We use Ninite Pro extensively within our network. Not only does it allow remote updates (whereas locally it requires administrative rights most users don't have) it also allows disabling of update notification and disabling of shortcuts.
The update process Adobe employs is a nag for admins, the constant flow of acrobat updates and flash updates is a bombardment of announcements which most users in a corporate environment don't have control over.
I prefer paying ninite for the hassle free service, rather then adobe who seem to have no clue or interest in making users life easier. From my perspective, i don't care who profits as long as I can achieve my goals with a minimum of hassle. Ninite provides this, Adobe does not.
As a sys admin in a school, Ninite is awesome. I really don't want installers and updaters popping up in front of small children and (often, technically illiterate) staff, and Ninite facilitates this. At the same time, it makes it easy for me to update software at a time to suit me - usually the holidays. The fact it denies Adobe the chance to trick me (or my users) into installing additional, unwanted software is a major bonus. It just means I don't have to visit users' PCs later to uninstall the crap.
(School Sys admin here too)... We don't use Ninite, but at my old job I looked at the implementation and liked the fact that you can have a local-central repository (This saves bandwidth and keeps things in our control).
It depends on the number of users, but I found it was very affordable for my network. I think it's less than $200 for the year. Beats using GPOs via Active Directory, visiting each machine in turn, or relying on users to do it (which is largely impossible anyway). The central repository is handy, but the software expires fairly quickly in some cases so it's most useful when I'm updating many PCs at once. If you can persuade your finance dept to fork out some money, I would recommend it.
If your users get used to clicking "yeah, whatever" on any and all software update pop-ups, this will almost certainly become an attack vector. Adobe Reader, Flash and Oracle's Java each have their own nuisance updaters that are constantly pestering you for attention.
That software-updates-as-a-service is now a thing is really a sad state of affairs, but if Ninite can make a go of it, right on.
Adobe Flash updates are already an attack vector for some malware. My wife was presented with a "FlashPlus" installer to "update to the latest version of Flash" that looked exactly like Adobe's with the exception of the name. I'm still not sure what good fortune intervened to show me that particular installer before she hit "install".
I wonder why the creators of such an installer even bothered changing the name? Virus/malware authors shouldn't care about the possibility of trademark violations; They usually take care to ensure the software can't be traced back to their identities regardless.
This article is a bit... lacking. First off, the Flash updater on Windows works quite well on modern Windows systems. Second off, Ninite isn't just some good Samaritan, they're a for-profit company. Third, and related to the second, Ninite's updater costs $10 a year while Adobe Flash's built-in updater is free. They also have a Ninite Pro version that supports remote updates and installs and costs $240 to $2,220 per year.
In a similar vein, this is why Piriform cut them off from providing CCleaner via Ninite. Because automatic updating is a feature of CCleaner's business model, too. The paid version of CCleaner has automatic updates. Ninite was essentially taking that revenue model away from Piriform and using it for themselves. With free software supported by offers, Ninite is hiding those offers in exchange for cash. It's basically a paid ad-blocking service.
First I want to say thanks! We love your work at PortableApps.com and send people there whenever they ask us to add portable software.
Our value is keeping the catalog up-to-date and putting a nice interface around the updating process. Not ad-blocking.
We actively uncheck toolbars for maybe 5 apps. If those apps removed their toolbar offers people would still use Ninite to track updates and automate work.
If publishers want to make updating their software artificially hard there's not a lot we can do except trust that people will see what's going on and move to other products.
Not being able to choose where things get installed killed Ninite for me. Their reasoning is "where an app is installed is an implementation detail that users shouldn't worry about."
My SSD can only hold so much, and I don't see the benefit of having a browser or file sharing app on an SSD. That seems like a detail I should care about.
I usually install to the default location.. shutdown the app if running, move the directory, and symlink/mklink the default location to the new location.
This is especially helpful for games/apps you are actively using (on the SSD) but when you're done, or not playing as much, it's still available, just not as fast.
I believe it uses the default Program Files and (x86) directory. Have you tried setting that to your other drive so your Ninite-installed apps default to their, but you can still manually select your SSD for the apps you wish to run more quickly (PhotoShop, etc).
Howdy Patrick. First, let me say thanks as well, as I like your product and have sent people your way when they ask about something like PortableApps.com for local software. I'd also like to make clear that I in no way have a problem with the way Ninite works. I just had a problem with the way this article was written. Looking back at my original post, I definitely wrote a few things incorrectly and I apologize for that.
