Adobe Releases Last Linux Version of Flash Player 426
Posted
by
timothy
from the end-of-the-line dept.
dartttt writes "Adobe has released Flash Player version 11.2 with many new features. This is the final Flash Player release for Linux platform and now onward there will be only security and bug fix updates. Last month Adobe announced that it is withdrawing Flash Player support for Linux platform. All the future newer Flash releases will be bundled with Google Chrome using its Pepper API and for everything else, 11.2 will be the last release."
Okay (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll return the favor, and dump you now, Adobe.
Good Riddance (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good Riddance (Score:5, Funny)
...but not on Slashdot, which just rolled out a Flash-based feature.
Re: (Score:3)
About half of youtube works without Flash installed. Other video sites, not so much... blip.tv (which is the other one I use fairly regularly) has actually discontinued their html5 support in favour of going 100% flash.
Ultimately, my choice was between installing Flash and using the browser of my choice, or installing Chrome for Linux. I went with flash, but I am not happy with the decision. It's sort of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.
Re:Good Riddance (Score:5, Informative)
Vimeo works 100% without Flash, unlike YouTube.
Re:Good Riddance (Score:4, Informative)
YouTube works without flash. That's one of the nice things about it. Forward compatibility.
Re: (Score:3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyhV4oLOHEg&feature=fvst [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4-p3ZGlThg [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuD7W6XUS2s&feature=related [youtube.com]
All of these display a black area with the message "This video is currently unavailable".
I could sit here all day long and give you a list of hundreds videos that give the same error message, these are not hand-picked videos, this problem is on nearly 50% of the videos on YouTube.
And I never had a single problem on Vimeo.
Re:Good Riddance (Score:5, Informative)
About half of youtube works without Flash installed
I've been using ClickToPlugin, which fetches the HTML5 version of YouTube videos for a while and I've not seen the Flash player for a good six months.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Which all points to the benefit of using open source. Instead of people shooting from the hip and complaining the should read and understand.
Here's a lovely little wikipedia article on Google Native Client http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Native_Client [wikipedia.org].
You will find it is a open source client, cross platform and of course can readily be incorporated in Linux.
This is basically exactly what we all want really to happen. Open source modules incorporated into an open platform, with core programs open
Re:Good Riddance (Score:5, Funny)
it's like Adobe wants the death of flash.
Re:Good Riddance (Score:5, Insightful)
Adobe and the rest of the world, yes, that's what we want.
Re:Good Riddance (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Good Riddance (Score:5, Insightful)
Less terrible technology? Abomination?
Really now. I can respect an anti-Flash opinion based on a desire for open standards (even though the SWF format is open), but saying Flash is terrible tech is just me-too ignorance. What other web framework can you composite 2d animation, advanced typography, h264 movies, native sound processing, and a 60fps native 3D rendering engine at your leisure? Try making audiotool [audiotool.com] in HTML5. There's nothing better for creating multimedia content. There are simply no IDEs anywhere near as mature for HTML5. Actionscript 3.0 is a pretty great language, a bit like Java, that encourages good coding style, but without weighing down development speed with too much cruft. It's what Javascript could have been if Microsoft hadn't sabotaged the ECMAScript 4 deliberations.
And what other web framework has let developers deliver quality games? Unity, sure, but most people don't have the plug-in. Go ahead, what do you recommend that people should have used the last 10 years for web-based gaming? Yeah...I thought so.
Do I need to remind you that Epic recently ported the latest version of Unreal Engine to Flash [unrealengine.com]? WebGL can't touch what is being done in Flash.
Even though Adobe is run by fucking morons, Flash is still a great platform, and they are not giving up on Flash completely. I imagine the future of Flash is more of a Unity-style thing where you develop in Flash and then export to various platforms. Epic wouldn't have spent the time and money porting Unreal Engine unless they had confidence in Adobe's roadmap.
As I said, if someone has philosophical differences with Flash as a platform, I can respect that. But all you people mouthing off about Flash without even understanding the issues only do more harm than good.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah...Epic threw the Citadel demo together last year to show at an Adobe event. I assume it's pretty early code and totally unoptimized. Still, those are PS3-quality textures and models, so the RAM footprint isn't going to be tiny.
