Java 7.10 Plugin blocked on Mac

General Discussions
#31

@princec Bank security is actually pretty terrible. When it is the banks fault, they often put money back in the effected individuals’ accounts without telling them the were a victim of hacking or social engineering. They prefer to keep customers in the dark because replacing the damages is more profitable than preventing them.

@Mads They should open source the software so that people do not need to run it in a browser.

@ Alan_W But Apple is so secure! Why would a computer with the same security mechanisms (or worse) of Windows and Linux and featuring such stylish rounded corners ever have to worry about malware?

I think a browser distributor has the “right” to choose not to load third party software; assuming the benevolence of the distributor. Web browser distributors do have agendas, though, and since Apple bundles it’s web browser with its operating system there is even more reason to distrust their choices. Ideally they would temporarily disable something without breaking its functionality and explaining the situation in an unbiased and informative way.

#32

New java release now available Version 7 Update 13 (build 1.7.0_13-b20).

Now if Apple and Oracle could get together and have updates released before blocking the old version everything would be peachy.

#33

If Oracle had the patch ready before there was a need to block the plug-in, there wouldn’t have been ab exploit in the first place.

#34

http://media.threadless.com/subs/big/291487.jpg

#35

That’s hilarious; I hadn’t seen that graphic before.

I plead " not guilty", though’ your honor.

The splash call-out at the top of the graphic says “… points to what is clearly obvious to everyone else”.

Judging from comments here and elsewhere on the web, the situation isn’t obvious to quite a few people.

#36

Following your reasoning: they shouldn’t have had the security issues in the first place.

#37

Well now, that would have been ideal, obviously, but that wasn’t my point.

Alan_w had said “Now if Apple and Oracle could get together and have updates released before blocking the old version everything would be peachy.”, and I was simply pointing out that his wish was nonsensical.

As much as it pains me to see Java with yet another black eye, Apple was right to block applets by default until Oracle could get their act together (assuming they have this time).

#38

I’m quite fed up with java right now. I just downloaded and installed java7u13 from java.com because my java auto-updater didn’t, even though I can see it running in my task manager, and then I found that my browser has the Ask toolbar installed. What the hell! I never asked for it (no pun intended) so there must have been an opt-out checkbox that i overlooked in the installation process.
So annoying. I can’t beleive that Oracle installs that crap with the java plugin, it reaks of amateurism. None of the other plugins like adobe’s flash or pdf viewer do that.
Disappointing >:(

EDIT: And to uninstall the Ask toolbar, you have to go to the control panel to do it, as well as close the browser and restart the computer! Geez

#39

http://www.java.com/en/img/download/ask_toolbar2.jpg

Whenever I install ANYTHING these days I carefully read every page. Things like DVDSoft have like 10 hidden programs D:

But yeah, very ugly for an official java runtime download.
“We recommend installing the FREE Browser Addon…” oh yeah well I recommend to shove this FREE pineapple in your ass D:

#40

Yep, it definitely makes Oracle look like a pretty low-rent operation. Of course I should mention that Windows is the only platform with this problem.

Oh, and the Ask toolbar deliberately waits 10 minutes before it begins to install itself, so you’re unable to remove it immediately if you accidentally clicked. I’m going to recommend to my employer that we treat it as malware.

#41

This kind of stuff is just terrible. :emo: no wonder so many people hate java.

#42

Anyone still use Ask?! :o

#43

Another article by the guy in the one sproingie posted talks about how they don’t separate ads from real searches, so the first page or so is just advertisements. I certainly hope not.

#44

Pro-top, always install the latest java version from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java because those are the purest :slight_smile:

#45

You should have a look at this:

#46

No one ever did.

#47

Of course people used Ask. Back when Google was a terrible search engine with no influence in the ad market it was one of the best for a while. Now that Google is a terrible search engine that is omnipresent in the ad market, “competitors” end up doing things almost as shady as what Google does.

Speaking of plugins and search engines. I remember updating Flash once and being bestowed with a Google toolbar despite unchecking the box for it.

#48

Watch yourself…Google can find you… :stuck_out_tongue:

But seriously, it’s a really good search engine, what are you talking about…?

#49

Search engines of all brands have gotten worse because they are allowed to do more nefarious things. It is an illusion that they are constantly improving their secret algorithms. The internet has just gotten bigger.

You can find what you’re looking for because someone already thought of it and human web crawlers already did most of the work of indexing and judging the quality of web pages. Google actually goes out of its way to show you worse results for the purpose of making their side projects and partners more profitable but the average user does not notice because a crowd sourced website like Wikipedia, Stack Overflow, Youtube, or Yahoo Answers gives you a near word for word match when you type something in. If you take away those types of sites, the rest of Google’s results are just ads. (That is, they privilege sites that have Google ads or work with Google and their algorithm is easily gamed by retail companies, so that most of the links are garbage unless you can find a good blog post buried in there.)

#50

Curious, I dont know anyone who ever used it, to my knowledge. I remember using Altavista predominantly, Fireball, Lycos and Yahoo.

I dont think I agree without any obvious evidence that you actually not find what you are looking for just because google MIGHT prioritize websites with google ads (which is the whole internet anyway)

Also google finds whatever crappy blog or website I create by using the right keywords. Always. You may say “well thats because the webhoster/bloghoster send a crawl request to google”, but then so what? It works really well - so all in all, the only bad thing about google is the fact that it is all-powerful, omnipresent, monopolistic and one single company should never have as much influence. That I would agree with, but technically its working well.

I used Yahoo search for some weeks, a year ago, exclusively. It’s actually the number one in japan and its pretty good - I would say by far the best search engine after google. Imo having almost identical results; just that google has so much more featues.