Regarding profits XOR good, I agree that you can do both and hope it didn't seem like I was implying otherwise. PortableApps.com, though fully open source, is also a for-profit venture that also intends to do good. It just happens to not be turning a profit yet. We're working on a freemium model as well, but we decided against making our updater and app store a paid feature and against bundling in ads as it would negatively impact some of our users.
I was unaware that Adobe had accessibility issues but, considering the interface, it makes sense. So, let me commend you on assisting with that. We did some custom work to ensure accessibility in our products as we have a large contingent of folks it helps as well.
Regarding publishers making updating their software artificially hard, I'm with you on that. We've had more than one publisher refuse to appear in the PortableApps.com App Store and Updater for that very reason: they want to have users to visit their website on each new version to see offers. That's why the portable version of the app that's not on Ninite isn't available on PortableApps.com either, despite offering up possible alternative revenue streams and offering capabilities. So, we're in the same boat there.
We should have a chat sometime and see if there are any ways we could work together.
Ninite isn't an expensive paid Adobe Flash updater. It's a useful sysadmin tool for automating several painful processes. I think it should exist and other companies should not be able to bully them to shut down. As a consumer you can pay if you think Ninite's functionality is useful or not if you think it isn't.
On an ideological level, I would look at whether they are stealing content and reselling it or just automating something the user would do for him/herself. It sounds like automating to me.
I make scripts to automate my workflows all the time, including the flash installer. (Though I don't download it as part of the script, I have pre-downloaded it and put it in a folder to use. So I have to manually get the latest before I run the script on a batch of machines.)
> First off, the Flash updater on Windows works quite well on modern Windows systems.
Speak for yourself; I only ever see it on system startup. I only reboot once every few months (and it doesn't respond to waking up from standby), but there's a new Adobe security panic every two weeks or so, so that's not really acceptable.
Plus it opens as a pop-under window for some reason, so I'm generally unaware of it until I've opened a browser, which I'll then have to close and reopen.
The 'stealing revenue' argument is definitely valid, but in Adobe's case it's such a hateful method that I can't sympathize at all.
I thought that Adobe's rolling out automatic updates for Flash Player might finally end my having to (endlessly) maintain it on my parents' computers. No dice... (It doesn't work -- at all, it often seems, or at least consistently nor in anything like a timely manner.)
After some horrible experiences with Adobe Support, I've decided that Adobe as a company is crapware. I am sorry for e.g. some of the engineering talent there that may be doing good work. But, they (you) seem to exist these days within a horrible company organization.
> The 'stealing revenue' argument is definitely valid, but in Adobe's case it's such a hateful method that I can't sympathize at all.
Is it? If their (Piriform, as in the original example) model is based around providing a service for a product they release for free, but someone else can provide that service better, then perhaps they need to re-think their business model. Either be way cheaper, or provide something that Ninite can't or won't. Maybe even partner with Ninite and explain that your product can't exist without that revenue, so why not just integrate deeper and share a bit of revenue, rather than having it fail and upset customers of both parties.
You imply Ninite are charging for Flash, but they are not. The charge is for the Pro service. I don't use it (I use the free installers, and love them). I'm not in the target group for the Pro--admins that need to keep a lot of machines up to date. If I were in that group, I'd gladly pay.
The whole focus on Ninite charging is a red herring. This also has to do with the free installer that Ninite provides to people who do NOT pay for the Pro.
The article was talking up the fact that Ninite allowed you to update your apps. The Ninite Updater, intended for home users, is a paid service for $10 and is separate from Ninite Pro, intended for corporate users. Without paying the $10 fee, Ninite doesn't provide automatic updates.
> Ninite isn't just some good Samaritan, they're a for-profit company.
It saddens me that we've gotten to a point where operating a service company for profit can't also be seen as doing good. Everyone has to pay the bills (and maybe even be rewarded for their efforts?), even the do-gooders.
A for profit company can also be seen as doing good. My issue with the article is the complete one-sided-ness and the fact that they say that Ninite is an alternative to using the Flash updater but neglect to mention that Ninite costs $10 a year for updates while Flash's built-in automatic updater is free.
I don't think that's any sort of bias; the article's point is that Ninite's update process is much simpler to manage than the Adobe one, particularly if you are managing a network. I will freely admit I haven't used Ninite, but I know that almost anything would be an improvement on the Adobe updater.
The value Ninite creates is worth $10 a year (is the point in the article).
