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On (Adobe) Flash

I despise it.

Being a Linux user for a while now, there have been very few instances when I haven’t cursed Flash for what it is. An abomination on the web. I have not investigated whom exactly to blame here – the list of shared objects in `ldd /usr/lib/flashplayer-mozilla/libflashplayer.so` or the actual shit that’s in libflashplayer.so or the browser’s interface with this blob.

Awesome Web 2.0(tm) sites such as slideshare use it and trying to view a presentation fullscreen is more painful than watching your laptop die due to overheating. I’ve given up on watching youtube on the browser too. These days I wait for the video content to load into /tmp and play Flash* file with dear old mplayer. Such is life. Can’t wait to get my copy of Windows 7 license now.

Yes, I’m beating a dead horse here but I post this at the backdrop of the news of Mr. Jobs having announced that the iPad(sic) isn’t going to have Flash on it. I don’t know if I’m ever going to use this piece of locked hardware ever – maybe it’s useful in the hospitals – but the “no-flash” stance makes me happy.

I sincerely hope that HTML5 and related bling really does take off and take Flash off of my laptop.

3 replies on “On (Adobe) Flash”

I use that when I want to queue up a bunch of ’em. Or if the video is long/huge and there’s a good chance the flash plugin is going to die midway (when I’m on a slow connection)

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