Three software programs that [used to] plague our computers: Acrobat, Java, Flash

There used to be three programs that really made our computer miserable. They were slow, bloated, intrusive and a  lot of security holes opened with them when you installed.



Java - Probably Java is the nastiest of all

Until few years ago you could not browse some web sites because some derailed 'web developers' decided to put some 'cool' animations and menus on their web site that required Java, forcing YOU to install Java, this way.
Now, Java is a really intrusive mammoth that starts at computer start up, installs background services, make your browser literary crawl eating A LOT of memory and keep wasting your Internet bandwidth by checking and downloading updates. And boy, Java needs updates because every 3-4 days a MAJOR security hole was discovered! And every security hole in Java is a security hole in YOUR computer.

ACTUALLY, Java is so dangerous for your computer that "The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is advising people to temporarily disable the Java software on their computers to avoid potential attacks" floridatoday.com
It is so bad that Firefox won't even let you activate it.

I uninstalled Java maaaaany years ago from my computer and I vehemently refuse to install it. Not a single time! And many others like me have forced the web designer community not to use Java on their web site. Now probably less than 1 in 5000 web sites still have Java. So, you miss it a bit.



Acrobat Reader - Big deal for nothing

Adobe Acrobat Reader is basically a notepad. Its task should be to open a PDF file and show it on screen. It does this in such a bombastic way that 3 minutes later after Acrobat, but it is still crunching data, you forgot why you wanted to open that PDF anyway.

Same bubonic 'features' as Java: eats up lots or memory and disk space, invades you with background services, system tray icons and installs itself to run at computer start up.
Security wholes? Plenty.

Alternatives: Foxit PDF (once a decent and fast PDF viewer, now starting to step on exactly the same sick path as Acrobat Reader), Sumatra PDF. More about these Acrobat Reader alternatives.

And something else: Next time somebody sends you a PDF send him an email back and say "I politely request to send me the document as DOC or RTF. They are as good as PDF" then optionally sign: "Fuck you and best regards retard".



Adobe Flash Player

The Flash Player literary built and shaped the web as we know it. And this is not the web should be.
Firefox will also deactivate the Flash plugin when a MAJOR security whole is discovered. And boy, coming from Adobe, there are lots of those!

Flash is so wrong in every possible way: difficult to program, terribly slow (and I mean it), bulky and unsafe. But Adobe really pushed money into it so they managed to shovel it down to our throats. 

Alternatives: HTML5 - After all those years, the web community is finally coming to its senses trying to replace Flash with HTML 5, a major update of (too) old HTML. This change should have been done 25 years ago (which on Internet time-scale means 2 eons ago).

Most web sites already abandoned Flash and switched to HTML 5. So, it is not the time to turn off the Flash plugin in your browser and finally take a fresh breath of Flash-free Internet.

Also see "Flash is dying a death by 1,000 cuts, and that's a good thing" by TheGuardia.

Win7-Wrong folder permission

Under Win XP I never touched the permissions of a file/folder. I was happy with the way it worked. But recently, I have installed Windows 7 on a drive that previously hosted Windows XP (I installed Windows 7 on top of Win XP - XP is now gone). Now, some programs do not have 'read' and/or 'write' access to their own folders - and I am not talking about system folders like 'Program Files' but normal folders like 'C:\my data\my own folder\program folder'.
I see that for folders created under Win XP I have some user groups that do not exist for 'normal' folders (folders created by me recently under Windows 7).

For example, for the Win XP folder I have:
* Creator owner
* System
* Account unknown(S-1-5-21 blablabla...
* Admins
* Users

For Win7 folders I have:
* Authenticated users
* System
* Admins
* Users



Trying to delete the 'Account unknown' gives me:

Windows Security You can't remove Account Unknown(S-1-5-21-1220945662-706699826-839522115-1003) because this object is inheriting permissions from its parent. To remove Account Unknown(S-1-5-21-1220945662-706699826-839522115-1003), you must prevent this object from inheriting permissions. Turn off the option for inheriting permissions, and then try removing Account Unknown(S-1-5-21-1220945662-706699826-839522115-1003) again.

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To solve this:

Add a "Authenticated users" group to those folders. You can watch other Win 7 folders to see how the permissions are set to "Authenticated users" group. To add this group, just press the 'Add...' button and in the last box (the largest one) write "Authenticated users" (without quotes) then press "Check names" button. If everything is OK, the "Authenticated users" text will get underlined. Press OK and wait for Windows to apply the permissions.
Now you will be able to access the XP folders like any other regular Win 7 folder.

Solution 2:
I have found that some junk is left behind if you are using the first solution. More exactly you will see an account called 'Unknown user' appended to all yuour old folders. The best solution is to rename the current folder for example from 'MyData' to 'Old', make a new folder using the original name ('MyData') and move all content from the old folder ('Old') to the new folder ('MyData'). The new MyData folder will have the correct permissions applied to it.



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