[geeks] encrypted video cable?

[John Francini]

On 30 Oct 2006, at 13:36, velociraptor wrote:

> On 10/30/06, der Mouse <mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca> wrote:
>>> For a current look at that: did you guys know that many PDF files
>>> online cause your PDF viewer to phone home whenever you read the
>>> document?
>>
>> No, and I don't believe it, either.  If they do, I have a bug to
>> (report and) fix in GhostScript.
>>
>>> If you run Adobe Reader, the first thing you should do is...
>>
>> ...replace it with something that behaves civilizedly. :-~
>>
>> Contrary to what most PDF-providing sites would have you believe,  
>> Adobe
>> software is not necessary to read PDFs.
>
> The rendering of the OSS pdf viewers/printers is atrocious compared to
> Adobe's however.    I never really noticed this until I printed some
> things recently.  I don't know if this is an issue with all pdfs, or
> only with some.  I have not noticed the issue on the Mac.  However,
> their pdf rendering code is licensed from Adobe.  I wonder if Mac's
> preview "phones home"?

No, because it would then be doing so for everything it renders on  
the screen.  Part of the underlying Quartz display engine uses PDF  
rendering technology to render all displayed text.

You can verify this by getting a hold of "Little Snitch", a small app  
that will let you know when anything on your Mac tries to make a  
network connection.  It puts up a dialog to allow you to control  
whether or not the network connection will be allowed. It's available  
here:  <http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html>

John




>
> Adobe's software products have been phoning home for quite some  
> time...
>
> =Nadine=
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