I'd agree with your assessment of it. And Ventura is the better replacement for it: much better UI, and some important features that Framemaker lacks.
Several textbook publishing companies, several TV guide companies, a lot of catalogue publishers, a few book publishers, and almost every bible publishing company use it.
For those of you truly boycotting Adobe products, I'd like to suggest some replacements:
For Illustrator, CorelDraw. It's easier to use and more powerful. Much more powerful.
For Acrobat Distiller: JAWS PDF (formerly 5D PDF). Produces better-quality PDF, though with slightly larger file sizes.
For FrameMaker: Ventura Publisher. Ventura has a *much* better UI, more power, and comes with more useful helper applications. Indeed, Ventura is the best long-document layout software available, bar none.
For Photoshop: Corel PhotoPaint or PaintShop Pro. PhotoPaint does much more than Photoshop, though with a slightly odd interface; PaintShop does 90% of what Photoshop does. Oh - and there's also GIMP.
For PageMaker, CorelDraw or Ventura Publisher. CorelDraw is better for artsy-fartsy shite; Ventura is better for more traditional layout.
For InDesign: CorelDraw, again. I'm assuming no one is foolish enough to attempt to use InDesign for long documents: if you are, do yourself a favour and use Ventura. You'll thank me endlessly for that advice.
That about covers all the major Adobe applications.
In *every* case, the alternatives are better than the Adobe product.
My "rice rocket" has 200 000km on it as of this month. It's a 1991 Nissan NX 1600 t-top.
My wife and I are avid backpackers during the summer months. Consequently, this car has been to hell and gone.
Memorable experiences:
- 20km up one logging road, I surfed the car across a massive sandspit created by a flash flood a month earlier. It was only after I crossed over that I started thinking about what I'd do if another flash flood came along while we were oot and aboot.
- some freaking 60km down a logging road loop (we'd just come back from a side-road that lead into 4WD territory to the trailhead. 4WD? Pah! A skilled driver can do anything until the rocks get too big and too numerous to move!). Hit a construction zone. Dunno what the hell they were constructing, but the road became a car-width wide, and at least a foot deep of fine clay silt. *Almost* turned back... but then the guy on the grader waved us on. So I went for it. Once started, couldn't stop...
- Misjudging a heave, and nearly toasting the oil pan. One of the very few times I wanted more clearance.
- Backing the car down a car-width wide logging road that was carved into the side of a mountain. Couldn't see any ground whatsoever out the driver's window. Damn near shit myself.
- Crossed an abandoned wood bridge. Had to reconstruct parts of it using logs and loose boards. Again, didn't really consider the going-back consequences...
Anyway, point is, SUVs are for nancies. If you're a halfway decent driver, damn near any road is passable with a 2WD car.
(Shoulda seen what we could do with the Chevette. We really didn't care what happened to it. The Nissan... well, honestly, we try to be nice to it...)
Pish-pash! Are you going to deny that it's filled with adultery, murder, incest and more?
It's ever so frightening that there are still people who believe that the bible is a "nice" book. One suspects they have never actually read it word-for-word... or if they have, they simply failed to actually *comprehend* what it says.
You mean, like the Bible, which generally has a pretty innocuous cover, but is filled with all sorts of incest, adultery, child-killing, even genocide?
From a promising start ("In the beginning was the Word...") it pretty quickly degenerates into all sorts of nastiness.
Indeed, the bible is an excellent example of a book that not only shouldn't be judged by its cover, but must actually be read carefully in order to determine its true contents.
The mass can be disregarded, as it's constant in this case (the car is not going to become appreciably lighter as it goes faster).
That leaves velocity-squared. Double the speed equals four times the damage when that car collides with something.
You're free to quibble about my casual use of "impact force," but I'm not much interested in arguing cheezy-ass semantics. The original point still stands: 75kmh is nearly *twice* the collision of 55kmh, even though the speed is less than half-again as fast.
No doubt, some people slip through the cracks, and some fuckups happen.
But do you really think you'd be any better in any other country? In the USA, f'rinstance, your insurer would do everything possible to avoid paying out: try to blame it on your genetics, blame it on something you did, blame it on anything to just avoid paying.
We need to fix the problems our system has, but we can't just throw it out; that'd be a cure worse than the problem!
You can minimize your blind spots, and possibly even eliminate them, by correctly adjusting your mirrors.
