Here’s a message we received tonight from Mike at PCGameControls.com, about a bit of Adobe software that may harm FS installations. Mike writes: “………FlightSim.com member Ocala has identified a serious threat to the FS community, please see the following thread in the FS2004 forum … “.
“… FlightSim.com member Asad Khawer is technically knowledgable and was aware of this application and what it is used for. It’s just that he didn’t know the FS significance of a .air file and so was not able to connect the dots till ocala spoke. Anyway, Asad has agreed to write an article explaining the problem and its implications.
Here are some additional remarks made by email to me by Asad …
“After some research and personal testing I have identifed that, contrary to what I thought prior to this, Adobe AIR is not automatically added in Adobe updates.
However, it remains a huge cause of concern, because it is being used on major online websites such as NASDAQ, Nickolodeon, and AOL, and many users may unwittingly download Adobe AIR, hence corrupting almost all freeware and payware FS addons…….. “.
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Latest news just in from Mike McCarthy…..:
All,
I’ve cc’ed you because you deserve to know that the problem is not as
serious as I had originally asserted. If I’m causing you too to have to
backpedal, my apologies.
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I’m terribly sorry and terribly embarassed, Francois. The notice I sent
you apparently exaggerated the problem. It’s not that .air files are
getting deleted, it’s that the Adobe AIR software is reporting them as
not being valid Adobe files. FS itself will not have been harmed and
will continue to run in the normal way.
The solution is to change the file associations for .air files away from
Adobe AIR and over to the .air-file-friendly application AirEd. Because
there is some difference of opinion regarding what should be done
regarding FS users who aren’t computer savvy, I’m going to stop
listening to others, conduct my own tests regarding when the problem
arises, and decide for myself how best to explain the situation to
newbies as well as giving them the simplest reasonable solution to follow.
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The following is a link into the Adobe site, a forum on which this very
issue is being discussed, with references back into the FS community.
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/messageview.cfm?forumid=72&catid=670&threadid=1389507
If that link gets wrecked in this email you can get it directly from
post #73 to the following thread on FlightSim by Holger Sandmann, who
posted to this same effect on Avsim, I believe.
http://forums.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?t=186262&page=8
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All, the recommended solution would be brain surgery for many FS users
who are not computer savvy. Maybe it’s a simple matter of documenting
the situation and how to recover from it in an article available to all
for wide distribution …
But maybe it will be a procedure that will allow a newbie to achieve a
simple but effective installation of AirEd …
Or maybe I’m going to have to go further and write some code to force
the desired file association in the registry, incorporating that program
into a download package that will include and install AirEd …
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I don’t know yet. When I do know I’ll say so. All I know at this time
is that the procedure recommended by Holger and others a) works but b)
strikes me as newbie-hostile.
With a very red face,
And with apologies,
thx,
Mike