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I went to http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer with my Android phone and was told the player only supports the Nexus One phone.
(not mine.)

Of course, Flexnet is apparently quite capable of making Windows unbootable too, at least if you're using TrueCrypt. Say no to badly-designed DRM!

It's true flash is a lot more stable these days, particularly with the release of flash 10.1

Just the odd browser issue here and there:
Like it causes IE to crash very frequently on some computers
http://forums.adobe.com/message/2925919?tstart=0
and Firefox to crash very frequently on some computers
http://forums.adobe.com/message/2962506#2962506
http://forums.adobe.com/message/2920257#2920257
and then of course there was the Safari crashing problems
http://fairerplatform.com/2010/08/flash-10-1-crashes-safari-how-to-remove/
and it crashes some computers with hardware acceleration enabled (the default setting)
and it causes all browsers to crash on some computers when you try to activate a webcam
http://forums.adobe.com/message/3031253#3031253
and of course it crashes chrome a lot too on some computers (also remember the Adobe flash uninstaller doesn't work on chrome now, so need to uninstall in two ways)
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=461f66d507a8d884&hl=en

But I'm sure your right, I haven't for instance seen anyone complain of flash crashing safari on the iPhone. oh wait....

It's true flash is a lot more stable these days, particularly with the release of flash 10.1

Just the odd browser issue here and there:
Like it causes IE to crash very frequently on some computers
http://forums.adobe.com/message/2925919?tstart=0
and Firefox to crash very frequently on some computers
http://forums.adobe.com/message/2962506#2962506
http://forums.adobe.com/message/2920257#2920257
and then of course there was the Safari crashing problems
http://fairerplatform.com/2010/08/flash-10-1-crashes-safari-how-to-remove/
and it crashes some computers with hardware acceleration enabled (the default setting)
and it causes all browsers to crash on some computers when you try to activate a webcam
http://forums.adobe.com/message/3031253#3031253
and of course it crashes chrome a lot too on some computers (also remember the Adobe flash uninstaller doesn't work on chrome now, so need to uninstall in two ways)
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=461f66d507a8d884&hl=en

But I'm sure your right, I haven't for instance seen anyone complain of flash crashing safari on the iPhone. oh wait....

It's true flash is a lot more stable these days, particularly with the release of flash 10.1

Just the odd browser issue here and there:
Like it causes IE to crash very frequently on some computers
http://forums.adobe.com/message/2925919?tstart=0
and Firefox to crash very frequently on some computers
http://forums.adobe.com/message/2962506#2962506
http://forums.adobe.com/message/2920257#2920257
and then of course there was the Safari crashing problems
http://fairerplatform.com/2010/08/flash-10-1-crashes-safari-how-to-remove/
and it crashes some computers with hardware acceleration enabled (the default setting)
and it causes all browsers to crash on some computers when you try to activate a webcam
http://forums.adobe.com/message/3031253#3031253
and of course it crashes chrome a lot too on some computers (also remember the Adobe flash uninstaller doesn't work on chrome now, so need to uninstall in two ways)
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=461f66d507a8d884&hl=en

But I'm sure your right, I haven't for instance seen anyone complain of flash crashing safari on the iPhone. oh wait....

It's true flash is a lot more stable these days, particularly with the release of flash 10.1

Just the odd browser issue here and there:
Like it causes IE to crash very frequently on some computers
http://forums.adobe.com/message/2925919?tstart=0
and Firefox to crash very frequently on some computers
http://forums.adobe.com/message/2962506#2962506
http://forums.adobe.com/message/2920257#2920257
and then of course there was the Safari crashing problems
http://fairerplatform.com/2010/08/flash-10-1-crashes-safari-how-to-remove/
and it crashes some computers with hardware acceleration enabled (the default setting)
and it causes all browsers to crash on some computers when you try to activate a webcam
http://forums.adobe.com/message/3031253#3031253
and of course it crashes chrome a lot too on some computers (also remember the Adobe flash uninstaller doesn't work on chrome now, so need to uninstall in two ways)
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=461f66d507a8d884&hl=en

But I'm sure your right, I haven't for instance seen anyone complain of flash crashing safari on the iPhone. oh wait....

Hell you can go to Hulu and watch a good majority of recent TV free.

Free, after you install a proprietary worm relay and allow them to reprogram your brain with ads.

Actually, the Adobe Flex SDK is Open Source and Free. It runs similarly to the Java JDK.

