[A Demon Llama!]

We have all the new - and pirated software - where I work. I don't know how a legit company that has 8 people using AutoCAD has only 1 license, from like 2010. Not to mention Windows most likely as well.

[Arthur Dayne]

A Demon Llama!, on 20 July 2015 - 10:29 PM, said:

We have all the new - and pirated software - where I work. I don't know how a legit company that has 8 people using AutoCAD has only 1 license, from like 2010. Not to mention Windows most likely as well.

The military licenses out corporate versions of certain software that really only has "one license" and it doesn't take multiple keys. Might possibly be this.

More on topic, I was watching the Anime Code Geass and a certain death towards the end of Season 2 really has me bent to the point where I almost didn't want to finish the thing. Now I have all these feels. It sucks.

This post has been edited by Arthur Dayne: 21 July 2015 - 01:59 PM

[QuickTidal]

For me it's Adobe. We have to send files to companies that haven't upgraded past the last two or three updates. They always ask me to save the files down so they can open them. I keep telling them that you can get massive text/font reflow and huge transparency issues (to say the least) when saving down. They think they are saving money by not upgrading with the rest of the world...until the first multi-million $ print job goes south on them because of issues with downsaving...then they would not have balked so hard at a grand/upgrade. Luckily, my company stays up to date...but the amount of companies I see who refuse to upgrade staggers me. I get that it's crappy to have to upgrade every year or so...but damn guys, it's worse for your files when you don't.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 21 July 2015 - 03:13 PM

[Illuyankas]

Near constant connection errors ever since we switched over to BT Infinity. We did a speed test just now and we're getting about 9-10 Mb/s downloads. We should be getting, and are paying for, 79-80. Understandably, we are not super happy with this.

[Gust Hubb]

I'd check to make sure Comcast doesn't own that company Ill.

[Studlock]

One of my brother good friends was murdered yesterday morning, found out last night, still reeling. He lived with our family for half a year when we were younger because he and his mom were having problems, he's been to jail for trafficking drugs, he wasn't necessarily a good person but he was trying to get his life together but its hard for ex-cons to be reintroduce back into society. I'm mostly hoping my brother doesn't do something stupid in his time of grief.

[Silencer]

QuickTidal, on 21 July 2015 - 03:13 PM, said:

For me it's Adobe. We have to send files to companies that haven't upgraded past the last two or three updates. They always ask me to save the files down so they can open them. I keep telling them that you can get massive text/font reflow and huge transparency issues (to say the least) when saving down. They think they are saving money by not upgrading with the rest of the world...until the first multi-million $ print job goes south on them because of issues with downsaving...then they would not have balked so hard at a grand/upgrade. Luckily, my company stays up to date...but the amount of companies I see who refuse to upgrade staggers me. I get that it's crappy to have to upgrade every year or so...but damn guys, it's worse for your files when you don't.

Yeah that's pretty annoying. Often you have to save excel and word docs in older formats too because of compatibility with previous versions.

That being said, I'm a bit more sympathetic when it comes to Adobe. Their prices may be more manageable for a company than an individual, but their updates never seem to do much and I suspect the problems you describe are slightly more than a necessary consequence of saving down. They have a similar business appearance to Microsoft - only they get away with it and have for decades. XD "pay us to upgrade or be obsolete" isn't the right way to do business... (that being said, I do appreciate that for some, the updates are useful, but that's a pretty narrow band of their client base...)

[Tsundoku]

@Studlock
Sorry to hear that mate. All you can do is just be there for your brother.

In other messed-groove news, the stepdaughter had a car accident tonight. Less than 2 weeks after getting her P plates.
She's OK, but I think the car is a write-off. My car - the white Mitsubishi Lancer that once had "MALAZAN" plates.

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 22 July 2015 - 11:04 AM

[QuickTidal]

Silencer, on 22 July 2015 - 07:28 AM, said:

QuickTidal, on 21 July 2015 - 03:13 PM, said:

For me it's Adobe. We have to send files to companies that haven't upgraded past the last two or three updates. They always ask me to save the files down so they can open them. I keep telling them that you can get massive text/font reflow and huge transparency issues (to say the least) when saving down. They think they are saving money by not upgrading with the rest of the world...until the first multi-million $ print job goes south on them because of issues with downsaving...then they would not have balked so hard at a grand/upgrade. Luckily, my company stays up to date...but the amount of companies I see who refuse to upgrade staggers me. I get that it's crappy to have to upgrade every year or so...but damn guys, it's worse for your files when you don't.

Yeah that's pretty annoying. Often you have to save excel and word docs in older formats too because of compatibility with previous versions.

