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NPR's Car Talk Dumping RealMedia
olcrazypete writes: "Click and Clack are apparently fed up with Real Networks. They have switched to Windows Media Player format. 'Why? Because, for a long time, we've had tons of complaints about RealNetworks. And the one that ticks us off the most is the perceived trickery they use to sell their premium products. This is just our opinion, mind you, but it's shared by enough of our listeners, that we
finally decided to take action.' The whole story is here . My favorite line: 'It stinks so much that it even makes Microsoft look good by comparison. That's something, huh?'"
I would like to write an open letter to the people of RealMedia, telling them how I disp *BUFFERING*
Setec Astronomy
Not that I would ever endorse anything from Apple, but their streaming media technology seems fairly competent.
Excellent.
Yippee. It's not like they switched to Ogg Vorbis.
Why not just use MP3?
Sure, it's not a free solution for them, but at least it's universal.
While I applaud this article and agree that realplayer is mostly evil, I find it amusing that people are "duped" into "accidentally shelling out their hard-earned dineros" for realplayer. I don't know about you, but I've never "accidently" entered my credit card number and bought something on the web, ever =).
Switch to something a little more open minded... like Nullsoft's Shoutcast. I listen to some pretty nice UK radio stations from across the pond with KDE's Noatun whilst I code thanks to Shoutcast. I don't see any reason why its not usable for radio broadcasts like Click & Clack.
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
The interesting thing is that Click and Clack actually, themselves, knew about the technologies, even if just briefly. I would never have thought they would even be computer users.
~~~
perhaps its because that open source solution is faster, cheaper, and more stable then some of its alternatives?
Don't be fooled how much clearer the Real site is now (in regards to finding the free player).
Real already changed their site in response to this public embarrassment. Though they will probably never admit it...
For those who don't know already, both mplayer and xine play streaming windows media just fine on Linux/FreeBSD/etc.
I agree with their reasons for dumping real, but I wish they had adopted Quicktime instead of or in addition to WMP. Oh well.
First you have to hunt down the link for the free player, similiar to what winamp's doing now, then while you're installing the thing it has about 50 screens of email crap you have to tell it not to add you to, and most of those the only options that are checked are way down in the list where you have to scroll down to catch it. They have all the moral turpitude of Gator (its spyware! - only true geeks will get that) as far as I'm concerned.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
Seriously though. These guys (Click and Clack) are Macheads so why not quicktime? The Quicktime streaming server fundamentals are under the Darwin open source and free paradigms, there are no licensing fees as there are with Windows, and hey, it's so easy to use. So, what gives?
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
There are really only two major players out there these days, Windows Media and Quicktime.
The main problem with Real is the server licenses. That and the really bad reputation their spyware gave the format.
Give people a choice of Windows Media and QuickTime, for video or audio, and you really can't go far wrong.
Flash video is looking really good these days too, although it's still early days for the Macromedia folks.
Peoples problem with Real Media is not the quality of the streaming media. It is the constant barrage of advertising and popups to get you to sign up for the premium service. Microsoft may no tdo this now but once they have the market cornered they will switch to a pay for play model i'm guessing. I'm surprised that Car talk is moving away from this kind of crap when so many others are moving toward. It seems like half the online newspapers that used to be free are now a charge or register type of thing.
I would like to salute the ashes of american flags, and all the fallen leaves filling up shopping bags.
There are no folders in Linux. You are a lying jackass! I hope the team from your city loses to the team from some other city, dick!
Let's see... There's the big "DOWNLOAD WINAMP 5 NOW" button. I click on that, and it asks me if I want Free or Pro. Both are equally displayed, right next to each other. I click on Free, and then I choose with bundle of Winamp I want. It's hardly difficult.
I've already (politely) flamed NASA and one or two local government webmasters about their exclusive reliance on Real's malware.
The sad thing is, the very latest generation of Real's player is actually pretty nice. It's reminiscent of iTunes's look and feel, only snappier. You can tell that Real, unlike Apple, employs a few clueful Win32 programmers. I installed it on one machine as a test, after the recent Slashdot article about how Real wasn't going to be so evil anymore, and sure enough, this morning it popped up an unsolicited window on my desktop extolling the latest from Britney Spears and similar dreckmeisters, despite my having taken pains to turn off all of the "messaging" features I could find.
If you're an engineer who works at Real, I'd like to pose the same question so many people want to ask SCO's tech guys: why in the hell are you wasting your talents working for the biggest shitweasels in the marketing (Real) or legal (SCO) businesses?
man hdparm
IMHO, both Real Player and Windows Media Player are both bloated, ugly, and slow. I do tend to prefer WMP over Real One, because the video quality is better, but seeking in streaming tracks is slower and their interface (well, both of them actually) looks like they came out of windows 3.11. I don't know why they didn't opt for something more open, like MPEG 4 (yes, I know about the consortium fees... still gotta be better than dealing with MS). I'd say quicktime, as it seems to be the most responsive and flexible in regards to dealing with different connection speeds, but that would rule out anyone not running windows or mac. I don't know how big of a step up it is, more like a side step, I suppose. I do agree with them about the blatant upgrade plugs real networks throws in everywhere though.
today is spelling optional day.
I used to like Real. Even after the debacle with the spyware in their jukebox, I was willing to give them a second chance. But I learned my lesson somewhere around G2. I was installing their latest player on my wife's Windows box, and up pops a Gator installer!
:-P
Of course it also didn't help my opinion of them that they provided my state with Maria Cantwell.
#DeleteChrome
I only have one thing to say: Ogggg!
Back when Real Media was using the adult entertainment industry to get their hold on the streaming media market, they had a special link for adult websites that made it much more obvious how to download the free player. Of course back then finding the free player link from their main page wasn't so hard either.
Divx.com is guilty of the same thing. They have a free codec package that will work fine with Windows Media Player. But it isn't in their table of their three main products. Also if you do find it, and just go with the install default config options, you'll see a Divx watermark at the start of every video. This can be turned off easy enough from the "Decoder Configuration Utility".
It's about...buffering.......time someone....buffering..buffering...realized realmedia sucks...buffering...for everything.
Leftist swamp? They are on NPR, not Pacficia Radio.
Chaincast offered KQED "free" streaming and no matter how many times they were contacted they never called back. Too bad for them.
It wants Windows Media Player 9 Codec, NFW!
Thats for horrible to horrid.
Profit motive has done nothing but dumb radio down to the lowest common denominator (see pop music and Rush Limbaugh). I guarantee you that if they moved to commercial radio, it'd be run into the ground within months.
Is there a windows client besides quicktime itself? I *hate* quicktime almost as much as I hate realplayer.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
and they say no one watches/listtens to public owned media :-)
It's free isn't it? It definitely sucks less than Windows Media.
