Six Months Without Adobe Flash, and I Feel Fine 393
Posted
by
timothy
from the alternatives-emerge-in-a-wait-no dept.
from the alternatives-emerge-in-a-wait-no dept.
Reader hessian six months ago de-installed the Adobe Flash player on all of his browsers, probably a prudent move in light of various recent vulnerabilities. "This provoked some shock and incredulity from others. After all, Flash has been an essential content interpreter for over a decade. It filled the gap between an underdeveloped JavaScript and the need for media content like animation, video and so on." But it turns out that life sans Flash can still be worth living. Are there things you rely on that make Flash hard to give up?
i'd like to see that (Score:4, Funny)
"probably a prudent movie"
where is this movie you speak of, i'd like to watch it on my flash player
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You're thinking of a prurient movie.
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Kids (Score:5, Insightful)
Kids sites, educational or otherwise. All seem to use flash. IIRC, Khan Academy as well. If you have kids, you "need" Flash.
Re:Kids (Score:5, Funny)
One more reason not to have kids.
Re:Kids (Score:5, Funny)
Saving a shitload of money wasn't enough of a reason?
Re:Kids (Score:4, Insightful)
Saving a shitload of money wasn't enough of a reason?
No, certainly not. What's the point of a shitload of money if all you do is save it? Are you going to swim in it like Scrooge McDuck?
There's no point in earning or saving money if you aren't going to do something with it. Spending money on children (and grandchildren) is something that a lot of people (though obviously not 100% of all people) get a lot of enjoyment out of.
Feel free to spend your money on whatever you like if you dislike children, but you're just ignorant if you think that raising children isn't an excellent way to make use of hard earned cash for the vast majority of the human race who like children.
Saving money so that you have lots of funds for spoiling grandchildren is also highly popular and a worthwhile way to spend money for many people, but it's a bit more difficult to have grandchildren if you don't have children (though not impossible obviously.)
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Not to mention that having children is the only proven route to immortality. With a lot of kids, your DNA is almost guaranteed to survive. With no kids, your DNA goes into the grave with you. It's unlikely that some woman in the distant future will be so desperate for DNA that she'll dig your bones up to try extracting the necessary ingredients with which to fertilize her eggs.
I know, zombie apocalypse fans will probably argue my assertions. Personally, I found getting the wife pregnant to be far more
Re:Kids (Score:4, Interesting)
Immortality for your genes isn't worth very much. It gives you a legacy, but you don't get to see it.
I'm young enough that I've a chance, if only a very slim one, that immortality-tech will become available within my lifetime. Body transplant, cryonics that actually works, maybe even the holy grail of mind uploading. It's a long shot, but it's the only chance I see. If not, well... not much I can do about it.
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Immortality for your genes isn't worth very much. It gives you a legacy, but you don't get to see it.
I'm young enough that I've a chance, if only a very slim one, that immortality-tech will become available within my lifetime. Body transplant, cryonics that actually works, maybe even the holy grail of mind uploading. It's a long shot, but it's the only chance I see. If not, well... not much I can do about it.
Sheldon Cooper, is that you?
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WWWWW?
(What would Will Wheaton want?)
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Nihilism is alive and well, I see.
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Obligatory: Family Decals [xkcd.com]
My wife and I couldn't and didn't have children, so we were the couple on the right. She died in Jan 2006, after 20.5 years together, so now I'm alone, but I don't regret one second of our life together - just the two of us. We kissed, hugged and said "I love you" every day, held hands wherever we went and did almost everything together. She even died in my arms. I still wear my wedding ring every day.
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Okay, I'll bite. This reply is really modded up as informative? Really? As opposed to funny? Because, as a parent, I can see funny. But reasonable? Really?
I'm torn. I'd like to think everyone knows that not having children will save you a shitload of money and that people are not obligated to have children. Thus "informative" would be a ridiculous mod. On the other hand, many of the people in our society do seem to feel they are obligated to have children and it is just what society expects of them. The idea that it is a huge expense they may not be able to afford and that people who have children tend to be less happy, isn't something they've ever thought
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Economically, today, children are a terrible idea. It made sense once, when children were a retirement plan - the only means of support when you get too old to work. But we have social security now.
