I'm not a great fan of flash, it seems to eat up bandwith, processor and memory very quickly.. not to mention the hassle of trying it working on a linux x86_64 machine ! I recently came across this great plug-in..
Flashblock :: Firefox Add-ons
Never be annoyed by a Flash animation again! Blocks Flash so it won't get in your way, but if you want to see it, just click on...
The white-list functionality is nice... i.e block all except "blah".. the option to run it in a black-list mode would be good for those who are only offended by flash on certain sites.