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Wouldn't low-bitrate VBR mp3 just make it more open and cross-platform than any other solution?
I know proprietary solutions like wma and ra sound a little better at very low bitrates but a 32kbps mp3 stream isn't bad for voice.
I use .RM because that is the only choice available sometimes.
They have for years pushed their retail product by making it difficult to find download the free one.
Bottom line REAL.com player feels like a combination of spam and spyware. The message center and product registration are far too invasive. REAL.com is sent to much usage information. Check your firewall for outgoing connections established by their player.
I can't say that I blame them. I haven't had RealPlayer on any of my PCs for ages. I went to fetch the most recent incarnation a few days ago and was completely blown away that what ought to be a relatively simple audio/video streaming client had grown to be more than 14MB.
As much as it doesn't sit well with me, Media Player is included with Windows. It requires no downloads, it doesn't bombard me with ads, and it seems to work pretty well.
Now I may give them a good online listen as well. I like their attitude towards radio broadcasting - in fact they're the only radio station I listen to when driving to and from work.
Here's the main reason they likely decided to use Windows Media instead of "free" alternatives or Quicktime: The people at Car Talk want to make it easy for their listeners to tune in. They know that the majority of PCs in the world already have the Windows Media Player sitting there on the desktop waiting to be clicked, or the plugin already tied to Internet Explorer.
The transition will therefore be as seamless as possible for the listeners -- a simple matter of "click here" and the program will play. No messing around with downloading new clients, configuring, or what have you.
Whether you (open source booster) think this is right or wrong is another matter entirely.
This is offtopic I know but NPR leftest?
I'm a Conservative/Moderate and I listen to NPR, I feel that their news is the best and least biased around because they are non-profit, they don't have to worry about keeping one side or the other happy.
The best thing about NPR is that they don't try to hype news to get me to listen. Cable news makes me sick with the way they twist the truth in teasers to get you to tune in to whatever is next by playing with your emotions. NPR treats me like an intellegent person and lets me decide for myself. I don't always agree with them but I never feel like they are trying to get me to either.
The Anti-Blog
I submit that realplayer has been real crap for a real long time. How could they ignore this for so long? Maybe there should have been a slashdot poll to give NPR some real feedback- since they seldom make contact with the real world.
I run Zone alarm on my windows 98 box. and what it showed me was that real player runs daemons that periodially send outbound infomrmation to the mothership. It doesn't look like update notifications either. what are they sending?? I dont know but its spyware in my book not to mention one more process to crash windows 98.
On the otherhand windows media player has all sorts of problems on macs. On my macs I often find radio stations that echo when you connect using WMA.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I see no excellent karma, heebe.
Media Player Classic will play both QuickTime and Real without either installed.
It's even worse with the authoring tools. Most significantly, they removed batch encoding capability from the freeware encoder. And the encoder is the one that's hard to find... it's on a totally separate web site (realnetworks.com) from the real.com domain, and there is no obvious link from real.com to realnetworks.com that indicates this is where you find the encoder.
George W. Bush
President, United States of America
42
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm an insane right wing gun nut and I listen to NPR because the profit driven stations in my area (Seattle) mostly suck ass. Yeah, profit motivated stations are soooooooo great, look at the quality of fare offered by Clear Channel.
I'm disappointed that they don't use Shoutcast/MP3 or Quicktime, although Quicktime might piss them off for the same reason as Real Media does as every time you start it Apple ends up trying to get you to shell out some dineros for Quicktime Pro.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
I'm looking at this from a mac computer, and it is detecting my appleness, so maybe the sight looks different from different browsers?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
And for that matter, to be fair to Real, the the Helix server/player/tools are also Open/Free (both Speech and Beer).
That doesn't really address the 'free Real player is harder to find than Osama Bin Laden at night' comment... Real's own employees have bitched about that for years, God knows the rest of us have. Hopefully that gives the Open movement within Real (the Helix Community) a little more leverage in selling their case to the more hardline business folk still trying to figure out why their user base is evaporating.
OTOH, I'm a bit pissed off... I have a free Real player (with all the source) that works great. Thanks Click and Clack, I can't listen to your program anymore. That 'free' windows player comes with a $200 Windows tax attached.
Nothing like a damned fool 'statement' that flies in the face of common sense.
Monty
Go here to get Real Alternative.
a ti ve.htm
It plays Real Audio crap without the need for Real's crapware.
Windows only, I do believe.
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Altern
WRONG!
Next solution, please.
Windows Media sucks more on a mac than QuickTime sucks on a PC :-)
Everybody send them an e-mail asking them to do a .mp3 stream that way everyone will have no problem listening to the show.
Since i'm sure their switch to windows media was in good faith I doubt they'd mind switching over if the demand is there.
Here's the story.
I'm in the Liberal \ Moderate area. I think that while NPR's news is excellent, more often than not their guest commentators who editorialize are on the liberal side of things. Also recognize that people often mix up NPR with their local broadcaster. The station in Colorado that I listened to seemed less liberal than the one I listen to in Cleveland.
NPR is flat out the best though. I totally agree. An in regards to our flame baiter, I think the Car Talk guys are doing alright financially and I bet they have recieved offers from for profit stations and turned them down.
stupid moderator. the cynical post had a point relevant to the conversation. Bill and Melinda give donations to public radio. Click and Clack explained how they disliked Real, but they did not explain how they chose Windows over numerous other streaming technologies.
no they did not. they are still playing games.
1 2904realhome_1_3_2_1_1_1
go to http://www.real.com/.
the headline reads: Introducing RealPlayer 10
subheadline: New Powerful Free
with a big image with a big, bright "Free" logo.
click on the free logo takes you here:
http://www.real.com/realplayer.html?pp=home&src=0
there are two big "Download Now" buttons on this site. both lead to the non-free premium player. in the margin on the right, with grey text over a grey background, there is a link to the free player.
that is bullshit. i know the free player is there, and that real plays tricks, so i specifically look for it. the average internet user, on the other hand, may not be that aware.
real are still assholes, and i am glad cartalk is moving away from their format because of their shitty tactics.
You don't need an iPod. Get a sense of humor instead.
Why can't they just offer downloadable MP3s? They're not for profit. It also tend to save bandwidth to do it that way over streaming (less likely to send the same thing twice if a person rewinds, or stops and starts, or multiple people listen sequenially)? I'd love to have click-and-clack MP3s.
If microsoft didn't have a monopoly to spread their media player, trust me it would nag you for credit card numbers just as much as all the other crap does. If you're using Windows Media Player, you've either pirated it or you've already given Microsoft your credit card number when you purchased windows (most likely a computer pre-installed with windows).
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
This link goes directly to the download:
http://www.real.com/freeplayer/?rppr=jplnasagov
To me file types are like a langauge. They should be free and open. Could you imagine the mess we'd be in if we had to pay a fee to use the english language. Or if someone kept it hidden so that it could only be used with their translators. For the man that could patent it, it would be a gold mine.