This is what it's supposed to look like anyway, sucks that it didn't work on your Linux box: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZmFaxBhAo4 [youtube.com]
Re:Good Riddance (Score:4, Interesting)
All you Anonymous Cowards sound like the slashdotters who still think Windows sucks as bad as Win95.
I have a user name, what difference does it make? Doesn't make me any smarter.
If you're talking about a page full of Flash ads, that's because ads are designed under the flawed assumption that they have 100% of resources available.
Applications shouldn't access memory allocated to them, yet we still have memory protection. Some problems can't be helped but Flash makes it very easy to use resources while being a black box with minimal controls.
As for video performance...it might have improved, but I have a pretty good computer right now so I wouldn't have noticed. But I don't think it matters that much anymore: Flash has been annoying for very long and is still the same black box made by the same company. It's a source of security holes which is mostly used for ads and video, and it's not really trusted.
With HTML video capability the choice stands between playing video and playing video with flash. It ultimately becomes a worthless middleman in this application.
Re:Good Riddance (Score:5, Interesting)
Find something new and quick. I suggest HTML5, and finding other tools to develop it in.
Adobe never wanted the death of Flash. They have gone through the 5 stages of grief already. Microsoft, in a little yellow school bus moment, ignored all the signs with their creation of Silverlight and went straight to "Fuck it. We were just kidding anyways".
There were a lot of factors that came together here and Flash simply cannot compete going forward with HTML5. Nobody really wanted a proprietary platform like Flash anyways, it was just all that was available at the time. You could stuff with Java, but that always seemed more geared towards business to me.
Adobe is moving on. While I don't like Dreamweaver (at all), and many developer friends state that the code it produces is lacking, Adobe can create some pretty nice development tools. Look forward to a pretty comprehensive HTML5 development products that you can make your games in.
P.S - It did not help that Steve Jobs refused to put them on Apple products towards the end of his life. Especially with games and content consumption. That was a bad hand dealt to Adobe that just quickened the death of Flash.
Re:Good Riddance (Score:4, Insightful)
VP8 on iOS? (Score:3)
[With HTML5 clients,] Adobe doesn't even have to pay the license fees for distributing the H.264 implementation
How so? I was under the impression that the whole reason for a "video server" was to support frame-accurate seeking and live streaming, both of which require encoding capability. I was also under the impression that HTML5 for Safari on iOS wouldn't take VP8.
Re:Good Riddance (Score:5, Interesting)
A bit of history from this NeXT/Apple alumnus. In 1997 Carbon was brought to the WWDC in San Jose as a one year transitional API for the big boys to port their application base over to and then a rapidly phased move to Cocoa. Adobe, Macromedia and others dictated and delayed a lot of OS X maturity by threats to pulling their products from the platform. Microsoft was settling the legal dispute and contractually bound themselves to OS X but refused to go Cocoa.
Apple had no real leverage until iTunes and the iPod.
Instead of being ready when OS X was released for Cocoa apps these companies kicked and screamed all the way.
They whined even more after Carbon 64 bit didn't materialize. By then Apple had all the leverage they needed and when iOS materialized Adobe was the last and most arrogant one to believe Steve had any love loss left for them and their long-time collaboration from Apple->NeXT->Apple. When he publicly denounced Flash Adobe should have already had their app base moved to Cocoa. The days of complaining how difficult it is to maintain Windows and OS X finally fell on completely deaf ears. Adobe will never recover as a major player and will find itself relegated to a second tier if it doesn't make a bold push on OS X and iOS with actual native Apps from top to bottom that leverage pure Cocoa/GCD/OpenCL/OpenGL/CoreFoundation via C/C++/ObjC/ObjC++ in the truest sense of the world. Releasing PDF as an ISO standard was wise, but one done out of threats from competitors. Adobe still has bloated tools whose pricing is going to kill them faster than their competitors, but then again Adobe really seems to love bundles.
IE/XP, barcode scanning, and 2D vector animation (Score:3)
I suggest HTML5
In HTML5, how do I target Internet Explorer for Windows XP, which still has two years of extended support left? It may surprise geeks, but I'm under the impression that some administrators are still a lot more willing to authorize the installation of Adobe Flash Player than of Google Chrome Frame.
