back to article Microsoft's Edge to flush Adobe Flash in Windows 10 Creator’s Update

Microsoft's signalled it will join the crackdown on Adobe Flash in the forthcoming Windows 10 Creator’s Update, which won't even bother loading the pesky plug-in whenever possible. For sites that rely on Adobe's hellspawn, Edge will go all Clippy on users and ask if they really want to run it or would rather fire it into the …

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  1. imanidiot Silver badge
    Coat

    Not possible to ban smoking in the office?

    "a bit like a smoker in a modern office: not illegal, not possible to ban, but fair game for shaming and exclusion"

    What kind of backwards country do you live in? Over here an employer can't discriminate against a smoker, but it's perfectly legal to ban him from smoking during working hours (only on breaks) and it's actually mandatory by law to have "smokers zones" away from the normal breakrooms for the smokers to use their drug of choice. And if there is one a smoker can be banned from smoking anywhere else. My choice would be to locate it as far away is possible and enforce the working/break times. Want to smoke, sure, but you'll be spending 5 minutes getting to the smokers booth and 5 minutes to get back, leaving you with barely time to smoke an aerosolised death stick.

    Hmmm, that is kind of what MS is doing to flash users now...

    Forget I said anything.

    1. big_D Silver badge

      Re: Not possible to ban smoking in the office?

      What I find really reprehensible is the practice of people smoking around the main entrance to a business.

      It doesn't provide a very good first impression for visitors, when the first thing they experience is a dozen people milling around outside the entrance and they have to walk through a thick cloud of smoke. Then you have all the discarded cigarette butts on the ground outside the entrance.

      Where I work, the smokers have a dedicated area outside the back of the building, where they cannot be seen by visitors.

      1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

        Re: Not possible to ban smoking in the office?

        I don't know what it is about smokers but most seem to think that littering isn't a problem and just throw their butts either wherever they happen to be at the time or into a nearby small area (often causing fires). Even if there's a bin within 10 paces.

        When it was more prevalent it used to annoy the crap out of me that I'd be working hard all day, taking what passed for a lunch break and other breaks yet many smokers would think nothing of standing outside 20m out of every hour. In the end I took to joining them - probably passive smoking myself to death a little bit...

        1. bombastic bob Silver badge
          Facepalm

          Re: Not possible to ban smoking in the office?

          "most seem to think that littering isn't a problem and just throw their butts either wherever they happen to be at the time or into a nearby small area"

          I think it's not "most", more like a small number of highly irritating and highly visible asshats. They justify polluting other people's air, and sometimes INSIST on their "rights" to do so at others' inconvenience, so why not throw trash wherever they 'feel' as well? It goes with that kind of thinking, after all, that it's ok to grossly inconvenience others, based on their personal feelings.

          yeah, the 'F' word 'Feel' again, at the root of it all...

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Not possible to ban smoking in the office?

        "What I find really reprehensible is the practice of people smoking around the main entrance to a business."

        You should see the entrances to some British hospitals.

        The sick and the recovering standing outside foyer in their hospital pyjamas and gowns, ciggie in one hand, the other holding onto their IV drip stand....

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Not possible to ban smoking in the office?

          >The sick and the recovering standing outside foyer in their hospital pyjamas and gowns, ciggie in one hand, the other holding onto their IV drip stand.

          Do more confused patients try and smoke the IV drip and mainline the ciggie ?

        2. Arthur the cat Silver badge

          Re: Not possible to ban smoking in the office?

          You should see the entrances to some British hospitals.

          The sick and the recovering standing outside foyer in their hospital pyjamas and gowns, ciggie in one hand, the other holding onto their IV drip stand.

          The local hospital used to be like that, now they've banned smoking anywhere on the hospital grounds, which are huge. The die-hard smokers now have to go to the adjacent bus station. Unsurprisingly, there are less of them than there used to be.

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Not possible to ban smoking in the office?

          Go to East Surrey Hospital. Right outside the entrance to the A&E department there is a big sign that says that the whole site is a non smoking site.

          There are ususally 1 or 2 people having a drag right by the sign oblibious to what it says.

          I wrote to the Chief Exec but they declined to reply. Perhaps they are a smoker?

          Posting AC as my mother is a (in)patient in the Hospital at the moment and wants to get out alive.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not possible to ban smoking in the office?

