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So Adobe Reader 9 is here, and someone somewhere claimed, for whatever reason, that it is actually faster to start.

Being brave (read: foolish) soul that I am, I went directly to Adobe site to quickly download this latest marvel of modern technology. To summarize the next few paragraphs, or if somehow (strangely) you don’t enjoy reading about other people’s suffering, all you need to know is that half an hour later it is still Not Installed, and what’s more, it has successfully removed all previous versions of Adobe Readers from my PC.

The saga started with Adobe.com forcing me to install ActiveX control (their "download manager" ) to download this humongous "reader". Of course you need to be careful to uncheck the "free" Google Toolbar that they are offering along with the reader. Whatever happened to the days when this was considered Spyware trickery? What, Google Toolbar of course "phones home" everything you surf, among other of it’s "features". And why would I compromise the security of my browser with some sort of "Download Manager"? Why not provide me with good old simplicity of downloading the installer directly?!

!! WARNING *RANT* WARNING *VERY LONG RANT* WARNING !!

So I fall for their silly trap and install the "Download Manager" (by someone called getRight?) and it downloads, and before it completes I of course decide to close the original window where the thing started, like you usually would do after clicking "Download" from a page, you really are done with it.

And 10-15 minutes later I realize that something is wrong, the Download window is no longer minimized, but simply disappeared. Later I learned that it closes as soon as you close the browser tab where it started, brilliant technology.

So I restart, download resumes and finishes. Wonder, I think! Behold the amazing new Reader. Not so fast, in fact very slow is the word that comes to mind. On Quad Core Suppa-Duppa computer (yes, official term) it takes almost a Minute to decompress the package! Who wrote this genious compression algorithm?!

But it gets better! The installer launches and says that I need to close my Firefox (ok… ) and my IE, to complete installation. But wait, isn’t the "getRight" installer started from IE!? Brilliant! So I close the IE, and since installer runs separately it doesn’t close, but it doesn’t work either! It informs me that some sort of IE is still running and it can’t continue and HAS to abort. So I scout System processes, and do find IEUser.exe running somehow, I kill it and do what?! Click on the getRight installer, of course, since that is the only thing I got. And it launches IE again! And again tells me to close IE, so I do, but this time it is clearly feeling better! Instead of failing, it proceeds to happily Remove all old version of Reader.

Great, I think to myself, finally after all the hard work, I’ll get to experience the snappy new Adobe Reader (as if..). No such luck at all, instead it happily tells me that there is no source at all, nothing to install. Thanks for coming, don’t call us, we call you! Yes, of course I tried going back to original site and "re-downloading" the whole thing, only to be happily greeted with the same message (after patiently waiting for some mysterious "data" to decompress, of course).

!! WARNING *RANT END* WARNING !!

All I want to add at here is this: Yesterday I burned and booted something called Fedora 9 64Bit edition, which is Red Hat’s Open Source Linux distribution. Guess what, while researching something online via their fine Firefox 3 browser (preinstalled), I stumbled upon PDF document online. Instantly (even though it ran off a simple CD) it loaded PDF reader and presented me with clean easy way to read the document. That’s really all I wanted.

Adobe, why kill your own successful monopoly by bloating it up and unleashing untested software onto unsuspecting public? Oh wait, perhaps they are following in Microsoft’s footsteps! What? I love Vista!!!

Happy upcoming 4th, everyone! Let Freedom Ring! Yes, I will celebrate by installing Fedora 9.

UPDATE: After re-downloading, re-booting, re-trying, etc, it installed somehow. No, it isn’t much faster to start, and Look! There is now handy "Purchase Adobe Acrobat" option, how nice of them! …. NOT!

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I wanted to catalog this for myself, and I think everyone else should find it very useful! Skillful folks at the fine Mashable blog have put together a handy list of Top 10 How-To sites. These sites tell you How to do things, and most use Videos to help explain things.

Sorry I have been blogging less, have a few fun subjects in store, but not enough time to blog, with some crunch at work. But I promise to improve!

Meanwhile, Live and Learn!

[via Mashable]

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Now this is big news for all you parents out there! Free official Full Length Disney classics streaming on the Internet this summer.

I think this is a sign of things to come, and Disney are just running a fancy “beta” test this summer to test capacity and do some calculations of how much bandwidth per viewer, etc. Seriously, how far are we from every station out there putting up their entire shows/movies/etc archive on the Web, and making it advertiser supported, with perhaps Ads inserted every 15 minutes or so, as we are so used to now with traditional model.

Only one small difference! You choose When to Watch, and What to Watch, and of course feel free to Pause TV, and get back to that pesky Real Life.

[via EngadgetHD]

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I’ve been reading all the live blogging just like the rest of us, all too excited about “what’s next” from the over-hyped Apple brand. Finally Starts at $199 now, finally has built-in GPS (pretty much standard nowadays), and seems to have improved 3rd party apps support. Also looking especially lucrative is the 7 hour battery time when playing video, that should be awesome on long flights and overall most impressive. Internet always was a great feature, and with 3G speeds, it’s finally very viable. Plus, more and more popular web-sites coming up with iPhone optimized edition.