It's all relative. Mainstream TV news is mostly conservative and right-leaning and talk radio is frighteningly rightwing, so objective reporting does seem leftist in comparison.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
If they were on a "profit-motivated" network then they'd be under pressure to stop telling people about the dangers of SUV's, because the network would be trying to sell ad time to the companies that are making SUV's. Pay attention, this part is important.
Sure, the windows player has a $200 Windows tax. And a $200-$4000 PC tax ('cause hey, the files don't do much good if you don't have a PC), and even Linux comes with this tax.
Got a Mac? Guess there's an OSX tax there, along with the inflated hardware tax.
On Linux, you can use MPlayer to play wma files. Completely free. Except for the PC tax.
For some reason, your post reminded me of this.
Hope you don't mind the PC tax required to view that strip....
You know, I thought this post wasn't right, but I just checked their site, and holy crap, they actually did it. After 5 years, they finally did it!
Previously, if you visited the Real.com site, you were shown a huge banner telling you "RealPlayer with RealOne, $9.95 per month" or "RealPlayer Plus for $29" or some such thing, with "free Realplayer" in size 12 font in the upper right corner, with the banner taking the main part of the page. After clicking on "free realplayer" you were given, once more, an option to buy Realplayer plus or free realplayer on the right side in slightly smaller font.
Now, when you go, "free download" is the words in big font, with it once again linking to the second page, but this is an order of magnitude better than before. It could still be better though, if they eliminated once and for all the "realplayer plus" secondary page, or at least made that the lesser focus of the page (PREMIUM PLAYER is still in fairly large font)
Car Talk's technical advisor, Meg Ahertz said that the RealMedia is complete bogosity. "I tried to reason with their VP, Hugh Jass, but he redirected me to their lawyers, Dewey, Cheatham and Howe." At that point, I turned the matter over to our staff mediators, Sue First and Bernadette Bridge. The rest is history.
And it's the best show on NPR, bar none. They started offering this a month or two back, and the next week had a sample from their deluge of "thank you" letters.
Click and Clack probably haven't noticed this -- busy, as they always are, laughing at their own jokes.
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
Not only is NPR rather balanced (I personally used to listen to it every day in the car when I lived outside of the city), but people who listen to NPR as their main source of information have been shown to have less misconceptions about the war in Iraq than people who listen to or watch other news sources.
Interestingly enough, the study found that people who watched Fox News had the most misconceptions.
WARNING: If accidentally read, induce vomiting.
Defending RealMedia doesn't seem very popular around here, but I could find their free player with two clicks and in under 30 seconds. Just click the gigantic orange button on their front page and then click the link on the left side of the next page. Obviously the $20 player is more prominently featured (yes, RealMedia is trying to make money--imagine that!), but it's hardly difficult to find the free player.
You ignorant fuckwits, this is a re-write of an *old* troll. The sooner you stop tossing your bread crusts under the bridge, the sooner the troll goes away.
"Gator is Spyware, you fuckers.
Spyware. Spyware. Spyware."
How'd I do?
Peter, Tom and Dan are "mostly conservative and right-leaning"? Holy cow, where do you get your TV news from? Cuba or N. Korea?
Maybe it changed, but it's still fucked. The front page says "New Powerful Free" and the button says "Download RealPlayer". Hit that button, and the next page has another button that looks just like it that says "Download Now" so I hit that. Soon they're asking you for your credit card number. When you're a slime-mold like Real, it takes a lot more than the Car Talk guys demonstrating how you're a monkey's ass to make you change.
RealAudio was founded by a former Microsoft exec. Rumor is that he was too scumy for Microsoft.
He probably gets his news from Australia -- perhaps you've heard of Rupert Murdoch?
I just heard this on the radio, Geeks in Space is dropping OGG support in favor of closed and scummy Real Networks format. Even if you didn't like OGG and had no clue what the name represented, you can still appreciate the audacity of this action.
Truly a Slashdot icon.
Is it "You are bi-curious for me"? As below:
U R (U)BI CUR 4 ME
Tell Mac users (Ask your ad department which profile they belong to) how suscessfully they can watch your videos, especially OS/9 user. Wmedia 9 runs on OSX yes? No! Give it couple of complex scripts, like insert an ad before video, see how it fails.
Oh also, while flaming real you can start with the 20 step guide how to suscessfully install/compile/configure mplayer.
BTW, ever Real hating linux geeks, ask an OSX user if Wmedia works in OSX as advertised. Don't get tricked by specs MS gives.
IMHO they lost 10% of customers right away, source:Google stats
Care to show me your config, then? I can't play anything from their site.
I'm behind a firewall, but the stream buffers and then refuses to play. Not helpful.
My other car is first.
If not, shouldn't there be? That would
seem to be a solution to this problem.
It was yellow text on a blue background in the upper right above the picture, that says "FREE RealPlayer."
That's so depressing. I'm going to go jump in a lake now...
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I agree, I can't stand 'Car Talk'. The constant "Nyuk nyuk nyuk" humor from these 2 clods gets old fast. They are about as entertaining as watching an old Jim "Hey Verne" Varney movie. No, actually they aren't quite up to that level.
Bah, why confuse things with facts?
Seriously, though, do you expect them to back up a joke like that with notes on all of microsoft's wrongdoings?
Good news. I mean I'm all for competition in the software market, but I have always hated Real's players... I hate windows media player as well, and I still never use it, quicktime for me... But I've had tons of problems with real, the way they hide the opt out checks way down in a list, so unless you know where to look for them, you sign up for loads of spam, I hate any program that runs a program at system start up and leaves an icon in the system tray... besides these small nagging issues, I've always had many more stability problems on systems running real software (granted MS probably does that on purpose.. but quicktime never crashes the way real does on my systems). Anyway, maybe with helix opened up, we can write a good player that actually has some chance of fighting against windows media player...
I know someone who works programming Quicktime directly. Yes, it is very buggy, an Apple refuses to fix the bugs, or allow someone else to do so.
There are tons of streaming audion servers and also some nice and small audio playing systems availible, and even if you're REALLY desperate some java streaming audio applets. It should be VERY easy to replace real audio with something open and free to safe money and not be locked into one vendor (which they are once again)
Saying that people have windows media player on the desktop so who needs anything else is pretty much how M$ killed netscape.
Switching to windows media format is not going to help in the long run, since there is nothing to stop M$ from charging server licences.
Personally a better option would have been to look at an open streaming server system, maybe shoutcast or freedom audio (server and java player all open)
Swithing to M$ (which from there comments they seem to not think hightly of either) just because realmedia is worse) will not solve their problem in the long term, only lock more people into M$ in the short term.
Sanity is a majority vote.