All you need is any text editor of your choice and a command line, and you can build Flash .SWF apps for free.

In fact, Flash Builder (the professional Flex IDE built on top of Eclipse) is free for unemployed developers and students.

Actually, the Adobe Flex SDK is Open Source and Free. It runs similarly to the Java JDK.

All you need is any text editor of your choice and a command line, and you can build Flash .SWF apps for free.

In fact, Flash Builder (the professional Flex IDE built on top of Eclipse) is free for unemployed developers and students.

Wake me up when Microsoft comes up with a tool that allows non-coder graphic designers or animators to create entire apps in Silverlight with the same ease that you can with Flash.

That's the assumption sideline-commenting non-designer coders who aren't in the web or multimedia industry make, like a lot of guys here in Slashdot who do mostly non-frontend stuff. Until then, don't expect Flash to vanish anytime soon.

Same case goes for HTML5. Without proper authoring tools for the non-programmer layman, don't expect any other tech to knock off Flash from its perch. Nothing comes close to the Flash Professional authoring tool's ability for creating vector animations and integrating motion, sound and interactivity with ease today.

Even then, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch announced that Adobe would be the 1st one to build the same kind of tools for HTML5. In fact, they've already built HTML5 + CSS3 support for Dreamweaver.

As for video, there's a good reason Flash exploded on the net long before it had the capability to play videos, so don't expect alternative video players to end it either.

Heck, I heard even Blizzard used Flash for certain parts of Starcraft 2's UI. [citation needed]

*Sigh*

This thread.

The iPhone and iPad notwithstanding, Flash is beginning to show up on other mobile device platforms.

Exactly 1 single other platform : Android. All the rest are only promises for some time in the future.

Both you and the article author are somewhat misinformed. Flash has been running on mobile platforms for quite a while, albeit in the form of Flash Lite, which is not on par with the desktop version.

My 4-year old Nokia N80 can run older Flash content from the web (I think up to Flash 7), but more importantly it runs "phone applications" written in Flash.

You're of course correct with the rest of your arguments -- I'm not too fond of Flash myself.

To the best of my understanding, this is why flash takes so much CPU processing power to play a video.
Hopefully they will be addressing this now that they're going mobile, and working on a lot of optimizations..

Check out this NetSteam class, which is used to stream videos from the internet or your hard drive:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/flash/net/NetStream.html?allClasses=1

In particular, the bufferLength property reads:
"If any [thing] causes bufferLength to increase more than 600 seconds or the value of bufferTime * 2, whichever is higher, Flash Player flushes the buffer and resets bufferLength to 0"

Translation?
If flash player loads a video to the point that fills it's buffer size, it immediately flushes it's buffer and reloads the video into the buffer, and then it will flush it's buffer and reload the video into it's buffer, and then it will flush it's buffer.. etc

You can see where I am going with this. It's absurd.. but this is what appears to be going on to me.
The alternative is to set a really high buffer time, and make it so the entire video gets loaded into the buffer so the bufferLength is rarely greater than bufferTime*2. but then it will take much longer to begin playing so I doubt you have ever come across any code on the internet that actually does that..

I became aware of this when I was using flash to load a video on my local hard drive and received hundreds of buffer flush events.. one after another, after another, after another.
Having said all that, I think Flash has a lot of things going for it.. It just needs a little work still..

Adobe is obviously trying, but I think the talent is spread too thin. Some of their flash classes are written really well and some are written really poorly.

"You want a reason for installing flash blocking plugins."

You're searching for one?

• Mc Daily News
• US-Cert
• Adobe Systems
• Fortiguard
• Softpedia Software Shill
• MacNN

Many of these articles are redundant, I posted the links to show how ubiquitous the stories are. Flash will be around for a while since its the only game in town. But that will change, give it time. I DO NOT hate flash, but its old, there has got to be a better way to publish rich media, there just has to. I think, in time, as the OSS community wakes up to the need, some really great tools and protocols for interactive media that's at least as good as flash will come along.

Flash now respects the browser's private browsing mode. As for Java, I think it can only set cookies by going through a browser-implemented API... and hopefully each browser has made that API follow the private browsing settings also...

The current version of Flash respects "Private Browsing" mode in all major browsers, so you shouldn't have to worry about this loophole anymore.

