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Ahhh, those lovely '90s memories...

See this page and be sure to read it in its entirety. It answers all your questions. Especially read point #6 regarding the deceiving of users.

Wow, nice! I wish I had known about this, before I installed the normal RealPlayer....

The audio program CarTalk issued a similar ultimatum several months ago, and that resulted in a different RealPlayer download link.

http://www.real.com/freeplayer/?rppr=cartalk.com

It's easier (and friendlier) to download the RealPlayer, but it results in the same spyware-infested client.
What does it say about RealPlayer when their biggest clients are threatening to rebel, because of frustrations caused by their listeners trying to use Real's spyware-infested software? It's sad that Real is following the KaZaA "business model" by selling out to spyware.

(Can't resist a link to my original rant about RealPlayer 8. I'm glad that version was their nadir, and they've been (slowly) improving since then.)

This happened to me too, but only for a job interview at Google. That's as far as I made it: I never worked for them or signed any NDA.

My resume was submitted, and I made it as far as the first phone screen. It was one of the best interviews I have ever had in my life! Everything went 100% great, better than I had ever hoped for. I felt we had really clicked. Then, it turns out that I lost the interview, because the interviewer read my blog.

He didn't like me talking about my job search or my experiences with Google's hiring process. He especially didn't like the way I described the interview, perhaps because it would have given future interviewees tips on what to expect. He valued his ability to "surprise" people with trick logic questions, and my description of the involved thought processes might have tipped his hand. (I've since edited my blog to remove the spoilers, as per his implied request.)

Google and Microsoft share similar cultures, evidently. Both select for candidates who are good at discovering the "a-ha" moment that enables them to see through a tricky logic puzzle and solve it. I'm not good at logic puzzles or riddles in general, but in this case, I was able to relate the puzzle to a real-life problem I faced (when writing a simulator for a particular mechanism of a pinball machine).

Lesson learned. The culture at Google is one of paranoid security, as others have confirmed with me. When interviewing (or working) there, don't reveal anything about the process. Merely mentioning the fact that you are interviewing/working might raise eyebrows. When in doubt, don't.

The good news is that the interviewer liked me, and encouraged me to re-apply. Since I seemed to learn my lesson well, he told me he wouldn't put me on the blacklist, so I've another chance. I believe the cut-off period for previous failed applicants is a year and a day.

During the time, I found a job I'm happy with now, and I'll definitely stick with it. I won't be jumping ship, in case you're reading this posting there and wondering :) The free food at Google is tempting, though....

How can you live with yourself? Specifically, how can you even pretened to be an ethical person when your software is all about manipulating people (in the most insidious ways possible) into signing up for shit they don't really want?

For specifics, see this site, in particular the following tidbit:

• The "flashes" page is especially deceptive: all checkboxes at first appear cleared already, but when scrolling down, more checkboxes are revealed that are not cleared by default! Be sure to clear these "hidden" checkboxes as well.

I get 3000 spams/day with my catchall address (krellan.com)!

I will soon be putting in a whitelist of allowed usernames, and bouncing everything else, in hopes of reducing this ridiculously high spamcount.

I get only 100 spams/day correctly addressed to my real addresses that I use on that domain.

This is still too high, but a combination of SpamAssassin on the server and Bayesian filtering on the client (Mozilla Thunderbird) help reduce the number of spams I actually see to almost none! (For safety and in case of false positives, all emails are still archived.)

Back when it was last mentioned a few times ago on Slashdot, I also posted a rant about RealPlayer. It was back in 2001 or so, targeting RealPlayer 8.

http://krellan.com/rant/real.html

The version of RealPlayer I ranted about, RealPlayer 8, was probably a low water mark for them. Horrible indeed.

Recently, I installed RP 10 and it is actually a bit better and friendlier! Not 100% ethical yet, but getting closer. Here's an update to my earlier rant:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/krellan/16344.htm l

I look forward to trying the Open Source versions of the player (Helix, etc.)....

Got this photo from somewhere, I forgot. It's great. Somebody went up to the RealNetworks building and slapped a big handwritten "BUFFERING" sign over their logo!

http://www.krellan.com/rant/real.html
(at bottom of page)

Does anybody know where this picture was originally from? I'd like to link back to the source, but haven't found it online anymore.

I made this rant in response to a frustrating experience trying to install RealPlayer 8. They have improved since that time (I think that version 8 was a low water mark for them).

