Flash Can Rob 2 Hours From MacBook Air's Battery Life 509
The lack of Flash in the new MacBook Air may annoy some users, but it has a big upside, too. According to Wired's report (citing Ars Technica) passed on by an anonymous reader, "Having Flash installed can cut battery runtime considerably — as much as 33 percent in our testing. With a handful of websites loaded in Safari, Flash-based ads kept the CPU running far more than seemed necessary, and the best time I recorded with Flash installed was just 4 hours. After deleting Flash, however, the MacBook Air ran for 6:02 — with the exact same set of websites reloaded in Safari, and with static ads replacing the CPU-sucking Flash versions."
Why not install Flashblock by default (Score:5, Insightful)
Block all flashes by default but allow user to enable one specifically. Problem solved.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There's a Safari plugin that does just that called ClickToFlash. It handles flash the way browsers handled images in ye olden days - they're replaced with a "flash" box that you click on to let the flash tidbit load and run.
Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with the makers of ClickToFlash, though I do use it.
Yeah, I got the best of both worlds here. (Score:3, Informative)
I use NoScript. All Flash is blocked by default. I temporarily whitelist sites where I want something to play, and otherwise it doesnt run. I save the battery, skip the annoying ads, and still get to use YouTube. I paid a lot less for this laptop than I would for a MacBook Air to boot.
Not that they arent nice. But I think this study, while bringing up a definite truth, is an after-the-fact justification/spin for Apple, who blocked Flash for entirely different reasons.
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Seeing things (Score:2)
Cripes, I must be getting tired -- I originally read your post as:
Because its not an option in firefox or safari by default. Its handled by penguins.
Gah! They're everywhere!
I dont use Flashblock so tell me (Score:3, Interesting)
I dont use Flashblock so tell me, how exactly does it break hulu.com?
I do use NoScript, which does NOT break hulu.com. It simply improves the interface, allowing me to browse without a bunch of unwanted stuff starting inappropriately and grabbing control of my computer against my will. When I *want* to watch a video I temporarily whitelist it, the page reloads, and the video plays.
Would've been first post... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Would've been first post... (Score:4, Funny)
...but my computer ran out of batteries and I had to find an outlet.
I have several outlets besides computers - cooking, swimming, yoga, masturbation to hairy milf porn, ....oh, you're talking power outlet! My bad.
Who would stand to benefit from such a study? (Score:3, Insightful)
It couldn't be Apple, who has been impartial to Flash, and welcoming of it on their platform... ...oh, wait.
Re:Who would stand to benefit from such a study? (Score:5, Funny)
There are many beneficiaries when flash eventually bites the dust and becomes a pariah like Java Applets. But I'd like to point out the biggest impact isn't the battery life, it's your crotch. Flash forces laptops to run extremely hot and it invariably burns your nads while you rewind Lady Gaga videos for the 20th time in a row.
The reason why male sack is situated in-between legs is because it needs to remain a certain temperature to function properly. Evolution never anticipated humans putting hot slabs of electronics on their privates for extended periods of time.
Re:Who would stand to benefit from such a study? (Score:5, Insightful)
Evolution never anticipated anything, full stop.
Re:Who would stand to benefit from such a study? (Score:5, Funny)
Evolution never anticipated anything, full stop.
Oh, yeah? How do you explain evolution anticipating wrist watches by providing us with wrists, pal? Or anticipating the infernal earphones from Apple by provided us with convenient bumps and crags on the ear lobe for it to hang on to?
Re:Who would stand to benefit from such a study? (Score:5, Insightful)
Augh! Enough!
Flash isn't perfect, I'll grant that. But if Flash didn't solve a very real set of problems, it wouldn't be installed on 98% of all computers made!
Go back just 1 year. Want to watch a video, online, what tool do you use? Want to make an interactive, graphically rich application to deliver via the Internet, what tool do you use?
See what I'm saying? Sure, flash has its warts. But it does neatly solve a problem that even HTML 5 doesn't do all that well at, yet. And the cost is a bit of CPU time, which has traditionally been considered cheap....
How many conversations have been ended with: "No need to rewrite your PHP application in C - Hardware is cheap!"? It's the same conversation with Flash! It's highly abstract, platform independent, looks nice, and performs better than any other product available (still!) given these requirements.
