The Unbearable Lightness of Bit: May 2007

You got it. You couldn't sleep thinking that your removed due to terms favourite video may have been violations or to some other very good reason. So, you just downloaded a video from YouTube (don't ask me how and ask the master!), and now you have a nice, little, harmless .flv file on your hd. But how to open it? You are thinking about downloading VLC player, or an unknown generic codec; or maybe you're so bright you already thought it's possible to transcode it with your favourite factotum: mplayer. Maybe you could even download a specific application that can only read .flv files! But there's a question silently crawling in your head... Why the hell my friends Firefox and Safari could open and play and even seek the .flv stream, while they don't know how to deal with the same stream coming from my local hd?
And you already know the answer, in the deep. They can. You just simply need to present the .flv under a different aspect; you need to wrap it in a Flash object (swf) you can compile by yourself, or you could ask an existent Flash reader to open the .flv file for you.

[update]
After a very long and difficult work period (two days)¹, finally I made a html-knowdlege-independent and effortless-to-use-even-for-dumb-users page; it's a little .flv player written only in html (with a flash object). You can download it from WatchTube (another cool thing is coming soon on that website). This lilttle reader supports also .swf videos and other media files. Finally, we have our free, cross platform, light, fast .flv reader. We do not depend anymore on any specific codec or dedicated reader. Use your own browser and enjoy!

In a nutshell:

Lory Player 1.1 Flash player
Reads Flash videos (*.swf, *.flv) and other formats (*.mp3, *.jpg, *.png, *.gif, RTMP streams)
No installation required
For Linux, MacOsX, Windows (virtually any version)
Tested on Firefox, IE6, IE7, Safari, Camino (requires Flash plugin)
Creative Commons license (it's free)
Direct download link (~120 Kb)

An online version (not working with local files, it's just a layout preview) is available here.

¹ Note added: when you say you had a "very long and difficult work period", and then you specify that the long period was just two days long, you can't be serious. Evidently it's a contradiction, or simply a (stupid) joke...