silverlight, flash and other bunk

[owiknowi]

a lot of web sites use closed source software, like silverlight, flash, and so on. even public web sites, build and maintained with public funds (tax). so far nothing new.

but as a penguin user, with a taste for midori and konqueror as web browsers, i get messages about missing plug ins.
politely they ask if i want to install them, and unwilling, i click yes. and that's it.

are we obliged to use closed source software, even on the public(!) internet? that they sell computers with closed source operating systems is bad enough, but this?

is there a reasonable solution for some of these matters? are there open source 'hacks' to view the strictly legal content on web sites from public broadcasting organizations?

btw. writing to politicians doesn't work, at all (q.e.d.)

[atolboo]

My advice is to use FF for sites with multimedia contents.

[owiknowi]

thanks for your reply, atolboo. it's a bit of a non-topic, but i had to get it off my chest.

looking in konqueror, there are a lot of mozilla plug-ins installed, so why that doesn't work? beats me (maybe something with referrers?).

but maybe it's more about governments and public services wasting a lot of public money on bad IT. see for instance the recently hacked dutch municipalities with their mikrosovt addiction. sticking, fot years and years. to one and the same software moloch.

also pretty neat is diginotar. oh well, what the hell, we're a rich country, so who cares (and pays)?

taking it one step further by, more or less, forcing the public to use non-open source software too:
some services and documents from within the public domain, are not only made with closed source software, but one has to use the same bunk in order to work with them.

thought european union countries had to have open tender procedures on what software is going to be used?

so in the end it really annoys me to have to pay for mikrosovt, esri, adobe, and so on, whilst there are very good open source alternatives. spain does a rather good job there. or take a look at a certain turkish panther!

i won't get started here on all the stupid gadgets one encounters still more on the web...