But, looking at my own usage patterns, my current phone, though over 2 years old, is doing just fine for me. It provides occasional Internet via Opera Mini. It gives me full screen video via Mobile Divx Player, and of course Audio MP3’s are no-brainer. My Zune gives me full range of Podcasts access, and probably with miniscule 16GB on even the premium $299 model (what gives, flash memory is cheap nowadays!!!), it wouldn’t suffice for my needs there. I got my Bluetooth and my external Bluetooth GPS, if need be, on that phone also.

Big feature would be push email, especially my Yahoo! and Gmail, though meanwhile I get those on my work-issued blackberry, so no concerns there. Come to think of it, the email would probably be the biggest excuse I can find to switch phones, if my work decided to save some dough and take away our blackberries…

Meanwhile, the rest of you will charge forth and purchase this toy, I’m sure

PS: After I typed it up, I saw this little video, and looks like this one is a Solid reason to get an iPhone!

PPS: And here’s a shocker reason not to get the iPhone, somehow I felt this was coming…

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My sister is just starting studies for Computer Sciences, and unlike what I remember from my days, in the first Intro course, they are trying to fill her head with nasty recursive algorithms.

What gives? First, I want to hear from the community, who else thinks that studying recursive algorithms is a good introduction to Computer Science, for someone who doesn’t know what is a Parser, Whitespace or Compiler. They used Java as a language for intro course, which I think actually was a good idea, but venturing into recursion, why?!

Seriously, how often in your daily developer career and activities would you use it? Even if it is needed, who among us wants to risk blowing up the stack, when so many other more optimal solutions are usually available?

In general, I think Computer Sciences have lost their way lately. The Science of it, at least. It really needs to refocus on solving real problems. What are real problems, you ask? How about starting off with creating next generation of web-like networking platform? Or new wave of development tools and languages? Object Oriented was invented too many years ago, and the Intentional Programming hasn’t really taken off, nor have other ideas. Surely there are better ways! Who’s trying? There are some novel ideas in XML use as development platform in many areas, especially XAML in Vista‘s WPF layer.

Lets see what they study next, if in the intro course they mastered Recursion, I have high expectations now! Meanwhile, post in comments what you think the next great frontier in CS research should be, lets get some collective wisdom going here!

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Sorry I have been away for a while. I have so many excuses, but the truth is, I think I got “afraid” somehow. The more people know and read my blog, especially of those people who know me personally, the more I got worried about being judged based on the posts I write.

I decided to try and be braver! Ummm, but not today, not just yet..

Instead, Today I bring you fun sites to check out, that really impressed me! Starting off with Tag Galaxy, which I shared on my new and improved Shared Items feed. It links into an amazing database of tagged photos that is Flickr, and then leverages the relationships between the tags to create an amazing Planet like view of photographic awesomeness.

The other one is less exciting, but perhaps more useful on a daily basis, as another quick way to “glance” at what is going on in the world. Check out this excellent MSNBC’s Spectra news visualizer.

Oh, and the whole “Ya Rly” thing is from WoW, which is still where I’m spending way too much time, really…

Both via [Mashable]

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An important announcement from Microsoft, something called Mesh, is happening tonight at Midnight eastern time.

I am into guessing game, again, mostly because it is fun, but also because in a funny coincidence, I left a rather long rant at Yahoo’s own Jeremy Zawodny’s blog. What started as a short comment, turned into longer and I think worthy read about future of operating environments for us all. Jeremy doesn’t post too much, which is exactly how I prefer it and thus he is on my ‘read-first’ list. Check out my comment right here.

Back to the issue, I really think this one will be about cloud computing and web services, or cloud services, or whatever we want to call them services. And of course, their integration into applications and the OS, finally. Some applications already integrate nicely, such as Windows Vista Photo Gallery. And I hope they will finally take it to the next level.

Speaking of Vista, and of Windows 7. I hear people continue to trash it, but seriously, why?! Yes, it is bloated. Yes, it is incompatible with a lot of old software and drivers. But, that was obvious (just to me?!) going into it! Only install Vista on newer core 2 duo and faster PCs with 2GB ram. That’s obvious! Next, do NOT install older software on it, wait for lazy/suicidal/incompetent 3rd party companies come out with updated software specifically targeted at Vista! Or, use Microsoft’s new built-in software. Yes, be like the rest of us and use the primitive Windows Movie Maker for your HD editing… What? Microsoft were nice and anti-trust friendly by not killing Adobe and Sony and others in this market, and coming out with their own Killer Video Editing program. And how do Adobe/Sony/etc repay them?! Where is Vista optimized version of our favorite video editing tools, a year and a half later? Almost here, I bet…

Probably by the time your read this, the announcement will be out. For some reason official Mesh site is acting up (stress-testing was skipped, I bet). So instead, check out Scobleizer commentary on this "breakthrough" technology.

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