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Adobe senior principal scientist Jim King recently posted an item on his blog introducing a paper he authored titled "On the Evolution of PDF." In that document, King discusses how Adobe Systems has worked to maintain the compatibility of their Portable Document Format (PDF) while continuing to enhance its capabilities.

King describes three types compatibility and how Adobe Systems has addressed these as PDF has evolved:

• Backward-compatibility, the ability of newer products to process older PDF files.
• Forward-compatibility, the ability of older products to "adequately" process newer PDF files (with the meaning of "adequately" subsequently explored).
• Feature-compatibility, the ability of products that purposefully lack support for certain features to adequately process PDF files that contain those features.
  

Features like backward compatibility -- which allows newer versions of the PDF viewers to read the earlier format -- are not surprising (although it is shocking how often software vendors are unable to achieve even this level of compatibility with their products).

More noteworthy is Adobe's attempt to attain forward compatibility in the Acrobat product line -- that is, the ability of the earlier Acrobat products to correctly process later modifications to the PDF format. As one might suspect, forward compatibility is, as King points out, "more difficult" than backward compatibility.

While this level of compatibility is not always attainable, a personal anecdote from the early days of PDF demonstrates that, at times, even this elusive goal can be accomplished.

In May 1994, I was a one of a group of representatives from higher education institutions participating in a series of customer advisory meetings focusing on Adobe's Acrobat products. Acrobat 1.0 had been launched the previous June. At the time of these meetings Acrobat 2.0 was in the works, although its public introduction was still four months away.

By the spring of 1994, the Wharton School and the University of Pennsylvania were working on an initiative to enable the distribution of PDF documents across campus. As part of this project, Acrobat Reader had been installed on all the computer lab stations and public-access computers across the University. Remember that Acrobat Reader 1.0 was not free. The retail list price was $50 per seat (dropping to $35 for quantities of 500 or more). In 1993, the Wharton School had purchased a number of licenses for Acrobat 1.0 at a substantial discount. Later, in 1994, Penn had struck a deal to deploy Reader University-wide at no additional cost. (For a look back at this project, see the 1994 Penn Printout article, "Acrobatic Network: PennNet, Acrobat, and the Web at Penn.")

This endeavor to make Acrobat a standard across campus was coming to fruition in the spring of 1994 when we met with Adobe Systems in Mountain View, CA for the briefings on Acrobat's future. Adobe representatives unveiled many of the new features that would be available in the Acrobat 2.0 product family, and we were informed that, beginning with Acrobat 2.0, the Reader would be "freely distributable" (although there appeared to be significant internal debate about the details of how this would work).

In addition, Rob Babcock, then Acrobat product manager, told us that the PDF format was changing from an ASCII (plain text) format to one that would, by default, include binary data.

Originally a PDF file was, by definition, a plain text file. On page 8 of the first edition of the Portable Document Format Reference Manual, published June 1993, it states: "A PDF file is a 7-bit ASCII file, which means PDF files use only the printable subset of the ASCII character set to describe documents -- even those with images and special characters." Then, in 1994, we were being told that, although the Acrobat creation tools could still generate the earlier ASCII format, by default the next generation of Acrobat products would save files in the newer binary format.

Upon hearing this, my first thought was, "Oh, no. We've just deployed Reader 1.0 on computers across campus, and now you're switching to a binary file format. We'll have to get all the schools at Penn and all the computer labs across the University to upgrade to Acrobat 2.0 or they won't be able to read the PDF files people will be creating." This was before the widespread adoption of centrally-managed imaging software for computer workstations. Given how decentralized the University was, this would have been a major undertaking.

Babcock calmly explained, "No, you won't have to do that. Acrobat Reader 1.0 will read the new binary format without a problem."

My initial reaction was: No, that can't be true. The earlier product -- which used, by definition, a plain text version of PDF -- could read the later, binary-encoded documents? That couldn't be right.

