I'll tell you what - here's how to drop all ASnative extensions security on the Flash Player on your own device:

1) Create the file /psp/flashplayer.cfg
2) Add the following line:

PrivilegedCallExceptions=65535

3) Reboot

Widgets will now be able to make privileged ASnative calls on your chumby, just like the Control Panel.  Security is completely down, your device (and your network) is now wide open for exploits.  Enjoy.

Note to lurkers - this is HIGHLY dangerous, and is not recommended.  This could allow a widget to brick your device, steal your network credentials, access other machines on your network, and otherwise cause serious problems.  Any device using this feature will not be covered under warranty, we disclaim any liability for lost or stolen information, and widgets that require this feature to be enabled will not be made public.

Thanks for your response, a couple of thoughts:

Iphone apps can most certainly adjust the sound volume. It doesn't matter to the user if the setting is system wide or only applies to the currently running application, the important thing is they can control the volume of the iphone from within the currently running iPhone application.

And note that I'm not talking about running multiple apps at once, simply giving apps access to things like internet streams and hardware settings *while they're running* is fine. Ideally that would expand to include things like external hardware devices such as GPS's, but I'm guessing that'll never happen.

And the problem with creating apps that aren't widgets is that they're not easily sharable, so they a) won't be created, and b) won't be used if they are. You're welcome to correct me if I'm wrong: is there some place people are sharing their own Chumby apps that aren't widgets?

And that's great news about being able to play shoutcasts from within widgets. I just tried the Streams widget, works beautifully. Is there some documentation or sample code available for this functionality?

And of course I'm not talking about removing *all* system security. There's a big jump from giving apps control over sound volume to giving them root access to the device.

This is true!

Have not opened up the SDK 3 yet, but I think they might have changed that...not that it's important here.

Personally I think setting a relative volume and then storing that value using the chumby properties "saver" should be more than satisfactory.  This is how all Flash content works in any environment in regards to volume.

And in case anyone is interested...

//create the sound object
var my_snd:Sound = new Sound(_root);

//set the volume
my_snd.setVolume(50);  //values range 0-100

//get current volume
var snd_volume:Number = my_snd.getVolume();

Cheers.