The Simple Adobe Flash Problem

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Disclaimer Intro: I've never had it in for Adobe. I own a number of their programs and enjoy them. What I have it in for is dishonesty, deceit, bad programming and bad business. Sadly, Adobe have become diligent at all four. Why? Because they're suffering from what I call Marketing-As-Management. Their eye is entirely off the ball. They can no longer manage themselves. They can no longer invent. They can only sell. And as this downward spiral deepens, they become infiltrated with what I call Marketing Morons (as opposed to mavens) who consider the customers to be an annoyance and treat them as such. This is how companies die. And while companies die, they perpetrate crap like this:

Now What?

Once again Adobe have had a tantrum about criticism of Flash. And once again, Adobe have lied and attempted to bullshit us. Check out this bit of surrealism:

Adobe’s Next Flash Excuse: If You Want To Save Power, Don’t Turn On Your Machine

I posted a few bits of relevant information today over at this MacDailyNews article:

Adobe CTO tries defending the indefensible Flash pig

I'm summarizing my comments here for others to use and consider:

1) Q: "What's the name of that flash blocking plug-in?"

For Safari (and works with other browsers) use:
ClickToFlash

For Firefox use:
Flashblock
and/or
NoScript

I'd recommend NoScript at all times in any case. JavaScript (aka ECMAScript) has become the Bubonic Plague of the Internet.

2) Q: "If I use Click2Flash and just never click, does that save as much battery power as not installing Flash at all?"

YES.

Just keep in mind that when you do click to run a Flash video, the only way to stop the thing is to close that page in your browser or move on to another URL. If the Flash (playing or not!) remains in a background window or tab, it is STILL running and is STILL eating your CPU and therefore your BATTERY. The more Flash pages you have open, the more Flash is chomping your CPU, therefore your battery.

Therefore: Close all Flash pages ASAP after you've watched them.

3) The Clear Distinction:

Software that is sitting in the background, not being used, is supposed to be silent and not access the CPU. This is what is called "Good Programming".

Software that sits in the background, not being used, not playing anything, not actually doing anything, that STILL accesses your CPU and eats up CPU cycles is called CRAPWARE. This is called "Bad Programming".

Flash is Bad Programming.

And no, it's NOT the fault of the person who wrote the Flash ad or the Flash video or the Flash animation.

It's ADOBE'S FAULT. Only Adobe can fix it. Adobe refuse to fix it. Adobe are insistently Bad Programmers.

It's that simple.

4) "But I still want Flash on my iDevice!"

No you don't.

Note everyone: Flash still runs like a 1-legged cow on Android. Don't let Adobe fool you. If Adobe ever get off their lazy asses and fix Flash so it actually works nicely on hand held devices, then we'll talk. Until then, you don't want Flash on your iDevices. Be glad you don't have it.
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