An off-topic post defending NPR--often accused of being biased toward the left for various valid and invalid reasons--is modded up as "Insightful" as of this post.
Meanwhile, a post I wrote this morning defending FoxNews--often accused of being biased toward the right for various valid and invalid reasons--is modded down as "Off-topic."
Difference in ideologies?
I feel that their news is the best and least biased around because they are non-profit, they don't have to worry about keeping one side or the other happy.
That doesn't even make sense. If a private station must worry about not offending sides, that would give it even more incentive to be non-biased.
NPR gets major contributions from left-leaning entrepeneurs. They recently received several million dollars, which is more than they receive in taxpayer dollars yearly, which makes one wonder why we still have to pay for them to be on the air when they don't need us to keep them afloat.
I think the biggest fallacy is that people believe that the news can be unbiased. You're getting a report of the news through someone else's eyes. Frankly, right or left, you've got to be able to filter out some of it. Sure, you won't get everything, but some of it is obvious. Frankly, I'm not too worried about the Slashdot crowd being able to discern the media. It's everyone else that seems to have problems. I've seen too many people quote the news verbatim.
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
I'm a Conservative/Moderate and I listen to NPR, I feel that their news is the best and least biased around because they are non-profit, they don't have to worry about keeping one side or the other happy.
NPR usually gets critiqued for their viewpoint selection. In other words, they choose the people they agree with to appear. The problem here is that with the opposing viewpoint minimized, the listener has little to go on other than what NPR presents. Their on-air personalities have also demonstrated political bias, which would also call into question their ability to objectively present or select for air a news item. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's not realistic to claim that they are the least biased.
Check out: http://www.insightmag.com/news/438506.html
Students at the University of Kentucky were treated in early April to a fervent antiwar and anti-Bush diatribe by a national left-leaning celebrity. In an accusatory tone, the speaker claimed President George W. Bush had "offered an attractive bribe to Turkey in exchange for permission to use Turkey as a base from which to invade Northern Iraq" and charged that he had "told the rest of the world that the United States is ready to act alone in virtually every field." The celebrity railed against the press for allegedly not being as tough on Bush as it was on former president Bill Clinton, declaring: "The press didn't wait until the intern scandal to ask tough questions of Bill Clinton, so why is the incumbent getting a pass?"
"Who was this celebrity? One of the febrile Hollywood left? Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, Martin Sheen? No, the author of this rant was none other than newscaster Bob Edwards, host of Morning Edition on the "objective" National Public Radio (NPR)."
I don't know how rational they are in their decision to switch formats.
I don't have a problem with RealAudio. Listen to AM feeds a lot and the quality is great with pretty much no buffering.
I am sure that the vocal majority that caused them to make this decision is the whiney kind who believes "everything is their fault."
I never had a problem hitting ^F, typing in "free" and hitting Enter. So it is a bit tricky. Big deal. Try to beat them at their own game and get a sense of accomplishment.
How gullible, ignorant and naive does one have to be to block out all the price tags, dollar signs, and the word "premium" and "unknowlingly" pay for something with a credit card. The numbers don't type themselves in and the Submit button doesn't engage by itself. Their listeners should take responsability for being easy marks and learn not to be one.
"That show is way left of Stalin, which is not unusual for NPR."
Why is it that when someone has an opinion that is more than one step short of outright facism in this country now they are assumed to be far out there commies? I kinda got preturbed that around 2001 I went from a moderate Republican to a commie hippy liberal and didn't change any of my opinions.
Can't say I haven't change at all since realizing what was going on. Ever since being alienated by the current assholes in power, I actually started listening to what other people had to say.
You may want to check out who the media organisations give thier money too and thus support
s p? Ind=B02
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/contrib.a
and choose any of the years. If giving 70-95% of your money to the democrats is considered conservative I would hate to see your idea of liberal.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
WHOAH, I don't know about you, but where I live (San Fransisco/Bay Area) NPR is the MOST liberal thing you can possible listen to.
For example, on one program they compared Arnold, the new gov. of California to Hitler, just because he wants to reduce spending on some health care programs. No, NPR is the most biased news program I have ever listed too. You will never hear anything conservative on their station.
As for intelligence? No, the use way more emotion. Almost everytime I pass the station they have something like: "grandmother in Iraq who is blind who lost her grandchild" because of a war or some other depressing story.
No...it IS clearer now. Before that link to the "download free player now" on their second page...would take you to another page that showed the premium player and then "free player" in small text. now that link actually prompts you to download the free player's installer.
In (I think) the most recent CVS, using the -cache option with the appropriate URL should solve the problem...
Ohhh... mainstream _Australian_ media. Maybe that makes sense then?
We host the local NPR station using ffmpeg and everyone's been quite happy with it. When they initially consulted with us I recommended against RealPlayer for exactly the reasons stated in the summary.
The only 'problem' I have with ffmpeg is that it's been using 100% cpu on one of the processors. But since it's a dual-processor server that we are no longer using for anything major other than the streaming, it hasn't been a big enough issue to figure out why it's doing it.
If you have to choose between ugly woman and ugly ugly woman, you would choose ugly woman! (even though she IS ugly..)
-------
FM Clan
Jesus Christ Dude. "Dan" looked like he wanted to put on his cowboy boots and move from Texas to Baghdad so he could have a front row seat. Not one of the networks questioned the administrations claims of links between Iraq and Al Quaida. Not one questioned why young Americans were dying when inspections were being allowed and diplomacy seemed to be working. Not one of them exposes the human rights abuses by Israel that Palestinians claim their suicides are in retaliation for. I'm sure it's not "Peter, Tom, and Dan"'s faults. It is common knowledge that the media in the U.S. is heavily influenced by Zionists. So everything Israel does is portrayed as good and everything connected to opponents of their occupation of Palestine is portrayed as bad. That pretty fucking right-leaning.
Sounds like a biased study. But, then, we're now talking about bias and meta-bias.
I listen to NPR in the car all the time, too. But I'm not going to pretend they're balanced. Though they're less off-balance than they used to be, and there are definitely some programs that lean one way more left or right.
---
But one person finds this reply useful, I'll be happy. :)
There exists an alternative to downloading the horrid Real Player. Try googling "Real Alternative". It is a freely available codec that can work with any standard media player (such as Media Player Classic). Infact, I think it comes bundled with MPC. As far as I know, it works well.
The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act makes it illegal to collect personally identifiable information online on children under 13. Most sites won't collect information on children under 13 as a result, or will simply block access when a child states their actual age. (As if they won't try again.)
But Real Media has a new idea. They simply have made it IMPOSSIBLE to tell them that you're under 13. The form doesn't go that low!
RealPlayer is definitely an awful product to deal with for many reasons. It's spyware, adware, and it is so tough even for an expert to remove all the things it slips into your machine that it's better just to reinstall.
