So in the wake of this whole oil-spill thing going on, BP was forced to drop a camera down to the source of the link and broadcast the footage out over the internet. Initially, the site was wanged (see the Penny-Arcade definition) due to the huge amount of traffic it was generating, however it’s working fine now, at this link:

http://globalwarming.house.gov/spillcam

Of course, unless you’re using Windows, that link is no good to you. Why? Because, in this age of HTML5 video and Flash streaming, the video uses the Windows Media plugin – specifically, the Windows Media 9 Codec. There are ways to get it working short of a Virtual Machine running Windows, but it shouldn’t be difficult. The video should be in an open, available format to allow everyone easy access.

Now, I’m no Microsoft-hater, and I’m not a Linux fanboy. All I want is to be able to watch video on whatever platform I want, be it Windows, *Nix, or even OS X. I don’t think this is too much to ask, yet apparently it is.

Update: A Flash-based stream is available here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127258287&ft=1&f=1003