From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1PQpYC-0004GW-Kp for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Thu, 09 Dec 2010 23:05:24 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 2BADFE0B56 for ; Thu, 9 Dec 2010 23:05:24 +0000 (UTC) Received: from qmta06.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net (qmta06.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net [76.96.30.56]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EAC4AE0A8F for ; Thu, 9 Dec 2010 22:22:31 +0000 (UTC) Received: from omta02.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net ([76.96.30.19]) by qmta06.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net with comcast id h7zp1f0020QkzPwA6ANXYL; Thu, 09 Dec 2010 22:22:31 +0000 Received: from ajax.firstbooks ([68.40.15.84]) by omta02.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net with comcast id hANV1f00C1op4JC8NANVme; Thu, 09 Dec 2010 22:22:30 +0000 Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2010 17:22:20 -0500 From: Frank Peters To: gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Firefox/Firefox-bin & Flash Message-Id: <20101209172220.8215dc81.frank.peters@comcast.net> In-Reply-To: References: X-Mailer: Sylpheed 3.0.3 (GTK+ 2.20.1; x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu) Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archives-Salt: e7def12a-b7c7-40fe-b686-0b218bbf156d X-Archives-Hash: 8ddfe0d6cae5f8f0dac5ee8176e95c6b On Thu, 9 Dec 2010 20:20:53 +0000 (UTC) Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> wrote: > > Yes. AFAIK, there's another 64-bit flash beta out. > > But meanwhile, there's a problem with beta glibc and flash (both 32-bit > and 64-bit), What boggles my mind is that after so many, many years this 32-bit to 64-bit transition is still not complete. The developers of Flash, as highly paid ($$$) as they doubtless are, are quite unable to modify their code to perform on modern hardware. I recall that Sun java took a heck of a long time to go to 64-bit, and unless I am mistaken there still is no 64-bit java plug-in. It should not be that difficult. In the C programming language, only the size of pointers and certain integer types has been changed. Modification of software is straightforward and there are even automated tools to assist in the job. Flash probably has a lot of assembly language routines (I am not at all privy to the code) but the original designers should still be able to modify it with ease. Unless I am missing some crucial information, this whole 32 to 64-bit fiasco should have ended years ago. We managed to build an atomic bomb (Manhattan Project) from scratch in less than 3 years, but a 64-bit Flash (as well as other software) probably won't be finalized before an entire decade has elapsed. I really couldn't care less about Flash, but I would like to have a 64-bit Foxit PDF reader. Xpdf is a fine project, but it can't fill in forms or annotate a document. Frank Peters