I'm not saying that it couldn't be done better, but even with HTML 5, there still isn't a tool with a better overall combination of features and availability. (Hint: my small company's online training videos are all delivered with flash and FlowPlayer because it actually works - HTML 5 is not even close to universally available, yet)
Re:Who would stand to benefit from such a study? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are many beneficiaries when flash eventually bites the dust and becomes a pariah like Java Applets.
The problem isn't just Flash, the problem is complicated and interactive ads, which is what advertisers push for (because they work). It doesn't matter which technology is being used, be it HTML5 or Flash, it's still going to suck up CPU time.
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I think this should be read more like... (Score:5, Insightful)
... web ads can rob 2 hours from a macbook air's life, the main reason why the battery lasts longer in the no-flash case is because the ads aren't loaded, once all ads move to HTML5 I don't think there'll be that much of a difference.
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At least two HTML5 implementations are now indirectly threaded, so it won't stall a core like Flash does when you open 5 heavy tabs.
Also the problem with Flash is its history of inefficiency for even simple operations. The problem here isn't the ads (that's another problem), the problem is their performance. WebGL is currently doing stuff Flash can't dream of, and that will only improve (unlike Flash).
Bad JavaScript sucks nearly as hard as bad ActionScript, but at least we have tools to debug and selectivel
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Will Adobe ever add assistance like the these examples? Fuck no they won't, they've had 10 years of complete inaction.
During more than half of that time they didn't even own Flash.
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It's hard to detect when Javascript is stalling the browser and/or maxing out CPU, if it could be easily implemented, all the major browsers would already do it. The current 'this script is screwing with your PC' halts are unreliable at best, only catching a small percentage of javascript based lock ups. One of the most common lockups for me is wh
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That depends on how efficent the HTML5 rendering is compared to Flash. Its not likely to be worse at least and I suspect it could be considerably better.
not really (Score:3, Insightful)
unlike Flash, the browser makers can actually address HTML5 performance issues.
Ad block? (Score:2)
Well, then install an ad blocker. :P
Re:I think this should be read more like... (Score:4, Insightful)
... web ads can rob 2 hours from a macbook air's life, the main reason why the battery lasts longer in the no-flash case is because the ads aren't loaded, once all ads move to HTML5 I don't think there'll be that much of a difference.
Doubtful. The real problem is that Apple can't tweak the Flash runtime to be more CPU efficient. In contrast, they can do whatever they want to their Javascript and HTML engines.
This is also why I love Chrome. It buckets Flash into a separate process, so when Ads start hogging the CPU, I kill the Flash process.
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This is also why I love Chrome. It buckets Flash into a separate process, so when Ads start hogging the CPU, I kill the Flash process.
"Flash Player (Safari Internet plug-in)" is a separate process as of Safari 4 (on OS X at least).
-Ster
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No doubt that HTML 5 ads would consume some more resources but they would still be an order of magnitude less power hungry.
What makes you believe that? I'm sure advertisers will have no trouble finding ways to suck up power with HTML5. WebGL alone is likely to accelerate global warming by a couple of years...
Personally, I love Flash. I just install FlashBlock, and all those annoying ads go away, yet I still have easy access to Flash content when I actually want it. Once advertisers start moving to HTML5, it will become a lot harder to block only the irritating animations without also blocking the useful ones.
Re:I think this should be read more like... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, because decoding H.264 is so much less CPU intensive...
You're trying to be facetious, but in my experience that's actually true - and that shows what a dog Flash is.
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Playing H.264 video via QuickTime on Mac OS X is less CPU intensive than Flash because Apple specifically optimizes their OS and hardware around QuickTime. Not surprisingly, they don't do the same for Flash.
It wasn't until a recent OS update that Mac OS X even offered APIs to allow other software access to hardware H.264 acceleration - but since Flash doesn't only support OS X 10.6.4, instead opting to support Mac OS X from Tiger on up, those APIs are entirely useless. And until Apple bothers supporting the
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Decoding H.264 is much less CPU-intensive than Flash -- even non-video Flash.
In other news... (Score:4, Insightful)
Flash ads are CPU hogs. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, that's... news.
Re:Flash ads are CPU hogs. (Score:4, Interesting)
Not just the Air (Score:5, Informative)
Flash will suck the life out of a battery charge on my MacBook Pro, too, as well as every non-Apple laptop that I've owned recently, too. Interestingly, I don't have that issue if I watch a "raw" mp4 via the QuickTime plugin.
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Re:Not just the Air (Score:5, Informative)
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While we're bashing iTunes, has anyone got a decent Windows alternative?