Ninite Updater is a $10 a year service aimed at home users, completely separate from their Ninite Pro offering. Ninite Free does not automatically update. The article was pushing Ninite as an alternative to Flash's built-in updater but omitting the fact that Ninite Updater is paid.
"First off, the Flash updater on Windows works quite well on modern Windows systems."
No, just no. Btw. anyone knows how to manually force flash to check for updates? And an easy way to check flash versions across all different browsers?
"Works quite well" apparently means "pops up all the time about yet another national security threatening flaw that needs to be patched urgently" and "crashes frequently for no apparent reason when trying to perform said updates."
Also left unexplained is why Adobe needs to constantly update Reader. The PDF spec has not changed in forever. Why should this software need updating if there are no changes in functionality or spec compliance?
Security problems as far as I know. Many governmental workers have it installed, so it's used as a spear phishing vector.
"Re: UN Resolution #XYZ (Attached PDF)" is how these things play out. You open the PDF and your computer develops, ah, magical new capabilities, like sending copies of everything you do to Eastern Europe or China.
I have no interests concerning Ninite. I think they offer a handy service. But the article was completely one-sided and left out some key points so I offered a factual counterpoint. The site I run, PortableApps.com, is in no way competitive with Ninite as we offer portable software while Ninite is meant to streamline installation of local software.
How can you not see a potential conflict of interest here? The OP is the founder of a website which encourages you to download various software from their site.
Ninite could potentially allow users to bypass the OP's site, which could clearly cause the OP some irritation.
> In a similar vein, this is why Piriform cut them off from providing CCleaner via Ninite. Because automatic updating is a feature of CCleaner's business model, too. The paid version of CCleaner has automatic updates.
Maybe CCleaner should rethink that one, that is an awful business model. I wonder if they do the same thing with their OS X version too, because if so they might want to have a chat with the MacUpdate Desktop folks too.
IMO you can't blame app update tools for breaking a business model. That's a really idiotic business model to begin with. Charging for updates, fine. But charging for the ability to auto-check for updates? There is a reason nobody else in the industry does that. Because it's stupid.
The big problem for me (and maybe Piriform?) is that now I don't have any of their products on my systems because I can't get them through Ninite. I used to religiously install their CCleaner, their defrag and system information tools. They're all very good, but I'm not going to walk through three separate installers for something that Ninite used to do in seconds.
When I bring up a new system, I just go to Ninite, check some stuff and I'm done. For most machines, there is nothing else to do.
I suppose this is sort of a cautionary tale... "Don't try to take your installer back from Ninite after they've showed everyone how it can be so much better."
I'd wager they are more concerned with preserving their paid revenue stream than losing a few free users. Any company offering a freemium product has to strike that balance.
Well, I did say "maybe"... I guess what I was trying to get at is that before I would enthusiastically recommend their products to other people. Now I don't use them, so I never mention them to anyone.
I don't seem to have a problem using separate installers for something like Blender, but the activation energy seems too high for installing "small" utilities[1].
That said, if I could get larger applications from Ninite, I'd pull from there in a heartbeat!
If you don't mind using the portable versions of the larger apps like Blender, you can install the PortableApps.com Platform on your local hard drive and install and update all of those apps in a couple clicks. (Our portable apps work just fine locally, they just won't appear in your start menu by default, you have to add a shortcut manually or launch them using the PA.c Platform) Apps like Blender, Inkscape, GIMP, LibreOffice, GnuCash, Scribus, Firefox, Thunderbird, etc.
I will complain that Adobe wants to be updated what feels like every time my Windows machine restarts, but it never asks to install any adware as it does so.
CCleaner Free offers notifications only of when an update is available. At that point you must click a clink to download the new version from Piriform's website where you are presented with additional offers to upgrade to the paid version and/or ads.
Aren't there other free updaters?
Sure, but they don't work like Ninite Updater. With Ninite Updater it's one
step to download and install all your updates in the background at once.
Sorry for the confusion. That copy is about things like Filehippo Updater, not built-in updaters. The aggregation and automation arguments still apply, but it's not intended as a jab at them.
I'm still confused at how making money destroys our credibility. It's a good thing for the people you trust with software updates to be profitable. Pro users paying us for extra features like remote mode lets us offer Ninite free for everyone else.
We don't even run ads on the free site because Pro users pay the bills and we love that we can save people from wasting time clicking Next Next Next.
because looking at the website, you sure look like a bog standard marketing pitch to the average consumer selling fundamental computer operations for a price.
