Free Republic

John Warnock, who invented the PDF and co-founded Adobe Systems, has died. He was 82. The Silicon Valley entrepreneur and computer scientist died Saturday surrounded by family, Adobe said in a statement. The company didn't give a cause of death or say where Warnock died.“John’s brilliance and innovations left an indelible mark on Adobe, the technology industry and the world,” Adobe said. Warnock worked for Xerox before he and colleague Charles Geschke created a company around a rejected idea in 1982. Nearly a decade later, Warnock outlined an early version of the Portable Document Format, or PDF, transforming the way...

The Schwarzenegger administration has decided those more lucrative safety retirement benefits that went to the politically influential California Union of Safety Employees will apply only from here on out. Union members will not receive richer safety retirement credit for service before July 1, 2004, when the new safety category went into effect. It was the right decision for taxpayers and fairness. It also was a big financial blow to individual retirees. Under the old retirement formula, a 55-year-old CAUSE union member with 30 years on the job could retire today with 60 percent of pay. If the new, richer formula...