Find Text Leading from Acrobat PDF
Ever have to recreate a document from an Acrobat PDF? You can find out most everything about the text by using the Object Inspector, except the leading. Well, here's a cheesy way to figure it out. Open the PDF in Illustrator (you just need one page). Release any and all clipping masks. Draw a guide at the baseline of the first line of text, and one on the line below. Now, Option-drag the first line to make a copy, and position it exactly next to the original first line at baseline. Then put a return anywhere in the copied line. Now adjust leading of the copied lines, so that the second line of copy rests on the baseline of the second line of the original. Now you know your leading.
Or you could buy expensive software to find the leading. Your choice.
Submitted by
Greg Ledger
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David Pogue's "Take Back the Beep" Campaign
Kudos to David Pogue for using his New York Times soapbox to point out how the cellular carriers are padding their profits by adding short messages to voicemail greetings, to instructions for listening to your own voicemail, and so on. Sure, it's only a few seconds, but when you multiply that by all the times you listen, it adds up. And when you multiply all the times it's heard by all the cellular subscribers in the country (and indeed in the world), you can see how increasing call time by just a little bit can result in real money - our money - for the carriers. (Also be sure to read his followup post.)
This isn't a conspiracy theory - cellular carrier executives have admitted this fact to Pogue. What can we do? Complain en masse. If the customer revolt is loud enough, perhaps the carriers will back down from these policies. Pogue assembled the following links to the four major U.S. carriers; I encourage you to complain to at least the one that's billing you each month.
- Verizon: Post a complaint here.
- AT&T: Send email to AT&T Customer Issues address.
- Sprint: Post a complaint here.
- T-Mobile: Post a complaint here.
At least the iPhone does away with the extra messages; according to Pogue, Apple insisted that AT&T drop the pre-beep message for those using the iPhone.
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You could say, "Hi, please press # to leave a message for Walt" if you wanted to make it easy for folks.
I'm glad that Jobs insisted on none of the crap messages for iPhones, but AT&T obviously factors it into their pricing and is a fine example of the cell providers treating their customer base exactly as economic theory of monopolists and oligopolists predict. THAT's something for the FCC to look into!
How to disable it (for Sprint customers):
1.Call Your Voicemail
2.At the menu, press 3 for Personal Options
3.Press 2 for Greeting
4.Press 1 to change the greeting.
5.To enable/disable the instructions, press 3
Comcast doesn't even provide a way to find out when the incoming call occurred.
Speak up if it annoys you!