one little fish rant

ok so i'm a bit pissed off and don't know what to do about it. it seems like such a little thing - especially given the state of freedom in the world and in our country - but it's irritating the hell out of me, so i thought i'd share...

i never run updates from Adobe, for a number of reasons, and stay as far away from .pdf's in my personal life as possible (because i believe they are spawns of the devil) - so of course, when i wasn't thinking and ran the update, it crashed the program right out from under me and, Murphy be praise, right when i needed it.

being the good little tech that i am, i uninstalled the program, went to adobe.com, followed the links to get to the installation of the free Adobe Reader and BAM!

they, oh so casually, invaded my privacy...

after clicking on the link to get to the installation files ("for MACs and Windows), the window came up with the "installation for your current OS" and there was the installation file for XP and no other link.

as far as i am concerned, once i buy a computer, it is my property and once i buy software, it too becomes my property. scanning my machine to find out what OS i am using (even for the simple marketing reason of making sure that i, as the customer, receive compatible software) without my permission is like someone walking into my house without my permission just to take a look at what i own - all they had to do was ask.

in the wake of Microsoft's announcement that running updates from their site scans your machine to find "legitimate" software and all of the issues with spyware, adware and pop-ups, you'd think companies would be more careful and that people would raise bigger stinks about these invasions. but there is a fine line between planning marketing strategies to outwit stupid people from sabotaging their own systems and trying to catch pirates. so fine, that most people hardly even bother to care.

in other circumstances, i would boycott Adobe products - however, pdf's happen (sad but true) and no one else has software to deal with them - and as far as image manipulation software, Adobe PhotoShop and Imaging are among the best. as for taking them to court, i'd not only lose because the scan really was innocuous, but i'm poor. sometimes i wish i knew hunter s. thompson - he'd be able to do something about this - but he shot himself - so i'm stuck ranting to you, my dear little fishies and maybe i'll write a letter (for what little good that may do).


ok - i'm done now. thanks for reading.

to recover, click on the link below and enjoy the shirts and sexy nerds:
http://www.nerdyshirts.com/