At least Adobe isn't selling me the copy function at $3.99.
If you were coming from selling a service, that would be different (we aggregate a working ecosystem of programs ready for your selection, subscribe to our repository!), but you're not. You're selling a program more than a service.
I just find it incredulous to see the phrase "We deserve better than this" where "better" is having basic functionality sold to you.
I realize I'm opening up myself to more, but hell it ain't about the karma.
Nothing's wrong with being for-profit. Redhat's for profit, I like them. What I don't like is the cut of David's gib in this David and Goliath story.
If Adobe turned to Ubuntu and said "Hey, don't put our plugin in your repositories, we want to spam mcaffe at linux users". That would be a really good reason to get the pitchforks and torches out! Adobe is instead responding to another for-profit company who's removing adobe's advertisement in place of their own.
The consumer gains a little from this, yah they're less obnoxious, but they're still selling package management, what I would argue a fundamental operation in an OS, for the low low price of only 9.99.
This article is angry at Adobe for making Windows hard to use by baiting users. Ninite is guilty of the same crime, even if it's to a lesser extent.
Technically only the Mozilla Foundation is non-profit. The Mozilla Corporation which is the organization that has the deal with Google about the search feature, and is the one which distributes common versions of Firefox is not non-profit. Granted Mozilla Corporation is owned by Mozilla Foundation, but still, this just shows that in non-non-profits organizations the decisions are governed by owners, for better or for worse.
> With them being for profit, they have lost their credibility.
Why? Their software automates a repetitive and complex task thereby saving money. Some of the money saved goes to paying Ninite but everyone still wins.
Title here is wrong, the reg says "crapware-free Flash". This dash is a little thing but it does matter; it changes the meaning. I passed over this article all day, after I read the headline as "stop rolling out flash, which is crapware, free".
Punctuation. It's the difference between "Let's eat, Grandma" and "Let's eat Grandma"
It's a real shame that Adobe is making this kind of mandate of Ninite. The Ninite catalog is a little limited for me given that I'm a developer, but when it comes to setting up a new PC(or a reformatted one)for friends and family, Ninite is the first place I go to for all programs and utilities they need, and most likely the last as well.
On the one hand I can see why Adobe wants total control over their installers, but I really wish they could also see that a lot of people simply don't want it.
I would expect powershell access to the windows store might just kill this project over night. I kind of hope so actually, nice official repository system native from MS.
If by "kill overnight" you mean "partially replace over the next few years", yeah maybe. But there will always be plenty of apps not on the Windows Store for various reasons.
I wonder how the "toolbar providers" actually make money. I mean, I work as a freelance IT guy, and on nearly every customer PC I find ~6-10 toolbars, 2-3 "free virus scanners" and >10 different youtube downloaders (which mostly brought the toolbars). With such an infestation (and given this, the competition between the toolbars), how do the individual toolbar providers get back the money they paid to the trojan horse software?
Sure, but how can this game be successful when the toolbar is active / dominant in the browser only for a couple of days until the user downloads yet another crapware bundle?
I wonder if any of the toolbars have extra code to try and nobble further toolbar installers. Perhaps there is a coding war going on between the crapware providers, fighting to be the top of the URL-rewriting chain?
Likely they have. I had to completely wipe a Firefox profile of a customer because ten toolbars had messed up the search engines so hard that I could not add Google back.
Ninite was a godsend in the days before I moved our offices over to Chrome. It was the first tool that took the pain and suffering out of updating Reader, Flash, and Java without the worries of crapware ending up on workstations.
Thanks to this move, I'll be banning the flash plugin outright. I hope that makes Adobe happy.
Except for the videos on YouTube that don't support HTML5 yet. From here[1]:
| Additional Restrictions (we are working on these!)
|
| - Some videos with ads are not yet supported (they
| will play in the Flash player)
|
| - On Firefox and Opera, only videos with WebM
| transcodes will play in HTML5
|
| - If you've opted in to other testtube experiments,
| you may not get the HTML5 player (Feather is
| supported, though)
The YouTube HTML 5 player is basically done now, it works just as well as the flash one. I wish they would stop "experimenting" and roll this out across the site. They seem to have no timeframe for releasing it.
It would be an interesting interpretation of the CFAA to bring charges against Adobe for interfering with the security and managing of a computer network.
Noticed it was gone from Ninite yesterday. Good riddance and a nice one of Ninite I thought. Still on fresh Windows 7 the Adobe monster suddenly appeared. Not sure where it came from, IE10 or Chrome?
