If sites didn't abuse video, pop up, pop under, and other devious ways of torturing us then ad blocking software wouldn't be so prevalent.

Indeed. Though I fear that expressing my attitude towards advertising probably violates the rules of this site. Let's just say I don't think it's a valid way of doing anything.

Besides that, even if you're scum, sorry, I mean "in advertising", surely annoying people is the last thing you want to do?

It's happened to me and it doesn't have to be a personal view or anything inappropriate, instead we're in a conference call and someone references a technology or idea and one of us Googles for it and loads a site or seven, using several tabs and unexpectedly one of the tabs starts playing loud music or autoplays a video for instruction/introduction/sales. Just annoying because you have to find the tab and close it. Didn't know about the microphone trick, but probably wouldn't use that anyways. The other option is to quickly mute your PC. Either case I agree this is obnoxious. But also feel that obviously the person who specified the web site that way wanted it that way and it has nothing to do with the designer. If a company tells you to put their big "love us" video on their home page, then you do it.

I have to admit I probably could have shown him the way to mute everything (as I do anyhow on work machines) but I, also, panicked a little.
If it's unsolicited you don't do it.

It can be fine ... even helpful ... to offer video content that the user must 'click' to play.

However, it is also important to provide the script to your video. Sometimes I do not want to wait even 3 minutes to watch what your video has to say. I don't want "watch this cool video!" to be the only way that I can get knowledge from your site.

When I go to any web site, I can tell within a matter of a few seconds whether they were really talking to their customers, or if a group of web-designers had succumbed to group-think.