Adobe did not “disable” Flash. The browser developers did. All Adobe did was stop updating it and stop making it available for download.
The reason it’s not running for you using your current browser isn’t because Adobe quit supporting Flash, it’s because the browser installed on your computer will not run Flash apps. That was a choice made by Google, Microsoft, Apple, and any of the other browser developers out there. You want to access the security camera with a web browser, you’re going to need to find a way to install a version that is pre-2020 and never, ever update it. Better yet, contact the manufacturer of the security camera and get them to upgrade their app, since its sudden lack of reliability is what made you try to access via the web UI.
Flash had dozens of security holes that couldn’t be fixed. That was why the browser developers decided to stop building it into their software and since Flash mostly required browsers to be run in, there was no point to Adobe continuing to support it.
Adobe gave 2.5 YEARS of warning. It’s not their fault you weren’t aware that you needed Flash to use the web UI for your camera.
The remainder remains true, though. The latest browsers don’t even have the capability of running Flash. Assuming you can find a version of a browser old enough that the plugin is still available, it might work because it wouldn’t have the kill switch in it. But you’ll have to find something from 2018 or 2019 at the absolute latest, and I’m not sanguine that this is possible.
The word was there. Just no one took the responsibility to do something about it. As many of the training packages were scheduled to be updated, it should not have been a problem. However, deadlines slip. So, instead of having one standard training, everyone’s making their own.
Outsourcing the IT department didn’t help. That’s continuing to be a mess.
Which brings up another rant. If person A created something, and they retired 8 years ago, shouldn’t someone else be made responsible for maintaining it? It’s not enough to create something, it has to be maintained.
This is a very common issue where I work (and, I assume, most other workplaces). When someone leaves their role there should always be a proper handover of all their responsibilities - which ideally are already documented. Of course this rarely happens, with the inevitable result that issues like this come out of the woodwork months or years later, when it’s far too late to sort out.
Not my job, but a story from where my brother works. It’s a produce distribution company. They just implemented an entirely new ordering/shipping/tracking system. It crashed completely after 2 days. Supposedly it had been tested for 6 months. The company has had to throw away millions of dollars worth of produce because they couldn’t ship it before it went bad. 3 weeks later and they have it barely hobbling along. A bunch of people have been laid off because of all the business they lost. He’s looking for a new job since he doesn’t think the company will survive at all.
Working for a design agency that kept landing new industrial accounts, I got stuck being the guy who had to meet with the old-school engineers and get all their by-now-vintage materials.
Because they’d say “We need a dozen new Material Qualification Packets designed and printed up, and they need to look just like the ones we’ve done for decades.”
“Okay, then we’ll need these twenty photos of the equipment, and the aerial shots of each plant.”
“We figured you could just take those off our web site…”
(cue explanation of why a ONE INCH photo at 72 pixels per inch will not work at 6 to 8" wide, 300 ppi).
“Wellll, you’d need to get those from Ed.”
“Okay…” “But Ed left a year ago…”
“And he has all your photos?” “Wellll, we’re really hopin’ so. If he doesn’t, no one does.”
My workspace is in a distressingly public area of the house. My husband wanders in, stares at me with goo-goo eyes and for some reason the whole damn family gathers around my desk to chat, absently looking over my shoulder and asking questions about my work while I’m trying to do it.
I respectfully request that you all fuck off during work hours. Everyone wonders why I don’t magically relax after work…this is why. Because I feel trapped in a room with others smothering me, talking to me, and if it’s my husband, randomly grabbing my ass, rubbing my back, gazing at me with a dopey smitten look on his face that would be totally cool if I weren’t…I don’t know…trying to fucking work. Then everyone’s feelings get hurt if I get annoyed.
For a while I had a do not disturb sign I’d hang on my computer when I needed to be left alone. But my husband ignored it so many times the kids stopped heeding it, too, so now I have to hide in the bedroom when I need to have a private conversation.
Edited to add that I’d work in the bedroom if possible, but it’s not nearly big enough for my setup.
The bigger picture is that many companies treat their employees like interchangable cogs, whose only value to the company is the daily production the churn out. One Ed-cog leaves? Who cares, just replace him with another worker widget.
Trouble is, employees are not cogs, and they contain valuable institutional knowledge, and in rare cases dare I say “wisdom”.
So when worker Ed-cog walks out the door because he was treated like shit, or not compensated enough, or got tired of being treated like a dispensable worker-unit? The company loses. Sometimes they lose a little, sometimes a lot, leading to Bad Things. But the companies rarely, if ever figure this out.
