This is my issue with the whole discussion. The pundit class has latched onto the "HTML5 will kill Flash" story so a lot of people now think it's gospel. But

This is my issue with the whole discussion. The pundit class has latched onto the "HTML5 will kill Flash" story so a lot of people now think it's gospel. But in truth there are a lot of features that HTML5 makes no attempt to duplicate. The same is true in .NET. It's great that Microsoft folks want to say HTML5 is their primary development platform so they can sound cool. But unless they are seriously extending HTML5 there's no way it could replace everything available in Silverlight and WPF. Because that's not what it's designed for. HTML5, as you said, is an attempt to deal with the most common usage cases in a standardized manner and that's great. But on the specialized functionality front Flash and Silverlight still easily have it beat.