Broadband Tech > Security > Security > Adobe apologizes for festering Flash crash bug

Adobe apologizes for festering Flash crash bug

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An Adobe product manager has apologized for allowing a potentially serious bug in Flash Player to remain unfixed for more than 16 months.

CTO Lynch flatly rejected the criticism from [Apple's] Jobs, arguing that "if there was such a widespread problem historically Flash could not have achieved its wide use today." As if a product's widespread adoption were a guarantee that is was free from serious defects.

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Large fireball, not recently, exploited, that I've seen as have others, yup.

reply to lorennerol

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The NHTSA put pressure on Ford to recall the Pinto, motivated by public outcry and pressure from groups such as Ralph Nader's Center for Auto Safety. Initially the NHTSA did not feel there was sufficient evidence to demand a recall due to incidents of fire. The 27 deaths attributed to Pinto fires is the same number of deaths attributed to a transmission problem in the Pinto, which resulted in 180 total deaths in all Ford vehicles, and in 1974 the NHTSA ruled that the Pinto had no "recallable" problem.[14]

Nevertheless, in 1978 Ford initiated a recall providing a dealer installable "safety kit" that installed plastic protective material over the offending sharp objects, negating the risk of tank puncture.[15]

In 1981, an automobile accident that killed Lilly Gray and badly burned 13-year old Richard Grimshaw resulted in the court case Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Co.,[16] in which the California Court of Appeal for the Fourth Appellate District upheld compensatory damages of $2.5 million and punitive damages of $3.5 million against Ford, partially because Ford had been aware of the design defects before production but had decided against changing the design.

Due to the alleged engineering, safety, and reliability problems, Time magazine included the Pinto on its list of the fifty worst cars of all time.[12]

However, a 1991 law review paper by Gary Schwartz[17] claimed the case against the Pinto was less clear-cut than commonly supposed. The number who died in Pinto rear-impact fires, according to Schwartz, was well below the hundreds cited in contemporary news reports and closer to the twenty-seven recorded by a limited National Highway Traffic Safety Administration database. Given the Pinto's production figures (over 2 million built), this was not substantially worse than typical for the time. Schwartz argued that the car was no more fire-prone than other cars of the time, that its fatality rates were lower than comparably sized imported automobiles, and that the supposed "smoking gun" document that plaintiffs claimed showed Ford's callousness in designing the Pinto was actually a document based on National Highway Traffic Safety Administration regulations about the value of a human life rather than a document containing an assessment of Ford's potential tort liability.

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reply to siljaline
Flash on Linux is a huge pain in the ass. With 10.1 Beta 2 I'm seeing the crash bug more often in Windows now as well.

reply to siljaline
Flash is the devil.

reply to Link Logger

And then there's always Sumatra, »blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sum···dex.html, which is really horribly simple and will not do what many need, but I don't know if any PDF viewer is safe.

reply to siljaline
SWF is an open; which allows GNASH to exist. And others.

If adobe's flash product isnt good. Go find another.

Flash itself is about as open as they will ever make it. Maybe 10 years from now that'll be different.

Then consider that many groups are actively trying to umount flash from their position. Leaving known public bugs in their product might just unseat them faster.

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Of course, despite having the name "Flash", I haven't heard of anyone's PC exploding with a large fireball from an Adobe Flash exploit.

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Flash on Linux is a huge pain in the ass. With 10.1 Beta 2 I'm seeing the crash bug more often in Windows now as well.

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reply to siljaline
Gee, I really hope that the big three smart phone players (MS, Blackberry, Google) get there act together quickly so we can all enjoy the benefits of Flash on our phones...Not.

reply to siljaline
That's interesting, because when I tried out that guys "FlashCrash" site, nothing happened.

I tried it with multiple tabs open, reloaded it...etc.

reply to siljaline
I wish webmasters would stop useing flash, and coders would develope something different and open source.
silverlight and flash can go scratch.
Adobe can go scratch all by itself.

As, Phil , said "Flash is the Devil" There's no avoiding it, Adobe is the new plague of third-party software.

Correction:
Adobe predicted as top 2010 hacker target