I had read enough of the PDF Reference Manual to have a basic understanding of the structure of a PDF file. As I pondered Babcock's assertion, my mind raced through what I knew about the internals of PDF. I then realized that Babcock's claim was, indeed, correct.

From its inception, PDF was, at least in part, a self-describing format. It specifies the filters used to encode its own data stream and, from the outset, Adobe's Acrobat viewers were designed to interpret a PDF file through these filters. By changing the filter used to decode its own data, Acrobat was able to switch from a pure ASCII file to binary-encoded format. Acrobat Reader 1.0 could read the binary files created by the forthcoming Acrobat 2.0 products.

This was my "a-ha" moment with PDF, the instant when I realized PDF was more than just its graphical abilities (impressive though these were). PDF was designed as a format that was not only expressive, but also durable. It was intended to be "future proof."

In the intervening years, PDF has held fast to that promise. While not all changes to PDF were able to incorporate this type of forward compatibility, backward compatibility has remained strong. I have PDF documents from circa 1993 that still render flawlessly in the Acrobat 9 viewers. In fact, due to improvements in Acrobat's font rendering technology, they look better than they did in the version of Acrobat with which they were created.

While some later additions to PDF -- such as embedded video and Flash SWF files -- cannot be accurately rendered by the earlier viewers, in most cases the features of a PDF document elegantly degrade in the earlier viewers. And, on some occasions -- like the introduction of binary encoding in 1994 -- Adobe's Acrobat products have even provided forward compatibility.

By and large, as enhancements have been added to PDF, the vision of a durable, robust format has been retained throughout the evolution of the Acrobat product line.

Adobe co-founder Chuck Geschke once observed that your organization's documents are more important than the software used to create them, and they need to outlive the computer platform on which they were generated. Thanks to PDF, they can.

As the old joke goes, everyone knew the floating crap game was crooked but played anyway -- because it was the only game in town. This came to mind with a Wall Street Journal report earlier this week that Sony Pictures has entered into a distribution agreement with kiosk video rental firm Redbox. In addition, according to an earlier report in the Journal, Walt Disney and Lions Gate Entertainment may have made similar deals with Redbox.

To date, most studios have not viewed Redbox as an ally. Universal Pictures sued to force the company to stop distributing its movies. The case is currently awaiting a ruling.

The issue, naturally, is over money. Mass distributors such as Blockbuster and Netflix pay the studios a percentage of their rental fees and, in return, receive bulk shipments of popular DVD titles directly from the studios. Redbox, on the other hand, buys from distributors such as Ingram Entertainment and only pays the purchase price of the DVDs.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal, the new arrangement with Sony allows Redbox to buy directly from the studio at a lower price than it would receive from distributors. The deal apparently does not include a revenue sharing arrangement. But it does, according to the article, require Redbox to destroy (rather than retain the rights to resell) the DVDs once they are removed from the rental service.

Although the pricing details weren't announced, it's unlikely that Redbox is receiving the same discounted rate as revenue sharing partners such as Blockbuster. Nonetheless, one suspects that companies like Blockbuster and Netflix will look askance at such an arrangement. When the time comes to renegotiate their contracts with Sony, expect these firms to come to the bargaining table with renewed demands.

For its part, Sony is trying to make the best of a bad situation. Despite the lack of revenue sharing, the arrangement with Redbox is an opportunity to eke out a little more profit from the declining DVD market. As revenues from physical media like DVDs continue to erode, deals like this may represent the only game in town.

In "The Hulu Effect at Fox TV? Less is More in TV Advertising" last December, I observed that Fox television appeared to be following the lead of online video services like Hulu in running fewer ads per show. By having shorter commercial breaks -- and communicating at the outset that the program would, for example, "return in 60 seconds" -- the network hoped viewers would sit through the ads rather than changing channels, zapping past the commercials, or just walking away.

Comcast, which along with Time Warner plans to go online with some of its cable programming, apparently has a different view. According to the Wall Street Journal, Comcast plans to include the same complement of ads online as when the programs are originally broadcast.