In existing HTML5 implementations, how do I make a barcode scanner application or a voice-controlled application? There's still no way to (ask the user's permission to) read the camera and microphone connected t
Re: (Score:3)
Wow. What's with all the disguised butthurt?
What nobody wanted was a client side platform that was proprietary, had expensive authoring tools, and was run by Adobe, a company that clearly had no problem using FBI connections to imprison somebody over a Security through Obscurity issue and generally act like insane evil tyrants to protect their IP. It's not really that hard to figure out why a lot of people did not, and still do not like, Adobe as a company, or some of their products.
Everything you mention
Barcode scanner, for example (Score:3)
He did not mention anything that required a microphone or camera.
A barcode scanner application does, as does a voice-controlled application.
I do remember running Java applets from banks
I'll take a guess that any applet from a bank has been digitally signed with a commercial code signing certificate and is therefore allowed to use JNI as opposed to 100% Pure Java. Like ActiveX, JNI allows running native code, but like ActiveX, it requires a commercial code signing certificate that has not expired. This arrangement is fine for banks but not necessarily for student or hobbyist developers. I'm under the impression that
Re: (Score:3)
You'll be fine. Adobe is phasing out Flash -- but in favor of Adobe Air -- on desktops and mobile.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Re: (Score:3)
Isn't AIR based on Flash? Apparently they're still going to develop it for now, but I wouldn't trust that it will be around long-term.
Re: (Score:3)
I expect Flash to be phased out in favor of non-proprietary alternatives in the near future(3-4 Years).
The HEVC/H.265 video codec is pretty far along now.
It will have the backing of the major hardware manufactuers and distributors like Netflix.
There is really no way of stopping new prorietary technologies from gaining traction on the web or keep them from being ported to the web as they gain momentum elsewhere,
Re: (Score:3)
It's very hard to have any technology (proprietary or not) gain traction on the web when it needs to replace an existing solution in order to do so. It must not just be better - it must be significantly better, especially when the existing one is "good enough". It's precisely why HTML5 is struggling hard against Flash in video, and why it took ages for PNG to become a real standard on the web. But it also means that, once H.264 is set - and, largely thanks to Apple, it is a de facto standard for the Web alr
I'll never forget... (Score:5, Funny)
and thanks for? (Score:4, Funny)
and thanks for all the 100%-CPU-use times?
How will this affect users? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How will this affect users? (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly, it hasn't been that big a deal for a little while now. Like it or not, HTML5 is supplanting Flash in a lot of places.
Personally, I see this as less of a ding against Linux than an admission that Flash just isn't that important anymore.
Re:How will this affect users? (Score:4, Interesting)
If you have nothing but tons of time and experiment forever, yes.
But for everyone else, noscript is going to simply break all modern websites. We need something far better. Something that gives users easy control over what they see and resources used. And do this with minimal breakage of sites and without the user a being a compsci major.
It is possible. I have even had some ideas- mostly centered around limited tight javascript loops designed to short-circuit animation. But it seems there is just not much interest in the community.... yet. I am hoping that will eventually change.
Millions of iOS users show you are wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, Apple (crosses himself to ward of the evil one) has shown that Flash is overrated. Adobe itself already acknowledged defeat on that front and stopped development for mobile devices. Those lucky Android devices that got flash support have it crash or slow the device to a crawl. The mobile device on which regular web pages make sense, tablets, seem to give Android no advantage at all in sales.
Adobe is really shooting itself in the foot here again. Web development is my trade and I have noticed a very high adaptation of Linux in this industry. Not just the obvious servers but desktops as well. A few years ago, if you wanted one, it was a negotiation. Now, I have even seen it as a requirement. Flash is universally despised in the LAMP development area which also seems (but I admit to being prejudiced) to be the place where new things are attempted rather then the 1 millionth intra-net site.
Will this make a huge difference? Not at first but unless a customer absolutely demands flash, I code a requirement in HTML5 and show something that is smoother and better supported and Hey, works on the iPad. So much easier for the initial demo to just hand a tablet to show how nice the site works... especially if you noticed the customer has an iPhone or iPad themselves. And a lot do. I am not convinced the world is moving to the tablet for browsing but the customer does so demoing the product on the product of the future just seems smart to me.
