In Texas, and probably other states, there are laws restricting reading the magnetic data off a driver's license. http://www.legis.state.tx.us/tlodocs/78R/billtext/html/SB01445F.htm

I'm pretty sure Best Buy is not a law enforcement officer, nor selling alcohol, so that leaves a restricted set of exemptions for financial institutions which seems like a long shot.

I am not a lawyer, etc, etc. That's a bill, not a law, but I think something extremely similar is on the books.

While I am not the biggest fan of it's proprietary nature or bugginess, flash has one big feature that makes developing for it a LOT better than html5: ActionsScript 3. It's based on what ecmascript 4 would have been, and is a true strongly typed class-based object oriented language with first-class functions. It's a really nice language to develop in, actually. Especially compared to javascript. Fuck javascript. Fuck it right in its almost-untyped, prototype-based ass. And I say that as someone that develops in javascript every day.

Although I program in and use Flash daily, actual flash support was not a dealbreaker when I chose to get an android phone. It was important, sure, but not a dealbreaker. The dealbreaker was WHY flash isn't supported on apple products. It's clearly not a technical limitation since it can be installed on a jailbroken ipad and works well even through a compatibility layer http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/how-to-install-flash-on-your-jailbroken-ipad-for-real/. It's entirely political. I don't want to be told what I'm allowed to install or not. My devices are MY devices.

Here you go:
http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/

"Scripts can be run interactively in a terminal, in the background, or via Locale. Python, Perl, JRuby, Lua, BeanShell, JavaScript, Tcl, and shell are currently supported"

The development tools for flash can actually be completely free of cost.

http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Download+Flex+4
http://www.flashdevelop.org

I will agree that the capabilities are neutered compared to native tools, but when compared to html5/javascript Flash has much better capabilities. Things like a proper object oriented and class based language to develop in, which is actually compiled rather than interpreted, and has a real type system. Things like webcam and microphone access, as well as binary sockets.

The only real reason I want flash to stick around is because javascript programming is ****ing painful. Cross-browser issues aside, the language just isn't very good for large projects. There's no real type system, everything is dynamic, the prototype inheritance model is clumsy, and there's no compile-time error checking because there's no compilation.

I would love to have a real open standard to use to program client-side stuff for the web, but html5/javascript is a huge step backwards from what is currently available with AS3. If microsoft hadn't sabotaged all the good parts of javascript 2, we'd all have an awesome, free, standard, and open client side development platform. As of now, we only have a mediocre, free, standard, and open platform.

I encourage people to learn Haxe. http://haxe.org It can compile to javascript, flash, as well as server-side languages and runtimes, and it's got all the features I really want.

According to the list of supported swf tags (http://wiki.github.com/tobeytailor/gordon/swf-tag-support-table ), it does not support DoABC, which means that it does not support Actionscript3. So basically, it only supports the parts of flash that really annoy people: Animations. This won't let you play many neat flash games, or replace Flex, or play a movie designed for Flash9 (introduced in 2006) or later.

As an Actionscript hobbyist, I love the idea of an open source implementation of the player. But so far, none of the open source alternatives support the features I actually like: Actionscript3. It's a strongly typed language with real classes, and it's compiled to bytecode rather than interpreted (mostly). Javascript has come a long way, but it still sucks if you like strongly typed variables.

Keep trying, Tobias. And if you get that byte-level access, let the world know.

I built a utility that can be used for the same purpose back in april. http://cosmodro.me/blog/2009/apr/11/smuggle-improved/
It's a small flash movie that can encode files into pngs and decode them back. It's not limited to torrents, so you can encode any file that's less than about 16MB.