I'm also pissed at Amazon for requiring RealPlayer

I hadn't listened to the excerpts of a CD on Amazon in a long time, but I had the occasion to last Friday, and I was unhappy to find out that Amazon switched away from its self-contained music-sampling system (maybe it was Windows Media, but I didn't have to do anything to make it work, so I have no idea, really) to something else entirely. Something else that required the download of RealPlayer.

Now I haven't actually WANTED to have anything to do with RealPlayer since, probably, 2001, and I really don't need another proprietary program f'ing up my system and constantly trying to sell me crap that I have no intention whatsoever of buying. I couldn't believe RealPlayer and RealAudio were even still around.

The installer was long and complicated, and once it asked me for my name, e-mail address, etc., I bailed out of it. All I need is more spam and another f'ing conglomerate getting its mitts on my personal information.

Luckily that was enough to get the minute-30 song excerpts flowing from Amazon, but sheesh, I hope somebody made a lot of money in this transaction that kind-of, sort-of screws up Amazon's ability to not piss me off.