Each and every aspect of this company and its products just send the same message to the customer: We are scummy, scummy, SCUMMY!
But this age thing makes it look like they put being scummy and skirting the law even above profit, because it's not even getting them anything! Can this really make them enough to be worth it?
More people should be willing to come out and say when a company is plainly unethical. Thanks Click and Clack!
And the sites that offer "only" Real Audio streams is just about as frustrating. Who convinced those people the the consumer doesn't want choices?
Quick QUESTION: how about DIVX? same deal as Real Audio last I looked. In order to play that video you have to "buy" the codex. How sad...
Three years ago I had a painful experience with RA: it was like an octopus putting its tentacles all over my computer; it slowed down to a halt. Deleted RA and it was fast again. Because I hate M$ (and therefore do not want to use their fine WM-player) I tried RA again today. Again - intrusive, background scheduler, internet traffic when there is no reason for it, and indeed an 'in your face' interface. THIS SUCKS waaaaaaaaeeeeyyy more than the by-comparion 'discrete' M$ WM-player.
Sigh...
What to do? Is there ANY alternative out there?
I have done the same thing with Gallery, having people that use the printing services donate to the project. Is it that big of a mystery that when you treat customers right they do pay you back and keep you going? Besides, it helps cut down on your PR costs.
There is a codec called The Real Alternative that plays realmedia files without the hassle of finding their free player.
Why is it that when someone has an opinion that is more than one step short of outright facism in this country...blah blah blah
Hyperbolize much?
You can always grab the radio signal from the ether and encode it to MP3 or whatever on your own. Here are a couple of pages on how to do this: #1, #2.
I agree, I've been running a stream for our college station for over a year with icecast/darkice...and can't really think of why we would change...it's also nice to be able to distribute the audio anywhere on campus by hooking up a few old old machines running mpg123 and connecting to the stream.
You live in the SF Bay Area (the most liberal metropolis in the USA) and you think NPR is the most liberal thing on the airwaves? Are you just feeling the contact high or have you really never listened to ANY other station in the Bay area? They're ALL liberal, even the Clear Channel operated stations.
Hopefully more places will follow suit. I have no idea why realplayer is so damn popular with so many news places.
I wish people would just stick to open standards, but this is an improvement in my eyes.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
One release would cause IE to quit if you closed a quicktime video. Kill every browser window you had open, just by clicking 'back'.
Its still annoying today, and you can't fullscreen video (rather, it maximizes the window, so you still have the start button, and all the chrome).
QT for windows sucks. That said, I definetly prefer it to Real for streaming video on websites.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Ignoring the comment on the Jews...
Just because Dan has to have 2 inch lifts on his left shoe doesn't mean he can't see the marketability of a good action shot. Also, you're ignoring the fact that while Dan has political outlook, he also has a need for ratings.
As for media criticism of the build up to the war, where were you? In the bunker already? The phrase of the day for months was "We support the troops, but..." or was it "we need to have a coalition"?
The thing that really annoyed me about RealPlayer for Windows was its habit of always popping with stupid "message alerts" that were just for their frigging ads. The Real player for Mac is much, much better behaved, as is the Windows player for the mac (when compared to the WMP for Windows).
So I sort of put a pox on all of them for being proprietary, but at least on the mac, I call it a tie.
Hey, I've been listening to them off and on over the years. I knew they went to MIT, but I didn't know that Tom had gotten a PhD. Thanks for the link, I'd never seen those bios before.
Realnetworks may be trying to change their spots, but I think it's too late, most of us already hate them too much.
Now, if we all pressure them to add a beowulf cluster of ogg vorbis streaming petrified penis-birds, nah... nevermind.
As I heard you actually read Slashdot, even submit stories announcing original codes are offered to Linux users for free, don't be sad...
Surf at -1 to read people who actually likes your code.(Not a joke) Also thanks for still respecting Linux/BSD unlike microsoft and releasing players with same native features as Win32/OSX counterparts...
Also thanks for coding OSX version samely compatible as Win32 version, e.g. scripting etc actually works, unlike wmedia.
Some choice quotes:
..you're the guy who put up this sign?
why why you are
why why you be
i see you are
why why?
for emmy!
But what that fuck does that mean?
1. Go here to download a previous version of Real Player. I recommend Real Player 9, which is what this guide is written for. Don't bother with that Real One shit. Choose the most basic player that's available.
2. Choose the custom install option. Uncheck all the boxes for the desktop icons and file associations.
3. Start Real Player. Go to View->Preferences and disable anything else that you don't want. Do this for StartCenter, since it eats up memory.
4. Go to Program Files\Common Files\Real\Update_OB. Delete or rename realsched.exe, which will still run even if you've disabled everything else.
5. Run msconfig to take out realsched from win.ini, as well as any other program you don't want loading at startup.
Some of the info came from here. Use this info at your own risk!
Enjoy!
They are very bad people with bad business model. Their model is based on blatant subterfuge and deceiption. Bad people, I tell ya.
Looks like if you choose *nix *bsd you get really left out in the cold on this deal :(
420
I'm not going to debate the subject with someone who know so little about it that he thinks democrats are liberals and republicans are conservatives.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
An excellent alternative for Windows boxen is Winamp, of all things. Plays video and audio. Additionally, if you install ffdshow, you can avoid the horseshit involved in putting DivX on your machine. Enjoy.
Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
Heh damn, my will-never-exist +1 goes to you... I somehow managed to be stupid enough to say good things about Real...
/. , you somehow get downmodded when you post stuff like that ;)
Posted as a placeholder for your comment.
On
I just downloaded and installed the free player to night to try to watch those SuperBowl commercials. I knew that I had a search ahead of me to even find the free player, then when installing it, I got a screen with the choice:
[ ] Install Premium Player with blah blah
commercial FREE radio
[ ] Install Basic Player
Now, if that isn't an underhanded trick, then I don't know what is.
I'll probably get flamebaited for this, but...
Honestly I generally ignore these posts, as I am sure many others do as well, but I feel I need to comment.
The thing that bothers me about all of these conversations (media bias) is that anyone can pick apart one of these channels and say it's balanced, leftist, rightist, whatever. Frankly I am tired of listening to arguments that consist of "small fact here means grand assumption here". I think it is funny (is a sad, twisted way) to see self-titled liberals (or leftists) bash those that few that stand up for right-wing politics on here then turn around and complain about how the government and/or majority doesn't listen. The same with the OS wars: not everything MS has done is bad, yet I keep seeing it equated with the devil. It's difficult to actually have conversations with people when they get fanatical about any subject because logic generally has no effect, fanatics don't question their beliefs (fanaticism in a broad sense, not just a religious one).
Sorry for the rant, but too many posts written in close-minded manners by people supporting Open Source and claiming that all news is conservative and far right wing.
