JD on EP

... and a comment at a followup post at another blog, which also has not yet passed through their own moderation queue....

I left a comment over at the original blog 2pm Pacific today, but it still hasn't been approved for publishing.

There are various live-update mechanisms in Adobe Creative Suite -- if memory serves, both the documentation and functions like templates may check the Adobe site for updates. And adobe.com does use Omniture for site analytics.

I'd like to check with my partners for the definitive list of all auto-update mechanisms, and how to turn them off if you wish. I regret that I alone don't have the full story tonight myself, and can't think of a good search term to pull it from the docs or the technotes. I think it's benign though.

jd/adobe

(These folks are talking about others, and not hearing replies, and both of these weblogs also set a number of third-party cookies without notice.)

This is on a different subject entirely, but also at 2pm today I left a comment on this blog, wondering if he actually had a onetime crash with such a strange screen and asking for more info, but that comment also has not made it out of moderation, and I did not copy the text before hitting "Post".

John Gruber says "disgrace", but doesn't host replies.

Valleywag throws in a peripherally-related Devnet example, and requires membership for replies.

Well, bash and rumors are privileges of those who are successful. :) I see this more of a sign that Adobe is rising and shining. Take it easy.

I've been hitting the Digg citations with this text:

For more on the story, try here:
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd/archives/2007/12/republishing_co.cfm

jd/adobe

Good ol' Digg actually publishes comments! :)

And here's a spinoff from the Valleywag link, with no original reporting (such as looking around at Adobe blogs), but which actually did publish a reply!
http://blog.teqedge.com/2007/12/28/adobe-is-spying-on-creative-suite-3-users/

Techdirt reprinted Valleywag, but fortunately they permit open replies:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20071228/020818.shtml

(Techdirt also does not appear to set third-party cookies, which is welcome... the site does ping Google Analytics, which performs a role similar to Omniture.)

Another reply which does not appear to have gone through:

"The company could not be immediately reached for comment on Moren's findings."

That's true, Ed... holiday weeks it's hard to reach people.

But a little bit of searching might have revealed this, and subsequently that:
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd/archives/2007/12/republishing_co.cfm
http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2007/12/adobe_ate_me_ba.html

jd/adobe

Next morning: I checked BetaNews again and the comment still didn't go through... tried reposting it, and a new bit of UI told me that my name was already taken and I needed to guess a password. They should search before copying articles -- it's part of a reporter's job.

An interesting comment at one of the early republishers of this story. I don't know the full identity of "Todd", but I appreciate the case he makes. The info that he was also unpublished without explanation is worrying, considering how popular sites such as Daring Fireball and Valleywag don't seem to look around beyond a single source.

Submitted by Todd on December 28, 2007 - 11:06am.
Subject: It's just flash

here's a slightly expanded version of the comment I left on the authors site (which the author, Dan, has failed to approve even though he's posted stories since then):

It's just the welcome page, which has embedded flash, which, as another commenter on the story explained, uses 2o7 for flash usage statistics just like every flash app. Prove it to yourself, just check the "don't show again" on the welcome screen, quit, and restart. Boom, no Little Snitch alert for 2o7.

Much like the iPhone IMEI non-story put forward by this same site, uneasysilence, this story has been written with little research and with a trollish title so as to generate maximum digg and techmeme hits. I hope the Yahoo ads revenue is worth it for them. Personally I've lost a lot of respect for them, it used to be a better site before they started going for total diggbait.

It also looks like two attempts I made to post there finally both got through.... ;-)

It looks like my comment at the original weblog was finally approved for publishing, three days later.

If it had been published immediately, I wonder how much of the subsequent flameage would have been avoided?

I caught a comment at Center Networks via Twitter, but my reply is still in the moderation queue.

I didn't copy the message text before submitting, but in reply to an anonymous person who said someone else heard from some unnamed Adobe staffer about writing to boot records, I asked for source links, and provided a link to the Activation FAQ.

(There are other comments there which ask me, by name, to defend statements I didn't make... many other comments which speak before hearing... I'm not planning on addressing such digressions.)

Update: Eight hours later, and the reply is still not approved. That's not very open.

This article at Linux Journal came up in a search at Google News, but it's noise more than news... didn't even do a cursory read of comments there or info at other weblogs... if you're saying "Adobe is spying" but not even checking what staffers are saying over the holidays, then it's your right to do so, but it's more noise than news.