However, the decision to breed* isn't economic. It's emotional. People choose to have children because they have a psychological need, and sometimes a pet just doesn't quite fill the niche fully.
*When it actually is a decision at all, and are are a lot of accidential children.
Give Birth for the Economy! (Score:2)
Personally economic, perhaps not. But nationally economic, children are essential, as we need a certain level of birthrate.
Re:Kids (Score:5, Insightful)
The older you get the more you appreciate your children. What makes sense in your 20s may not make as much sense in your 70s and 80s.
Re:Kids (Score:5, Informative)
2. Believe it or not, 'social security' is not a magical rainbow fairy whirlpool where money just appears. It needs ... money. Money which is usually generated through general taxation or some kind of contribution scheme. Where does this money come from? People who work.
Even in your utopia, the ability of your government to support you and your 'social security' in retirement is directly correlated with the number of people working in the economy and paying taxes. When you're old, those people will be - guess what? - other people's children.
Please make sure you thank them for indulging in their emotional/psychological need so you can retire in comfort.
Re:Kids (Score:4, Insightful)
But we have social security now.
No, the old people have social security now because young people like you work and some of the GDP they generate is redirected towards the way of the needy. When you become old or disabled and there are no young people to fill in the void, what do you think you're going to get from the social system?
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People with kids are less happy? I find that hard to believe - definitely citation needed. My kids make me far happier than anything else in my life and most parents I know feel the same.
Re:Kids (Score:5, Insightful)
If you did not have kids your life would be radically different.
If his parents didn't have kids, his life would be even more radically different!
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That your kids make you happier than anything else you have now DOES NOT imply that you would not be happier without them. IIRC there are studies that have shown people without children are in fact happier than those with children.
You don't know what true happiness is until you have children.
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The plural of platitude is not data.
Re:Kids (Score:4, Insightful)
If you did not have kids your life would be radically different. You would have things you DO NOT have now.
Things do not make you happy. People do.
You do not need to have children to be happy, but you need something other than more material possessions.
Re:Kids (Score:5, Funny)
Now, now, we don't even know if he's from New Jersey.
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And the vast majority seem to be outside the union of those two sets.
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Not even baby goats?
Re:Kids (Score:5, Interesting)
Khan academy videos are on youtube and work fine if you join HTML5 trial [youtube.com] on Youtube.
Gnash sometimes works, sometimes not.
Google Streetview, yeah it would be nice if that worked without Flash. There is no reason why it could not. It's just a matter of Google investing money/time/effort to get that working.
I personally don't use Flash. For years. It certainly is possible to live without it. The smaller amount of ads alone makes that worth.
Re:Kids (Score:5, Informative)
They already have, you can enable an experimental webgl version of streetview that seems to work just fine for me.
I've been flash-less for the better part of 5 years now :) Never regret!
zero punctuation (Score:3, Informative)
Cannot live without
What? And, what? (Score:4, Interesting)
This provoked some shock and incredulity from others.
Er, did it? I think some of you have your surprise bar set a little low, if one guy uninstalling Flash is enough to make you apoplectic.
probably a prudent movie
What about the imprudent movies? How are we supposed to watch those now?
Gnash (Score:2)
Why not, for the hell of it, live with Gnash, the GNU Flash alternative, for six months? Maybe no Flash at all is better than dealing with a crashing Gnash, but who knows, you might be surprised!
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Two Month without adobe pdf and I feel .. (Score:5, Informative)
.. fine, because now I use SumatraPDF, small fast no nagware no nagdates .. I feel great!
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Try MuPDF for size.
Press 'I' to invert colors, Shift-W to scale to width. Indispensable for when you have a headache.
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.. fine, because now I use SumatraPDF, small fast no nagware no nagdates .. I feel great!