For the record, I am pro Open Source, I am moderate (having an equal number of opinions from both major political sides), and I am capable of changing my mind based on logical presentation of facts...
Whee signature.
I use the free version to view Quicktime. I don't need the pro version because I don't produce. I would guess that almost all quick time is produced on Macs so Apple doesn't spend money to fix the windows bugs without profitable cause. That's business.
This is so true.
the next page has another button that looks just like it that says "Download Now" so I hit that
You left out the TWO mentions, (both right below the 'download now' buttons) that say
"$19.95 one-time fee".
If you can't read, that's YOUR problem.
ffdshow is nice until is messes up your video playback. i have too many friends that complain of green video or lines in their too damn much whe using ffdshow.
I do believe the same can be said if you do not believe that democrats are liberal.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
n/t
But no: "Cannot find codec for audio format 0xA" and mplayer bails. Many hours of googling, trolling mplayer-dev/user and all I can come up with is:
I've got MPlayer 1.0pre3, and /usr/lib/win32/wma9dmod.dll (along with the rest of the "essential.tar.bz2" codecs) from the mplayer web site.
If someone has *actually* listened to a wma CarTalk feed and can tell me where to find the magic codec I will be a very happy camper. I will even accept a necessary minimum of abuse for not finding the solution on my own.
Most people are easy marks when they are dealing with an unfamiliar subject. If your doctor prescribes a drug for your condition, what will you do if you are not a doctor yourself? Buy it and become an "easy mark", or refuse and potentially die? I think I know a most common answer to that.
Is there any reason they do not just offer a few different formats? Real, WMV, and QT could all be used at the only expense of additional processing power. If they wanted to make it easy for customers, simply have WMV a 'recommended' solution for Windows users and QT for Macs users, as this software is packaged with each system.
...That's five words.
"But the cars are all flashing me, bright lights are passing me, I feel life passing me by" - Stiff Little Fingers
The problem here is that if he's waaayy off the left side of the spectrum, the Dems might look positively right-wing to him.
Nice link. But that is nicely countered by the fact that media companies are, in general, Greedy Little Fucks. And by sucking up to the very deregulation friendly administration and FCC, they might be able to expand their markets past the current cap.
So they have a very strong incentive to Play Nice the Republicans in the White House and Congress.
I've never been satisfied with Quicktime or RealAudio and never realy have had problems with WM player.
Thats the way it is and I believe M$ should have been broken up so that 3rd party apps at least have a chance to be competative.
As it is right now, 3rd party apps targetted by Microsoft simply cannot compete and make money and I don't have time in my life to wrestle with products continously being sabatoged by MS, crippled ware or little used variants.
You won't find the older players by navigating their website, you just have to know the link http://forms.real.com/real/player/blackjack.html
What was the last law that benefited people but not corporations?
While Real complains about the problems they have with a MS monopoly, they don't then take the obvious step and properly support alternative platforms.
But then, they don't really support Windows either. I have to run RealPlayer 7 on my old Win98 laptop because none of the subsequent releases work properly (they all need a minimum of 128M of memory.)
If Real, really want to succeed, open up the codecs and allow us to help them compete.
Reminds me of this:
From The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, by Douglas Adams.
Well, here in Minnesota, MPR and NPR are the most boring stations you could possibly listen to. They use no emotion. It is just blah, blah, blah...
I'm confused now. Do we hate Real this week? Next week when an article about their legal fight with Microsoft comes out I need to cheer? Or are we still hating them anyway? Help!
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
On linux, there's the open-source HelixPlayer project, which has recently had a Milestone 2 preview release.
Check out Helix Player
Umm unless you have forks in your eyes it's not that difficult to see the Free download link. Despite what you may think, you do not have special powers that allowed you to see the link that the "average internet user" lacks.
Have you checked out Nullsoft's NSV?
Sure it requires Winamp 2.91 or higher (maybe not including 3) at the moment, but it's free for you and your users, and the quality is great. And they can either tune in to a stream or connect to an NSV file directly to play from the beginning.
Check out the example video's at Winamp.com and the available streams through the Winamp media library's internet TV browser.
The most important part of the whole discussion was being glossed over.
The revenue stream that Car Talk gets from audible.com is not insignificant.
BTW, when pledge breaks come on during Car Talk,
the local stations always mention that Car Talk is their most expensive purchase.
Tonm & Ray are not dumb. Easily-ripped streams would not be in their best interest.
Seriously, though, do you expect them to back up a joke like that with notes on all of microsoft's wrongdoings?
If you've read Slashdot enough to know about the tendency to slam Microsoft and miss the details your in sereous dential.
Are these the same "Car Talk" guys that demonstrated knowledge of English bows and the fingers used?
...the rest of the money comes from corporate sponsors...
I've worked closely with our local PBS/NPR station on their online auction site. One of the things up for auction in their most recent auction was billboard space--donated by ClearChannel Outdoor.
Yes, it makes sense for ClearChannel from an advertising and PR standpoint. But it still struck me as humorous seeing ClearChannel donating to an unaffiliated TV/radio station in the same market. And also seeing ClearChannel's donation as a featured item on the PBS auction site.
Yes, at work TCP over port 80 (which is what's used) almost can't be blocked, at least not easily, and it does mean I can use WinAmp to listen to high quality streaming media...for free!
Rather than celebrate another format win by Microsoft, complain! Put up a stink.
In the meantime, if you don't like the way the RealPlayer currently works, help us with the Helix Player, which is an open source player that commercial Linux desktop providers don't have to worry about getting sued for distributing.
If you don't like the fact that RealAudio and RealVideo are still proprietary formats, then help us support Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora, as well as any other free codecs that are applicable. But whatever you do, don't just let Microsoft win these battles.
Rob Lanphier
Helix Troublemaker
RealNetworks
But only because it uses quicktime.
The big problem with asking people to load iTunes is the size...20M, not practical unless you're on broadband.
The constant "Upgrade to PRO!" irked me on both the Mac and PC versions, so I just download the keygen from warez group.
I don't use any of the pro features, I'm just tired of Apple whining for more money for what should be free... a quicktime player that doesn't whine for money.
It was originally in the three stooges, but probably an older joke than that.
My guess is that this joke was invented the day after they invented lawyers.
I'm not going to be an apologist for RealNetworks past actions. RealNetworks is a big enough company, that Jamie Zawinski's quote "[G]reat things are accomplished by small groups of people who are driven, who have unity of purpose. The more people involved, the slower and stupider their union is." I'll admit we've done slow and stupid things. However, there are certain things that can only be done by big companies, no matter how slow and stupid, which is why I haven't written a similar rant.
However, I'd like to point out that, in the "slow and stupid" vein, we're slowly getting better. The RealPlayer 10 beta isn't perfect, but it's better, and I imagine that things will be better in the final release.