Andy Heller, vice chairman of Time Warner's Turner Broadcasting, is quoted as saying, "We spend billions of dollars buying and making these programs. And if we give this stuff to consumers for free with limited ads, it'll go away."

Television programs on Hulu, the free alternative to these cable-subscription services, typically contain less advertising than when they are shown on broadcast television. According to Jean-Paul Colaco, senior vice president of advertising at Hulu, the company has no immediate plans to change this scheme. The Journal states that "Mr. Colaco says Hulu's focus is on increasing the effectiveness of ads and the amount of revenue they produce, rather than increasing their number."

The issue, then, is one of quality versus quantity. If online commercials prove to be more effective than their broadcast counterparts, networks can run fewer ads per program. In theory this should be the case. Online ads can be targeted more narrowly and measured more accurately. And, of course, they can't be skipped over as can the ads in recorded TV programs. Because of this, as the Journal piece points out, web ads typically command higher advertising rates per view.

The networks and cable companies are reluctant to leave money on the table, however. They are concerned, in the now famous words of NBC Universal president and CEO Jeff Zucker, about "trading analog dollars for digital pennies."

While individual ad spots may command a higher CPM (cost per thousand views), the overall revenue-generating power of online content remains to be demonstrated. Until online programming can prove its ability to generate revenue on a par with conventional distribution methods, expect the traditional media to be reluctant to change the rules of the game as they move their content online.

As the oft-repeated story goes, in the latter half of the 1990s, Netscape co-founder Mark Andreessen boasted that Netscape would reduce Microsoft Windows to "a set of poorly debugged device drivers." What he meant, of course, was that software development would move from native operating system applications to the web. The web browser would become the new software platform and the underlying operating system would be relegated to providing basic services like device support.

Although Andreessen may have been overly optimistic about the time frame in which software would move from the desktop to the webtop, announcements this past week -- from two of computing's fiercest competitors -- may indicate we're finally on the verge of Andreessen's vision becoming reality.

On Friday, July 10, Microsoft launched version 3 of its Silverlight platform, Microsoft's answer to Adobe Systems' Flash. Like Flash, Silverlight is a browser-based plug-in for delivering high quality video and rich interactive applications over the web. Silverlight 3 includes, in the words of Microsoft corporate vice president Scott Guthrie, "a ton of new ... features" for software application development and enhanced user experience. Included in the list of the new capabilities available with Silverlight 3 is "out of browser support." With Silverlight 3, Microsoft joins Google's Gears, the Mozilla Project's Prism, and Adobe Systems' AIR in moving the web experience beyond the confines of the browser.

Earlier this week, Google announced -- or rather, released a few tantalizing hints about -- the company's planned Chrome Operating System. Although the details are scarce, Google's intent seems to be to revive Andreessen's aspiration of establishing the web browser as the locus of software development.

Despite all the press it generated, the basic architecture of Chrome OS doesn't seem particularly radical. Google's announcement states that the OS will be built on "Google Chrome [the company's web browser] running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel." Since you can already run Google's Chrome browser on the Linux operation system, one might wonder, "What's new here?" Google's answer lies in the next few sentences of the announcement:

For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

And there it is. Andreessen's dream: The web is the platform.

The list of partners Google announced as part of its Chrome OS initiative includes computer manufacturers Acer, ASUS, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, and Toshiba, along with semiconductor companies Texas Instruments and Freescale. In addition to these hardware vendors, the list of partners also includes Adobe Systems. What the two companies are working on is not stated, but Adobe's AIR currently brings web development to the desktop, and this may indicate how Google's aspirations differ from those of Microsoft.

Google's Gears, Mozilla's Prism and Microsoft's Silverlight are all closely bound to the capabilities of the browser -- adding features such as desktop shortcuts and local data storage to what are, essentially, browser-based applications. In contrast, Adobe's AIR allows developers to use web technologies to develop desktop applications -- with deeper integration with the local computer system -- yet with the ability to run on Windows, MacOS, and Linux operating systems.

