Actually I'm advocating mp4, but I'll take flash over gif. Heck, since Flash9, it can play mp4 files.

I'll even take wmv over gif. Gif is not an appropriate container for video. People use it for easy hosting not because its a "standard" or because its good at video. 4 megabytes of this? Please.

I call strawman. You are trying to make this about video, while I'm talking about slideshows. For video, Animated GIF is no good, we're in complete agreement there.