Post

Carl T. Bergstrom
@carlbergstrom.com

A hearty f*** you to Adobe for the platform-wide licensing system that makes it impossible for me to use both my university license to Acrobat Pro and my personal license to their Creative Suite at the same time. I remember when buying a software package meant you could use it, no bullshit.

Carl T. Bergstrom
@carlbergstrom.com

Getting this shit to work smoothly is like trying to get both sound and your printer working at the same time in Debian unstable in the 1990s. It shouldn't be like that.

5 reposts289 likes

Carl T. Bergstrom
@carlbergstrom.com

I've now spent over two hours on a Saturday afternoon trying to fill out the three different forms that the UW requires me to fill out before traveling overseas lest the state department get upset that I talked to a forn'er or something — and failed because of Adobe's licensing bollocks.

Carl T. Bergstrom
@carlbergstrom.com

My friends are all like "what's the obsession with fountain pens, dude?" My brothers and sisters in Christ you just pick them up and start writing without 2FA or *anything*!

Buck
@turbineseaplane.eurosky.social

(Person in the future, probably) “Wait, there were pens without biometric authentication on them!?” “Like… the Government won’t even know what you’re writing!?”

Bethankit Hums
@tangibullah.bsky.social

I remember once in one of those 400-seat exam rooms, one of the monitors stopped by my desk and said loudly, "Hey, this guy's using a fountain pen!" I'm sure I aced that exam too.

Rebekah Rogers
@evolscientist.bsky.social

And the number of times I've had Adobe fail because it couldn't get online while I was flying from one destination to another. I know they want to prevent counterfeiting, but it shouldn't leave the software bricked because wifi went down.

Alex Wellerstein
@wellerstein.bsky.social

FWIW, as a very heavy PDF user (OK I just checked and I have 16 PDFs open as I write this, which is normal) on a Mac, I have found PDF Expert to be a totally adequate replacement for Adobe Acrobat Pro, for at least what I use it for and care about. Their ed discount is significant, too.

Alex Wellerstein
@wellerstein.bsky.social

Unlike Adobe, if there is a bug, you can report it and get an e-mail back from a real person usually within a day or two, also. Very responsive Ukrainian company. Still some rough edges but again, a very capable replacement.

Alex Wellerstein
@wellerstein.bsky.social

I started using it 3 years ago when I hit my limit with Acrobat's bullshit, and have not ever felt the need to go back. As a historian, pretty much everything I need to read (articles, books, documents) is a PDF, so getting a reader/editor that I don't have to fight with was very important for me.

Alice Wonder
@genxjared.bsky.social

Oh, I think that was backwards. On 8-bit ISA, hard disk controller was IRQ 5 but got moved up in 16-bit ISA, allowing Sound Cards to then use IRQ 5 to avoid the parallel port conflict on 7.