The partnership between Adobe and Google may rest on this shared vision of software that is not bound to a particular operating system. When I spoke with Microsoft's Scott Guthrie a little over a year ago, he stated that he saw a clear differentiation between web applications and desktop software, stating: "I do see a sharper cut between what you do inside a browser and what you do inside a dedicated Windows or Mac application shell." Despite Microsoft's newly announced "out of browser" capability of Silverlight, Microsoft wants to maintain a distinction between the desktop and webtop. Adobe and Google, on the other hand, are interested in moving the line that separates the web and the desktop toward increasingly web-based software.

The history of computing is one of progressive abstraction. To program the first computers, you needed to toggle switches to enter programs in machine language. Assemblers eased the task by introducing mnemonic "opcodes." Later came higher level programming languages -- FORTRAN, PL/I, Pascal, and then object-oriented languages, extensive module libraries, and language frameworks. In parallel with these developments, operating systems grew from basic input/output systems to rich sets of application programming interfaces and system capabilities.

And now we may be on the verge of another leap in software abstraction, one which will combine the richness of traditional desktop applications with the ubiquity and platform independence of the web. To what extent this emerging webtop platform will complement traditional desktop software as Microsoft envisions, or begins to replace it as Google and Adobe contemplate, time will tell.

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"Little-Known Redbox Proves the Power of In-Between Technology" in the current issue of Fast Company describes the rapid rise of video rental kiosk vendor Redbox. As indicated by the title, the article underscores how Redbox has succeeded using "in-between" technology, focusing on what works now rather than chasing the latest vision of the high-tech future:

Ask any entertainment bigwig where the movie-rental business is going and you'll hear one thing: digital streaming. Amazon, Apple, Netflix, the cable companies, and many startups are gearing up to send every movie to your home on demand. But Hollywood's byzantine licensing structure precludes that from happening anytime soon. Redbox has positioned itself as the perfect in-between technology -- the next best thing to on demand.

To drive home the point, the author describes the Redbox kiosk as follows:

This sorry contraption doesn't run peer-to-peer software; it doesn't do Blu-ray; it won't stream anything straight to your house. It's a vending machine in a supermarket -- as old school as you can get without actually involving vacuum tubes.

One of Redbox's leading competitors is Netflix. The article cites a Hollywood Reporter article in which Netflix CEO Reed Hastings identifies Redbox as his company's "fastest-growing competitor" stating, "It's really scary."

For all the emphasis on Redbox's success as a transitional technology, the Fast Company piece fails to note that Netflix's current model also rests largely on "in-between" technology. Like Redbox, Netflix distributes physical media. Shipping DVDs through the U.S. Postal Service is hardly the epitome of high-tech.

Like Redbox, Netflix built a business based on the practical realities of the current technology environment. Both companies realize that while distributing physical media may seem antiquated to forward-looking futurists, it is an efficient method of distributing digital content.

It is surprising how often the drive toward the future blinds us to the value of these low-tech "in-between" solutions. As Andrew Tanenbaum observed back in 1996 when comparing computer networks to old-fashioned physical transportation of media, "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway."

But the future will ultimately arrive, and Netflix has cleverly positioning itself for that eventuality. While generating a steady revenue stream by embracing the old -- that is, currently practical -- technology, Netflix's "Watch Instantly" feature builds a bridge to the on-demand streaming future.

There are impediments that still need to be overcome, of course. We need more bandwidth and better video compression. We need an easy way to send streaming content to any screen in our homes. But the seeds of these capabilities are already being planted. For example, Netflix's streaming capabilities currently come bundled with selected Blu-ray players, game consoles, and large screen televisions.

On-demand will eventually overtake media-based distribution. When that happens, Netflix will be able to gracefully transition its business model -- and its paying customer base -- to the streaming future. The long-term outlook for Redbox is less clear.