When the iPad (or was it the iPhone itself) launched, a lot of people like the parent claimed that the lack of flash would kill it... I would like a product that gets killed like that. I would dry my tears with million dollar bills.
Adobe got lazy with flash, it is slow, buggy, a resource hog and crashes every two seconds all so that webpages can't be indexed and look like the creation of a 12 year old Japanese girl. It lost support of the people who are capable enough of working around it and now, thank to the evil one, customers are demanding that their site works without it to.
HTML5 is the new thing and with mobile devices becoming bigger and bigger (who would you rather please with your website, an iPad user or a user running IE6, I think I know the bigger sucker... eh, the customer with more disposable income) the finicky, slow websites must go. Have you tried YOUR websites menu with a touchscreen yet?
Re: (Score:3)
Well, for VIDEOs you don't need flash. Never did. Of course SOME websites intentionally obfuscated the videos to force you to decode them in flash, but that's not REAL VIDEO. REAL VIDEO has worked for ages without any need for flash. Flash was made to overcome failures of Microsoft IE to deal with video.
Re: (Score:3)
Sorry, but Real Video never worked.:p
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As much as I think Flash is *way* overused on the Internet, I would miss it. I watch some videos, though not that much - but when I want to it's nice to have. I also play online games to kill time which I don't NEED, but like. I generally hate Flash, but sometimes you need it. Fortunately, Chrome is an option.
Re:How will this affect users? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fortunately, Chrome is an option.
Unfortunately, there's no other option. Even Chromium doesn't have native Flash support on Linux (about half of the videos on Youtube will gak saying that you support for the video format requested).
Re: (Score:3)
I use youtube-dl for most videos. It doesn't do streaming, but it doesn't need Flash!
Flash will diminish in importance, good for HTML5 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Flash will diminish in importance, good for HTM (Score:5, Insightful)
Desktop Linux is not a large enough market to have any significant bearing on the importance of Flash.
Re: (Score:3)
According to statcounter:
February 2012:
"iOS",1.89
"Linux",0.83
February 2011:
"Linux",0.76
"iOS",0.46
If iOS gets to have an effect, I don't see why desktop linux can't. In this case however, it seems like it would mostly hurt Firefox on Linux. But then again this is in 5 years. 5 years ago, there were a lot more sites with Quicktime, Realplayer, and Windows Media streaming. I barely see them at all today.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If that's true, then why did Adobe create Flash for Linux in the first place?
Re: (Score:2)
If that's true, then why did Adobe create Flash for Linux in the first place?
Sometimes people make thing for Linux without need for large profit. It's good PR and helps the community; However, for most people, when you do something for free and find the recipients to be largely rude and ungrateful, you stop doing it.
Re: (Score:3)
They didn't. MACROMEDIA did. And then Adobe swallowed Macromedia and turned flash into bloatware.
Re: (Score:3)
Desktop Linux is not a large enough market to have any significant bearing on the importance of Flash.
Ah but you see, next year it will be the year of the Linux Desktop and it will all change!
Yes everyone was waiting for Gnome 3 and Unity
Time to celebrate... (Score:5, Insightful)
Adobe kills Flash for Linux. - "This is supposed to be a happy occasion. Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who."
Re: (Score:2)
The day it reads "Adobe kills Flash" I'll pop the champagne, "for Linux" just means support is going backwards for Linux. No matter how much you hate Flash the effect will be "That doesn't work on Linux/Firefox, use Windows/Chrome." because despite it being supported I bet once Flash 12 comes out most sites will reply "your version of flash is not supported, please upgrade" anyway. Anyone know if this support will be in Chromium too or if it's another Chrome-only feature like H.264?
Re: (Score:2)
it's not going to be in chromium. chromium is chrome without those google specific features.
Re: (Score:3)
The day it reads "Adobe kills Flash" I'll pop the champagne, "for Linux" just means support is going backwards for Linux. No matter how much you hate Flash the effect will be "That doesn't work on Linux/Firefox, use Windows/Chrome." because despite it being supported I bet once Flash 12 comes out most sites will reply "your version of flash is not supported, please upgrade" anyway. Anyone know if this support will be in Chromium too or if it's another Chrome-only feature like H.264?
Actually, the communication should go in the other direction and say "Use Web Standards!". Then their videos will work on all modern browsers.