Place your head against the drivers' side window, and adjust the left mirror to where it just barely doesn't show your car at all. Repeat for the right mirror, with your head positioned toward the middle of the car (ie. above the center console/parking brake).
True, you can't see your car in the mirrors any more. But, then, that's okay: you know where your car is. Give it a week or two, and it won't seem so unnerving.
You'll see a *lot* more of the traffic on either side of you, and your rearview covers the traffic behind you.
An impact of 75 vs 55, is an impact with nearly twice the energy.
Speed is quite obviously a major factor in the severity of an accident.
An impact where both drivers are speeding at 75 will have *seven* times the energy of a single-vehicle accident at 55. And that'd have to be a single vehicle hitting an immovable object, not a fencepost.
Of course speeding isn't the (common) *cause* of accidents. But it's an *extremely significant* factor in their outcome.
And the fact is that most of the arseholes who are speeding are just plain incompetent drivers. When they're forced to maintain pace with traffic, they put everyone at less risk, because they're not weaving in and out of traffic, nor passing.
That's the whole point: to minimize the chances of them fucking up, and to minimize the destruction when they do.
But the rate would be regulated: the (Canadian) monopolies had a profit cap. The telcos weren't allowed to earn more than x%; anything above was translated into lower consumer costs.
It was a great system. The telcos got to make a very fair coin, but had to toe some pretty important lines to do so. IMO, I think we consumers were better off with the old system.
Currently, there's bugger-all for control, and that means the providers get to come across all Verizon-like: fuck the consumer, he's stuck with us... and if he leaves, someone else will take his place. Service and standards have dropped like the proverbial rock.
Anyway, my original point was just to provide some info re: how Canada came to have telephones everywhere.
(Note for geeks: lots of microwave towers to connect population centres; and lots of radiophones in the most remote corners of the country.
These days, though, it's fiber everywhere, even to rinkydink communities; and I think the radiophones are pretty much history, the telcos having run copper or fiber within most every remote community, though perhaps they're still connected to the rest of us using microwave or satellite.)
(Speaking for BC, at any rate. I suspect bits of rural Alberta are still being serviced through barbedwire fences...)
It's the Americans who got bitchslapped with the DMCA. It's the Americans who got put over the barrel with education funding tied to school Internet filters. And so on.
America is not the home of the free. Not any more. Not since the corporations became powerful people.
Everyone in Canada got a phone connection because our telcos were guaranteed monopoly control *in return for* universal service.
This was a Very Good Thing.
The telcos benefitted: they had a secure, non-competitive market, with readily predictable costs and profits.
The consumers benefitted: we had service guarantees and rate restrictions.
For the longest time, the telco supplied the phones and were responsible for *every* problem with them, from the central office to the speaker. Inside or outside your house, the repair bill was on their tab.
And for the longest time, we had extremely low monthly lease fees, free local calling, and moderately low long-distance fees.
With the introduction of telco competition, we now have to pay outrageous hourly rates for any repair work done from the outside wall of our homes, pretty much have to buy our own phones, pay double to triple the monthly lease fee, still have free local calling, and have cheap long-distance.
Overall, I think we're on the losing side of things: except for the people who really yack it up on long-distance, having a phone is more expensive than it used to be.:-(
Ironically, the monopoly telcos are still quite healthy, while all the would-be competition is struggling to stay afloat. In the end, we may wind up with monopolies once more... but this time, monopolies that aren't controlled by a consumer regulatory board. Ouch.
The USA is already behind Canada wrt broadband access, and per-capita use of the Internet. Canada is in position #2. Believe it's one of the Scandinavian countries (perhaps Finland?) that's #1 for being wired.
The USA has always lagged behind Canada when it comes to telecommunications. Our monopoly telcos were permitted under the provision that they provide universal service.
Our privacy commish bashed the government in the chops, when it tried to integrate a half-dozen unrelated information systems into one system, all in the name of efficiency.
There was a helluva outcry about having a whole bunch of our records all in the same database.
The privacy commish made the government revert back to the old separated databases, out of concern that the uncivil servants shouldn't be able to look willynilly through our data. Revenue Canada employees simply don't need to know my medical records, vice versa, etc.
Or if not overconfidence, at least a captain far too easily influenced by the media and the fleet owner: IIRC, the Titanic was also touted as being really fast, and thus the pressure was on to prove that she could cross the Atlantic in record speed.
If you stole the car, then I did not lend it to you, and I am not responsible for what you do.