Deciphering the Cosmic Number by Arthur I. Miller from University College London is an intriguing, yet occasionally frustrating, book that tackles a fascinating and complex subject. The book explores the personal and professional relationship between physicist Wolfgang Pauli and psychologist Carl Jung during the first half of the 20th century. In doing so, it examines the origins of scientific discovery and the nature of reality.

In the early twentieth century physics had become increasingly detached from what most of us think of as the "real world." The subatomic particles described by quantum physics exist beyond our direct perception -- their nature can only be inferred as a side effect of their behavior. And their observed behavior was increasingly bewildering, even contradictory.

With his famous "uncertainty principle" Werner Heisenberg demonstrated that we can never know both the position and the momentum of a subatomic particle beyond a certain degree of accuracy. An elementary particle such as a photon or an electron behaves both as a discrete particle and as a wave of energy. It was difficult to imagine. As Heisenberg wrote to Pauli in 1926, "What the words 'wave' or 'particle' mean we know not any more; [we are in a] state of almost complete despair." Scientists debated whether a mental model of the world of quantum events was even possible.

Pauli found in Jung's theories of the psyche a way to reconcile the worlds of science and intuition, of mathematical rationality and intuitive understanding.

Pauli originally sought out Jung as a therapist to address his personal problems -- his self despair, his drinking and carousing, and the tragedy of his mother's suicide following his father's abandonment of the family for another woman.

But long after the psychological counseling concluded, Pauli stayed in contact with Jung. He saw in Jung's theories -- such as "synchronicity," the connectedness of random and yet meaningful events -- a way to comprehend the increasingly bizarre world of quantum physics.

Although well-researched and copiously annotated, Deciphering the Cosmic Number is, at times, desultory and confusing. The chronology of the narrative is occasionally jumbled. Although some of this is to be expected from a dual biography, the book jumps around more than is necessary, even within the narrative of one of its subjects.

The text occasionally struggles to explain its difficult scientific theories clearly (admittedly a challenging task given the complexity of these ideas). You may find yourself turning to Wikipedia or elsewhere for more lucid explanations of some of the concepts described in the book.

In other instances, details are glossed over. After explaining Jung's concepts of introversion and extroversion, Miller correctly observes that "Jung was the first to coin these two terms, which have since become common currency." True enough, but it is worth noting that the way these terms are commonly used differs from Jung's definition. Jung's personality traits focused on whether the individual gives primary value to external sensations or internal experience -- which is different from common parlance which uses these terms as synonyms for being outgoing or shy. There exist, for example, shy extroverts.

Miller explores at some length the contrasting world views of the late Renaissance thinkers Johannes Kepler and Robert Fludd. Kepler's work, although rife with astrological, alchemical, and mystical allusions, relied on mathematics as its foundation. Fludd's views were based largely on his mystical and spiritual insights. Fludd preferred to demonstrate his ideas using pictures rather than mathematics, and condemned Kepler as a "vulgar mathematician" who relied on "quantitative shadows."

In Jung's categorization of personality types, Pauli found a model for the differing views of Kepler and Fludd. Miller writes:

Pauli recognized Kepler and Fludd as opposing psychological types -- Kepler the thinking type and Fludd the feeling type. Thus his knowledge of Jungian psychology had revealed to him the limitations of modern science.

Elsewhere, however, opportunities to explain the often divergent views of modern science in Jungian terms are left unexplored.

For example, at an early age, Pauli is intrigued by the ideas of his godfather, positivist Ernst Mach. As Miller explains:

As a boy [Pauli] was spellbound by the scientific equipment in Mach's apartment. Its ultimate purpose, said Mach, was to eliminate unreliable thinking -- to demonstrate that the only thing that was really out there was what you can experience with your senses. The rest was all metaphysics -- quite literally beyond physics and not worth considering, mere illusion.