"We don't need no steenkin Flash!"
Re: (Score:2)
This post makes me want to
sing.....
sing.......
sing...........
Features (Score:2)
I'm not sure this is actually a loss. I think it's probably a bonus that they'll only be doing fixes and not adding more features. The new features are not likely to be used and generally only end up adding more potential exploits.
Re:Features (Score:4, Informative)
From TFA: "Adobe will continue to provide security updates to non-Pepper distributions of Flash Player 11.2 on Linux for five years from its release".
And then, nothing.
Re:Features (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think Adobe is expecting Flash to last that long. They're already releasing HTML5 authoring tools to prepare ground.
Yay! (Score:3, Insightful)
Now for them to stop releasing it on windows and everything else!
So flash can GO AWAY. Bloated ass useless ad serving slow pos infecting the web and our hardware!
Re:Yay! (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to think of Flash as a CPU hog, but it pales in comparison to Javascript/HTML5. Even simple 2D games in Javascript will run at about 3 frames per second despite constantly using 100% CPU, and they often hog memory too (which Flash has never been all that bad about in my experience, unless you leave a dozen YouTube tabs open or something).
Annoying ads won't go away just because Flash does; they'll move to HTML5 and will be just as annoying, more resource hungry, and harder to block (disabling Javascript everywhere makes the Web unusable; a whitelist system like NoScript is going to be a necessity).
Re: (Score:2)
Some of those games are not using a newer API like requestAnimationFrame [mozilla.org]. After it is more widespread, currently Firefox and Chrome, I expect some limitations will be added to setTimeout
Re:Yay! (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to think of Flash as a CPU hog, but it pales in comparison to Javascript/HTML5
You're comparing apples and oranges there. You are not comparing Adobe Flash to JavaScript + HTML5, you are comparing Adobe Flash to an (unspecified) implementation of JavaScript + HTML5. This may seem like nitpicking, but it's very important. For example, on OS X Safari is a lot faster than FireFox for anything involving lots of compositing, but on Windows the converse is true.
More importantly, the people who get the blame for poor performance can actually fix it with HTML5. When Flash was slow on OS X, people blamed Apple, but Apple was a small share of the market that Adobe didn't care about, and Apple couldn't do anything to fix it. Adobe has very little incentive to improve Flash performance - they don't make money selling the client. In contrast, Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft, and Google all use their JavaScript performance as a selling point for their browsers. If a Flash game is too slow on a user's machine, what can they do? Not play it. Unless they actually tell the author, they may not realise that they've lost a potential user. If they do, will the author pass the complaint to Adobe? Probably not. In contrast, if a web game is too slow in Firefox, the user can try it in Chrome. If it's faster, then Firefox probably just lost a user...
Time for a Linux - Apple alliance (Score:4, Insightful)
Pepper API (Score:5, Interesting)
Can't other browsers just adopt the Pepper API?
Re:Pepper API (Score:4, Interesting)
Ok, to partly answer my own question, it seems Mozilla is not interested in adopting it [mozilla.org].
Re:Pepper API (Score:5, Insightful)
I think Mozillas stance on this Pepper/NaCL thing is quite bad founded. What Google have done is essentially to technicaly sandbox plugins (giving them about the same security as Javascript) and with that made a new and improved plugin API. This is not a bad thing. It of course might keep developers from HTML/JS and instead use C/C++/Any language you can think of. I really don't see how this is a bad thing either. It's pretty much proven by now that HTML/JS will never get native speeds, Chrome already have it. Compare Airmech on chrome with that mozilla MMORPG released this week and you will see for yourself. Airmech looks modern, the Mozzila game is a litte better than NES quality.
Re:Pepper API (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with pepper is that it is a code dump, now moved to the chromium repository, it isn't an spec, behaviour changes every time Google updates it. If Mozilla were to waste waste resources to allow more closed plugins infect the web at least gives them a spec, if every browser embed the same code, then why have different browsers?
This is the same reason why WebQL died as an standard, the spec said: must follow Sqlite version x.y as the SQL dialect., or something like that. Mozilla and Microsoft rejected that because it force an implementation
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, they can. And believe it or not, Mozilla was at the table creating the standard that became Pepper API. They just didn't want to implement it...
