Looks like Macromedia has plans to make Flash much more of a standalone, cross-platform, virtual media engine. Macromedia Central looks like a much more regimented JVM to me. The attendant white paper is an amazing piece of puffery (application integration hasn't advanced since the 70's? c'mon), but the actual meat is downright scary. Looks like an unescapable payment mechanism is baked in.
NMH Wisdom: good luck unseating the Web browser as a primary interface, only hope is to be a big hit in the enterprise