I started up my Windows XP operating system for some testing, Firefox updated and warned me to update my Adobe Flash immediately. Had their own splash page with the notification that "You should update Adobe Flash Player right now".
If you click it goes to Adobe's download page where it automatically has selected to download McAfee's virus tools. Unchecking that and continuing on (no, that isn't part of an update, thank-you-very-much) and then it requires that you install their plug-in to update. There are plenty of _older_ versions that linked directly to the download if any failures, but no longer; you can't download the installer directly from those pages.
So screw them; I've uninstalled Adobe's products (Flash, Macromedia, and Acrobat) from my MS Windows image. I still use a 3rd party PDF viewer.
The only thing I miss is I did like the Fligo screen saver that needed Flash. The rest of the websites, although they indicate they need Flash, really don't - most of the functions have been banner checks, Instant Messenger functions, or "you've got mail" notifications.
The only other site I use that might need it is YouTube, as the Firefox stable versions don't support HTML5 unless you use the nightlies (firefox-3.7a5pre.en-US.win32.zip), so I guess I'll get the nightly for use on YouTube, and keep the stable version for all my plug-ins.
I imagine Adobe is doing this for their best interest, but as and end-user, I say "screw you for screwing me". You should at least make the barrier to entry (that is, acquiring your software) as low as possible, if you want it used. Based on the hope that we don't need Flash in the near future, keep on pissing on your users, and we'll go on to something else.
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