Value (Score:5, Funny)
One of the top causes for my netbook's fan to become noisy.
And nothing of value was lost.
Just make HTML5 usable (Score:2)
Isn't this good for Gnash? (Score:2)
Is there any reason the Gnash team cant step up and improve Gnash and make it as good as Flash? Or at least good enough that it can be a drop-in replacement for Flash?
Does Gnash support RTMPE streams? Maybe what is needed is a fork of Gnash (or a bolt-on for Gnash) hosted in a country without anti-circumvention laws that supports RTMPE and other flash DRM. (similar to how many projects have had and continue to have sites outside the US for the development and distribution of encryption software to avoid str
Not really true.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Adobe will continue to make new versions of the Flash Player that use the new PEPPAPI (Pepper API). They will no longer make any new versions of the plugin that support the older NSAPI model. PEPPAPI was created by Mozilla and Google, but since PEPPAPI was introduced, Mozilla decided to not support it ("it is too hard").
I was about to say to stop the bad summaries, but this is/. , and this is what we have come to expect.
Good riddance!!! (Score:2)
Adobe, your web programs (Flash and PDF Reader) have been a pox on computer users everywhere even if they are not aware of the risks. I hope you will entirely give up on the Internet and concentrate on software where they will do no harm. Better yet, just leave the business entirely.
Looking forward (Score:4, Interesting)
This move was not unexpected. We've been hearing things to this extent for a bit now.
This leaves a few questions. First of which is:
Are the open source alternatives ready for prime time? Correct me if I'm wrong but here is the list of the major alternatives:
I've included Swfdec, but as I understand it, this is for flash apps that you have created and know work with swfdec. It is not for random content from unknown sources. A use case for this is a kiosk where you control the content and the display.
Now, are the other two, Gnash and Lightspark, ready for primetime, i.e. can they replace Flash Player any time soon?
Personally, the last time I used either one was a few months ago when I toyed with the idea of trying to make my workstation fully open source. I found that many youtube videos made the plugin crash for both Gnash and Lightspark.
Since there is content right now that is made for Adobe's Flash Player, I feel that the way forward should be to stop creating new content for Flash. Let it die, and only create new content in HTML5. As for the existing content, the alternatives like the ones listed above need to be able to play need to be able to play it with no problems. I would even have no problem if there was new content developed with the alternative in mind rather than close source Flash Player.
Flash dropping support for (Score:2)
Pepper API (Score:3)
Regression as a parting shot? (Score:4, Informative)
And as a parting shot at Linux users, Adobe introduces a major regression [launchpad.net] (hardware accelerated video tints everything blue [archlinux.org], e.g. YouTube), claims it can't be reproduced, and closes all bug reports [archlinux.org] about [adobe.com] it, leaving users to implement a nasty hack [nvnews.net] individually.
Re:OS alternative? (Score:4, Informative)
For YouTube, just enable the HTML5 experiment [youtube.com]. No Flash needed.
Re:OS alternative? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:OS alternative? (Score:4, Informative)
Here's a link to a MPlayer YouTube script [multimedia.cx] which also allows playing on the fly. It uses youtube-dl as a helper to fetch the exact video location URL from which MPlayer starts buffering.
Now we just need a Firefox/Chrome extension to make a nicely clickable button which passes the browser URL to the script. One problematic thing here too is that while MPlayer can seek, it does seem to not know the length of the video, so I don't know the current position.
Re: (Score:2)
so will Linux (i.e. Android)
Android is not losing Flash support, only desktop Linux / Mozilla / X11 is.
Antiquated storage (Score:2)
One problem I've always had w/ Adobe Flash - regardless of platform - is that the storage that one can set aside for a downloading video is at the most 10MB, and after that, one's only choice is unlimited. There is no way I'm going to select unlimited, but in this age of TB of HDD and GB of RAM, it's really antiquated of Adobe to have nothing b/w 10MB and entire disk. Least I expect from this is to allow 1GB of HDD to be allowed, so that the downloads are faster.
I happen to use Safari/XP to watch YouTub
Re:OS alternative? (Score:4, Informative)
How close are we to an open source alternative that actually works for most flash tasks...
