Adobe: The next hijacker
PDF is the format of choice for floating around documents. I just got a new system set-up and needed to open a PDF file. So I head over to Adobe’s website to download what I have always known to be Adobe Reader. I have done this countless times in the past over the years, but this time around, I am quite surprised.
- I go to download Acrobat Reader 9 at Adobe.com and find this download page
I have no idea why I should be asked to download the Free eBay Desktop bundled with Adobe Reader, so I uncheck it. - Then my eye wanders up and I don’t know why I am getting a forced inclusion of "Acrobat.com on Adobe AIR". What does that even mean?
- Well, I want to find out, so I proceed by clicking the "Download Now" button.
- It makes firefox tell me that it has just "prevented www.adobe.com from asking me to install software on my computer"
- What the … I think! Why is Adobe installing a firefox-addon to my computer. All I want is the freaking reader so I can view pdf files. Wait a sec, is this just the browser plugin, so that I can view documents inline?
- I ask Firefox to allow it to download software and this is what I get:
Adobe DLM? Download Manager? Am I on a 33.3kbps serial modem connection? When was the last time I needed a download manager? I don’t want a download manager to download the freaking reader. At this point, I have already decided to blog about how awful this is, so I go on to document this completely. - So I click "Install Now". Firefox does its thing and asks me to restart my browser.
How annoying, I think. I hit the "restart firefox" button. - When firefox restarts, this Adobe DLM addon spawns some executable which is, of course, detected by Windows UAC (yeah, I haven’t got around to disabling UAC yet), asking me if I want to allow the spawned process to do what it wants to do. I allow it.
- It opens up a download manager screen
- As I wait for this "Adobe DLM powered by getPlus" I suddenly see what I have rarely seen in a RTM version of firefox:
This is firefox 3. I wonder what the DLM is trying to do, but is has just crashed my firefox - I click on "close program" and the corresponding Adobe DLM window also disappears.
- Hmm, so what’s going on here. Firefox is back on but the DLM process is not visible, nor is there any download manager.
- Wait a sec, what’s that new link on my Desktop?
Oh, look! It is asking me if I want to continue downloading. So that’s why you have a download manager, because the crappy download manager prevents you from downloading at one go? A very boot-strapped problem this. - At this point. I was going to uninstall everything from my firefox and my computer and go with Ghostview or something. But I just wanted to know where this all goes. So I double click on that desktop shortcut
- I again get a UAC prompt:
I allow that and move on. - Finally, when the download manager is at 99%, it spawns the familiar windows installer for Acrobat that I am used to seeing.
- However, without any warning, or prompt, it silently exits. Is it done? Apparently so, because I have two fresh desktop shortcuts:
- I know what Adobe Reader 9 will be. But what the heck is Acrobat.com?Oh, that was the AIR version of their site. Let’s take a look. So I click on the Acrobat.com desktop shortcut.
- Oh, the Office Killer!
The above window is an AIR window. Not a browser window, nor an application window in the traditional sense. - Here are the other services it is advertising:
- Of course, clicking on anything makes you register or sign-in
I might have been more receptive to the other services and checked them out if they were not forced to me. I do not think this is any different from what Apple did a couple of months ago when it force-installed the Safari browser on un-suspecting Windows users as a software update for iTunes and Quicktime.
There is a clear line that users don’t expect respectable companies to cross. Adobe has always been a little on the bloat side with it’s reader; but this time it has gone too far. Most users will probably end up with an unwanted Ebay Desktop installation, an unwanted Firefox extension DLM, and an unwanted Adobe.com AIR installation.
Gotta get back and uninstall all the sh** from my computer and go get my Ghostview! If all you want is view PDF files, I recommend that’s what you should do to! Skip Adobe, they obviously do not respect you.
[Update: Corresponding discussion at Mozillazine or the alt.comp.freeware google group titled I installed Adobe Reader 9 - WARNING! ADWARE AND BUNDLEWARE!]
SSDs save battery power, right? Wrong.
If you were having a hard time deciding if you should opt for a 4,200 rpm drive versus a solid-state drive on your new ultra-light laptop, the decision could be easier as a myth gets busted.
Tom’s Hardware has discovered that SSD drives end up consuming more power than even a performance 7,200 rpm drive. The conclusion is that though SSD’s improve performance (read/write throughput), they don’t seem to lend well to “road-warriors” for whom every milli-ampere of battery juice is very valuable.
[via Engadget]
Cross Over – using Windows apps on a Mac
I have found that the easiest way to run many apps on a Mac is CrossOver for Mac. It’s built on the Wine codebase, but is a much easier and friendly way of installing Windows apps in virtual “bottles” on a Mac. They actively fund the Wine community.
It’s funny that most Mac users don’t seem to know about it. There doesn’t seem to be much need to buy Parallels and have a heavy overload on your system if most of the apps you want work fine here.
You can try and give it a spin. Here are the applications that are strongly supported, however, you could probably be lucky if you use any other software as well (Yes, many games are supported).