There's no reason to turn off Flash or Javascript unless they ignore the privacy mode and cache content on disk anyway. The current version of Flash respects this setting, and presumably all browsers with a "private browsing" mode restrict their Javascript engines in the same way...

Just fyi, the current version of Flash does respect "Private Browsing" settings in all major browsers.

You have a seriously messed up computer. I'm on my work machine (2 gigs of ram, Windows 7 Flash 10.1 - and its an Dell Optiplex 745 with a 2 core Core 2 duo running at 2.4 GHz) and hulu in hd mode uses 15% of the cpu. My machine is nothing to brag about either.

Then countless others users on Adobe's bug tracking system also have messed up computers. And considering that my tests were based on a fresh install of Windows 7 with lots of unnecessary crap disabled, I'm wondering whether you're either very lucky or whether Hulu (which I don't use) have found a way to stop Flash video decode taking up massive amount of resources...

> - I can't make Flash work on Ubuntu, even though I've tried numerous times. It keeps saying something about, "Not enough permission."

Then you aren't really trying. You aren't actually sincerely trying to make it work. You're just trying to make it fail. You just want something to whine about. You're just a troll.

It doesn't get any easier than a vendor repository managed package.

Actually, the OP probably is trying - and I'll tell you precisely what the OP is doing.

S/he is going to a website which demands flash, and if it's not detected, the website brings up a message saying "If you don't have flash, you can download it here."

The OP clicks on the link, which takes them to Adobe's website and searches for Flash for Linux - they get offered the following:

- Flash Player 10.1 for Linux (YUM) : System Requirements - Browser Firefox, Mozilla, Seamonkey.
- Flash Player 10.1 for Linux (.tar.gz) : System Requirements - Browser Firefox, Mozilla, Seamonkey.
- Flash Player 10.1 for Linux (.rpm) : System Requirements - Browser Firefox, Mozilla, Seamonkey.
- Flash Player 10.1 for Linux (.deb) : System Requirements - Browser Firefox, Mozilla, Seamonkey.
- APT for Ubuntu 9.04+ : System Requirements - Browser Firefox, Mozilla, Seamonkey.

They've got no idea which of the five options is correct, so they probably click on the first option that comes up. Alas, YUM is specific to RedHat-derived distributions (it was originally produced by YellowDog, who distribute a RedHat derivative), so unless they're using a RedHat-derived distribution that uses YUM, that doesn't work. Is the OP's distribution RedHat derived? Do they know enough about Linux to ask themselves that question?

The second option is the tarball. They open that - what's inside the tarball is a single library, libflashplayer.so (I've just downloaded it myself to check). They probably have no idea what to do with that - does Ubuntu have the good sense to put it into /usr/local/lib and restart the browser?

Next on the list is the RPM. Again, doesn't work unless they're on a RedHat-derived distribution.

Okay, now we're onto .deb - and rapidly running out of patience. That actually has a good chance of working if the .rpm didn't. Now I'm typing this on a Mac so I have no idea if it will. Let's assume it doesn't for whatever reason.

Finally (after about an hour of messing around, because the OP doesn't really know what they're doing so has tried opening everything they've downloaded a number of ways) we get to APT for Ubuntu 9.04+. Whatever the hell APT is. Yes, I know what it is, does our OP who just downloaded Ubuntu and hit "next... next... next..." when they installed? Or are they going to assume that APT is something entirely unrelated?

What?
The documentation I'm aware of is under the Creative commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/langref/

That was historically true, but is no longer the case (I believe they changed the license coincident with the Open Screen Project release). See here. There are still the H.264 and On2 (as well as Nellymoser and other specific media codec) issues, but not any with open implementations of Flash itself.

Flash has security controls that limit the impact. HTML5 would need to do this also.

See the security section here:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/full_screen_mode.html

The thing about Flash though is there are some people who have stuck with it and made some really cool tools/products/games with it (everything from C64 emulators to word processors not to mention tons of games - some of which are quite complex) using a serious dev toolkit like Flash Builder.

Hopefully this kind of tool inspires someone to dig deeper and pick something up something a bit deeper like the Android SDK

Nvidia GPU, Flash 10.1. That's why it didn't suck.

ATI GPUs are unsupported right now, Intel GPUs never will be, for Flash 10.1 acceleration.

I think your info might be outdated. In early betas, recent NVIDIA GPUs had the best support, but support for ATI and Intel GPUs were added and improved with every beta and release candidate.

