RealPlayer: December 2007 Archives

I'm also pissed at Amazon for requiring RealPlayer

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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.

Tech Talk column

Steven Rosenberg's weekly Tech Talk column, which appears Saturdays in the Los Angeles Daily News, is now available on the Daily News Technology page.

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Steven Rosenberg aims to learn what he does not know. He writes about it here.



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This page is a archive of entries in the RealPlayer category from December 2007.

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RealPlayer: December 2007: Monthly Archives

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