I use a Mac and I have been smugly without Adobe PDF software every since I got it 5 years ago.
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.. fine, because now I use SumatraPDF, small fast no nagware no nagdates .. I feel great!
Windows 8 comes also with a nice Reader app for PDFs.
I need my daily dose of animated bicycle gore. (Score:2)
Happy Wheels requires Flash.
http://www.totaljerkface.com/happy_wheels.php [totaljerkface.com]
So did I, about four months ago. (Score:2)
I'd got rid of Adobe Flash ages ago, at least a year ago. I noticed that Gnash wasn't cutting it though for the few things I was trying to use it for (basically Youtube and the occasional stupid game). So, about four months ago I got rid of Gnash as well. No problem at all. OK, so the occasional Youtube video won't work in HTML 5 mode. I can cope. I really can! (The slow Internet speed which means it takes twenty minutes to download a three minute video helps as well.)
And I can't think of anything else that
Re:So did I, about four months ago. (Score:5, Informative)
I noticed that Gnash wasn't cutting it though for the few things I was trying to use it for (basically Youtube and the occasional stupid game).
That WAS ages ago... as you said. I see Gnash is a little CPU-hungry, but playback has been smooth for me. I don't miss Adobe Flash one bit.
There's experimental GPU acceleration in the works too.
youtube-dl [github.com]
is nice too, if you don't mind the lack of streaming. I'm not actually sure why playback doesn't work on partially downloaded files.
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That seems to be a problem related to the video not the app. I've seen this in several different file containers, from what I can tell MPEG4 has some kind of built in index at the front of the file that gets checked for consistency before it plays. Unless the file is intended for streaming in which case it's set up a bit differently. Quicktime won't play many cut off videos but VLC will play them often after an error message.
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youtube-dl -o - $URL | mplayer -
The only difference to actually streaming is that you cannot jump into the middle of a video straight away. But after caching for a while, you can move back and forth with MPlayer's usual keys.
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I just tried it. It's beautiful, and I learned how to use - for std I/O. Thanks!
Hulu, etc. (Score:5, Informative)
But also: MSNBC (TRMS, occasionally Morning Joe). Pretty much any decent video site still uses flash.
Re:Hulu, etc. (Score:5, Informative)
But also: MSNBC
For MSNBC change your user agent string to the IPad's user agent string and they'll server up Flash free video.
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An Amazon Instant Video...flash only currently.
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An Amazon Instant Video...flash only currently.
Inexcusable.
In other places (Score:5, Informative)
An Amazon Instant Video...flash only currently.
You can use that on AppleTV, the PS3 and all iOS devices - all without flash.
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AppleTV, the PS3, iOS devices all support Hulu without needing Flash.
So, in order to escape Flash, people should pay hundreds of dollars? I don't think that's really a step up.
Not Flash, but Silverlight (Score:5, Informative)
Netflix uses Silverlight, something that sucks quite a bit. They do offer a dedicated app if you use Windows 8, but the app is surprisingly poorly designed, plus I don't really want Windows 8 on my desktop.
Re:Not Flash, but Silverlight (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't believe how many sites use silverlight. Even Microsoft backed away from Silverlight ages ago, but some sites are even just now starting to implement Silverlight. As a Linux user this is EXTREMELY frustrating, and as a user of mobile devices it isn't any better. Silverlight has never worked properly on linux, and nobody has ever made a plugin for it for Android, there was a Linux Firefox plugin ages ago called "moonlight" that seemed to work on about 10% of Silverlight sites, but that stopped development ages ago too, and isnt' compatible with any of the latest browsers.
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Re:Not Flash, but Silverlight (Score:5, Insightful)
Question: What's the only thing worse than Flash?
You mean besides Java applets, right?
twitch.tv (Score:2)
Streetview (Score:4, Informative)
Streetview on Google Maps needs flash. I would miss that quite a bit.
Re:Streetview (Score:5, Informative)
If you enable WebGL on Google Maps, I'm almost certain that the streetview is WebGL too, not flash.
