A reader writes:
I wrote was in response to a comment you made on Catholic Answer about realplayer. You made a comment that you thought they were evil (like in dante evil). I was trying to find out what you meant by that comment. Working for Sun, (M$FT Sworn enemy 😉 ) kind of rules out using Windows media player, and not being a great fan of iTunes, I had defaulted to realplayer. Is there something really intrinsically evil about real that I should try to avoid?
Yes, RealPlayer is one of the most evilest software applications ever created in the pits of hell.
RealPlayer has been one of the most consistently evil applications over a long stretch of time. As users have complained about one set of evil behaviors on the part of RealPlayer and they get "fixed" by the company, the company just goes and introduces new evil behaviors. Among those the evil behaviors that RealPlayer has been discovered going over various versions are these:
1) It will try to take over your system and become the default player for every type of audio and video file that exists.
2) It will make it very difficult for you to stop it from doing this. You will have to manually uncheck almost a hundred boxes in order to limit RealPlayer to being the default player for only Real’s proprietary formats.
3) It will constantly nag you to register until you finally give in and tell it a phony e-mail address.
4) It will constantly nag you to upgrade to the paid version.
5) It will constantly nag you to upgrade to the latest paid version (for which you will have to pay again).
6) It will try to push content at you that you don’t want.
7) It will push advertisements at you, making it a form of adware.
8) It will stick in your system tray when you turn it off, and you will have to go to extra efforts to get it out of your system tray.
9) It will modify your system registry so that it will put itself BACK in your system tray on startup and you’ll have to get it out again.
10) It will install parallel programs that you don’t want, like AIM and RealJukebox.
11) It will send individually identifying user strings back to the network so that Real can track what music you as an individual (not as an unidentifiable part of a group) are listening to.
12) After you turn off the advertising options so that you won’t get hit with advertising, it will TURN SOME OF THEM BACK ON AUTOMATICALLY so you get hit with ads anyway.
13) It will constantly bombard you with e-mails from Real (unless you gave them a fake address).
14) It will crash your system.
15) It will sacrifice babies to Moloch.
I am NOT kidding about that last one.
After the above, it comes as no surprise to discover that RealPlayer was designed by the Easter Bunny as part of his never-ending war against humanity and should be avoided at all costs!
Hmm, good to know. I’ve never had any issues with Real, personally. I’ve never had it try to ninja attack my file settings either.
I mostly had it because the lower-bandwidth EWTN stream-casts look better on Real (in my very humble opinion) than equal bitrate-streams showing in WMP.
Heh – I almost spit up some of my drink when I read that last one, number 15. 🙂
Very enlightened indeed, Jimmy. You could have just done the humble thing and said you didn’t have a good reason for hating RealPlayer and be done with it.
Then again, that wouldn’t have been as “clever” or entertaining as that screed, now would it?
Very enlightened indeed, Jimmy. You could have just done the humble thing and said you didn’t have a good reason for hating RealPlayer and be done with it.
Then again, that wouldn’t have been as “clever” or entertaining as that screed, now would it?
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternative.htm This one not evil and grab the quicktime one also
“Very enlightened indeed, Jimmy. You could have just done the humble thing and said you didn’t have a good reason for hating RealPlayer and be done with it.
Then again, that wouldn’t have been as “clever” or entertaining as that screed, now would it?”
You know, if Jimmy were talking about a person or a group of people, I’d be in 100% agreement. But he’s talking about a piece of *software.* Software doesn’t have feelings to the best of my knowledge, so no one’s getting hurt here.
I for one found it amusing–perhaps because I’ve noticed the same behavior from RealPlayer myself.
In fact, I can even add an additional reason why RealPlayer and associated products are best avoided: Like many companies, they try to entice you with free trial periods, which of course require a credit card. Ordinarily it’s no biggie if you want to take advantage of that offer to get some new music; just be sure to cancel before the trial period’s over. What they don’t tell you when you sign up is that you can’t cancel over the web; you have to call. And then, of course, you get the hard sell. “No, ma’am, I don’t want you to extend my free trial. I want to CANCEL. That’s C-A-N-C-E-L.” It took a bit of doing….
Just the troll-of-the-week, Amy. Don’t sweat it.
The thing about evil software, of the kind that Jimmy is describing, is that someone has to PROGRAM these intrusive and aggressive properties into the product. It’s not by accident that the program keeps re-setting itself for maximum naughtiness, someone engineered it that way.
The Easter Bunny? You decide!
Thoroughly enjoyed Jimmy’s post. RealPlayer tried to do the same thing on my computer.