I've tried:
http://www.musikcube.com/ [musikcube.com] - Not updated since 2006, worked well on xp, crashes on vista + 7
http://amarok.kde.org/ [kde.org] - I use this on my laptop, but it's not windows compatible.
http://www.atunes.org/?page_id=6 [atunes.org] - I currently use this, but it resets the repository occasionally, and I would be interested in other options.
Re:Not just the Air (Score:4, Informative)
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If you don't mind paying for your software J.River Media Center [jriver.com] is probably the single most powerful iTunes-like media player/organizer for Windows. They also have a free edition [mediajukebox.com], but that only handles music (and not e.g. video).
Re:Not just the Air (Score:4, Informative)
But then you have Quicktime installed, which means you have iTunes installed. No thanks. And people think Adobe software is bloated
Quicktime is integrated into OS X. Neither Quicktime player or iTunes such on OS X. They are not that bad either on windows unless if you have a crap load of stuff installed and running in the background.
Re:Not just the Air (Score:5, Informative)
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search the boards, there are a few very common mis-configurations of Windows that cause iTunes to have horrible performance. Often it's a registry key that needs fixed or other program conflicting. On my Acer netbook it happens every 6 months or so.
Re:Not just the Air (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, nice straw man. The registry has nothing to do with itunes suckiness. Itunes is bloated and slow. its a what, 100mb download for a fancy media player and organiser. Winamp, foobar2000, mediamonkey and pretty much every other media player I've used over the years are tons lighter, quicker and just plain work better.
I mean, itunes can't even automatically pick up new media you put in the media folder on your computer.
FWIW, the registry is NOT slow. And you don't have to "open the database" to get each setting. When you log on your registry hive is loaded into memory, and its pretty quick. However, it does suck having a bunch of programs settings stored in one binary file, and file associations on windows do suck.
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So no, the architecture of Windows is not to blame at all here for iTunes, its all Apple all the way.
Not Trolling, dual platform user. (Score:3, Informative)
Please, I have used iTunes on both OS X and windows and although my primary OS at home is currently OS X, I was a windows user exclusively form 1996 until 2002 and I have an actual "paid" job as a software developer on the windows platform.
Based on my "REAL LIFE" experience with windows over the years including in the Windows XP beta program, I have noticed that the overall performance including boot times does tend to deteriorate over time regardless if you have iTunes installed. iTunes is not the culprit
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But then you have Quicktime installed, which means you have iTunes installed. No thanks. And people think Adobe software is bloated
QuickTime can be installed in a windows machine without installing iTunes. iTunes requires QuickTime but not the other way around.
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Well, I use a Mac for that sort of thing. I avoid it at all costs on Windows because it doesn't work particularly well off of a Mac. It seems to be perfectly well integrated into OS X though, and is quite snappy. However, it makes sense they'd put the effort into it.
Having it installed cuts the Battery? (Score:5, Informative)
Not blocking it selectively with noscript, flashblock etc. sucks the Battery.
news? (Score:4, Informative)
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The FPU hasn't been separate from the CPU for ages now.
Running a DVD, though, takes something like an order of magnitude less CPU than an equivalent Flash video. Likewise with the simple 2D Flash games.
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Re:news? (Score:5, Insightful)
Friends don't let friends run flash (Score:5, Insightful)
It's great that someone is finally recognizing this sort of stuff. Think of the millions of kwh wasted all over the world every day running flash on laptops and desktops...not to mention the security issues involved with the 'active' content that the flash player brings to the system. All of this comes from an unlovely company that does not seem to shoulder any responsibility for the software that it looses upon the user community. Okay Adobe, mod this troll, but you can't stop everyone from eventually seeing the light.
Re:Friends don't let friends run flash (Score:5, Insightful)
there is nothing about flash (the format) that is all that bad. sure the implementation could be a LOT better, including the plugin, but I think for what it is and considering how long it has been around, its not all bad. Until now, there hasn't been an equivalent on the web, at least not with the same market share. Up until recently, if you wrote a website using flash, you could deliver a rich multimedia experience to a very wide audience. What other choices did you have? not all websites are just about information and plain text.
I think flash is now reaching end of life, sure, but I also think it has served a purpose, while we wait for web standards to catch up and fully support rich content online.
One day the web will be an extension of what our desktops can already do...but that day is still a way off...and no HTML5 isn't going to fix this overnight.