These work fine for what I do (Debian):
i browser-plugin-gnash - GNU Shockwave Flash (SWF) player - Plugin for Mozill
i A gnash - GNU Shockwave Flash (SWF) player
i A gnash-common - GNU Shockwave Flash (SWF) player - Common files/libr
Re:That didn't last long (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, there was a Linux flash player since version 6... The support hasn't always been good or well-synced with the Windows/MacOS releases, but it has existed for quite a long time. 64-bit support has only been available since version 10 or so.
Re: (Score:3)
It's at least been since Flash Player 9 in January 2007. [adobe.com] 5 years is more than a token gesture.
Re:Google Chrome for Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
All of my machines "lack" Flash, except the one built into Chrome. That includes my Mac and Windows machines, also, not just my Linux machine. Of course, I don't consider that to be a problem, it's deliberate.
Re: (Score:2)
They're called "other countries", and in some of them, desktop Linux use may not be a majority, but it's more than a rounding error.
Re: (Score:2)
Why the hell would you even want to spend resources to reverse engineer a piece of shit such as Flash ?
Because the "POS" Flash is still better than the POS called "Java applets"
Re: (Score:2)
I agree. But unfortunately, Sturgeon's Law applies - 90% of websites are garbage, so if you want to use the web you'll have to go "dumpster diving" (enabling JS) a lot.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
We don't need a stinky user base!
Fixed it for you.
Re:Hulu Desktop? (Score:5, Informative)
Adobe will keep supporting Flash on Android, for example.
Not according to Adobe they won't...
http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2011/11/flash-focus.html
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Rumor is H.265 will support protected path and HDMI which means it'll be a DMCA violation if you even attempt to reverse engineer it.
What business does a codec have with digital restrictions management technologies? I thought that was the province of the container. The only time I've ever seen an interaction between a codec and DRM has been BD+, in which the encoder can warp portions of a video to make them easier to encode, and then code on the disc running in a VM can refuse to unwarp them if the playback environment doesn't meet basic spot checks.
Re:Hulu Desktop? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hulu Desktop? (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't necessarily have to be the end of free as in free as beer, but worst case scenario it is, sure. You might as well be complaining that mozilla has to pay for bandwidth for everyone to download the browser from their site, or grab add-ins. That isn't free either. They'll just pay the license fee out of the revenue they get from google for having them as their default search engine. Whoopee.
Not all "FOSSies" are clueless, they just aren't just aren't as a religious zealot about not using h.264 as you are. They are actually fairly smart about doing what's best for themselves, usually. If you actually studied most of the technologies in h.264, VP8, WMV, etc, you'd realize if a patent likely applies to one, would apply to them all. The open source codecs aren't all that different from the proprietary ones that they would likely escape either.
And yes, I would consider your post to be TROLLING, as it really didn't do anything but complain and spread FUD.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
You have some very strange views my friend. MPEG-LA exists so that something reasonable could be done about all the patents that are involved with specific codecs, and people who wanted to license it could do so from one place rather than dozens. I'm not sure how that is considered being a troll, but apparently having to actually pay for stuff means "troll" to you.
As for something that MPEG-LA did that was friendly and/or supportive of FOSS (although I wonder why it's all about FOSS with you). Here: http [mpegla.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Hulu Desktop? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hulu Desktop? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hulu Desktop? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
They probably want Hulu to "fail", because then they can say, "We tried but it didn't work," and then push people to their own, private platforms with individual subscription fees--or make deals with ISPs to raise rates and bundle subscriptions that don't count against bandwidth quotas.
I think our best alternative is to just do something else. Make our own TV shows, or don't watch TV altogether. Life goes on.
Re: (Score:3)
They probably want Hulu to "fail", because then they can say, "We tried but it didn't work," and then push people to their own, private platforms with individual subscription fees--or make deals with ISPs to raise rates and bundle subscriptions that don't count against bandwidth quotas.
But they've been doing that, and every effort appears to have failed. Part of that problem is they olny offer they're own media, or can't come to good enough agreements with each other. Again the lincensors are too greedy I think.
Re:Hulu Desktop? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Hulu Desktop? (Score:5, Informative)
DVD regions are trivial to defeat. Multi-region players are available widely, cheaply, and legally. In some jurisdictions, it's even legally mandated that disk players not enforce those restrictions.
DVD regions are a paper tiger compared to web services.