They still haven't figured out how to stop loading delays caused by buffering. The secret is to bang the rocks together, guys! Or in this case, the secret is to download the data at maximum speed from the previous 15-or-so seconds of content, and start the client playing immediately, and by the time the buffer fills, the client will be caught up to the current live content. Real still hasn't done this! (In fairness, it might be patented: the old SurferNETWORK was the first to figure it out, and they might have patented it.)

I'm disappointed that they didn't do more in the 1.10 patch. A fourth difficulty level, "Inferno", beyond hell, would have been great to have and it would reduce the boredom at high level. The changes they're doing to Act 5 could have been applied to all acts at this new difficulty level.

There's other nitpicks that make the game still feel incomplete. Act 4 still only has very few waypoints, compared to all other levels. Adding some more waypoints, or even a new area or two, to Act 4 would have been great.

A much-needed "No Hostile Players" checkbox, to prevent players from going hostile, should have been added to the game creation options. Grief players have ruined many a good game by unexpectedly going PvP.

This wishlist was made 2 years ago, when rumours of 1.10 first began:

http://www.krellan.com/rant/diablo.html

A shame that so little has been done in so long.

They've been doing this since RealPlayer 8.

See the rant from the last time this appeared on Slashdot, roughly August 2001, and my embellishments to it. I added a lengthy 12-step process for installing RealPlayer that is the best that can be done for disabling spam/spyware given the few options they give you:

http://www.krellan.com/rant/real.html

Also look at this funny picture that someone anonymously posted long ago, when a frustrated user decorated Real's building! If anyone knows the original source, I'd love to know it.

http://www.krellan.com/rant/real-buffering.jpg

They've been doing this since RealPlayer 8.

See the rant from the last time this appeared on Slashdot, roughly August 2001, and my embellishments to it. I added a lengthy 12-step process for installing RealPlayer that is the best that can be done for disabling spam/spyware given the few options they give you:

http://www.krellan.com/rant/real.html

Also look at this funny picture that someone anonymously posted long ago, when a frustrated user decorated Real's building! If anyone knows the original source, I'd love to know it.

http://www.krellan.com/rant/real-buffering.jpg

An example of why a particular patch might not be accepted, even though it seems like a "no-brainer", is because it would be for too specific a purpose. It might optimize the kernel for one particular application, at the expense of others. One of the best things about Linux is that it is general-purpose: suitable for everything from palmtops and embedded systems to servers and enterprise applications.

A patch to aggressively cache the disk in memory, for instance, might be good for servers but not for embedded systems. So, I could understand how a patch would be rejected in this case.

As an example, a company I once worked for made many minor changes to the Linux kernel. Since Linux is GPL, I made a webpage publishing these changes, and unlike the company, my webpage is still in existence!

Splash Open Source Page

These changes would be too narrow in focus to apply to the Linux kernel for everybody, so we never submitted them.

This is wonderful. The ability to operate at specific bitrates, especially low bitrates, is critical for streaming.

Having a flexible range, with definable minimum and maximum bounds, is a very good way to go. You get the bandwidth efficency during silence and other easily compressible sounds, without the unpredictable bitrate spiking of unbounded VBR.

Ogg Vorbis is a step well taken in resurrecting online music and radio streaming. After the losses in 2001 (RIAA fees, AFTRA fees, MP3 patent fees, increasing bandwidth costs, copyright concerns), we need all the help we can get....

I listen to Dr. Demento online and keep track of what stations remain: http://krellan.com/demento/

I worked at a company (Splash) that made Linux print servers. We supported both Ethernet and Token Ring.

Yes, we obeyed the GPL! Here is my Splash Open Source Page. Olicom (remember them?) made a patch to get DHCP clients working over Token Ring. I still have their patch to "dhcpcd", if you want it.

I'd be interested in what you think of the color calibration used by Splash products. They are print servers that hook up to a large color copier, and do color calibration as well as other things.

The calibration scheme used seems simple enough, using only a scanner, color strip, and the copier. Kodak makes high-accuracy color strips that have standard colors. The scanner scans that strip and is calibrated to it. Then, the copier spits out a sheet of paper with colored squares. That paper is placed on the scanner, along with the color strip, and they are compared and used to calibrate the copier against the color strip (via the already-calibrated scanner).

The computer is then calibrated to the same standard used by the color strip. Then, you can use the copier as a printer, to print accurate colors, as the system is then completely calibrated. Simple enough.

Unfortunately for the GIMP, this is patented. I work at Splash, programming Linux network stuff. This caught my eye, and I thought I'd add this to the discussion...