Stupid online installers

I find it pretty annoying when I download an installer for an application, then run said installer, only to find out that it’s just a tool that downloads the actual installer.

Seriously, why? Why can’t I just directly download the real installer on the first go and just get it over with?

Today I tried to update my Flash player, and the installer, after downloading the stuff, greeted me with the following:

Not a very helpful error message, eh? To top it off, if an error during the installation occurs, the whole installer has to be downloaded again before you can retry. Thanks, Adobe.

Anyway, buried deep within Adobe’s support site I found a link to the true Flash Player offline installer that you actually download only once.

Flash Player for ActiveX (Internet Explorer)

Flash Player Plug-in (All other browsers)

Presumably, these files get updated so that the link remains the same when a new version is released.