Phil Manser

An open letter to Adobe/Macromedia regarding their insipid and arcane product activation system. From: Someone who tried

Dear Anyone Who Cares,

I bought the Macromedia MX 2004 Suite a few years ago for Flash and Fireworks because I wanted to learn how use them. I ended up really liking them. I even liked (to a lesser extent) DreamWeaver. Hell, given time, I probably would’ve liked Freehand. But screw you. I’ve just sat through about an hour and half phone session in which I was passed between 5 different people who didn’t help me at all. Apparently, I’m Somebody Else’s Problem.

What was I trying to do? Just the right thing, according to your stupid licensing crap. I was attempting to transfer a license for the MX 2004 Suite from my Win to my Mac, but instead got passed around like a hot potato until some guy from India (not certain here) told me that the other four were wrong and I couldn’t do anything with my software except transfer it to another windoze machine. I don’t care who you hire for support, how about you just make sure they’ve all RTFM, alright?

What about me then? No doubt I am was one of the last few people that says said, “If I’m going to use software, I’ll buy a legal copy of it.” Well guess what? I see where my money is going and now, I’m not Somebody Else’s Problem. I’m yours. You’ll know where to find me.

Sincerely,

A Freed User

My current favorite song: Who needs sleep? - BareNaked Ladies

A note from the admin

What better use for a blog than using it to act as a mannequin of sorts while you fit it with different outfits? So in case this place looks a little weird and / or is changing every couple minutes or so, that’s why.

I think it’s extremely important to add my voice to the lot, so here it is. Big corporations want to take over the information superhighway for their own profit. I’ve added a little banner to my site which I hope will raise the din of our collective cries. Please, learn more about this issue, and write your representatives about it.

A great resource for more information is http://www.itsournet.org/

Well, that was interesting. I finally imported everything from my old blog engine’s database. It was a Textpattern blog, and fortunately there is a handy feature in wordpress automating much of the import. Unfortunately, this handled a bit haphazardly.

Note: This is where I begin my little rant about a feature and complain without really offering any solution. You may want to stop reading here.

It was nice that it imported everything in, but wait, it didn’t. For some reason, it didn’t bring in some of the hidden posts that I had. They may be hidden from the public, but I still want to keep them. Then, I realized that everything was in the textpattern markup. But the output html is actually stored in the textpattern database, why not import that?

Before any says it (not like I get any comments, or anything, but just in case) I know, maybe it was a new feature or someone forgot to implement it or blah, blah, blah. I’m just saying that it needs to be fixed. That’s all.