By your standards, I shouldn't be held accountable if I lend my car to someone who isn't licensed and has never actually driven a car. Indeedy, you figure I shouldn't be held accountable even if I lend the car to someone who has had their license impounded for repeated drunk driving offenses!
There are plenty of examples of ownership resulting in liability. If you own a swimming pool, but don't put up a fence, you're liable should some nosepicker jump in and drown. If you own a gun, lend it out to a friend to kill his wife, you're going to be held partially at fault. If you help a friend smuggle dope across the border, you're going to be in trouble, even though you weren't driving the car.
Now, finally, note that the original discussion is all around people who speed.
If you lend the car out to someone who speeds, and photo radar nabs him, then the ticket is assigned to the owner of the car. Who pays -- you or your friend -- is something you're gonna have to figure out for between yourselves.
Chances are, he'll pay, and you won't lend it out to him again.
If the major rental agencies ever come to realize that this will increase their bottom-line profitability, by reducing their insurance rates, car-theft rates, and accident rates, you can be damn sure they will immplement it.
And all you fruggin whiners who figure you've got some sort of G.D. right to speed will be screwed to the wall. And thank goodness, too.
So what? Since when has ignorance been any sort of acceptable excuse?
By your thinking, I should be able to stop paying my mortgage, and yet retain the house, because I didn't read the contract, and therefore it doesn't apply to me.
Slashdot Mirror
Framemaker is the "damn book publishing program."
I'd agree with your assessment of it. And Ventura is the better replacement for it: much better UI, and some important features that Framemaker lacks.
Several textbook publishing companies, several TV guide companies, a lot of catalogue publishers, a few book publishers, and almost every bible publishing company use it.
--
"(And since I'm in Germany for LinuxTag I get to post something before I usually even get it up!)"
Too much detail!!
--
Quark? LOL. You *GOTTA* be kidding.
Quark has a barely useable interface.
Quark is so lacking in power that you gotta add *thousands* of dollars worth of add-ins.
And even then, it doesn't have the features and power of CorelDraw (for very short docs) or Ventura (for long docs).
Sorry, bud. You're the one smokin' crack.
--
For those of you truly boycotting Adobe products, I'd like to suggest some replacements:
For Illustrator, CorelDraw. It's easier to use and more powerful. Much more powerful.
For Acrobat Distiller: JAWS PDF (formerly 5D PDF). Produces better-quality PDF, though with slightly larger file sizes.
For FrameMaker: Ventura Publisher. Ventura has a *much* better UI, more power, and comes with more useful helper applications. Indeed, Ventura is the best long-document layout software available, bar none.
For Photoshop: Corel PhotoPaint or PaintShop Pro. PhotoPaint does much more than Photoshop, though with a slightly odd interface; PaintShop does 90% of what Photoshop does. Oh - and there's also GIMP.
For PageMaker, CorelDraw or Ventura Publisher. CorelDraw is better for artsy-fartsy shite; Ventura is better for more traditional layout.
For InDesign: CorelDraw, again. I'm assuming no one is foolish enough to attempt to use InDesign for long documents: if you are, do yourself a favour and use Ventura. You'll thank me endlessly for that advice.
That about covers all the major Adobe applications.
In *every* case, the alternatives are better than the Adobe product.
--
My "rice rocket" has 200 000km on it as of this month. It's a 1991 Nissan NX 1600 t-top.
My wife and I are avid backpackers during the summer months. Consequently, this car has been to hell and gone.
Memorable experiences:
- 20km up one logging road, I surfed the car across a massive sandspit created by a flash flood a month earlier. It was only after I crossed over that I started thinking about what I'd do if another flash flood came along while we were oot and aboot.
- some freaking 60km down a logging road loop (we'd just come back from a side-road that lead into 4WD territory to the trailhead. 4WD? Pah! A skilled driver can do anything until the rocks get too big and too numerous to move!). Hit a construction zone. Dunno what the hell they were constructing, but the road became a car-width wide, and at least a foot deep of fine clay silt. *Almost* turned back... but then the guy on the grader waved us on. So I went for it. Once started, couldn't stop...
- Misjudging a heave, and nearly toasting the oil pan. One of the very few times I wanted more clearance.
- Backing the car down a car-width wide logging road that was carved into the side of a mountain. Couldn't see any ground whatsoever out the driver's window. Damn near shit myself.
- Crossed an abandoned wood bridge. Had to reconstruct parts of it using logs and loose boards. Again, didn't really consider the going-back consequences...