Moreover, we've got a lot of really great things going on in the Helix Community. We've got the Helix Player for Linux, which just the won Best Open Source Project award at LinuxWorld. That means that if there's something that annoys you about it, you can fix it. It's based on Gtk, and the engine code is all cross-platform, so someone could theoretically port it to Windows even.
So, we're trying. I'm hoping that folks could cut us a little slack. I'm hoping that the Linux folks out there could help us change Car Talk's mind, since Windows Media is a pretty Linux-hostile format.
Thanks
Rob Lanphier
Helix Troublemaker
RealNetworks
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
I know, that was more or less my point. I've dealt with others who felt that democrats were very conservative before.
I'm about as far right as you can get in the US yet I can see that many to the left of me are not leftist or liberal, I've never understood why so many way left have an issue with telling the difference.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
Car Talk is one of only a few NPR shows that does not offer free, archived versions of its episodes. If they really cared about their listeners, they wouldn't charge $3-4 for each episode!
I agree they are greedy little fucks, but they are doing a piss poor job of sucking up to the administration or the republicans. Unless you consider giving most of thier money to the other side as playing nice or sucking up. I, for one, wouldn't consider my oponent getting 70 percent or more of the money to be sucking up to me and I bet you would not either. I would consider where thier money is actually going a much nicer counter than where I think they should be spending it.
Though Disney seems to be pretty good at following the "suck up" and "greedy little fucks" by looking at thier past/current contributions. But hey, another reason to put Disney at the bottom of the list, they can't even take a stand past thier own short term profits!
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
There are thousands of sites streaming in MP3. Why don't more such sites use MP3?
Of course, for a completely open streaming solution, Ogg has both excellent encoders and numerous free players (including one that runs inside a web page, written in Java).
It's not just the difficult to find free player. . . I forgot which one of the plugins it was (Macromedia, wmp, Real. . . but I'm sure it wasn't Quicktime), but the web site kept me from getting at the download from a different platform. i.e., I was trying to grab the Windows version of the player for a friend on my Powerbook, but the web site absolutely refused to let me get at the windows version of the download, no matter what games I tried with the URLs and links clicked. (In retrospect, I should have found a browser that lets me set my user agent.) The upshot was that in their lame attempt to be "helpful", they prevented someone from downloading the player and thus increasing their user base. I'm thinking it was Macromedia. Anyway, I thought that was even lamer than hiding the free player link.
-- "This world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel."
Not to be too pedantic but really, you just suggested someone go to as bleeding edge as you can get without coding it yourself. I'm sure that is a very good suggestion but it just seems like a generalized linux problem. You take a very stable OS and then everyone has to run at the bleeding edge of everything which makes it crash more than windows if you want to keep up. Is it just the playing catchup mentality or the fact that open source projects are always under development and so never quite done?
One defense I will offer for our hardline business folks is that they've figured out how to keep the lights on. The fact of the matter is, we just announced that consumer revenue was 76% of our 2003q4 revenue, up from 70% the previous quarter. "Consumer revenue" is made up of subscriptions to our premium business, as opposed to systems revenue selling media servers. People assume that our business is still about media servers. So, they do get a little zealous about keeping the subscription business growing.
The thing that can't be repeated enough is that RealAudio is a supported format on Linux. Now, Linux users are forced to use jury-rigged solutions to listen to Car Talk. Very sad.
Rob Lanphier
Helix Troublemaker
RealNetworks
All you people complaining "I don't see the problem" and bashing the reference to the "average internet user";
In my experience the "average user" notices all the extra icons throughout the average users choice of OS. -Including resource draining (everybody does not own a uber-computer) entries into the start-up group. They never seem to enjoy having their PC's turned into billboards. What's the other one I always find right there with it? It seems both are seen as "crappy" but necessary by the average Joe. So, it still sucks, even if you're fine with their pushy web page. You don't see attitudes like this with Winamp or many of the others.
Quicktime tries the "start-up" registry entry every time you run it! At least Real Player stopped doing that.
I enjoy the look on peoples faces when these junk apps are removed and their PC is running "like it used to".
Naive as it is to say, I'm just disappointed anything on NPR would be associated with Real, being they have such a low-brow sales strategy. I am waiting for "This American Life" (http://thislife.org/) to realize Real does not reflect well upon them either.
I have one customer who uses AutoCAD and therefore (until recently, anyway) MS-Windows. Machine A, running MS-Windows 98, plots fine. Machine B, running MS-Windows 98 (and the same versions of everything) refuses to plot to the same (LAN-connected) plotter.
AutoDesk advise upgrading to Windows ME, so B is duly upgraded, and fails, and is wiped and reinstalled, and works. Hurrah! Both machines can plot.
Management now decides to shoot for homogeneity, so upgrades to ME on A as well... and it stops plotting. Wipe and reinstall doesn't help. Wipe and revert to 98 does.
Exit one technician, stage left, screaming.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
High compression, good quality, no DRM albatross around its neck. What more could you want?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I still use Real Player 8 (on XP :)
I get reminded to upgrade every now and then, but as far I'm concerned, this was the last player that was even remotely bearable from Real. And, finally, they've made the page static so it can be linked to (I wonder how long that will last?):
Real Legacy Players
Don't forget to check out EVERY option on install, and scroll down to see hidden checked checkboxes and other crap. Then go to preferences and Nuke everything. But apart from that, it's not too bad when you've got everything stripped out :)
.02
cLive ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
Their "Born Not to Run II" sample tracks are still .rams's.
Well, the web site I could live with, seein' as you can eventually find the free link. Waste of time and lame, yes, but still... it's a one time affair.
What really got my goat when I could last be arsed to try RealOne, though, was that it was the worst annoy-ware ever. None of the obvious options seemed to convince it that
1. no, I do _not_ want it to keep pre-loading itself, and
2. no, I don't want to be spammed with their lame pop-ups... even when I'm not even watching and realmedia files any more, and have manually removed all file associations to it
It was _not_ convincing me to fork over the dough for the premium version. Au contraire, it just served to convince me that I _don't_ want to "vote with the wallet" that such lame practices continue.
Now mind you, this was some two versions back, so I don't know if they fixed it or not in the meantime. But still, it's left such a bitter taste in my mouth, that I don't want to have anything to do with them again. Ever.
And just for the sake of having a good rant, what the **** is with all these business models based on annoying the potential customer? I can understand that they need money, but then don't bloody advertise it as "FREE!!!"
The whole thing is as if I advertised "FREE MP3 players!" Only once you've got one, I started showing up at your house, reading your diary, making a list of what music you're playing, listening to your phone conversations (the non-Internet equivalent of what spyware does to a TCP/IP connection), and shouting in front of your window to give me money if you want me to shut up. Even when you're not actually using that MP3 player.