Can anyone with a legal background explain if Adobe can actually force Ninite to change the way their software works? AFAICT, they can't. Why did this guy give in to Adobe? Because they've got an army of lawyers they can attack him with?
But Ninite isn't redistributing the installer, is it? It's downloading it directly from Adobe's site when the user runs it, just like if the user were to manually download Flash.
That's right, we did no redistribution or modification of their software. Ninite just automates things you would do.
But, publishers can license their software under whatever terms they want. They could forbid this sort of automation in the license, or even forbid Ninite specifically by name. As far as we can tell there's no right to automate your own machine that prohibitions like that would be violating.
I think the only defense here is public backlash (thanks everyone!) and/or boycott.
> publishers can license their software under whatever terms they want. They could forbid this sort of automation in the license, or even forbid Ninite specifically by name. As far as we can tell there's no right to automate your own machine that prohibitions like that would be violating.
You're referring to the EULA, right? Is that enforceable in court? I've heard mixed opinions in the past on this topic from legal experts.
If you live in a closed source ecosystem, you die in a closed source ecosystem.
e.g If you want to distribute closed source tools and software without sorting out a license first, your going to have a hard time because often this is exactly how free (in terms of price) software companies make their money.
Never had this problem of Adobe installing unwanted Anti-Virus stuff. Is this common for Window-users? For Mac I would suggest Pacifist if you want to install selective parts of an installer: http://www.charlessoft.com/
Yes, it is common on Windows. When you are on their website to install Flash, there is a tick box you need to untick to avoid installing McAfee Anti-Virus with it. It is basically like the Ask toolbar bundled with Java.
If you are not paying attention - which most people don't - you'll be installing unwanted software, because so much relies on basically crappy software (Flash and Java). Actually, that makes them crappy is their ubiquitousness. Even if you seldom use Flash or Java applets, you'll often find yourself having them installed, because there is that one site that needs one or the other.
Now, people like us with the technical knowhow know how to get around that (disable plugins; flashblock, etc.), but most people just install these things whenever there are updates, each is a change of getting crapware along with them. And Java is quite often updated.
As a developer, I kind of take offense to the allegations of Java (and Flash as well, I suppose, it's supposed to be pretty good) being "crappy software". The JVM is actually a rather awesome piece of software which offers good performance and good garbage collection. And interesting new languages have been created and flourished on top of the JVM. (Scala, Clojure)
Please know the difference between bad/customer unfriendly handling of installers/updaters, and actually bad software.
Take a look at the security record of both in browser plugin scenarios and get back to us on that...
While Java admittedly has a solid underlying core, the criticism is for the entire platform, which has some significant problems, some technical, some security, and many organizational.
I'll definitely admit that the browser plugin is a piece of crap which should be moved away from. Sadly, there's still a ways to go for that as a number of countries use them pretty extensively. (bank interfaces are brought up a lot on HN) And yes, organizationally they definitely have some problems. The JVM has still been making progress though, with new garbage collectors and project lambda.
That said, I'm not sure what technical problems you're referring to. The JVM seems to work quite well on all platforms, even if it can be kinda clunky to program in Java at times. (which is part of the reason I mentioned other languages) And yes, I know the JVM is slow to start. It isn't designed for small scripts. Use Python or something else for that.
Yes. And what's even worse is this: How many sites in common use actually need the Java browser plugin? And yet, if you are not careful, it will be enabled in your browser, thus increasing your vulnerability for no good reason.
If regular users were commonly aware of what browser plugins they actually need, and knew how to go through the list and disable the ones they actually didn't need, that would mitigate things somewhat.
For the average consumer, "Java" is crapware. It has a horrible security track record, to the point where many national computer security advocates recommend removing Java from your computer. You get constant nagging from the Java auto updater, which you must attend to or you place yourself at risk. And it installs toolbars.
On my Windows gaming box I get a dialog box that says jusched.exe : cannot verify certificate of somesubdomain.oracle.com. I don't know if I'm more or less at risk if I press "no", but I guess the average user is just going to press "yes". So I guess my Java is now out of date but I'm not going to install software with admin privileges if there's a problem in validating certificates.
I will never ever install Java on a Windows box again. I did install it because I wanted to play a game written in Java. The game was unplayable because it was so slow and jerky - because it was written in Java.
There may be bits and pieces of cool tech inside, but for the vast majority of computer users, Java is crapware.
