Spinor Info

Adobe Corporation recently introduced the latest version of their PDF reader application, Adobe Reader X.

So I promptly downgraded my Adobe Reader 9 installation to Adobe Reader 8.

I use PDF documents very often. Apparently, the good folks at Adobe do not. Why else would they remove one of the most important productivity features, namely the ability to view several PDF files in the same application window?

Yes, I get it: for new users, it makes sense to move away from the “applications open documents” paradigm towards the “documents appear in windows” paradigm. In an ideal world, the application would be invisible; each document would exist in its own window; and we wouldn’t even care that some documents are Word files, others are PDFs, etc.

But we don’t live in an ideal world, and there are reasons to suspect that this ideal world may never come to pass. Perhaps it will. But it’s not here at present, and the fact that every PDF opens in a new window is a huge annoyance.

An annoyance that was first introduced in version 9, and is apparently being kept alive in version X. However, my patience ran out. It’s back to version 8 for me.

Oh, and I also have a license of Acrobat Pro, to produce and edit PDF files. But, it’s a license for version 6. Why? Because version 6 was the last version without DRM/Activation.

If folks from Adobe read this, well, please let me know when you have a version of Acrobat that is DRM-free and can do MDI. Then, I’ll buy. Until then, I’ll just stick to my obsolete versions.

I once built my own not-so-micro processor as a hobby project of sorts. It was loads of fun.

There is another way of having loads of fun: how about visually simulating an old 8-bit microprocessor as it executes instructions? What can I say… it’s neat. Brings back lots of memories from the days when I was earning a living writing code for the Commodore-64.

In recent years, one of the most welcome feature in Web browsers was tabbed browsing. Implementing in effect what Microsoft calls MDI (Multiple Document Interface), it helped reduce screen clutter while viewing multiple Web pages.

Meanwhile, Microsoft made a (valid) observation that MDI is application-centric, and for new users, not intuitive; the idea is that each document should live in its own window, regardless of which application is used to render or edit it.

Fortunately, even Microsoft were wise enough to recognize that for many (especially professional) users, who keep multiple documents open, SDI (Single Document Interface) is not always the best choice. On the contrary, MDI allows one to work significantly more efficiently when keeping a large number of documents open. Therefore, Office 2010 continues to support MDI mode (thankfully), although not near as elegantly as a Web browser, with visible tabs.

Enter Adobe. They also chose to follow in Microsoft’s footsteps. Unfortunately, in their infinite wisdom they also chose to take a step further: they not only made SDI mode the preferred mode, they removed MDI mode altogether. They offered the lamest excuses: 1. that’s not how it’s done on the Mac, 2. MDI mode was already considered deprecated in version 8, 3. Microsoft told us to do it, 4. it’s more work, and 5. it’s more costly to test.

Thankfully, Acrobat’s product manager came to his senses after receiving overwhelmingly negative feedback. He closed the discussion by referring to the proverbial dead horse.

Except that news of the horse’s death might have been slightly exaggerated. The discussion in question took place in October 2008. I cannot help but notice that my calendar says July 2010, yet Acrobat 9 is still the latest version, still sorely missing an MDI mode.

The other day, I updated the Java VM on this machine, and as part of the process, I uninstalled the previous version. During the uninstallation process, I was presented with the following dialog:

I’m not sure what purpose the checkbox in this dialog serves. By checking it, do I suppress the confirmation dialog for all future uninstallations? That doesn’t sound smart. But what is the alternative? A checkbox that serves no purpose other than helping me avoid having to click the mouse one extra time just in case I happen to reinstall, and then uninstall, the 6.19 version of the Java VM?

I’ve been having computer trouble. My main (but soon-to-be backup) computer has been acting up lately. Since I fixed the broken heatsink, it crashed several times. Is it aging hardware? Is it a virus? An instability due to a recent update? Or perhaps, possibly, the result of the fact that most recently, I plugged the network into the gigabit Ethernet interface, as opposed to the 100Base-T one? (This motherboard has two network connectors.) I know for a fact that the gigabit Ethernet interface used to cause problems, but I thought that was fixed by driver updates ages ago. Perhaps not.

Anyhow, since I swapped the network cable, the system has been stable for days. Today, its video driver crashed, but that’s not new: the complicated driver set of my ATI All-In-Wonder card (combination high-end graphics and TV tuner card; well, whatever passed for high-end in 2005, that is) was never 100% stable, but it is stable enough for reasonably reliable use. Today’s crash, too, was recoverable: I was able to Remote Desktop into the machine from another computer. So… I still don’t know what has been causing the real crashes in recent weeks.

Anyhow, after restarting the system, I logged back onto my Linux server from it, and I was presented with the usual UNIX login fortune cookies. Including one I never saw before, and one that only those can truly appreciate who used to program in FORTRAN and are familiar with implicitly declared variables and the default implicit declaration rules:

“God is real, unless declared integer.”