And, predictably... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And, predictably... (Score:5, Funny)
...viewing TFA caused a Flash popover ad to appear over the article text. Just sayin'.
Yeah, that's okay, I still have just enough battery left to fini
Flash blocking (Score:2)
That's why I'm gonna go install ClickToFlash [clicktoflash.com] so I don't have it running when I don't want it to.
Sigh (Score:2, Insightful)
If you're going to report one uptime as being "6:02", don't just report the other as being "4 hours". Tell us if it was 4:01 or 4:00 or whatever.
When your difference is on the order of 120 minutes, 1 or 2 minutes difference either way is indeed notable.
And if this test was done over wireless, I wonder how much the browser cache played a role. No need to refetch content, right? Did he even make sure all pages served him the same ads?
This is Mythbusters-levels of bad science.
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How about the "handful" of websites? I can fit a nearly infinite number of websites in my hand.
Flash isn't the problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
Reinstall Flash and install adblock. Then the story changes to "Ads Can Rob 2 Hours From MacBook Air's Battery Life". But not many ad-supported websites would run with that title, would they?
This is a complete non-story. It's no surprise that replacing animated content with a static image improves battery life. I would prefer more websites used static content for their ads rather than Flash content. Then maybe I wouldn't block them so much. With AdBlock, having Flash installed makes no difference to how long my battery lasts - but it does make a difference to what I can do on the web.
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Yeah, I certainly don't want to defend Flash, but wouldn't animated GIFs have much the same effect?
With cane in hand... (Score:4, Funny)
"I've be trying to stop Flash for years!" - The Shade
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
I swear every day it's another retarded "report" about something equally as retarded.
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You mean running animations in the background on multiple pages eats CPU cycles??? Oh noes! Geez, I wonder how Jobs' little darling, HTML5, will manage to do animations without using any CPU power?
Just off the top of my head, I would imagine that browsers will be smart enough not to run HTML5 animations on pages that aren't visible to the user. That should help, right there.
I'd also imagine that with engineers at multiple companies fighting to make their browser the best, further refinements would be discovered and implemented. Adobe has had very little incentive to improve Flash since they are in a dominant position.
No NOT WoW (Score:3, Interesting)
These are FLASH ads, the kind of animation early computers operating at mhz were capable of. For god sakes, we are talking banners that flash 2 small images. How can this require 100% CPU power on what is by alrights a super-super-computer.
Most of the time my computer busy running even such hogs as java and opera with tab icons 1 pixel in width barely reaches 4% cpu. But flash can bring the same machine to its knees.
It is the same with PDF. I can play a game that renders an entire world with super high te
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Geez, I wonder how Jobs' little darling, HTML5, will manage to do animations without using any CPU power?
My guess is, by using GPU acceleration.
Which, as we all know, uses no battery power.
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Rick Romero here with Breaking News (Score:2)
Rick Romero here with Breaking News:
Water is wet, Flash eats CPU power and bears do in fact shit in the woods.
Kill Manually (Score:5, Interesting)
Every time I have used Flash on my Ubuntu, mostly for playing videos, I must manually use the `top` and `kill` command or Chrome's task manager to manually kill the npviewer.bin process. Flash always eats more than 50% of my CPU even long after I have closed all web pages using Flash, only killing it will bring my CPU back to idle and shuts off the noisy laptop fan. There is huge difference in power consumption between an idle CPU and running CPU, that's why for laptop it is best to keep the CPU idle most of the time to save power.
Now having to kill the Flash process manually is not user friendly at all. I'd imagine that average joes can't do anything on it and have no idea that Flash is the one that causing their laptop fan spinning, heating up, and soaking battery powers.
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Surely at least one Adobe geek is reading this. Please tell someone at Adobe, please! I know your development cycles are about 40 years long, but please, at least get it on the change request list! Please!
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That's similar to FF's new 'IPC Plugin Container' thing. It launches a second process to run Flash, Silverlight, and other web-media. It's poorly implemented, so it was a relief that you can disable it entirely in about:config. I haven't seen any performance or battery issues on my PC since.
Just blame apple (Score:2)
Its what all the kids are doing.
I don't even have it installed on my laptop, i don't miss it a bit.
In other news... (Score:2)
Or I could just turn off the program when I don't need it. But then I couldn't make inflammatory headlines, and that wouldn't be nearly as fun.
FYI: Updated Flash released today. (Score:5, Informative)
V10.1.102.64 to fix security bugs and not the battery life and CPU issue. ;)
Advertising is the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
As the article says - the cause of the problem is advertising.
