On Tue, 24 Jul 2001, Robert Davies wrote:
> This is right, I had to write programs for output of a CAD system, PostScript
> was the 'great white hope', for device independant output. At first ps was
> just B/W, and there weren't ppd file to define the non-portable capabilities.
I remember seeing a MacPlus with some desktop publishing thing on it - may
have been an early copy of PageMaker - and a LaserWriter attached,
sometimes in the late eighties. It was soooo much more attractive than the
IBM boxes of the time :)
> As for Adobe, DMCA is a corporate law, designed to suit corporations and
> protect their profits.
Yup. Sadly all too true. Unfortunately your concept of 'customer
resistance' will never happen while people like the DoJ seem repeatedly
powerless to break Gates' stranglehold on the OS market :( since the rest
of the market just doesn't understand. Let's face it, the software
companies make vast profits from (a) corporate sales, where they're very
unlikely to ever change having just predicated an entire company's systems
on one or two vendors, and (b) the home market where they sell 'cut-down'
software developed by their corporate divisions with most of the
functionality stripped out. Easy money. The home user is not gonna dent
the profits since there is no alternative, and the corporate users are too
busy congratulating their non-executive board members who just happen to
be executives on their vendors boards.
> There's a need to attract press attention, and portraying a 'war' between
> Adobe and 'Hackers' protesting against the arrest of Dmitry, is sexy enough
> to get the issues addressed by the press.
Yes, but it's always going to fall on the side of the corporates. Right
now the word 'hacker' is a dirty one; Joe Public sees 'hackers' (well,
crackers but you get the idea) as A Bad Thing, second only to the scourge
of terrorists. Especially now that we get fictional 'hacking wars'
conjured up by the US press... and then retracted after the US skript
kiddiez go to town. I'll dig the URL out for that one shortly.
> The same process is happening here, and no political party seems to be
> effectively opposing this process. In fact they seem to be actively
> competing to come up with illiberal policies.
s/cies/ticians/ :) Can anyone say 'Jack Straw' ??
G
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