That being said, I'm a bit more sympathetic when it comes to Adobe. Their prices may be more manageable for a company than an individual, but their updates never seem to do much and I suspect the problems you describe are slightly more than a necessary consequence of saving down. They have a similar business appearance to Microsoft - only they get away with it and have for decades. XD "pay us to upgrade or be obsolete" isn't the right way to do business... (that being said, I do appreciate that for some, the updates are useful, but that's a pretty narrow band of their client base...)

Indeed. It helps them to be pretty much the only game on the market for years now. I don't like it as a business model either...but when the other options are just so cruddy (Corel), there isn't much we can do. I maintain that if some young upstarts in Silicon Valley want to make a bajillion dollars, they ought to design a suite of similar programs, offer them at a less insane price, and make them compatible with the formats Adobe offers for ease of switching over. But no one does.

[amphibian]

There is some intellectual property issues with simply making a cheaper clone of Adobe's suite of programs.

I work in an industry where the entire Corel suite used to be the standard. Microsoft's suite and Adobe's suite have come to replace it. The engineers all hate, hate, hate the obsolescence of Corel and regularly wish it'd come roaring back because two doing the job of what one used to rubs their brains the wrong way.

[Andorion]

QuickTidal, on 22 July 2015 - 12:11 PM, said:

Silencer, on 22 July 2015 - 07:28 AM, said:

QuickTidal, on 21 July 2015 - 03:13 PM, said:

For me it's Adobe. We have to send files to companies that haven't upgraded past the last two or three updates. They always ask me to save the files down so they can open them. I keep telling them that you can get massive text/font reflow and huge transparency issues (to say the least) when saving down. They think they are saving money by not upgrading with the rest of the world...until the first multi-million $ print job goes south on them because of issues with downsaving...then they would not have balked so hard at a grand/upgrade. Luckily, my company stays up to date...but the amount of companies I see who refuse to upgrade staggers me. I get that it's crappy to have to upgrade every year or so...but damn guys, it's worse for your files when you don't.

Yeah that's pretty annoying. Often you have to save excel and word docs in older formats too because of compatibility with previous versions.

That being said, I'm a bit more sympathetic when it comes to Adobe. Their prices may be more manageable for a company than an individual, but their updates never seem to do much and I suspect the problems you describe are slightly more than a necessary consequence of saving down. They have a similar business appearance to Microsoft - only they get away with it and have for decades. XD "pay us to upgrade or be obsolete" isn't the right way to do business... (that being said, I do appreciate that for some, the updates are useful, but that's a pretty narrow band of their client base...)

Indeed. It helps them to be pretty much the only game on the market for years now. I don't like it as a business model either...but when the other options are just so cruddy (Corel), there isn't much we can do. I maintain that if some young upstarts in Silicon Valley want to make a bajillion dollars, they ought to design a suite of similar programs, offer them at a less insane price, and make them compatible with the formats Adobe offers for ease of switching over. But no one does.

Most of the free or open source or even slightly cheaper options are just not as good. For example I often use OpenOffice at home and while its good its not anywhere near as good as Word. But I ditched Adobe Reader long ago. Adove Reader X was this humongous slow dinosaur that ate RAM. I switched to Foxit which is free, has way more options in the free version and have never looked back.

[amphibian]

Foxit Phantom Reader is brilliant.

I paid for a copy to test it out for myself and it's so good, I'm planning on buying 10+ licenses when the small biz gets 10+ people (in a couple months).

[Gnaw]

QuickTidal, on 22 July 2015 - 12:11 PM, said:

Silencer, on 22 July 2015 - 07:28 AM, said:

QuickTidal, on 21 July 2015 - 03:13 PM, said:

For me it's Adobe. We have to send files to companies that haven't upgraded past the last two or three updates. They always ask me to save the files down so they can open them. I keep telling them that you can get massive text/font reflow and huge transparency issues (to say the least) when saving down. They think they are saving money by not upgrading with the rest of the world...until the first multi-million $ print job goes south on them because of issues with downsaving...then they would not have balked so hard at a grand/upgrade. Luckily, my company stays up to date...but the amount of companies I see who refuse to upgrade staggers me. I get that it's crappy to have to upgrade every year or so...but damn guys, it's worse for your files when you don't.

Yeah that's pretty annoying. Often you have to save excel and word docs in older formats too because of compatibility with previous versions.

