Hey Adobe guy! Let me know where you get your batteries that are immune to increased CPU usage, will you? You might want to patent the idea...

Despite your whining, most of the Flash developers out there couldn't code their way out of a paper bag. Whatever Adobe's official line, Flash was never meant to be such a pervasive medium (same as Darpanet, Unix, ethernet, SGML, the Web, MS-DOS, etc.).

Now that it is so pervasive, it's Adobe's responsibility to ensure that CPU usage is kept to a minimum when something is published to the Web. This can be done through various means, the most obvious of which is to provide developers with a CPU wastage meter. Another technique would be to always launch the Flash Player with a low priority so it doesn't suck so much power.

Flash is great, when it's used properly. And no, YouCompleteTube is not proper usage of streaming movies in Flash -- that feature is better used for adding movie clips to some larger presentation.

This is why so many people use Flash blocking technologies. We're sick and tired of it, and it adds nothing of value to the Web, thanks all the same.

I agreed with you that any increased CPU usage uses more batteries. My exact statement was/is:

"Anything that uses more CPU will eat your battery faster"

Actually, you followed that up with:
<blockquote>"Compared to turning off Airport when not using it and dimming your screen, the amount of time you save blocking Flash will likely be minimal."</blockquote>

Here's the thing... you dim your screen to nearly nothing and turn off your wireless card, and you've essentially rendered your laptop useless. Networking and being able to 'see' the stuff we're looking at are expected of our computers. Yes, I know, it sounds crazy to expect that a computer function as it was meant to.

The only time that I find it reasonable to turn off my wireless card and dim my screen are on transatlantic flights, because I *know* my battery won't make it past four hours, and that I won't have the opportunity to plug in for a while. I expect that I'll probably have to change batteries half-way through the flight.

On the other hand, what we DON'T expect is that the most seemingly benign piece of content on our screen consumes more CPU cycles and battery charge than any other aspect of our computer's hardware, and for absolutely no perceptible benefit or reason, and for those many of us who slip our laptops out at starbucks to work for a couple of hours, it shouldn't be much to expect that our battery last for the duration.

And yes, a Flash instance that pegs your CPU will exhaust your battery far more rapidly than leaving your screen on full brightness while your airport card is operating. Please don't try to tell those of us who are victims of Flash anything otherwise.