Slashdot Mirror
FedEx Will Pay You $5 To Install Flash (theregister.co.uk)
FedEx's Office Print department is offering customers $5 to enable Adobe Flash in their browsers. Why would they do such a thing you may ask? It's because they want customers to design posters, signs, manuals, banners and promotional agents using their "web-based config-o-tronic widgets," which requires Adobe Flash. The Register reports: But the web-based config-o-tronic widgets that let you whip and order those masterpieces requires Adobe Flash, the enemy of anyone interested in security and browser stability. And by anyone we mean Google, which with Chrome 56 will only load Flash if users say they want to use it, and Microsoft which will stop supporting Flash in its Edge browser when the Windows 10 Creators Update debuts. Mozilla's Firefox will still run Flash, but not for long. The impact of all that Flash hate is clearly that people are showing up at FedEx Office Print without the putrid plug-in. But seeing as they can't use the service without it, FedEx has to make the offer depicted above or visible online here. That page offers a link to download Flash, which is both a good and a bad idea. The good is that the link goes to the latest version of Flash, which includes years' worth of bug fixes. The bad is that Flash has needed bug fixes for years and a steady drip of newly-detected problems means there's no guarantee the software's woes have ended. Scoring yourself a $5 discount could therefore cost you plenty in future.
I said that a few months ago. I never figured someone would actually attempt to do so.
And yes it still applies.
Every other month it seems, we get an urgent notice from IT reminding us to either uninstall or update Flash.
Unfortunately, I have to have Flash installed on my work computers because the corporate-required "training" courses that they keep on making us take require Flash - such as the one on "information security" about how important it is to keep our software up to date.
So, basically, I have to have Flash installed so I can tick off a little checkbox that says I know not to install software like Flash.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
The Html5 canvas has been widely available since 2006, and FedEx is a $50B/yr company. Why would it take them more than a decade to update a legacy app to a modern platform? Instead of paying their customers to install malware, they should hire some competent developers.
FedEx is not paying anyone to install flash. Instead, they are offering a $5 discount. There is a huge difference.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Heck, it should be easy to automate spinning up VM's, installing flash on a few different browsers in each, then collecting $5 for each. I'm guessing way more than $100 is possible.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Instead of paying their customers
They aren't paying you anything. Giving you a $5 discount off money you haven't spent yet is not the same as "paying you $5". If people actually fall for this scam, it saves FedEx a lot of money (they don't have to pay someone to write a non-flash app) and costs them exactly nothing.
I'll pay you $20 not to install Flash.
Here's how it works.
1) Don't install Flash.
2) This will prevent you from spending $30 with FedEx, which you were planning to do to get that $5.
3) Send me $5.
#DeleteChrome