{"id":204,"date":"2010-11-24T22:38:27","date_gmt":"2010-11-25T06:38:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/?p=204"},"modified":"2011-09-12T03:50:08","modified_gmt":"2011-09-12T10:50:08","slug":"adobe-flash-installer-goofiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/archives\/2010\/11\/24\/adobe-flash-installer-goofiness\/","title":{"rendered":"Adobe Flash installer goofiness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In recent years, Adobe Flash has been a prime target for malicious hackers in which to find security exploits. (Don&#8217;t even get me started on the security vulnerability of the week in Adobe Reader.) Additionally, in the era of the zombie PC apocalypse, compromised computers hurt everybody.<\/p>\n<p><strong>It&#8217;s therefore crucial that users update Flash<\/strong> on their systems to patch known exploits, yet Adobe strangely makes it harder than necessary to update Flash.<\/p>\n<p>Upon booting my computer, an automatic Flash update tool notices that my installed version is out-of-date. (It&#8217;s no longer a good time to check for updates on boot; many people reboot very seldomly these days.)<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/images\/flash\/flash1.png\" alt=\"Installation prompt #1\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Clicking the &#8220;Install&#8221; button then shows:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/images\/flash\/flash2.png\" alt=\"Installation prompt #2\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This is even worse on Vista or Windows 7 since they will require an additional <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/User_Account_Control\" class=\"unemphasized\"><acronym title=\"User Account Control\">UAC<\/acronym><\/a> prompt. <strong>There are three prompts asking the user the same thing.<\/strong> When you ask someone a question, then ask again, &#8220;Are you sure?&#8221;, and yet again, &#8220;Are you <em>really<\/em> sure?&#8221;, some people are liable to change their minds.<\/p>\n<p>I admit it&#8217;s unfair for me to complain about the UAC prompt since that&#8217;s outside of Adobe&#8217;s control, but their own, second installation prompt is simply goofy.  Moreover, all the <acronym title=\"End User License Agreement\">EULA<\/acronym> nonsense gets in the way too.  <strong>They should avoid introducing reasons for people to change their mind.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Thankfully, it does seem that <a href=\"http:\/\/get.adobe.com\/flashplayer\/\" class=\"unemphasized\">Adobe again lets people download the Flash installer manually<\/a> without using their silly Adobe Download Manager browser plug-in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In recent years, Adobe Flash has been a prime target for malicious hackers in which to find security exploits. (Don&#8217;t even get me started on the security vulnerability of the week in Adobe Reader.) Additionally, in the era of the zombie PC apocalypse, compromised computers hurt everybody. It&#8217;s therefore crucial that users update Flash on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantsraves","category-usability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}