Crane crash in Andheri
A crane of the Metro project toppled over, falling on the road and crushed an auto-rickshaw killing two people on the spot. I was at the Bhavan’s A.H. Wadia High school, overlooking the complete crash site and had a clear view of the site. Part of the school compound wall was also broken by the crane’s tip.
All pictures with full versions here: http://flickr.com/photos/sameerhalai/sets/72157605048202588/
Apple - the PUP company
Some sites still make me use Quicktime to watch video content. But, Apple thinks that I am too dumb to realize this, but I need iTunes too. I know Apple thinks that because it forces me to download iTunes if I try to install Quicktime. Not only that, it thinks I need to have a constantly running AppleMobileDeviceService, an iPodService and and iTunesHelperService.
Anytime I end up with software on my computer that I don’t want to startup automatically, I use msconfig to disable it. That has always worked for me with most programs from non-malware companies. So I do the same with Apple. But, no. The programs keep starting up on their own even after I set them not to.
The only way to do that is to go to services.msc and "disable" the process.
This is very annoying. And then Apple goes ahead and sneaks Safari onto my computer which violates it’s own EULA. You have angered too many people this time, Apple!
Sledding in Ann Arbor
My recent sledding experience. Virtual Earth views of the sled slopes
Blogging through Journler!
I really liked Windows Live Writer and I miss not having it on the Mac! I am using Journler for now and it looks very promising but I would really like to be able to copy-paste an image into my post and have the publisher upload them to the server in the background!
[Update: I am liking Ecto
]
Pakistani Napolean Dynamite
At America’s Got Talent, here’s what Kashif did:
Real Life Second Lifers
What if the real world was like second life. How would we walk and talk?
This will be scary/weird for those who haven’t been on Second Life. But if you have already stumbled around Second Life, you might find it as hilarious as I did 
Smriti Irani leaves "Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi"
This is major! Probably old news by now but it’s interesting to know that Tulsi Virani is no more! And it’s very interesting in how they end her:
Tulsi tries to escape from the tunnel, but is not successful as the doctors capture her. Tulsi again makes a valiant attempt to escape from the asylum, she poses as a dead body ready to be taken to the cremation ground? Lady Luck smiles on Tulsi as she gets into a truck, but will this same good fortune end up being her last journey? It seems so, as the driver driving the truck is totally drunk and this proves fatal, as the truck goes down in a valley and blasts..
Burnt parts of the truck and burnt bodies are recovered from the valley. The Doctors find Tulsi?s asylum tag near the accident spot and call Tanya to give the Virani household, this sad news. The three bahu?s enter the accident scene and are horrified to see the burnt remains of Tulsi. They decide to complete the last rites in Omkarnath and this marks the end of Tulsi?s existence in this Flagship serial of Ekta.
[via India Forum]
Mumbai University x2: Sam Pitroda
Due to an increasingly large student population attending college, the Universities in India are tightly packed and competition is at an all time high. National Knowledge Commission chairman Sam Pitroda made a “wild” suggestion - why not run the University in shifts - that would automatically double all capacity. Start the day at 6:00 am and end it by 3:00. Start another shift at 3:30 and end it at midnight. This is a low cost of way of increasing capacity since we would be reusing a lot of the infrastructure.
Mumbai University has taken this suggestion seriously and is working out how this can be practically implemented - for starters they found that this would increase the capacity by 60% rather than 100% since not all courses would demand 2 shifts.
I didn’t know Sam was the chairman of the National Knowledge Commission. I am glad he is. The right person, at the right place, at the right time. We can not forget how he was instrumental in facilitating the Communication Revolution in India. I hope we see something good become of our education system as well. I do like how the system has finally realized that being adaptive and responsive to the industry is very important for a University.
Google Gears: Browser up, OS down!
We all knew this was coming and it has finally come. The final problem of offline access to web-based services has been addressed by Google Gears which was released last week. Today, I saw the first instance of it being available to the end user via the Google Reader.
You can have consistent, transparent access to all your favorite websites/web applications through the browser. The OS becomes less important now and the need for natively installed OS specific applications is greatly reduced.
It would be interesting to see the changes this will bring in our world!
Facebook friends visualization tool for Many Eyes
I wrote a small Facebook application that scans your friends list and finds how they are related to each other. It prepares the data in a format compatible with Many Eyes. You can visualize this data in Many Eyes to see the connections between your friends.
About the visualization: The people on the left are my high school friends, the dense nodes on the right are my current grad school friends and people on the fringes are college friends and other common friends.
Please head over to http://apps.facebook.com/manyeyes/ and visualize your data. I would love to see what other’s people’s data looks like!
This also opens up another interesting dilemma: I accessed information about my friends since I am their friend and they know that I can access it. But I am sure they do not expect me to make a text dump of it and visualize it on a publicly viewable website. I have been thinking hard about my right to do so or their incorrect expectation in this regard. I trust my friends with my information. But if they are not trustworthy, the only thing I can do about that is remove them from my list - this the advice Facebook itself gives to get rid of stalkers and bad wall-posters. I am very interested in hearing from my friends (it’s your data in this visualization) about what they think about this.