That being said, I'm a bit more sympathetic when it comes to Adobe. Their prices may be more manageable for a company than an individual, but their updates never seem to do much and I suspect the problems you describe are slightly more than a necessary consequence of saving down. They have a similar business appearance to Microsoft - only they get away with it and have for decades. XD "pay us to upgrade or be obsolete" isn't the right way to do business... (that being said, I do appreciate that for some, the updates are useful, but that's a pretty narrow band of their client base...)

Indeed. It helps them to be pretty much the only game on the market for years now. I don't like it as a business model either...but when the other options are just so cruddy (Corel), there isn't much we can do. I maintain that if some young upstarts in Silicon Valley want to make a bajillion dollars, they ought to design a suite of similar programs, offer them at a less insane price, and make them compatible with the formats Adobe offers for ease of switching over. But no one does.

For those of you with OS X there's a pro level Adobe competitor again. Remember Serif? They brought out Affinity Designer last year and Affinity Photo just recently. Re-written from the ground up, powerful, and very reasonably priced. If they can get enough penetration to stay alive...

[worry]

Are you running these things in Safe Mode?

[amphibian]

Run the scan again. Once it reaches a full cycle and cleans stuff up, you're ok.

[Silencer]

You need to boot into safe mode. Otherwise you're just making life difficult for yourself.

When you start up your pc press and hold f8 *before* the windows screen starts up. This will boot you into safe mode/allow you to choose it in the advanced boot options.

When you do this, it will (should) prevent other programs from making changes. This is the environment you want to be running your anti-malware in, to prevent the malware from protecting itself/reinstalling itself, in layman's terms.

After you've run the tools a couple of times (for safety - sometimes they don't find everything/other problems because the first issue they find is masking them) you want to restart your pc, probably into 'safe mode with networking', and check if you get internet access that works.

Then reboot into normal windows and check if everything is ok. Make sure you don't do anything important for a day or so to make sure it doesn't come back.

Other thing you want to do is update/replace your antivirus program with something better. Before doing anything other than a quick check on the internet to see if it works after the safe mode stuff.

[Puck]

The next person to ask me when I plan to get married and produce offspring and THEN claiming I'll eventually mature enough to want to when I say 'Not at all.' or 'None of your business.' is going to get their eyes scratched out, I swear it. I respect everyone's decision to want/have a family but that does not figure on the list of things to do with my life, never has and higly likely never will. This condescending shit is annoying and I'm losing the will to even stay respectful to everyone who thinks their way of life is the absolute best evar.

/rant

[QuickTidal]

amphibian, on 22 July 2015 - 03:40 PM, said:

There is some intellectual property issues with simply making a cheaper clone of Adobe's suite of programs.

I work in an industry where the entire Corel suite used to be the standard. Microsoft's suite and Adobe's suite have come to replace it. The engineers all hate, hate, hate the obsolescence of Corel and regularly wish it'd come roaring back because two doing the job of what one used to rubs their brains the wrong way.

The issue with/and reason it flopped is that Corel tries to be both Photoshop and Illustrator and expects us to believe it's a layout program as well. It does none of these things well as a result. Corel as a corporation even decided that they were going to middle finger Adobe by initially making any PDF's saved out of Corel be monstrosities that gave ever piece of vector art multiple extra lines, and ALL black was 4-colour black (as Corel defaults the colour black to "auto" which is technically registration). Fixing these things so they print properly was a chore, and gods forbid you ever got a complex logo with a transparency, the way Corel handled it made it a rip killer. Then of course PDF became the de-facto "print-ready" format that replaced stuff like DCS or EPS, and Corel is left scrambling with a program that purposely screwed up PDF's...and sunk its own brand. So yeah the program was probably great in focused industries or areas (like autoCAD) that used it, but as the program it wanted to be? Not even close. The Adobe suite has always, always done it better.

As for engineers, Illustrator is far more exacting and flexible...I wonder why they liked Corel at all?

[QuickTidal]

Gnaw, on 23 July 2015 - 12:25 AM, said:

For those of you with OS X there's a pro level Adobe competitor again. Remember Serif? They brought out Affinity Designer last year and Affinity Photo just recently. Re-written from the ground up, powerful, and very reasonably priced. If they can get enough penetration to stay alive...

Cool, but the issue now is that the Adobe programs have come in a suite for years...so to get Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign...we have automatically paid for Acrobat Pro and get it as well.

[DeadHedge]

People who cannot communicate clearly are currently messing with my groove.

I have been asked to order a load of kit and materials for my works education centre, but I have 3 issues with it, 1) the person who has asked for it is on leave for 2 weeks, 2) parts of the order are so vague I'd need to consult Mystic Meg for the help and 3) I need to have all this ordered within the next 3 weeks.

Not fun at all.