Adobe Flash Player vs. other flash players

Adobe flash player has too many updates. Why when I download it the program wants to download Adobe Dowload Manager? What is the difference between this flash player and the Adobe Shockwave Player? Do I need both? If I download the Shockwave player then will this do all the flash video that I need? Or is the Shockwave player not flash at all?
How can I get Adobe to stop telling me to update every two months? Is this the download mgr's business to tell me about this? So should we uninstall the download manager?

jonnyb--These two pages will tell you the difference between Shockwave and Flash
http://www.adobe.com/products/direct...omparison.html
http://www.adobe.com/products/direct...s/integration/
Do you need Shockwave? Probably not, but I think a webpage will tell you when you do.
It is pretty hard to avoid using Flash these days if you surf sites with videos.
To disable the messages about updating Flash read here
http://www.macromedia.com/support/do...manager05.html
http://www.technipages.com/disable-a...e-forever.html .
I am not sure it is a good idea to disable the messages unless you are very conscientious about monitoring Adobe for updates yourself. Often the updates are for security reasons.

I download flash player from FileHippo, one for IE and a separate one for Firefox/Opera. These files are direct installers, not the crappy web update messes. http://www.filehippo.com/download_flashplayer/

But before I install the new ones, I always run the latest uninstaller from Adobe here http://download.macromedia.com/pub/f...ash_player.exe (Note that the versions of the installers should match the version of the uninstaller.)

I have never ran Shockwave and can't imagine most users need it for much

Does the installer you are using is licensed? Don't download and upgrade stuff that you didn't know or just unnecessary to use.