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If you enable WebGL on Google Maps, I'm almost certain that the streetview is WebGL too, not flash.
You are correct; just enabled WebGL on my Flash-less Safari, and was pleasantly surprised. No need to switch to Chrome for Street View anymore!
I try this every now and then... (Score:2)
It is getting easier. I eventually reinstalled it because I got tired of not being able to play some youtube videos and wanted to edit a map on OpenStreetMap.
I normally use Click to play on everything (in Firefox), and it does have some pain points. Namely sites that can usually fallback to not using flash, still ask for flash and block it. YouTube does this sometimes even though it is going to work without flash. So does http://gs.statcounter.com/ [statcounter.com].
Google actually asks for Flash the most out of sites that I
Went without until I needed it for online meetings (Score:3)
I bought an OSX laptop and successfully avoided Flash for a few months while I was using it to prepare the class I now teach. A good proportion of YouTube videos wouldn't play so I was glad at times to have another computer in the house to watch them, but mostly I didn't miss it at all.
Ultimately, though, it turned out that in order to hold online office hours at our university, I had to install Adobe Connect. That software is Flash from stem to stern. I installed Flash, and it took me a few days to get used to the surprise of animated (and noisy) ads again.
Conclusion: access to Flash is nice at times, but one generally does better without it.
Re:Went without until I needed it for online meeti (Score:4, Interesting)
I installed Flash, and it took me a few days to get used to the surprise of animated (and noisy) ads again.
Luckily, those are easy to circumvent if you just use a suitable browser. On Firefox the Adblock Plus - plugin generally manages to hide all ads and the likes, something that also includes most Flash - content, or you can use the Flashblock - plugin to disable Flash altogether on some sites or make it so that you must click on the item in question first before Flash gets loaded.
I have to add, though, that from the security perspective you should not run around without using Flashblock, there are still too many Flash - based attacks roaming the Internet and you never know when they land on your machine. An antivirus may help, but why let the virus/malware package on your machine in the first place?
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Gimme a break. The GGP was talking about OS X, which pretty much implies Safari, and then you DON'T come back with "Well, if you are using Safari, use THIS (like I did)", or "If you use FireFox, you might want to check into...".
No, I deliberately used the wording "a suitable browser" so that it would NOT rule out any specific one. I do not know about Safari's capabilities because I do not own any Apple device and I have no interest to start Googling about a browser I don't use, so that's why I chose to use such a wording.
No, instead you made a snarky, side-swipe at Safari, and got called-out on it.
You wish I did, but just look through my comment history and point me to where I had done such previously; I have no need to bash OSX or Safari or whatever, I don't care what people use, I just wanted to make a po
Don't really miss Flash (Score:4, Interesting)
I consider ClickToFlash to be the best of both worlds. Flash that doesn't get to execute is essentially "not there", and unless I don't understand all the attack-vectors (which is likely), I think that, for now, this strikes a good balance. Because, before I click that little "Flash Placeholder", it makes me stop and think about whether I really need to see what's "behind the curtain".
However, on my iPad, which is Flash-Free, I think I run into a Flash-only site only about once or twice a month. Even porn seems to be being delivered in HTML 5 from almost everywhere.
Bottom line: The only thing keeping Flash alive is lazy developers and/or cheapskate PHBs.
Three Flash-only sites in one day (Score:2)
However, on my iPad, which is Flash-Free, I think I run into a Flash-only site only about once or twice a month
Let me break that record: Albino Blacksheep, Newgrounds, and Kongregate. That makes three.
So? (Score:2)
There's absolutely nothing newsworthy in this post. Apart from the poster calling Overly Attached Girlfriend Overly Obsessed Girlfriend while getting the abbreviation right...
Not hard since the iPad (Score:2)
life worth living (Score:2)
I think, but I can't say from experience, that life sans computers is worth living too...
ING banking site (Score:2)
Other than that site I haven't needed Flash for years. Any website that had no html home page lost my interest immediately.
sandbox/VM (Score:2)
Please go hardcore (Score:2)
and drop the whole Internet thing. You will notice that you are still fine.