I'd be happy if the Java updater would garbage collect old versions of Java after it installed a new one. How many versions does the average user actually need?
Checkboxes are not allowed to already be 'selected' with Direct Mailings in Germany or the Netherlands, see http://www.fedma.org . Perhaps this should apply for other webservices as well.
Consumer protection in the United States is basically nonexistent, so you'll unfortunately never see Adobe reprimanded for this sort of behavior. (I guess we can wait for the 'free market' to take care of it. Feh.)
Didn't say they were. I was replying to the folks saying that the distribution of flash without crapware was a free market solution. In a free market with no copyright, sure. In a market in which there is copyright though, adobe (copyright holder) decide on the distribution method. Which is what happened here.
The folks I was replying to seemed to think that adobe stopping them was anti free market. I just wanted to clarify that that meant they didn't agree with copyright in any form, which is quite an extreme position.
Ninite does not distribute Flash. Adobe does, and always has. Ninite merely provides an automatic way to download Flash from Adobe's servers and say "No" to every crapware installation prompt.
Adobe gets to decide on the distribution method, whether with or without Ninite. There's nothing stopping Adobe from bundling McAfee with Flash in such a way that it becomes impossible to install Flash without McAfee, it's a free market after all. Instead Adobe gave users a choice as to whether or not to install McAfee, and Ninite helps users express that choice.
> they didn't agree with copyright in any form
The article doesn't say anything about copyright or DMCA. Nobody else has expressed any view on copyright in this thread. The only person in this thread who is talking about copyright is you.
Other than the guy who posted a link to mises.org and agreed that copyright and the free market do clash. And I certainly didn't mention the DMCA, that was all you.
--edit-- And it could still be a copyright violation if the terms of the license require non-automated install. As it's adobe's product they get to say how it is copied (installed).
A free market? I've heared whispers of those magical places, but I am yet to encounter one in real life. Seems everything and anything worth something in this world has already been regulated to "no-real-competition".
There is a whole history with Adobe's SVG and Macromedia's flash and patent-wars, but those ended when Adobe bought Macromedia. So, you're correct. I was light heartedly referring to the comment about free market places, not commeting in regards to Flash specifically.
During the installer the user will be asked if they want to install McAfee anti-virus. There is a checkbox on the page in the setup that is already set to true by the time they get to it, so most users will probably think that having "more protection" is a good thing and that Adobe is really looking out for them.
At one point, there wasn't even a checkbox in the installer as I recall - there was some kind of checkbox on the page to download the installer, and if you didn't notice and uncheck it you got a download that installed whatever crap they were pushing silently and automatically along with Flash.
Not to mention a larger, longer download. Then you realize it and have to re-download it all over for the flash-only one. (It's happened to me a few times.)
However, if Adobe were to force Ninite to drop Flash -- we would have quickly dropped Flash from our corporate network, and probably have been for the better even with a few users complaining that their favorite time-wasting website/game no longer works.
I see a fairly simple solution.
The issue Adobe has is essentially that Ninite is taking away the choice of users to install this software when installing Adobe Flash. Ninite is therefore taking away the revenue that Adobe would get from these installs, if you were to assume that some users actually want them.
Ninite could easily circumvent this by giving people a choice to include the adware. 99.999% of users obviously won't make that choice, but Ninite puts that responsibility back with its users.
Ugh, "coalface admins". If I can hope to influence anyone's usage, I'll advise against using "coalface" as an adjective for people. I realize that a coalface is a place where a worker turns a resource into a commodity. But the word "coalface" is too much like "blackface". In fact it is used that way in regard to birds and cats. It risks distracting people with disturbing connotations, particularly here in the United States.
Rather than complain about a U.K. publication's possible refusal to play the PC game, or ignorance of how coalface might be stretched to connote blackface (a word that is certainly less freighted over there), why not learn the term as the British use it, e.g.:
"Originally used with reference to miners i.e those who remove coal from the 'face' of the mine, its now more commonly used to mean any work closest to the frontline
"Managers have no idea how hard it is for a sparky these days because they never have to work at the coal face.
"I love pulling apart engines. Its great to get my hands dirty at the coal face."
The update process Adobe employs is a nag for admins, the constant flow of acrobat updates and flash updates is a bombardment of announcements which most users in a corporate environment don't have control over.
I prefer paying ninite for the hassle free service, rather then adobe who seem to have no clue or interest in making users life easier. From my perspective, i don't care who profits as long as I can achieve my goals with a minimum of hassle. Ninite provides this, Adobe does not.