bomb lookalikes were placed. I wonder whether the bomb squad folks have any skills, or whether they get any training, or do they get hired simply for their ability to get excited by anything with flashing lights?
If there's any head shaking to be done, it should be at the over-reaction on the part of Boston's finest. They've made themselves look like fools, and turned the idea of protecting the Homeland into something more of a farce than it typically is. And overlong ramblings such as yours about the dangers of bombs only adds to the collective absurdity.
The two guys are complete idiots, of course, but that's another subject. If there's anything interesting or noteworthy about the mess it's the story of how an entertainment company is held liable for the unfortunate outcome an advertising campaign gone bad, and how that blame gets spread around.
This really isn't any different than the Nielsen rating.
Except that they don't pay the Nielsen viewer anything?
Or that the Nielsen, Arbitron, etc. respondent willingly agreed to provide information on their viewing, listening habits?
Or maybe that the folks at Nielsen provide a clear and unambiguous privacy policy"?
I don't think you can specify IP addresses in binary. Decimal, yes. Hexidecimal, yes. Dotted-quad, yes. Binary and octal, no.
A quick copy/paste would settle the matter, doncha think? If it helps, the address resolves to Google. Firefox will take you there, so no guarantees if you're using IE.
If NASA nixes the hookers, how about a restaurant that serves Aldebaran liqueurs and Ameglian Major cow?
Maybe someone can come up with a catchy name for it.
Pfft. Real men do it in binary. Or for the lazy:
Now, as to weather that was actually the correct pronunciation or merely something close enough ...
;-)
Close enough.
With modern fluorescent bulbs, there is no reason not to use them.
Sure. Vista has more features than any other version of Windows, and it's the safest version yet. There's no reason not to upgrade.
Don't mean to sound so critical, but the details matter. If you take a quick read through of the large number of posts reflecting an opposing opinion (for this article, and a related one a few weeks ago), you'd realise that your summary is not entirely accurate, or true.
Advocacy can be good, but only in the context of complete information.
Is there any app that can 'uncompile' a pdf and fit it on a screen width?
;-)
No, technical discussions of the format aside.
As an end user, it would help if you consider the format a FINAL format (for viewing, printing, distribution, etc.), and treat the authoring of it as entirely separate. It's really quite obvious, but the modern widespread use of wordprocessing software (which typically combines the two separate steps in an unholy but manageable mess) has led to the confusion. Put another way, your question comes up frequently.
By contrast, those accustomed to separating the two steps (editing text and adding markup, on the one hand, and generating output as postscript, PDF, HTML, formatted text such as man pages, etc., on other), never ask the question and typically scratch their heads when they see it asked. PDFs are typically generated into letter and A4 sizes. Reading them on screen isn't ideal, agreed, but it's unlikely there will ever be a big push for everyone to provide 6x9 or smaller versions. Perhaps one day in the future when screen technology improves and becomes widespread, but not now.
You consolation prize is that you can, with little trouble, extract the text from a PDF. You can use that to re-author a new PDF, or read it as is. But that brings you back full circle to "plain text", doesn't it? The tangential lesson here is there is a reason why *nix users continue to insist on using the command line, and spend much of their time mucking about with text files, and the rest of it arguing about text editors. Text (ascii, if you will), is the lowest common denominator for people and computers. The two get along quite nicely. You could say that processing text is what it's all about. Oddly, enough, computer programs are written in text, and their output is often more text.
There is a book called Unix Text Processing (written by Dale Dougherty and Tim O'Reilly) that was first published in 1987. To a large degree, it's as relevant and useful today as it was back then, years before Microsoft released Windows 95 to the world. If you buy a copy on amazon.com (for under $2.00, typically), you can learn how to make your own PDFs and never have to ask the question again.
So basically you're paying to watch something you dont want to watch, which you yourself paid to get produced, just so you can watch something else you didnt pay to get produced (well, except you did pay to get it produced when you paid for the advertising by buying the advertised product...).
Unless, of course, you participate in a more optimal funding approach typically known for generating better results. Human nature being what it is, participation tends to be low.
On the other hand, I wonder sometimes whether people really do want the advertising.
Dude, calm down. Everyone knows you live in your mom's basement.
Be kind. He's probably just protecting his collection of pennies.