The final version of Flash 10.1 (for Windows) supports hardware acceleration for ATI Radeon HD 3000, 4000, and 5000 series.. It also supports Intel GMA 4000 series (e.g. G45 chipset), HD Graphics, and GMA 500.

Source: http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/systemreqs/#video

Kind of like using a fork to eat tomato soup, isn't it? I mean, you can do it but you'll really annoy yourself. Vector-graphics programs have so many advantages over raster-graphics programs for drawing it's almost ridiculous.

In the commercial space, there's Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw. In the free space, there's Inkscape — a software package I like a lot.

"No, it's just an explanation of why the whole flash argument (particularly Adobe's constant whining) was so silly. We're just now starting to see usable Flash on any mobile devices. If Flash is so useful on a mobile phone, why hasn't Adobe shown us?"

Actually, they have, since 2008. And more coming, real soon now. As in 'maybe'. But Adobe is trying.

The value argument for Flash on mobiel devices is the same one for desktop devices. Web pages that use Flash are not useful on mobile devices, and the iPad is a mobile device offering a similar, if not indistinguishable, Web experience like desktop devices. Apple just wants to keep Flash off until it plays nice with iOS, to improve the reputation of iOS.

"While Apple has presented a number of different reasons why they don't want flash on iOS, one of their main examples is that flash would be a buggy, CPU and battery hog."

Describes Flash on my notebook and desktop perfectly, save that my desktop doesn't have a battery. But we tolerate it on those devices, because they have the horsepower and resources to run Flash tolerably.

"if flash is as important and useful as Adobe says, then eventually consumers will demand it, and Apple will adapt or lose out."

Consumers ARE demanding it. So far, it's not a show-stopper for Apple or Android users. Blackberry I dunno.

A slow and inadequate standards process led to the browser wars. There were no standards for doing what people wanted to do with the web-- so instead of waiting for the WC3 committee (or whatever it was back then) to come up with a standard way, the two major browser manufacturers decided to do it anyway. And it's no surprise they did it differently. However, if the WC3 had provided robust standards early on for dynamic content, proprietary solutions would have been at a disadvantage.

However, flash fills the missing piece of the picture. In the late 90s, flash was not as robust or ubiquitous as it is now, and website developers had to use proprietary HTML extensions to provide dynamic content to their users. But now, with flash as widespread as it is (adobe claims around 95% of computers have flash10), website developers use it instead of proprietary extensions. Flash has become, in effect, the standard proprietary extension to HTML.

If you want websites to stop using flash, provide a standard that does what the websites need, and sooner is better.

http://www.streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/flash-player-cpu-hog-or-hot-tamale-it-depends-.html - I think its been proven that Flash performance isn't that bad - once hardware acceleration has been finished for Mac OS its performance will be on par with Windows and it performs better than HTML 5.

http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2010/02/adobe_cto_talks_flash_performance_on_macs.html - I think its been proven that Flash reliability isn't that bad either. I personally can't remember the last time Flash crashed.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/ - I think its also been proven its an open spec.

Stop repeating the words of the all mighty turtleneck and come up with your own ideas.

http://www.streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/flash-player-cpu-hog-or-hot-tamale-it-depends-.html - I think its been proven that Flash performance isn't that bad - once hardware acceleration has been finished for Mac OS its performance will be on par with Windows and it performs better than HTML 5.

http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2010/02/adobe_cto_talks_flash_performance_on_macs.html - I think its been proven that Flash reliability isn't that bad either. I personally can't remember the last time Flash crashed.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/ - I think its also been proven its an open spec.

Stop repeating the words of the all mighty turtleneck and come up with your own ideas.

In the past, we delivered Adobe Reader updates as full installers or patches (for instance, 9.x = full installer, 9.x.y = patch). The Adobe Reader Download Center at http://get.adobe.com/reader always offers the most recent full installer of Adobe Reader, which is currently Adobe Reader 9.3. After installation, the Adobe Reader Updater will automatically check and offer the latest patches to keep end-users up-to-date (as of today, the latest patch is Adobe Reader 9.3.3).

What a bunch of incompetent ass clowns. They can't even offer up a downloaded-able 9.3.3 install yet. You have to do it in two stages. If I was running the show, the people that crapped out this dung-pile would be looking for work tomorrow morning.

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/thankyou.jsp?ftpID=4692&fileID=4425

The MSP Installer is also available for those who may use Adobe Reader in silent installs/updates.