If the user wants to watch flash videos in youtube, it drains the battery just as much as watching downloaded videos on the video playe of his choice.
But if the user doesn't want the "content", then the system shouldn't spend valuable, scarce resources (such as battery life) on them - the solution is not disabling flash, the solution is to ship computers with AdBlock preinstalled and preconfigured. The computer vendors can and should do that, to improve the value of their product to consumers.
Re:No ABP in OSX? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No ABP in OSX? (Score:4, Funny)
No it doesn't.
This little benchmark even proves it.
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I use both on my AO751h (+ABP), and a 9 cell battery gets me ~10 hours of use, streaming video or whatever. And no damned "Punch the Monkey" ads. Don't see why the same wouldn't work on/for Macs...
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This wasn't a troll, but I know I just stomped on an anthill...
- Dan.
Re:No ABP in OSX? (Score:5, Informative)
Why would ANYONE use Safari on Mac when you have FF? ABP and NoScript for the win!
Ummm, AdBlock is now available for Safari, and Click2Flash neatly dispenses with Flash.
But, the battery-sucking aspect of Flash is old news [macworld.com].
I use that setup (Score:3, Interesting)
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there is no correlation between battery life and computer necessity relative to time.
Re:I use that setup (Score:5, Interesting)
Ask yourself the flip question - at what point can you stop carrying your AC adapter (assuming you're not on a multi-day trip)? I've stopped carrying mine, which means I've stopped carrying the laptop bag and associated weight. Now a 3lb laptop really is 3lb, and you can use it more like a notebook.
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Re:No ABP in OSX? (Score:5, Informative)
Alternatively, just uninstall Flash. You really don't need it for most of the web these days. (On OSX, it lives in /Library/Internet Plug-ins; you'll want to remove Flash Player.plugin, flashplayer.xpt, and the Shockwave file, I don't remember the name.)
Click2Flash is a great plugin, I used it for months. The problem with it is that it tells sites you have Flash installed; it just takes over for Flash and then releases content to the real plugin when you click on the box. The downside to that is that you prevent the site from sending alternate content which can be sent if your browser reports no Flash plugin.
For those sites that won't work any other way, load them in Chrome, which has an internal Flash renderer. When you're done you can quit Chrome and go back to your regular browser, with which you can write a note to the admin of the site you just visited asking them to get their head our of their ass and provide alternate content.
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Re:No ABP in OSX? (Score:5, Funny)
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Why would ANYONE use Safari on Mac when you have FF? ABP and NoScript for the win!
ClickToFlash [github.com] works very nicely and there are several other extensions that let you block stuff. It even replaces flash videos with the H.264 stream if it is available.
I'm really loving GlimmerBlocker [glimmerblocker.org], which sets up a http proxy so any web browser you use will have ads blocked, you don't need to install an ad blocker extension on every browser you have. It'll even allow other computers on your network to use the proxy and gain the same benefits. Pretty nifty.
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The problem, according to the many help forums, was I had "too many extensions" installed, and that I should "create a new profile".
I resented being punished for using the extensions system that Mozilla so heavily promoted, so I switched.
And now I've got AdBlock back, and use ClickToFlash, 2 extensions which installed right from the web page with no restart required. Now I'm a happy Safar
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"According to Wired's report (citing Ars Technica) passed on by an anonymous reader," According to Wired's report (citing Ars Technica) passed on by an anonymous reader who talked to his cousin who found out from his baby's mama who saw this girl at 7-11 talking to her brother who said...
You *almost* got it right. The girl at 7-11 talking to her brother who saw it in an ad on the internet - you know, one of those fancy moving ads that are all spiffy 'n stuff.
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I would think they are just letting some of the light leak through from the panel backlight, if not then a tiny amount as it would just be an LED or two.
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Introducing:
The Macbook Shuffle: This Changes Everything Including the Magic!
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Seriously, the only people who think having Flash installed *at all* is a good idea are people who have no brains, namely Adobe and a handful of lazy web developers.
Well of course that's flamebait. There's a huge number of lazy web developers who think Flash is a good idea.
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You think saying the people who have the software installed that is necessary to view half the video on the web have no brains might be flamebait?
Gee, really?
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/html5_video_market_penetration.php [readwriteweb.com]
and you've been saying it since a long time ago?
So you just don't believe in online video at all, then.
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Yes here you are posting in this thread.