Please stop embedding Reader in my browsers; it’s a horribly bloated application that renders PDF files a dozen times more slowly than Preview.app, and frequently manages to peg the CPU and lock up my browser while failing to render a document.

When Adobe released the CS suite, they added a revision control system called Version Cue. I had mixed feelings about it, but at least it was off by default.

When they released the CS2 suite, they turned it on by default, without any regard for security. I was less than thrilled:

The only nice thing I can say about it is that it doesn’t add a new rule to the built-in Mac OS X firewall to open up the ports it uses.

Care to guess what CS3 does? If you guessed “adds a new firewall rule”, you’d only be half right. It adds a new firewall rule, and then turns off the firewall. That part’s a mistake, obviously, but silently modifying your firewall settings to turn on an unsecured file server is unforgivable.

[Update: Adobe acknowledges their mistake in turning off the firewall, but does not apologize for silently turning your machine into a server and sharing your documents]

Harry Dresden is a rather unconventional wizard, in a rather decent set of urban fantasy/detective novels. He has no significant connection to Japan, and indeed his magic is very strongly Western in origin.

So where did the glowing runes on his staff come from?

The paperback edition of Dead Beat doesn’t seem to name the cover artist anywhere, but whoever it was decided that the English loanword マトリックス (“matrix”) made a dandy set of runes.

[oh, and I just noticed that Amazon has a new “Amapedia” site…]

This is a remarkably useful gadget that’s paid for itself several times in the past month. What it does: connect an IDE or SATA drive via USB2 without putting it in an enclosure. It’s faster to work with the bare drive when you just need to grab some data from a failed machine or scrub a disk before reuse or service.

The Microsoft Basic Mouse is USB.

The Microsoft Basic Keyboard is PS/2.

This is not obvious in certain online stores, and is a damn nuisance when you buy machines that have no PS/2 ports.

Usually when you buy a luxury item for half the usual price, there’s a good chance it’s a knockoff or a scam. So, when someone starts selling large quantities of $3,000 poodles for half price, what are you really getting?

In Japan, you get sheep.

The sad thing is that thousands of buyers were fleeced before a celebrity brought her new dog on TV and wondered why it didn’t bark or eat dog food.

[update: hoax/joke/tabloid nonsense]

…shot down by a definitive quote. In Hand Maid May, the genius cyberdoll who applies rigorous logic to all actions (including how much salt to add while cooking) is named Kei, and unlike the title character, gets a -san from everyone. Kei-san = 計算 = “calculation”.

Except the creator came right out and said that she was named after Robot Detective K, who isn’t nearly as photogenic.

He also said that May comes from maid, Mami from mommy, Sara from The Terminator’s Sarah Connor, and Rena from actress Rena Tanaka (This one, not this one).

[…and on an unrelated note, I had no idea that someone was planning a TV spinoff of The Terminator, called The Sarah Connor Chronicles.]

…dogs are howling in pain from the sound of her voice.

Kusumi Koharu can’t sing. Here’s proof. There’s plenty more where that came from, but it should be watched with the sound off, because while she’s a really, really cute teenage girl who can bounce around cheerfully with the other girls in Morning Musume, she’s painful to listen to.

It’s not that all of the other girls in the Hello!Project empire were chosen for their vocal talent; the majority will never “graduate” to a solo career, and you’ll only hear them solo individual lines in a group performance (sorry, Tsuji, but with Kago‘s permanent departure from the organization, your career is screwed). It’s just that Koharu stands out for pushing the cute/voiceless trend to a new extreme.

Although from the audition video, at least one of the two Chinese girls who were just added to the group might actually be a worse singer…

[oh, and the ED from her anime is sung by another H!P group, °C-ute, some of whose members will eventually become teenagers…]