Gee Jimmy, that’s it? Doesn’t sound all that bad.
As a programmer type myself, the real problem with Real Player isn’t that someone programmed it that way, its that some one told the programmer to do that specifically. Its usually management’s fault.
Realplayer is evil. However, I still don’t get the evilness of the *.pdf.
PDF –
It takes a long time to load the viewer.
If you don’t have it on your system, too bad..
The company has had their fair share of doing evil things to people.
It crashes.
It sometimes closes the whole program down if you’ve got more than one file open and you choose to close only one of the files out.
If you upgrade, they make you install stuff you don’t always want (like the Yahoo toolbar.)
Sometimes it can take forever to render images (probably depending more on how the image was encoded than with the viewer)
On the plus side, at least its a common standard for papers and reports that’s trustworthy in its formatting.
Like the person in the first comment, I have never had any problems with RealPlayer, not that I would notice some of them. Still, I have never recieved an email from them and Windows Media Player remains the default program for everything except EWTN internet broadcasts. I got RealPlayer from EWTN a couple years ago. I wonder the nasty features have only been added since then, or if EWTN somehow gives a better version of the program than the standard one.
Personally, I’ve found that one needn’t choose between WMP and RealPlayer – WinAmp was always my fav player, back in the dark days before I started using Linux to reduce my dependency on another piece of evil software…
Mr. Akin’s negative comments about “RealPlayer” are so greatly exaggerated that the thread ought to be deleted.
I don’t have time to go over the whole list of Mr. Akin’s complaints. Suffice it to say, though, that I have been using “Real” since the mid-1990s, and I wouldn’t be without it. One just has to be patient and willing to do a little work, during and just after installation time, to shut off the things that Mr. Akin finds annoying. They NEVER bother me by cropping up again (contrary to the picture he paints).
I have an older computer (March, 2000) with a Windows 98SE [“Second Edition”] operating system. I am tremendously grateful for the availability of RealPlayer, because Windows Media Player will not work for me. It quickly crashes and/or shuts down pieces of Windows 98SE, resulting in an inability to use various features (arrows, tab, etc.) and to shut down cleanly.
Go, REAL !!!
PS: I have no stock in Real and will not benefit in any way for having stated these things.
For Windows I prefer the latest Win Media Player. The secret to keeping Real Player “in the background” is making sure you UNcheck everything you can when you first install it. Disable their “message center” too — you’ll get a “Are you sure???” and say YES. Make sure it is only checked to play .rm .ram .ra video/audio files.
I haven’t had a problem with Real Player 10. Real Player 8 might have been worse. Also after installing, go to Run — MSCONFIG and UNcheck anything that Real Player wants to start up. It won’t come back to haunt you.
QuickTime is the same way, it wants to become the default media player for everything, and run when you start up. Same with Win Media when you install it fresh or upgrade, same with WinAmp. Make sure when you install these things, you use the options available and UNcheck anything you don’t want. Legit software allows you to do these things if designed right. The compression ratio for Real Player video/audio files is also quite good.
Phil P
iTunes is all you need.
Huh.
Do all you who have these problems use Windows? I use Mac, download the free version of Real, and have none of these problems with it. In fact, I think my iTunes is a little belligerent towards my Real Player.
Down iTunes! Bad boy! You let little Real play on its own!
Where are these ads? I think the message should be aimed at the Real Enemy:
M1CR050FT!!!
Come on..You this ia a conspiracy by the Masons and the Illuminati!!!!!!!..Before you know it Jack Chick will link this to The Pope and his Jesuit army!!!!!!
Didn’t you hear? The idea of a Jesuit army is sooo yesterday. What the Vatican is doing now is creating a legion of giant fighting robots.
Cool, huh?
My Real Player is albino. Should I be worried?
I use “real alternative myself”, and it works just fine. I could never get the real “real” to work.
There’s an alternative to RealPlayer here.
John, You may be right. Jimmy may be grossly exaggerating about RealPlayer. Except the last one. I have proof about No. 15!
Man – I was not aware of “the-player-that-should-not-be-named” sacrificing babies to Moloch.
I should probably keep my daughter away from my computer then…
BTW, so no one is tempted to false worship, sacrificing babies to RP will not make your machine run faster or your streaming video/music/radion to flow smoother. 🙂
Lightweight, free, powerful, useful things every computer should have:
Media:
Media Player Classic
Quicktime Alternative
Real Alternative
The GIMP
Internet:
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Thunderbird
Kerio Personal Firewall
Others:
7-Zip
BurnAtOnce
PDFReader
OpenOffice