Adobe releases 32-bit Flash update for Linux

[Wolfgang S. Rupprecht]

"Robert G. (Doc) Savage" <dsavage at peaknet.net> writes:
> I can't imagine what has prompted Adobe to pack up their proverbial bat
> & ball and go home, abandoning 64-bit Flash development for all
> platforms. I hope there's another explanation, because this is just
> beyond dumb.

I was reading an article about llvm, the new just-in-time-capable
C-compiler and lo and behold they mentioned Adobe Flash as being one of
the users of this on the Apple Mac target.  It appears LLVM bytecode
gets converted to Flash "actioncode", which I assume is interpreted by
an interpreter inside the flash executable.  Adobe seems to have built
this Frankensteinein monster when most people simply want to play
videos.  Surely we don't need a full-blown bytecode language to play
videos???

Giveen that they have been working on a 64-bit version of flash for over
2 years now and having only limited success, I'd wager that their
actioncode and/or their interpreter itself is littered with address-size
assumptions where they wantonly stuff addresses into ints and expect the
process to be reversable.  (I've seen this in far too many "clever"
programs.)  Adobe themselves admits that there are "architectural"
issues preventing them from simply recompiling flash for a 64-bit
target.

-wolfgang