Anyway, point is, SUVs are for nancies. If you're a halfway decent driver, damn near any road is passable with a 2WD car.
(Shoulda seen what we could do with the Chevette. We really didn't care what happened to it. The Nissan... well, honestly, we try to be nice to it...)
--
Gahd. I should hope the cops have more important things to concern themselves about than some exposed tits.
If they don't have something better to do, then they should be fired: the police department is obviously overstaffed.
--
Pish-pash! Are you going to deny that it's filled with adultery, murder, incest and more?
It's ever so frightening that there are still people who believe that the bible is a "nice" book. One suspects they have never actually read it word-for-word... or if they have, they simply failed to actually *comprehend* what it says.
--
By reading the cover?
You mean, like the Bible, which generally has a pretty innocuous cover, but is filled with all sorts of incest, adultery, child-killing, even genocide?
From a promising start ("In the beginning was the Word...") it pretty quickly degenerates into all sorts of nastiness.
Indeed, the bible is an excellent example of a book that not only shouldn't be judged by its cover, but must actually be read carefully in order to determine its true contents.
--
Oh, gahd.
That's just great. Now the cell-phone dolts in the SUVs will be using Google *at the same time* to check on their facts, *while* they are driving...
--
And how did you know which groups had kiddie porn in them?
You must have been viewing them.
Which means you were downloading and looking at kiddie porn.
Which is illegal.
Catch-22.
--
Kinetic Energy = (1/2)*(mass)*(velocity)^2
The mass can be disregarded, as it's constant in this case (the car is not going to become appreciably lighter as it goes faster).
That leaves velocity-squared. Double the speed equals four times the damage when that car collides with something.
You're free to quibble about my casual use of "impact force," but I'm not much interested in arguing cheezy-ass semantics. The original point still stands: 75kmh is nearly *twice* the collision of 55kmh, even though the speed is less than half-again as fast.
--
No doubt, some people slip through the cracks, and some fuckups happen.
But do you really think you'd be any better in any other country? In the USA, f'rinstance, your insurer would do everything possible to avoid paying out: try to blame it on your genetics, blame it on something you did, blame it on anything to just avoid paying.
We need to fix the problems our system has, but we can't just throw it out; that'd be a cure worse than the problem!
--
Oh, hey, and speaking of blind spots:
You can minimize your blind spots, and possibly even eliminate them, by correctly adjusting your mirrors.
Place your head against the drivers' side window, and adjust the left mirror to where it just barely doesn't show your car at all. Repeat for the right mirror, with your head positioned toward the middle of the car (ie. above the center console/parking brake).
True, you can't see your car in the mirrors any more. But, then, that's okay: you know where your car is. Give it a week or two, and it won't seem so unnerving.
You'll see a *lot* more of the traffic on either side of you, and your rearview covers the traffic behind you.
In some cars, you will have *no* blind spots.
--
As speed doubles, impact force quadruples.
An impact of 75 vs 55, is an impact with nearly twice the energy.
Speed is quite obviously a major factor in the severity of an accident.
An impact where both drivers are speeding at 75 will have *seven* times the energy of a single-vehicle accident at 55. And that'd have to be a single vehicle hitting an immovable object, not a fencepost.
Of course speeding isn't the (common) *cause* of accidents. But it's an *extremely significant* factor in their outcome.
And the fact is that most of the arseholes who are speeding are just plain incompetent drivers. When they're forced to maintain pace with traffic, they put everyone at less risk, because they're not weaving in and out of traffic, nor passing.
That's the whole point: to minimize the chances of them fucking up, and to minimize the destruction when they do.
--
But the rate would be regulated: the (Canadian) monopolies had a profit cap. The telcos weren't allowed to earn more than x%; anything above was translated into lower consumer costs.
It was a great system. The telcos got to make a very fair coin, but had to toe some pretty important lines to do so. IMO, I think we consumers were better off with the old system.
Currently, there's bugger-all for control, and that means the providers get to come across all Verizon-like: fuck the consumer, he's stuck with us... and if he leaves, someone else will take his place. Service and standards have dropped like the proverbial rock.
Anyway, my original point was just to provide some info re: how Canada came to have telephones everywhere.
(Note for geeks: lots of microwave towers to connect population centres; and lots of radiophones in the most remote corners of the country.