      I gave up smoking cigarettes as it's a totally unnecessary and smelly habit that will eventually get you one way or another. I applaud the bans in shared enclosed spaces and the de-normalisation as it made it (relatively) easier to give up.

      Non smokers, don't be too hard on smokers as they have been very magnanimous over the years in making sure you get a better pension and have paid lower taxes. Also don't forget they have been the victim of Big tobaccos sustained efforts to get you to smoke.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not possible to ban smoking in the office?

      As a smoker in Canada, my smoking section is probably a 150 feet from the building door, out in the parking lot, and tomorrow the wind chill is expected to be -35 C or colder or -31 F or colder.

      It's an indefensibly bad habit, addiction, so that's what I do. Tomorrow will take a little longer as the putting of snow pants on over work clothes and then the removal of same will be involved.

      I don't mind having to smoke outside away from the office door as no one, not even ME ;) , should be inflicting that dangerous substance on others.

      1. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Re: Not possible to ban smoking in the office?

        "no one, not even ME ;) , should be inflicting that dangerous substance on others"

        you have the right attitude. thank you.

        Would your company allow you to VAPE indoors? That seems to be a good solution in my view, as vaping doesn't cause the kinds of problems that smoke does for people around the person vaping; in fact, early studies showed it has NO effect! so there ya go, I'd be in favor of it.

    4. Hollerithevo

      Re: Not possible to ban smoking in the office?

      I've never understood why employees with a nicotine addiction get to use company time to indulge. Although another Commentard has said that we non-smokers benefit, because smokers take themselves out of the Pension pot, etc., I am not sure whether is is worth it when we non-smoker cover a good 1.5 2 hours every day for our colleagues out puffing in the alley. If nicotine addicts, why not other addicts? Let ole Lenny spend two hours in the pub every day or out in the alley taking a nip, or young Dave shooting up, or coming down from his high? I am all for helping people get to healthy lifestyles; I am not sure why we and our customers are paying for smokers to smoke.

      1. albaleo

        Re: Not possible to ban smoking in the office?

        I've never understood why employees with a nicotine addiction get to use company time to indulge.

        Because we're more productive that way. Gee. Is this the Daily Mail?

        1. imanidiot Silver badge

          Re: Not possible to ban smoking in the office?

          @Albaleo, No, you are definitely not. If you didn't smoke at all you'd be as effective as you are just after your siggy all day long, without needing to take that smoke break. The unfocused, tired, nervous feeling you get when you need your fix is the withdrawal from your drug of choice. If you weren't smoking you wouldn't get that.

          1. albaleo

            Re: Not possible to ban smoking in the office?

            If you didn't smoke at all you'd be as effective as you are just after your siggy all day long

            But then I'd be a non-smoker with all the attendant risks.

            I accept there are benefits. For example, better physical health and knowing what's good for other people.

      2. big_D Silver badge

        Re: Not possible to ban smoking in the office?

        Here, if you smoke, you have to clock out when you go outside for a cigarette and clock back in, when you are done. There is an extra electronic terminal for clocking in and out next to the door to the smoking area.

    5. Bob Dole (tm)
      Flame

      Re: Not possible to ban smoking in the office?

      We used to have smokers sitting near the doors even though it's illegal to smoke within something like 50 feet and there was a nice smokers area established with benches, etc.

      However, people got fed up with that. So the building I'm in decided to ban smoking everywhere on the property - it's a sizeable property. This includes the multiple parking garages. They even went so far as to say you aren't allowed to sit in your car and smoke. Failure for employers in the buildings to make sure their employees follow this will result in breach of the lease agreement and subsequent eviction...

      Yes, it can effectively be banned.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Just what will all those advertisers do...

    ....That have been using Flash cookies all this time, not cleared by usual Browser purging.... I wonder....(Jan 2017 deadline)

    1. macjules
      Facepalm

      Re: Just what will all those advertisers do...

      Poor VMWare. They spent one hell of a lot of cash on trying to perfect FlashPlayer before someone told them that they were trying to do the software equivalent of spraying perfume over untreated sewage.

      Now, if only someone would tell Comcast and Brightcove that their entire media admin UIs are about to blow up ...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Just what will all those advertisers do...

        But from what I understand their HTML5 client sucks just as hard as the old Flash one did.