Side rant: Why does Adobe still only offer the unpatched versions of Reader on their front page?

One of the features of Flash 10.1 is that it supports video hardware decoding. This is available today. Flash also does offer a lot of other things that, at present, there's no real equivalent of in HTML5, although it might be possible to create some of them with some effort.

http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/features/

As far as I know, only the preview versions of IE9 are known to use hardware acceleration. However, it is possible that other browsers also use it for video, at least, and I was simply unaware.

  * Note that this post does not in any way endorse the continued existence of Flashplayer; it merely attempts to correct misinformation.

Except nspluginwrapper doesn't seem to handle flash 10.1 very well. For example, don't right click on the flash test at http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/ Sadly nspluginwrapper's web site and subversion repository have fallen off the net.

solution is to use latest firefox 3.6.4;explained heayah: http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=53036

You need a minimum of a Cortex A8-family processor to run Flash and many lower-end and older Android phones just don't pack the horsepower to pull it off.

Really?

If you need that much power then how are the Cortex A8-family processor-based machines ever going to handle everything through jscript+html5 canvas?

I saw a comment elsewhere that pointed to some HTML5 demos at http://smokescreen.us/demo/

I decided to hit the very first one on my Pentium Mobile 1.6GHz, strongbad's e-mail #45:
http://smokescreen.us/demos/sb45demo.html
Result: 100% CPU use, sound/video synchronization issues, stuttering, etc.

Then I checked out the standard Flash version:
http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail45.html
Result: 16% CPU use, perfectly smooth.

Then I read your comment and remembered that Adobe in fact have a Flash player available for my old Windows Mobile 5 phone (a QTek 9100 / HTC Wizard. TI OMAP 850, 200MHz). You can download it from:
http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer_pocketpc/downloads/player.html
So I checked that same SB email out on that device:
http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail45.html
Result: Perfectly smooth, running full-screen within Pocket IE. Can't give you a CPU use number as I don't have any CPU use app installed on it, but I had no problem playing back some MP3s in the background.

Surprised? You shouldn't be. I highly suspect you're thinking of h.264 video being played back - and indeed, checking out a YouTube video is a different experience altogether - i.e. slow with lots of video frames skipped; although I can watch (barely, as the screen is so small) my favorite StarGate SG-1 episode on it just fine (re-encoded for the format, of course).

But Flash is more than just video... so saying you need a beefy processor for Flash-in-general is inaccurate at best.

Incorrect.

According to Adobe they stopped the 64-bit beta in preparation for a major architectural change and will be releasing a new version of flash with 64-bit eventually.

PDF is not a variant of Postscript. Postscript is intrinsically a Forth like programming language with rendering commands. PDF is intrinsically a list of objects to render. Of course more recent PDF implementations have Javascript style scripting, but that has little or nothing to do with the rendering process. The link you refer to is mostly a bunch of marketing hype, unfortunately, but this sentence is relevant:

A PDF file is actually a PostScript file which has already been interpreted by a RIP and made into clearly defined objects.

That is not completely accurate (there is no Postscript when the conversion process is complete, nor is Postscript required to produce a PDF file), but you get the idea. You can get more information about the technical details of PDF here and here (PDF).

I think you don't really know the history of PDF, it's a variant on a programming language called Postscript, Postscript is a Turing complete programming language that makes extremely accurate page description.

http://www.adobe.com/print/features/psvspdf/

So HTML/Javascript is a good way of subverting "don't run your software on my computer without my permission" policy?

Or is there some argument here that a browser environment is safe but any other virtual machine sandbox and the local user permissions system for restricting binaries are horribly insecure?

Their System Requirements annoy me.

If you want to do quick cross-browser testing, try Browser Lab.

The stated reason VA-API doesn't work for them is that they can't get at the decoded data (from here). I don't know if that is at all accurate (I have my doubts) but it's pretty clear they don't have the manpower to do anything about it anyway.

You didn't actually answer my question, and waved your hands around it babbling about things which are unimportant.

If I have a business with machines that don't have DX9 capable video cards on the motherboard, what business apps won't work? And no, Flash 10 does not *REQUIRE* DX9, though it will make use of it if you have it.

http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/systemreqs/

It requires a Pentium II 450 or higher, and 128MB of Ram. Those are the only requirements to run flash. Hell, flash 10 runs on Windows 2000.

I will ask you again, which specific business applications will not work on a pc that has Windows 7 installed but does not have a DX9 compatible video card?