I can’t decide if the production supervisor genuinely forgot his past conversation with the paint manufacturer and was just making shit up, or if he was trying to gaslight me by claiming repeatedly during a meeting that the paint manufacturer had stated the product I specified for a project had been discontinued. He had previously told me – and shown me an email as proof – that the manufacturer was merely concerned about the product, and thought another would be a much better choice. (I didn’t have a say in the matter; the customer has demanded this one product.) At his insistence, I sent a copy of the proposed replacement to the customer; I had a response in less than five minutes telling me to stick with their original requirements.
I had to put my setup in the living room due to a combination of equipment limitations (my work computer needs a wired internet connection) and space (Mom had decided to tidy her closet by emptying its contents into the spare bedroom). This generally works fine, since Mom is the only other person in the house, but for some reason she feels compelled to watch her soap opera on the TV in the living room, despite there being a much nicer TV upstairs.
I hate work Zoom parties. I’d rather watch Dr. Phil. We always do a scavenger hunt, which is not fun, because one of my coworkers practices for these scavenger hunts, and she must have a pile of everything next to her desk, because she usually pops up with the thing immediately. That’s just not fun.
I have to use Adobe Creative Cloud a lot. I just upgraded to Big Sur, and now InDesign is broken. I added a new page, and now I have a spread that has loner pages that are off by themselves, not with the pages that should be in the spread with them. (A spread is two pages side by side, so they’re facing pages when the document is printed) This is really bizarre. I’ve looked online and contacted Adobe support, but haven’t found any way to fix it. I’m old enough to remember when Adobe products were mind-blowingly good, so this makes me really sad.
People who email me, then IM me immediately after need to go to hell. Especially when those emails are sent only as an FYI. An exchange I just had a few minutes ago:
Employee: “Overly, I sent you an email.”
Me: “Okay. Thanks. Do you need me to look at it now?”
Employee: “No, it’s an FYI. Let me know if you have questions.”
Me: “I will. Thanks.”
Employee: “So do you have questions?”
Me: “Not yet - you said you didn’t need an immediate response?”
Employee: “No, just wanted to know if you have questions.”
Me: “Alright, appreciate it.”
Employee: “When do you think you’ll read it?”
Here’s a decision tree: Is the building burning down? If yes, get yourself and your children to safety and call me so I know you’re okay. If no, find something to do. Now that you’ve found something to do, is what you are communicating to me a problem or related to the deliverable I asked you for a month ago? If a problem or something outstanding for me, expect an answer in about an hour. If no, is this an urgent new deliverable that requires immediate attention or is it a less urgent deliverable or FYI? If an urgent new deliverable, IM me and I will look as soon as possible. If not, or this is an FYI, kindly fuck off for a bit and I will respond to your request when I am able to do so. Hugs & kisses, overly.
I’ve just reached my limit with Adobe. I can’t deal with it. When I ungroup, the ungrounded objects move to a different layer. I moved the to a different layer so I could keep them separate from the objects on the other layer. Do they not realize that a lot of people are using their products for work? I need to be productive, and I can’t do that when every update is worse than the last. It’s either broken or they remove useful features and add in features no one wants that slow things down and use more memory.
Sigh… I remember when Adobe products were mind-blowingly good AND mind-blowingly simple. Buy the disks, OWN that version with no monthly “dues”, and keep that version for a decade because it WORKS. And stay on the same Operating System for a decade, too.
To this day, every time I save a file, I make sure it’s backwards-compatible with the last version that I OWN, because I swear, one o’ these days, Alice… I’m cutting that money-sucking umbilical cord and going old school.
Well, today was our big meeting (over lunch that she’d twice promised to buy). Even though she’d been begging for help, and I’ve put in a couple of hours for free… she didn’t show.
I called and she said “Oh, I’m home, moving things around my garage. But I could still do lunch maybe… later?”
I said the rest of my day was full (total lie, but I was pissed), and that all I’d be willing to do is to give some free advice on her project…
(“But I was thinking of it as OUR project…” “No, it’s now YOUR project.”) That felt liberating.
I remember when I posted this in 2019. Then we all got laid off and I had to take a job at a startup.
So instead of downloading time entry data for my projects out of OpenAir whenever I needed it, I had to wait for our Resource Manager to send me a spreadsheet once a month. So…progress
I’d rather watch Dr. Phil. We always do a scavenger hunt, which is not fun, because one of my coworkers practices for these scavenger hunts, and she must have a pile of everything next to her desk, because she usually pops up with the thing immediately. That’s just not fun.
I’m old enough to remember when Adobe products were mind-blowingly good, so this makes me really sad.