  3. Dwarf

    Would you like to run malware.exe ?

    Whats the user going to do when they see the pop-up instead of their favourite web site ?

    Answers on a post card please ..

  4. big_D Silver badge

    Good riddance

    I banned Flash on my machines in January 2015. Since then, the first thing I do with all new installs is remove / disable Flash.

    I haven't missed it so far.

  5. Dave Harvey

    BBC take note

    Why is it that the BBC, which has perfectly good support for HTML5 for its videos "for mobile" still insists on using Flash on desktop browsers, forcing those who wish to use the HTML5 version to fiddle with user-agent strings to avoid the Flash version?

    I wonder if they'll be on the white list for flash? If not, and if there are others like them, then perhaps a similar "default list" of alternative user-agent strings, per web site, should be added to browsers alongside the flash ban in order to keep everyone happy without flash but with minimal disruption.

    1. shifty_powers

      Re: BBC take note

      Don't know what you are watching on iplayer but I can use the html5 player on 99% of videos. The only exceptions are the occasional live stream/video on BBC Sport these days.

      1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

        Re: BBC take note

        I'm opted in and running on an ARM-powered laptop and I *still* get messages telling me I need to go and find Flash, for *most* AV content on bbc.co.uk. Your mileage may vary, but mine's crap.

    2. Don Dumb

      Re: BBC take note

      @Dave Harvey - iPlayer hasn't needed Flash for over a year. The desktop news site hasn't seem to have needed it either for several months. I don't have flash installed and I seem to have been able to watch anything I've clicked on for a while now.

      What are you trying to watch on the BBC site that needs Flash? Is it older videos?

      1. Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge

        Re: BBC take note

        I think iPlayer uses Flash by default, and you need to opt in to get HTML5 content. I can't check the URL from work because of the Fun Police, but I think it's something like www.bbc.co.uk/html5

        1. Boothy

          Re: BBC take note

          The BBCs HTML5 support is still in beta, so it's opt-in currently.

          Although if you don't have Flash installed/enabled in your browser, it will automatically switch to HTML5 anyway, without the need to opt-in.

          As above, just go here to opt-in : http://www.bbc.co.uk/html5

          There are also lots of technical details and other info on that page.

      2. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

        Re: BBC take note

        about 50% of the news items with videos on the BBC (www.bbc.co.uk/news) needs flash.

        A PITA whare the A means Areseoles. Should have saved all that momey moving to Salford and fixed their website.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    “Sites that support HTML5 will default to a clean HTML5 experience"

    Which conveniently for advertisers can't be blocked and prevented from autoplaying.

    1. Version 1.0 Silver badge

      Whenever a site autoplays I exit - auto play is THE most annoying thing on websites these days.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Yep, when I meet some autoplaying advert yelling at me, it's getting IP-blocked. Nothing more annoying on the web.

      2. poohbear

        Closely followed up a pop-up modal dialogue begging you to subscribe to their 'newsletter'.

        1. JLV
          Unhappy

          Or installing their crap app if on iOS. Why Apple provides them with that hook eludes me. Just checked, at least Android doesn't do that.

    2. Boothy

      If your using Firefox, just go to about:config, then find media.autoplay.enabled, and double click to disable.

      If your a Chrome user, try this extension: Disable HTML5 Autoplay

      It's Open Source for those interested in the code on github.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Too bad it doesn't work and never has

        1. Dave 126 Silver badge

          Whilst we're at it, there is a Chrome setting that lets you mute the audio on individual tabs. Go to chrome://flags in a new tab. Search for the 'Enable tab audio muting UI control' flag.

        2. Dan 55 Silver badge

          I don't have autoplaying videos on Firefox Mobile, there's a setting which exposes the config name-value pair.

  7. chivo243 Silver badge
    Devil

    It looks like you're trying to run Flash: would you rather fire it into the heart of a star?

    Is this a rhetorical question?

  8. Kane
    Mushroom

    "It looks like you're trying to run Flash: would you rather fire it into the heart of a star?"

    No thanks, I wouldn't want to take the risk that the star would then collapse into itself, become a stellar black hole, and wipe out any potential for life forms to evolve in the local stellar environment.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "It looks like you're trying to run Flash: would you rather fire it into the heart of a star?"