With the unfolding of relativity theory and quantum physics in the twentieth century, science was increasingly concerned with events beyond direct perception. Miller describes Pauli's puzzlement over this as follows:

Atoms could not be experienced with the senses. Did that mean they were merely "metaphysical" in Mach's pejorative sense? Were they not part of the elaborate scientific theories which made predictions that could be proved in the laboratory? ... The message of relativity theory seemed to be that scientists should look beyond what was immediately perceptible by the senses.

This divergence of viewpoints can also be viewed in terms of Jungian personality types, with Mach the "sensation" type Pauli the "intuition" type. Yet this point is never raised (perhaps because Pauli himself never reached this conclusion).

The "mystical" or "cosmic" number 137 that forms the book's title and is the focus of its final chapter refers to the fine structure constant of atomic spectra. This discussion, however, comes across as more of a diversion than a unifying theme of the book. The lists of coincidences of Kabbalistic words and torturous interpretations of equations that can produce 137 are particularly vexing. It's hard to fathom the relevance of the fact that 8π(8π⁵/15)^1/3 happens to be 137.348. Or why it matters that 10^{82943.99629/(32x666)}/666 = √137.

Furthermore, it turns out that the pattern of spectral lines that gave rise to interest in the number 137 isn't actually 1/137 as originally believed. This fraction is only an approximation of the actual sequence of lines (which, we learn, is closer to 1/137.035999084). As Miller himself states, after many more examples of calculations that yield results containing the number 137, "Sadly, all these are pure coincidence with no scientific basis."

Miller may have been drawn to using this device to frame his tale because Pauli died in room 137 of the Red Cross Hospital in Zurich. This coincidence (or would Jung and Pauli have seen it as synchronicity?) may have been too tantalizing to resist using as a literary device to shape the book's narrative. However, Pauli's puzzlement over the appearance of this ratio in nature seems like a tangential detour from the book's main theme of the blending of science and psychology in the first half of the twentieth century.

Despite these shortcomings, the book addresses an important topic in the history of scientific discovery -- the conflict between rationality and intuition, scientific reason and mystical insight.

We naturally look at history through the filter of the present. We study scientific advancement by looking back at the trail that led to our current beliefs. In doing so, we tend to emphasize the "scientifically correct" and ignore all else.

Yet the path to modern science travels through religion and mysticism. School children learn of Pythagoras because of his geometric theorems. His mystical ideas about numbers, the music of the spheres, and the reincarnation of the soul after death are not as emphasized. We often see Copernicus as an early rationalist because his views of a sun-centered universe were considered heresy by the Church. But for Copernicus, placing the sun at the center of the world mirrored his view of an all-seeing God at the center of creation.

Even though based on scientific analysis and quantitative data, the insights of scientists and philosophers nonetheless spring from their psyches. Pauli found in Jung's psychology a way to unite the disparate worlds of rationality and intuition, of science and mysticism, of Kepler and Fludd. As Miller states, "Pauli's focus was the process of scientific theory and particularly its irrational side. Though scientific theories are expressed in mathematical terms, the initial discovery of the theory is essentially an irrational -- not a rational -- process."

The book is a valuable addition to the history of science and psychology for those fascinated by these topics, but its occasionally opaque explanations and disjointed chronologies may be of little interest to the casual reader.

In today's Adobe Systems Q2 earnings call, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said that Adobe is seeing "tremendous adoption" of Flash across not just PCs, but all kinds of devices.

Narayen stated that Adobe has ported Flash Player 10 to multiple smartphone platforms, including Google's Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and Palm WebOS. A beta release of Flash Player 10 for smartphone platforms will be available to developers at Adobe's MAX conference this October.

In response to a question specifically about the Apple iPhone, Narayen declared that Adobe is "absolutely committed" to bringing Flash to the iPhone but went on to state, "We need more APIs and cooperation to bring the capabilities of Flash to the iPhone."

"We think it is in Apple and Adobe's best interest" to make Flash available on the iPhone Narayen stated, adding "We are constantly reaching out to them."

Updated 8:52 PM to add links and make minor corrections to quotes based on audio released by Adobe from the session.