As long as you made the choice yourself, you will be fine. Now tell, no, force others to do the same. Block all Flash at your router and see if the people you live with are also fine with it. Don't tell them anything. Just observe.
That would be interesting to see. Also do the same at your job and see if you are still fine.
Live sports (Score:2)
I tried it (Score:2)
Some videos played just fine but other videos played back at 1.5x speed while the audio was normal. Opted out of the trial after that.
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I haven't seen that happen. My experience is more binary. It either worked for a given video or it didn't there was no half way. Ironically, some older videos about openness and free standards were some of the ones that didn't work. This was some time ago.
I'd like to take a moment to extend my middle finger to any site that uses Flash for non DRM video. DRM is the only reason you should use Flash at all and it's not even a good reason at that. Fuck you Google. Set YouTube Free. You were going to d
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"sitting on your dick"
That would be an odd experience, I imagine. I've had OTHER people to sit on my dick. It's rather similar to having someone sit on your lap, but a bit more intimate. If you figure out how to sit on your own lap, let us all know, alright? Remember, though: Pics, or it didn't happen!!
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No, no. He meant sitting on your duck. His post almost makes sense when you read it that way.
Re:HTML5 on YouTube? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, this is the case. It took me a while to realize that Apple no longer ships Flash with Macs, and so I was using YouTube sans Flash for about a month. It works on some videos, but not on others.
Re:HTML5 on YouTube? (Score:5, Insightful)
All new videos, I think, get encoded into HTML5 friendly formats. Older videos may still not be.
HTML5 A/V could be a fantastic alternative, if only people would settle on a universal codec. Google is still firmly on WebM, while Opera and Firefox is all over Theora/Vorbis and Ogg and, of course, IE 9+ still natively supports MP4 only in H.264, I think. And Safari does QuickTime too.
Right now, the only way anyone publishing video will get away with only an HTML5 video option is if they encode to different formats, different resolutions and still provide a Flash fallback for older/incompatible browsers. Quite a mess.
Re:HTML5 on YouTube? (Score:5, Informative)
Google is still firmly on WebM, while Opera and Firefox is all over Theora/Vorbis and Ogg
Opera and Firefox support WebM (VP8+Vorbis in a subset of the Matroska container).
IE 9+ still natively supports MP4 only in H.264, I think. And Safari does QuickTime too.
IE 9 supports WebM through a plug-in [webmproject.org].
and still provide a Flash fallback for older/incompatible browsers
For IE 8 users, what benefit is there to using the Adobe Flash Player plug-in over the Google Chrome Frame plug-in?
Re:HTML5 on YouTube? (Score:4, Interesting)
Quite a mess.
Not quite.
You can support almost all browsers out there with only two codecs: H.264 + your choice of ogg/theora or webm/vp8. And the H.264 will of course still work with Flash. This URL http://caniuse.com/#feat=webm [caniuse.com] is very handy if you want to see for yourself.
At least that's the situation for static streaming / VOD. Live broadcast is where the mess is with Apple's HLS, Microsoft's HSS, Adobe's RTMP, MPEG's DASH along with IETF-standard RTSP (15 years old but still somewhat alive) and various less-known protocols. AFAICT, none of the recent protocols (that support adaptive bandwidth and work over HTTP) support open audio/video codecs. If Google/Mozilla/etc want patent-free codecs to get traction, they should work on a version of DASH that works with theora/VP8.
My 0.02€ as a former employee of a large video-streaming-oriented CDN.
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Yes, this is the case. It took me a while to realize that Apple no longer ships Flash with Macs, and so I was using YouTube sans Flash for about a month. It works on some videos, but not on others.
Yeah, in my experience, the ratio of "works" to "doesn't work" is about 10,000:1. I figure that Google probably doesn't constantly churn through their entire collection from A-Z, searching for, and converting, all of their old videos to HTML 5; but has some algorithm for deciding what priority to put on converting old videos (new ones are ALWAYS available in HTML 5), and so that accounts for the occasional "doesn't work". Nothing else explains inconsistency, considering that ALL they deliver are videos.
