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Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Flash.. Israel of the Internet?

I read a pro-Israel article on my android phone today.  I mention this because normally, all the news articles which I get in my news feed about Israel has some not nice things to say.  And I don't just mean that they aren't nice because I disagree with them. They aren't nice because many of the facts sited, when searched on the internet, are shown to be false.



This little experience reminded me of why I generally don't read the news anymore. I thought that now that I live in Israel, I would have access to two sides of the story. But alas, my Hebrew is not yet good enough and my phone doesn't have a Hebrew news feeder, even if it was.  It also reminded me of what I feel like when I read Daring Fireball, or Engadget.

One day, Apple decided to publish a letter saying that Flash is the bane of the internet. Let's forget that the internet as we know it could not exist today without the headway made by Flash. Let's forget that Adobe has opened up the ActionScript language and the FlashPlayer so that it is possible, though highly ineffective, to create Flash content without giving a single penny to Adobe, now or in the future.  (As apposed to apple products which require you pay $100 to deploy, and then 30% of any profits you make from your code.. in perpetuity)

The internet today is full of statements which make false claims about Flash, ignore it's history, ignore the context.. and forget that arguments made against it, are actually more strongly made against those who are pushing for it's delegitimization.

I used to get annoyed by these things, and as Lee Brimlow said at FlashIsrael, it tends to raise his blood pressure.  But now, I almost feel comforted when I see bad press. To me it is almost a sign that things are headed in the right direction.

Now if only the criticisms against Israel and Adobe/Flash could be tempered a bit, so that when improvements are made they are acknowledged, and there is then further incentive to make even more improvements.

**Edit:  Just to further my point, I saw this on twitter today.  http://blogs.adobe.com/jd/2011/03/is-video-so-hard.html

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