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Adobe wants Ninite to stop rolling out crapware-free Flash

theregister.co.uk

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Re: Adobe wants Ninite to stop rolling out crapware-free Flash

#31

Post by webjprgm »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #10

This article is a bit... lacking. First off, the Flash updater on Windows works quite well on modern Windows systems. Second off, Ninite isn't just some good Samaritan, they're a for-profit company. Third, and related to the second, Ninite's updater costs $10 a year while Adobe Flash's built-in updater is free. They also have a Ninite Pro version that supports remote updates and installs and costs $240 to $2,220 per…

Ninite isn't an expensive paid Adobe Flash updater. It's a useful sysadmin tool for automating several painful processes. I think it should exist and other companies should not be able to bully them to shut down. As a consumer you can pay if you think Ninite's functionality is useful or not if you think it isn't.

On an ideological level, I would look at whether they are stealing content and reselling it or just automating something the user would do for him/herself. It sounds like automating to me.

I make scripts to automate my workflows all the time, including the flash installer. (Though I don't download it as part of the script, I have pre-downloaded it and put it in a folder to use. So I have to manually get the latest before I run the script on a batch of machines.)

Re: Adobe wants Ninite to stop rolling out crapware-free Flash

#32

Post by ChikkaChiChi »

protospork wrote: post #25
JohnTHaller wrote: post #10

This article is a bit... lacking. First off, the Flash updater on Windows works quite well on modern Windows systems. Second off, Ninite isn't just some good Samaritan, they're a for-profit company. Third, and related to the second, Ninite's updater costs $10 a year while Adobe Flash's built-in updater is free. They also have a Ninite Pro version that supports remote updates and installs and costs $240 to $2,220 per…

> First off, the Flash updater on Windows works quite well on modern Windows systems. Speak for yourself; I only ever see it on system startup. I only reboot once every few months (and it doesn't respond to waking up from standby), but there's a new Adobe security panic every two weeks or so, so that's not really acceptable. Plus it opens as a pop-under window for some reason, so I'm generally unaware of it until I'v…

Adobe lost any credibility in this argument when they 'accidentally' pushed out a Flash update that sideloaded McAfee.

Re: Adobe wants Ninite to stop rolling out crapware-free Flash

#33

Post by FreezerburnV »

zdw wrote: post #23
FreezerburnV wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a developer, I kind of take offense to the allegations of Java (and Flash as well, I suppose, it's supposed to be pretty good) being "crappy software". The JVM is actually a rather awesome piece of software which offers good performance and good garbage collection. And interesting new languages have been created and flourished on top of the JVM. (Scala, Clojure) Please know the difference between bad/customer unfr…

Take a look at the security record of both in browser plugin scenarios and get back to us on that... While Java admittedly has a solid underlying core, the criticism is for the entire platform, which has some significant problems, some technical, some security, and many organizational.

I'll definitely admit that the browser plugin is a piece of crap which should be moved away from. Sadly, there's still a ways to go for that as a number of countries use them pretty extensively. (bank interfaces are brought up a lot on HN) And yes, organizationally they definitely have some problems. The JVM has still been making progress though, with new garbage collectors and project lambda.

That said, I'm not sure what technical problems you're referring to. The JVM seems to work quite well on all platforms, even if it can be kinda clunky to program in Java at times. (which is part of the reason I mentioned other languages) And yes, I know the JVM is slow to start. It isn't designed for small scripts. Use Python or something else for that.

Re: Adobe wants Ninite to stop rolling out crapware-free Flash

#34

Post by pasbesoin »

protospork wrote: post #25
JohnTHaller wrote: post #10

This article is a bit... lacking. First off, the Flash updater on Windows works quite well on modern Windows systems. Second off, Ninite isn't just some good Samaritan, they're a for-profit company. Third, and related to the second, Ninite's updater costs $10 a year while Adobe Flash's built-in updater is free. They also have a Ninite Pro version that supports remote updates and installs and costs $240 to $2,220 per…

> First off, the Flash updater on Windows works quite well on modern Windows systems. Speak for yourself; I only ever see it on system startup. I only reboot once every few months (and it doesn't respond to waking up from standby), but there's a new Adobe security panic every two weeks or so, so that's not really acceptable. Plus it opens as a pop-under window for some reason, so I'm generally unaware of it until I'v…

I thought that Adobe's rolling out automatic updates for Flash Player might finally end my having to (endlessly) maintain it on my parents' computers. No dice... (It doesn't work -- at all, it often seems, or at least consistently nor in anything like a timely manner.)