These days, though, it's fiber everywhere, even to rinkydink communities; and I think the radiophones are pretty much history, the telcos having run copper or fiber within most every remote community, though perhaps they're still connected to the rest of us using microwave or satellite.)
(Speaking for BC, at any rate. I suspect bits of rural Alberta are still being serviced through barbedwire fences...)
--
Bullshit.
It's the Americans who got bitchslapped with the DMCA. It's the Americans who got put over the barrel with education funding tied to school Internet filters. And so on.
America is not the home of the free. Not any more. Not since the corporations became powerful people.
--
Here, cheese-breath, chew on this *American* bit of media coverage of our healthcare system: [Canada's Burning! Media myths about universal health coverage].
You've been lied to by corporate interests in your country. And you *believed* what they told you. To shame!
--
Everyone in Canada got a phone connection because our telcos were guaranteed monopoly control *in return for* universal service.
:-(
This was a Very Good Thing.
The telcos benefitted: they had a secure, non-competitive market, with readily predictable costs and profits.
The consumers benefitted: we had service guarantees and rate restrictions.
For the longest time, the telco supplied the phones and were responsible for *every* problem with them, from the central office to the speaker. Inside or outside your house, the repair bill was on their tab.
And for the longest time, we had extremely low monthly lease fees, free local calling, and moderately low long-distance fees.
With the introduction of telco competition, we now have to pay outrageous hourly rates for any repair work done from the outside wall of our homes, pretty much have to buy our own phones, pay double to triple the monthly lease fee, still have free local calling, and have cheap long-distance.
Overall, I think we're on the losing side of things: except for the people who really yack it up on long-distance, having a phone is more expensive than it used to be.
Ironically, the monopoly telcos are still quite healthy, while all the would-be competition is struggling to stay afloat. In the end, we may wind up with monopolies once more... but this time, monopolies that aren't controlled by a consumer regulatory board. Ouch.
--
The USA is already behind Canada wrt broadband access, and per-capita use of the Internet. Canada is in position #2. Believe it's one of the Scandinavian countries (perhaps Finland?) that's #1 for being wired.
The USA has always lagged behind Canada when it comes to telecommunications. Our monopoly telcos were permitted under the provision that they provide universal service.
--
Here, chew on this *American* bit of media coverage of our healthcare system: [Canada's Burning!
Media myths about universal health coverage].
You've been lied to by corporate interests in your country. And you *believed* what they told you. To shame!
--
Our privacy commish bashed the government in the chops, when it tried to integrate a half-dozen unrelated information systems into one system, all in the name of efficiency.
There was a helluva outcry about having a whole bunch of our records all in the same database.
The privacy commish made the government revert back to the old separated databases, out of concern that the uncivil servants shouldn't be able to look willynilly through our data. Revenue Canada employees simply don't need to know my medical records, vice versa, etc.
--
Or if not overconfidence, at least a captain far too easily influenced by the media and the fleet owner: IIRC, the Titanic was also touted as being really fast, and thus the pressure was on to prove that she could cross the Atlantic in record speed.
IOW, egos did 'er in.
--
If you stole the car, then I did not lend it to you, and I am not responsible for what you do.
By your standards, I shouldn't be held accountable if I lend my car to someone who isn't licensed and has never actually driven a car. Indeedy, you figure I shouldn't be held accountable even if I lend the car to someone who has had their license impounded for repeated drunk driving offenses!
There are plenty of examples of ownership resulting in liability. If you own a swimming pool, but don't put up a fence, you're liable should some nosepicker jump in and drown. If you own a gun, lend it out to a friend to kill his wife, you're going to be held partially at fault. If you help a friend smuggle dope across the border, you're going to be in trouble, even though you weren't driving the car.
Now, finally, note that the original discussion is all around people who speed.
If you lend the car out to someone who speeds, and photo radar nabs him, then the ticket is assigned to the owner of the car. Who pays -- you or your friend -- is something you're gonna have to figure out for between yourselves.
Chances are, he'll pay, and you won't lend it out to him again.
--
If the major rental agencies ever come to realize that this will increase their bottom-line profitability, by reducing their insurance rates, car-theft rates, and accident rates, you can be damn sure they will immplement it.
And all you fruggin whiners who figure you've got some sort of G.D. right to speed will be screwed to the wall. And thank goodness, too.
--
So what? Since when has ignorance been any sort of acceptable excuse?
By your thinking, I should be able to stop paying my mortgage, and yet retain the house, because I didn't read the contract, and therefore it doesn't apply to me.
--