OSNews

Before the flash era sites were using object with the video in and custom controls with bitmaps, absolutely no difference. Except they were hardcoding the player with those crappy WiMP GUIDs but at least you could work around it in the browser. But now it just ships the player with the video, so you must have flash to play it. Some sites have an url to the flv in the code so you can grab it, but others have it hidden in the .swf. I repeat, braindeadness.

or what if the user wants to actually have some say in what goes on, on his computer??

flash is simply an abomination that should be put to death, right alongside anyone that would contaminate the web with it...

Until there's an international law that dictates "any media permitted to play on a user's computer implies the user's permission to permanently record/replay said media," you're discussing what you want versus what content producers want.

"or what if the user wants to actually have some say in what goes on, on his computer??"

The user (especially the average one, but the low-skilled one, too) is not interesten in what's going on on his computer. He hust wants to see the dancing elephants, rip DVDs or download music for free. If some software product makes such a promise ("With our great nerw product X, you can simply do Y without being a professional."), the user will be pleased to get it installed, and he will do anything to get it onto his computer.

"flash is simply an abomination that should be put to death, right alongside anyone that would contaminate the web with it..."

To force strict HTML validity would eliminate 99% of such web pages. Having alternatives built into web browsers (in form of plugins that are distributed along with the browser or the OS distribution) would do the rest.