After some horrible experiences with Adobe Support, I've decided that Adobe as a company is crapware. I am sorry for e.g. some of the engineering talent there that may be doing good work. But, they (you) seem to exist these days within a horrible company organization.

Re: Adobe wants Ninite to stop rolling out crapware-free Flash

#35

Post by GhotiFish »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #10

This article is a bit... lacking. First off, the Flash updater on Windows works quite well on modern Windows systems. Second off, Ninite isn't just some good Samaritan, they're a for-profit company. Third, and related to the second, Ninite's updater costs $10 a year while Adobe Flash's built-in updater is free. They also have a Ninite Pro version that supports remote updates and installs and costs $240 to $2,220 per…

You're right. With them being for profit, they have lost their credibility.

Frankly, just look at their website: https://ninite.com/updater/

  Aren't there other free updaters?
    Sure, but they don't work like Ninite Updater. With Ninite Updater it's one 
    step to download and install all your updates in the background at once.
Yup, This story is not black and white.

I'm actually on adobe's side.

Re: Adobe wants Ninite to stop rolling out crapware-free Flash

#36

Post by Nursie »

webjprgm wrote: post #29
amargulies wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I'm concerned, Ninite is the free market taking care of it.

Yup. And trying to shut it down is litigating, legislating, and dealing down to "no-real-competition".

So in your free market there is no copyright on software?

Re: Adobe wants Ninite to stop rolling out crapware-free Flash

#37

Post by Finster »

ChikkaChiChi wrote: post #30

Ninite was a godsend in the days before I moved our offices over to Chrome. It was the first tool that took the pain and suffering out of updating Reader, Flash, and Java without the worries of crapware ending up on workstations. Thanks to this move, I'll be banning the flash plugin outright. I hope that makes Adobe happy.

With Netflix moving to HTML5, and Youtube already supporting HTML5, there's fewer reasons to even bother with Flash or Silverlight plugins.

Re: Adobe wants Ninite to stop rolling out crapware-free Flash

#38

Post by TillE »

Already__Taken wrote: post #14
giulianob wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://chocolatey.org/ is starting to gain some traction for dev tools.

I would expect powershell access to the windows store might just kill this project over night. I kind of hope so actually, nice official repository system native from MS.

If by "kill overnight" you mean "partially replace over the next few years", yeah maybe. But there will always be plenty of apps not on the Windows Store for various reasons.

Re: Adobe wants Ninite to stop rolling out crapware-free Flash

#39

Post by Nursie »

digitalengineer wrote: post #18
beedogs wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consumer protection in the United States is basically nonexistent, so you'll unfortunately never see Adobe reprimanded for this sort of behavior. (I guess we can wait for the 'free market' to take care of it. Feh.)

A free market? I've heared whispers of those magical places, but I am yet to encounter one in real life. Seems everything and anything worth something in this world has already been regulated to "no-real-competition".

How has competing with flash been regulated to impossibility?

Re: Adobe wants Ninite to stop rolling out crapware-free Flash

#40

Post by kijin »

GhotiFish wrote: post #35
JohnTHaller wrote: post #10

This article is a bit... lacking. First off, the Flash updater on Windows works quite well on modern Windows systems. Second off, Ninite isn't just some good Samaritan, they're a for-profit company. Third, and related to the second, Ninite's updater costs $10 a year while Adobe Flash's built-in updater is free. They also have a Ninite Pro version that supports remote updates and installs and costs $240 to $2,220 per…

You're right. With them being for profit, they have lost their credibility. Frankly, just look at their website: https://ninite.com/updater/ Aren't there other free updaters? Sure, but they don't work like Ninite Updater. With Ninite Updater it's one step to download and install all your updates in the background at once. Yup, This story is not black and white. I'm actually on adobe's side.

What's wrong with being for-profit? People need to put food on their tables after all.
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