Sand in the eyes of M$

[Dogbert]

Read @ osOpinion

[RichL]

Thumbs up for RealNetworks.
But what will Microsoft do when (or perhaps that should be IF) it fails to halt RealNetworks in court?

Why, it'll introduce a new, proprietory media format thats patented & copyrighted up the wazoo so no-one else can code a broadcast server, then start pushing that as the new 'Standard'

[Gurm]

This is GREAT news... until you come to realize that Real is guilty of many of the same terrible things as MS.

And that their software is EVIL.

- Gurm

[RichL]

Evil in the way Microsoft isnt?

[Dogbert]

Yes, but at least Real's is opensourced...

[Technoid]

Originally posted by Gurm
This is GREAT news... until you come to realize that Real is guilty of many of the same terrible things as MS.

And that their software is EVIL.

- Gurm

Yes they are, they spied on their customers...

They harass me everytime I close realplayer down (theres a new version awailable...)

but their software is per se not more "Evil" than M$ software....

[Ant]

Real are not a great company but this level of competition is critical, lets hope we can see more of it from application software to OSes. I hope the next one is OS X for X86, again I don't think much of Apple but we have got to get some serious choice on the desktop it's all stagnating horribly

[RichL]

What version of Realplayer are you running?
I've running Realplayer 7 retail, and theres an option somewhere to turn off the reminders.
Plus I use Zonealarm to stop it talking to the internet unless I say it can.

[Dogbert]

Especially if we can run OS X in parts instead of a whole.

[Dogbert]

Originally posted by ralf
OS X/x86 - yes please. And someone has to buy the BeOS source code and get on with it.

BeOS source code belongs to Palm and they don't intent to sell it.
If you're so interested, you can look for BlueOS and other projects for rebuilding BeOS from scratch.

Loot at www.osnews.com for info.

[Gurm]

Realplayer 8 doesn't include an option to turn off reminders... which come EVERY time you close it... to upgrade to RealONE, the most evil festering POS on the planet. It corrupts your OS, your browser, your registry, and everything you do. It is WRONG, on so many different levels.

But yes, the competition is good. I just wish it weren't with Real.

- Gurm

[High_Jumbllama]

RealOne corrupts? I am not trying to sing praises or anything, but I have not had a bit of trouble with it.

Of course to make it stomachable, I add the following registry entries after the initial setup and before the connection to the internet to "register".

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\RealNetworks\RealPlayer \6.0\Preferences\EnableTrackInfo]
@="0"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\RealNetworks\RealPlayer \6.0\Preferences\FirstRunPlayed]
@="1"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\RealNetworks\RealPlayer \6.0\Preferences\ConfigurationComplete]
@="1"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\RealNetworks\RealPlayer \6.0\Preferences\StartupTab]
@="playeronly"

Edit:
Does anyone really use Realplayer? I'd rather use Windows Media or Quicktime or mpeg-4/DivX.

[KvHagedorn]

Gurm, why don't you spend your time writing a nice open source video player we can all use which won't enter our registry or need to phone home every time you try and play anything. By the way, this "oh I don't have the codec for this particular thing.. gotta "go get it" is ridiculous. Just have one format that WORKS.

[Gurm]

That would be nice, wouldn't it?

Sasami2k is cool, albeit unsupported.

Media Jukebox is also pretty cool.

- Gurm

[dZeus]

btw. there's nothing 'open source' about this new Real Player, except the player frontend (not surprisingly though). Just a marketing word that's populair these days.

Anyway, with a bit of luck the reverse-engineered Real Codecs will be ported from linux' Mplayer project to DirectShow (if that's possible), and then we can watch Realmedia stuff without the need for RealCrappy players.