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Has YouTube yet fixed the inconsistency where only Flash is allowed to deliver videos that have ads of any sort?
Yes. Ad-enabled videos work on the iPad. Though you end up with the issue of not being able to play videos that disallow mobile device playback.
Both of these restrictions are enabled by the video uploader, and both cause (IMO) more harm than good. Any uploader that disables mobile viewing is an uploader I'm far less likely to subscribe to or otherwise watch future videos from.
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I don't have any direct experience, but I think YouTube will serve up HTML5 instead of Flash. Any details?
Yes, mostly. I haven't signed up for HTML5 experience, but I do run with Flash enabled on a site per site basis. I don't have it enabled for YouTube. I've ran into a few videos that didn't play without Flash, but the vast majority of them do.
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Being part of the HTML5 trial isn't enough. You have to spoof your user-agent to a mobile device and use the mobile version of the site. I really wish they would hurry up and stop forcing flash on the desktop.
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All videos, however, can be downloaded from youtube as a .mp4, a .flv, whatever, then played in a normal movie player anyway. I haven't used flash in three years, and I've never run across anything on youtube I couldn't watch, unless it was "blocked in my region due to copyright concerns" or something. For a while at the beginning the tools were subpar, and you had to keep an array of them around, but these days something like Minitube will just work and leave your CPU unpegged.
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Re:Flashblock (Score:5, Informative)
Just run the Flash you trust and need for normal functionality. Done and done.
The mere presence of Flash on the system allows it to be craftily run in more areas than you might expect(as with the 'flash exploit embedded in an Office document' story seen here just recently, along with PDFs in Acrobat and a bunch of other abominations). Even if you can find the correct toggles to shut that off, Flash's updater can't really be trusted not to merrily reinstall things whenever the next update comes out; but running a version of Flash that isn't the newest is just asking for trouble...
If it were only confined to a browser(and a browser that didn't trust it in the slightest), it wouldn't be so bad.
Re:Flashblock (Score:5, Informative)
On Windows, it's quite easy, actually. The non-IE browser plugin and the ActiveX controls are separate installs. Without the latter, you don't have issues outside the browser. The browser plugin flash is invisible to anything but the browsers. I don't recall if recent IE uses the browser plugin or ActiveX variant, I recall that older ones needed the ActiveX version.
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Despite what some people may believe, neither MS-Office nor Acrobat is required on Windows. There are viable alternatives to both. Acrobat, in particular, should be an easy app to abandon. Office may be a little trickier if you're used to/depend on some of its specific features (something I understand, since I'm just the opposite--Office is missing features I depend on in my office suite).
It's really a trade-off, though. If you absolutely want to keep flash around, and have something like flashblock to keep
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Re:Live without Java (Score:5, Funny)
In an ideal world, I could live a life without Java, but I love my Android phone...
Stop, stop, you are making Larry Ellison's lawyers cry [wikipedia.org].
Wait, actually, that's probably a feature. Carry on.
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Or you could install flash on your tablet... just saying...
That's the great part about Android, unlike the iOS devices that don't have flash, we can view the vast majority of the web on our devices.
Download Flash how? (Score:2)
Or you could install flash on your tablet
I thought Adobe had stopped offering downloads of Flash Player through Google Play Store to devices that didn't already have Flash Player, and I thought Android 4.1 couldn't download Flash Player through Google Play Store in the first place.
French Erotic Yatta (Score:2)
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Only if you treat a subjective word like "safe" as an objective absolute. Nothing, anywhere, is absolutely safe. Putting the burden on the user and giving them the impossible task of being "vigilant" is not helpful.
However, if you treat safety as the subjective word it is, you may realize that removing Flash and Java will increase your safety on the web by an enormous amount. Most people aren't technologically savvy enough to use vigilance as a safety mechanism. Just avoid Flash and Java, run antivirus soft