You're not missing much.

My main workstation runs FreeBSD, which doesn't have a Flash player either. (There's an entry for flashplugin in the ports tree, but it's marked as broken due IIRC to a security issue.) As far as I'm concerned, this makes an excellent excuse when people send me URLs for Flash sites and bug me about watching them.

If I ever actually want to view Flash content for some reason, I can of course go to another computer and view it. On several occasions I have done this, including twice for YouTube videos, and in all instances it was a complete waste of time, devoid of entertainment value, let alone any actual information. The conclusion I have reached is that most people are *extremely* easy to amuse. (This is probably the same reason so many people watch television, which as far as I'm concerned is *actively* boring.)

So I consider the fact that the flashplugin port is broken to be a major selling point of FreeBSD. When people tell me that there's this uber-cool Flash content I've just absolutely got to see, I can respond without being rude or dishonest. "Sorry, I can't. There's no working Flash plugin for FreeBSD." This is a much better excuse than the one I used to use. Previously I used to tell people that I had uninstalled Flash because of how annoying it was -- I don't want my web experience to have blinky flashy animations. This was true, and seemed like a good reason to me, but for some reason it tended to upset people. (Why? No clue. I don't think I will ever understand humans.) Not even having the *option* to install the Flash plugin, due to my choice in operating systems, doesn't bother people nearly so much.

There are some things I don't like about FreeBSD, and it is possible that I will want at some point to move back to Linux. If so, I'll have to keep the 64-bit version in mind as a way to retain my good no-Flash excuse.

Oh, but there is a way if one is /dying/ to see a YouTube video by way of Python, which I found about from some random tech news|web log site. There are other suggestions related to this on Digg site.

That's how I do it.

Actually, because of the annoyance factor of the way youtube-dl works (it requires entirely too much interaction from me, the user), I wrote some Perl glue code that ties together youtube-dl, file renaming/deletion, and mplayer. I'm thinking of opening up the hood of youtube-dl, though, to see how it's done, then rewrite the thing in Perl or Ruby so that it does what I actually want it to do without having to be tied together with other software like that.

If I get to feeling really ambitious, I might do it with OCaml so that I have a binary-compiled executable. If I do that, you can count on it being stuck on some webpage somewhere with a nearly public domain license.

print substr("Just another Perl hacker", 0, -2);

- apotheon CopyWrite Chad Perrin

I'm much the same way: We have a television, but it's got no connection to the outside world and we live (way out in the sticks) where there's no broadcast reception at all. Most Flash content is insipid garbage, but every now and then a potential new client comes along whose web site navigation is dependent upon Flash -- guaranteed to get 'em a good old gloryhack lecture about accessibility every time.

Be that as it may, I've got to run my business, so I keep a "sacrificial lamb" 32 bit machine handy. With a 64 bit Flash player, I could turn that old machine off and save the electrons for the neighbor's air conditioner and their porch light that's always on.