And that testing is only as good as what it does test for. Really good QA is tough stuff and unfortunately, that level of expertise is often undervalued. Adobe has been pushing out lots of updates as of late. Good that they're doing it; bad that it's so often.

there would be no software at all....

In my experience outdated third party plugins like flash, reader and even java seem to be the way a lot of the attacks are happening lately. I watched a fake antivirus load to my PC after it somehow launch adobe reader about a year ago. An outbreak of fake antiviurses on machines revealed the same outdated version of java loaded on those machines. Sadly the end users affected normally were pretty good about their surfing habits even though the job required a lot of research work. It isn't just windows updates to worry about anymore.

These are not the droids you're looking for.

On a serious note, why badmouth IT people just because adobe's products are broken?

Personally I'd be simply dumping flash and pdfs, at the proxy/email servers, til adobe fixes their software. Send out note to entire company: Due to extreme security risk in adobe's products we must block flash and pdf content in web pages and email until further notice.

It's against policy (written or unwritten) in a lot of shops to deploy beta software to users so intermediate patching wouldn't be kosher in a lot of places. It'd likely get you fired in a significant number of shops, especially in government, financial and medical industries where compliance with federal information security regulations is important.

It's usually not a preference for the IT "droid". At the beginning of my career (I'm a software engineer now), we just did what we were told to do by the boss after we informed him of a problem. I'm pretty sure it still works the same way, at least if you want to stay employed. I was actually in the software patching automation group. We deployed what we were told to. We could care less what it was we were shipping out as long as the package worked.

If we were handed an adobe update on tuesday, then another one on thursday, no one would have cared one iota that it was for the same product. We'd just push it out.

What makes you think reader 8 is any better, security rise? It's just unsupported.

How is this even legal, given they are security updates? Plus, we now have to seek out the more obscure 'clean' update to prevent the Adobe Download Manager (DLM) from infecting our browsers. Adobe is really starting to feel like a virus.