Mostly about my amusement

Tag: Flash (page 1 of 1)

Thrift shop find: Sunpak Auto 121C flash

MSN-001A1 Delta Plus Gundam figurine not included

I collect old parts for a junk pile cameras and today I found an old Sunpak Auto 121C flash at the thrift shop.

When it comes to cameras, the local thrift shop isn’t often a good place to go picking. They’re like a magnet for all sorts of broken junk, most of which are really cheap plastic 35mm toys.

Occasionally you will find some decent Olympus consumer film cameras, but that’s because they don’t know what they have. Once I even found a Olympus Trip 35 only it wasn’t passing the red flag test and looked like it needed a lot of work.

Today the kids and I were there and while they searched for inexpensive toys, I saw the flash. The batteries inside had leaked but somehow hadn’t corroded anything on the inside. It was $9 so I took a chance and took it home. Success! I put a fresh pair of double AA batteries and the flash fires.

Compared to modern camera flashes, it’s a simple no frills model. But my film cameras are at least 37 years old, so it’s exactly what I wanted. With a little elbow grease it cleaned up really well.

This was a good find. The flash is small and works so I plan to take it to get-togethers and shoot off at least one roll of film.

Thank you Adobe, but no thanks

Update: Look before you click.  The McAfee component is optional and you are given the chance to not install it on the Abobe web page.

-Original posting below.-

So I downloaded the updated Firefox 3.5.3 and when it came up it said “Hey, your Flash player is outdated. Click here to get an upgrade”. You can read about this feature here.

I keep my software up to date so this was news to me. But what the heck, Mozilla’s rep is good and Adobe Flash and Acrobat are popular attack vectors. Why not upgrade? So I ran Adobe’s download manager extension in Firefox which promptly installed the updated Flash and McAfee System scanner.

I was not asked if I wanted the McAfee software, it installed it without my permission.

I have no problem with being provided the option, but seriously, installing third party software without getting explicit approval from the end user is just plain stupid.

Keeping up your software is a responsible thing to do especially if you want to keep the use of your PC to yourself. Why rent out your PC to a zombie army? But installing software without your permission is a tactic of the “bad guys”.

I don’t care if it’s an anti-virus company or not, don’t put software on my PC without my permission. I promptly went to my control panel and removed the McAfee software.  I already have an up to date anti-virus product on my PC and don’t need unwanted code.