[Edit: You might find the following applications interesting as well:
- Friend Wheel - Creates a wheel with connected dots between your friends
- Friend Explorer - Helps you graph out your friendships]
Joost is the new TV
I have tried Slingbox and I have tried Democracy TV. Joost is different. Community features, high quality programming, full screen smooth video. It’s a joy, a pleasure. I was captivated for hours as I kept watching show after show with a numbed, retarded expression on my face. The PC is the TV now and I am loving it.
And did I mention how cool the interface is? Check out these screenshots:
More screenshots
Note: click on the images to see the full size. When was the last time you saw free streaming internet video of that resolution? It’s a joy that even my Slingbox doesn’t provide despite a 3MBPs connection at both ends thanks to the low upload bandwidth of ADSL.
Note 2: It’s not yet open to general audience, you need an invite to get started.
Yahoo! Travel Updated
I am a little disappointed with Yahoo! which seems to sneak in great updates without a lot of buzz being generated around it. For instance, the only way I find out about the fact that Yahoo! Travel has undergone a major revamp is if I look closely at my Yahoo! page.
Where are the blogs, the news, the reviews around this wonderful update?
I do not think I can manage a full-blown review just yet, but some interesting things are:
- They have added community features to the Travel website
- You can browse other’s people’s trips, share your trip details with friends
- You can duplicate other’s trips and make reservations for the same itinerary or fudge it to create your own unique trip
I am going to play around with this and probably comment more. But I am still confused about why the only thing Yahoo! has been in the news recently for is people stepping down or Yahoo! Photos shutting down!
Visualize your WordPress activity using the Many Eyes plugin
Do you want to see how chatty you have been in the blogosphere? Is there a trend in your periods of lull and heavy activity?
I wrote a plugin that helps convert information about your blog posts into data compatible with Many Eyes. You can install this plugin onto your WordPress installation and then you are just one click away from creating a visualization that looks like the one below:
According to my stats, I’ve been very active in the August of 2005! How about you?
You can download the Many Eyes Data Exctractor plugin from here.
Installation Instructions:
- Unzip to your wp-contents/plugins directory
- Login to to your WordPress admin area - usually <your-blog-uri>/wp-admin/
- Click on Plugins and activate the Many Eyes Data Exctractor plugin
- Click on Manage
- Click on the Visualize tab
Surface Computing
Do you remember the perceptive pixel video that was up here a couple of months back. Well, Microsoft was involved:
A new paradigm: Social Investigation through Social Networks
Disclaimer: This post makes a reference to the death of a young girl in Mumbai. I never knew her but I wish that her soul rests in peace and I really hope her murderer is found and duly punished. However, this post is about the interesting phenomenon of ’social investigation’ I have observed around this ‘incident’ (if I may call it so).
The Incident:
A 24-year-old Tata Consultancy Services engineer was found dead on Monday morning in a hotel room in Andheri, where she had checked in with a male companion on Saturday.
Koushambi Layek, a systems consultant with TCS, was found dead in room number 202 of Hotel Sun-n-Sheel in Andheri (East) when the hotel staff opened the door with a duplicate key after their repeated calls on the intercom went unanswered. She was found lying on the bed soaked in blood with two bullets wounds.
The reaction:
She belonged to a cohort which is very active on Orkut and this incident is being heavily discussed online. Her scrapbook is being filled with messages of peace and condolences and rage for the murderer. Communities have been created to discuss this incident and make sure the message and investigation stays alive until justice is done.
Social Investigation:
Interestingly, her friends have launched a social investigation around this incident. The accused is also active on Orkut. His scrapbook and posts made by him are being actively scanned for pieces of evidence linking him to the crime. They have already found quite some interesting bits of information:
The above post shows how they found the accused individual frantically requesting phone number of another individual which has raised doubts about the potential involvement of someone else. The police too has been actively monitoring these communities to find interesting or implicating evidence.
Remarks:
Can this information be used as hard-evidence? Does this incident highlight how social investigation can possibly help law enforcement in the future? It surely highlights the importance of scanning social networking sites in addition to emails and web-access records to gather evidence. Is it harmful for investigation proceedings and speculations to be publicly available like this? As our lives become more public through these social networking websites, we probably want to reflect on what information about us people may get at in the future and whether we are comfortable having our information available in ways we do not foresee today.
President of India: Get Kalam Back
If you are happy with the wonderful term President Kalam served, you can vote for him to be elected back for another term. I am not sure how influential these votes will be, but there is no harm in voting(?). I do not know Pramodh Mysore, who seems to be running this website; for all I know, he’s a smart Indian using this as an opportunity to mass-collect email addresses :). But well, I would like to see if online voting can somehow be influential in the normal democratic process we have. So go over to the site and vote!
Note to citizens of other countries: India uses the parliamentary model of democracy where the Prime Minister is the main executive in the Government. The President mainly presides and has limited powers but is an influential figure nonetheless.