Can you name one? Just one?

Hey, you've got it easy. I made a polite request on the forum and they shut it down!

Pretty soon Flash for 64-bit linux will be the new Duke Nukem meme around here.

Yah - it was 10.0.45.2 was latest version of 64bit flash - that had been just kinda a stopping point and put on hold as adobe has been focused on 10.1 development for 32bit all platforms. So they kinda just kept it around.. but now that a major security bug was found in 10.0.45.2, instead of going back and fixing the 64bit version of 10.0.45.2 they just took it offline all together.. SOoooo I'm betting now that 10.1 is official for 32bit / all platforms, they are close to putting out a 10.1 64bit alpha to get that ball rolling again.. Hence forget patching 10.0.x - lets work on new 10.1 and move foward... But I'd like to get some official word from adobe. The current site shows 10.1 beta for 64bit is now closed, when in fact there to my knowledge was NEVER a 10.1 beta, alpha or antyhing else for 64bit linux.. YET...That line on the site and all the news sites that picked it up on the net should state 10.0 Beta Is now closed for 64bit linux... and 10.1 64bit linux beta is not yet available... http://forums.adobe.com/thread/657569?tstart=0 Former 10.0.x BETA page: http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10_64bit.html The latest Official Word from Adobe: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/000/6b3af6c9.html

Yah - it was 10.0.45.2 was latest version of 64bit flash - that had been just kinda a stopping point and put on hold as adobe has been focused on 10.1 development for 32bit all platforms. So they kinda just kept it around.. but now that a major security bug was found in 10.0.45.2, instead of going back and fixing the 64bit version of 10.0.45.2 they just took it offline all together.. SOoooo I'm betting now that 10.1 is official for 32bit / all platforms, they are close to putting out a 10.1 64bit alpha to get that ball rolling again.. Hence forget patching 10.0.x - lets work on new 10.1 and move foward... But I'd like to get some official word from adobe. The current site shows 10.1 beta for 64bit is now closed, when in fact there to my knowledge was NEVER a 10.1 beta, alpha or antyhing else for 64bit linux.. YET...That line on the site and all the news sites that picked it up on the net should state 10.0 Beta Is now closed for 64bit linux... and 10.1 64bit linux beta is not yet available... http://forums.adobe.com/thread/657569?tstart=0 Former 10.0.x BETA page: http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10_64bit.html The latest Official Word from Adobe: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/000/6b3af6c9.html

Yah - it was 10.0.45.2 was latest version of 64bit flash - that had been just kinda a stopping point and put on hold as adobe has been focused on 10.1 development for 32bit all platforms. So they kinda just kept it around.. but now that a major security bug was found in 10.0.45.2, instead of going back and fixing the 64bit version of 10.0.45.2 they just took it offline all together.. SOoooo I'm betting now that 10.1 is official for 32bit / all platforms, they are close to putting out a 10.1 64bit alpha to get that ball rolling again.. Hence forget patching 10.0.x - lets work on new 10.1 and move foward... But I'd like to get some official word from adobe. The current site shows 10.1 beta for 64bit is now closed, when in fact there to my knowledge was NEVER a 10.1 beta, alpha or antyhing else for 64bit linux.. YET...That line on the site and all the news sites that picked it up on the net should state 10.0 Beta Is now closed for 64bit linux... and 10.1 64bit linux beta is not yet available... http://forums.adobe.com/thread/657569?tstart=0 Former 10.0.x BETA page: http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10_64bit.html The latest Official Word from Adobe: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/000/6b3af6c9.html

While the Open Screen project has been around for 2 years, it's only been one year (this month) since the restrictions on SWF were removed.

This press release from May 1, 2008, stated that Adobe would be "Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications". Do you have a citation for your interpretation?

There is a new clause in the Flash 10.1 EULA that was not present in 10.0:

7.6 Content Protection Technology. If you Use the Adobe Runtimes to access content that has been protected with Adobe Flash Media Rights Management Server or Flash Access software (“Content Protection”), in order to let you play the protected content, the Software may automatically request media usage rights and individualization rights from a rights server on the Internet, and may download and install required components of the Software, including any available Content Protection Updates. You can find more information on Content Protection at http://www.adobe.com/go/protected_content.

You have to download a 3.3 MB PDF with 280 pages to find this kind of stuff. There's no telling how far these updates will go (remember TurboTax DRM?).