      Yeah, I was worried to it could trigger a core dump or something alike, or allow some evil alien take control of the Sun with a ransomware. The mass of hidden bugs let free by fusion would risk to collapse anything, anyway.

  9. Tachikoma

    There will be exemptions for “the most popular sites which rely on Flash today”, so as not to displease users, but Microsoft isn't saying which users.

    My money is on porn.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Pr0n peddlers have the money to develop their sites to reach punters however, wherever.

      1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

        So have the BBC, but it hasn't helped.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    so much hatred for continuing smokers

    Lets be frank and admit that the hate smokers campaign was a lie, yes smoking is bad for you but where are all the benefit we were promised would come from the majority giving up?

    Tax has gone up on everything to maintain the goverment income that used to come from tobacco and the services the tax paid for have degraded rather than improved.

    Are people actually more health now then before? is the air we all have to breath actually cleaner and less toxic.

    When you look as obesity for example, only one of the things that have increased as smoking has decreased, is this actually cheaper for the NHS to deal with? certainly we have already started the lastest campaign of fatty hate, one wonders why you haters are so blind to divide and conquer techniques.

    In reality both obesity and smoking have exactly the same cause, namely advertisers and lobbiest. Both influence what is seen as acceptable, they turned followers of their last trend into pariahs and just walk away from the fact that they were the ones profitting from it's promotion in the first place.

    Now they tell us it is the victims fault? I would suggest that those that agree have been just as influenced by the manipulation as the ones they have been told to hate.

    If you really cannot live without hating to make yourself feel superior then try advertising and lobbying as a target, the spreading of hate and intolerance has IMHO more negative effect on society and health then smoking 20+ fags a day for life, atleast then you are only hurting yourself. Don't bother giving me the passive smoking arguement, the days where you were forced to be around smokers are gone.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: so much hatred for continuing smokers

      Quote: "Tax has gone up on everything to maintain the goverment income that used to come from tobacco...

      Erm, nope. The cost impact of smoking, outweighs the tax income generated by smokers, by quite a margin.

      A publication done back in 2010 estimated the cost to the UK of smoking, was just under £14 billion a year. The income from taxes at the same time was around £10 billion.

      So smoking has an overall cost per year for the country of ~£4 billion, or at least it did in 2010, probably a little less now.

      1. Dave 126 Silver badge

        Re: so much hatred for continuing smokers

        >A publication done back in 2010 estimated the cost to the UK of smoking, was just under £14 billion a year. The income from taxes at the same time was around £10 billion.

        I've just skimmed through, and nowhere does it include savings to the government by not having to fund the pension and social care costs of those smoker who die prematurely. I won't speculate as to how such figures would alter the final balance, but they are conspicuous by their absence.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: so much hatred for continuing smokers

        >Erm, nope. The cost impact of smoking, outweighs the tax income generated by smokers, by quite a margin.

        Doesn't factor the cost savings in respect of Social Care which isn't needed for dead smokers - bearing in mind it's not unusual for a single disabled elder to cost 60K a year and still have another 10 years of life expectancy. Fortunately, despite the cessation boon we've seen in recent years, UK mortality rates rose in 2014 & 2015 (almost 5%) for the first time since 1963 - NHS cuts finally paying dividends.

    2. Hollerithevo

      Re: so much hatred for continuing smokers

      Being impatient with people doing something bad to themselves isn't hatred.

      1. Infernoz Bronze badge
        Holmes

        Re: so much hatred for continuing smokers

        Flash stinks like fags and I can't see any site as professional which still uses it, there is no excuse!

        Anyhow back to this smokers tangent -

        My primary concern is the unhealthy and disgusting smelling, second hand tobacco smoke, including smokers breath, which can make common areas like public/business toilets stink horribly, even when they smoke outside... Also, I have distant, horrible memories of a cigar smoker in an open plan warehouse-like work place, it was incredibly vile; I really hope he is dead in a nasty area of hell!

        I also find neighbours who smoke outside offensive, because it can make it horrible at the front and back of my house, and significantly delay me ventilating my house in the evening after hot days; the same for damned fires/barbecues and WTF stinky junk they light them with.

        If Smokers can't manage going cold turkey yet, they could at least do better to themselves, and everyone else, by at using the less harmful and less offensive electronic cigs.

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