Surely noone would put up with that kind of a trick, for a non-computer product. But in the software world it's become accepted and expected that, hey, the user is a computer-illiterate anyway. You're _expected_ to sell him/her snake oil, rape his/her privacy as hard as you can, never test or debug the product first, and generally be as annoying or dishonest as possible if it makes you money. etc. How did this happen?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Do you mean the one that's done in font-size:10px? Gosh, how could I have missed that Real is not being even the least bit deceptive? Here I thought they were engaging in shenanigans and deliberate confusion, but thanks to you, I see now that they're actually doing their very best to make it as easy as possible for me to download their free player! It's my own fault that they don't list "FREE" in their "Payment Type" pulldown listbox. It's my own fault that I didn't grasp that the "Download Now" button was referring to downloading an HTML form where I could enter a credit card number. How could I have been so wrong about Real, which obviously has our very bestest interests in mind and is above doing the kind of crap that everybody who's not a shill sees that they're doing?
Wait... as opposed to what? I go to microsoft.com and it tells me I need either Windows or Solaris to use media player? I still prefer real.
Internet TV looks great under Windows, using WinAmp5 to tune all their listed stations around the world. And all the tech is free, standard, reliable... why does anyone streaming only AV use anything else?
--
make install -not war
So, what do you do when you want to stream audio or video from Linux? These days the website owners expect that when they have streaming content on their site, the viewers can see it without installing any programs. As far as I know, the only way you can get this, is by installing a windows server. (can anyone direct me to a solution to this?).
Also, mplayer might play wma streams for a little while longer, but I got a nasty feeling that all the DRM crap enables Microsoft to outlaw any Linux option.
Helix player is even harder to get than the free Real player.
Sure, there is a link on the home page. But clicking the link makes you sign up for an account and requires a minimal amount of personal information. Then it makes you read and accept a long and non-negociable list of terms for using the site. Then once you finally do get in to the site you have to choose one of two other licenses just to download the damn milestone build. Sorry, but my lawyer is out of the office right now and I don't want to accidentally sign away my left testicle and firstborn child just to see a stupid software preview.
Most people are easy marks when they are dealing with an unfamiliar subject. If your doctor prescribes a drug for your condition, what will you do if you are not a doctor yourself? Buy it and become an "easy mark", or refuse and potentially die? I think I know a most common answer to that.
Any drug that I'm not familiar with, be it over the counter or prescription, gets googled before purchasing. Or at least googled before taking. I trust doctors, but they do make mistakes from time to time, and there's no reason I can't second-guess them from making their newest mistake on me. I've never found reason not to take the drug, however, I have learned a lot of good stuff. :) I'm certainly no doctor myself, and I certainly wouldn't refuse to take the drug based on googling, but there's an internet full of knowledge available to me, if I just look for it. Anyway, if the googling turns up questionable material, I'd call the doctor and ask him about it.
I'm no doctor, and I won't even pretend to understand everything I read about drugs. But if I see several sights that say "This drug causes people to lapse into psychotic fits", that's pretty plain english to me and worthy of note.
In doing so, I learned that most over the counter sleeping pills are just Benadryl, and over-priced for it. Since I already know that Benadryl doesn't make me drowsy, I can eliminate most over-the-counter sleeping pills as being useful to me. The other drug used has big massive warnings all over it, and likewise doesn't work on me.
Hell, just reading the packages themselves is plenty of information, and when you get a prescription filled the pharmacist is required to give you an information sheet about the drug. There's already one check in place to make sure doctors don't fuck you over.
Like I said, I trust doctors, but drugs aren't to be trifled with.
Like what I said? You might like my music
>WHOAH, I don't know about you, but where I live (San Fransisco/Bay Area) NPR is the MOST liberal thing you can possible listen to.
Bullshit. Try 94.1 KPFA.
I can't remember what it's called, but there's a program for windoes that allows you to play RM files without RealPlayer.
I have to disagree. It's not because Quicktime on anything other than the Mac eats ass, it's because Quicktime just plain eats ass.
.avi and .wmv files are much, much more common than .mov files.
At one point, up until the final version 2 release (I believe 2.5.x), QuickTime was a pretty solid software suite. The player had an extremely compact GUI, a good featureset for the time, and was stable. It wasn't commercial, and didn't constantly beg for money. It even had MIDI support.
Then came the dark, dark days of version 3. At some point, presumably buoyed by the fact that their System 7.5+ CD player interface had used a custom WDEF and other widgets, some "UI designer" on the Apple media team was given free rein. As far as I can guess, said designer was from the hardware team, because that was the beginning of The Great Apple Interface Starting To Suck. QuickTime 3 had nonstandard widgets, and used an ugly, less functional brushed metal interface. Version 4 was worse, and the downward trend continued. QuickTime eventually required idiotic contortions to get the controls to work ("He he...knobs are cool, and all those amateur WinAMP skinners do them -- we should add a volume knob!") I don't even need to mention the ridiculous idea of the Favorites drawer. The Windows interface was truly appalling. For a company that is clearly capable (or at least once was) of designing Very Good Interfaces and got violently pissy about Microsoft producing poor UIs on their Mac releases (think Word 6), Apple did a stupendously poor job of implementing their Windows media player client. There was little excuse for the floating menu bar other than pure arrogance -- simply refusing to recognize another platform's interface standards. At first, they could get away with this, because Microsoft's own Video for Windows blew chunks. However, Microsoft steadily improved, and Apple managed to convince itself that nobody could ever challenge QuickTime dominance.
Now, QuickTime is reduced to extremely annoying nagware/shareware with an interface that has only marginally improved since the Bad Days after version 2.x. Aside from Apple-hosted movie trailers, most end users don't run into it a heck of a lot. This is, for once, absolutely not an area where Apple lost due to Microsoft playing dirty. Apple lost because Apple did a poor job of serving users. Now,
(I'd also like to repeat my personal irritation with Apple actively pulling another QuickTime with its insistance on the single mouse button. Once again, they have people at the company who are arrogant enough to think that they can dictate to the user what the user will use and can ignore user complaints. They've still refused to accept the fact that they can do this only in the short run.)
It may just be because Apple is a big company, and big companies tend to do this, but it seems like Apple tries overly hard to leverage anything it produces ("this is really nice, but you have to use it on *our* terms"), and ends up killing it off. The few really impressive, new things that Apple has produced that haven't been leveraged to death seem to be suffering abandonment -- Speech Manager development sure isn't what it used to be, and OpenDoc got put into maintenance mode.
The last time I can remember Apple listening to popular demand was with standardizing windoids, and they took forever to do so, waiting until everyone else was using them. If poor reliability is Microsoft's Achilles' heel, arrogance is Apple's. (And disinterest in implementing boring features and maintaining backwards compatibility Linux's -- only on Linux does one hear "hey, we're doing a new minor kernel release soon -- let's require every vendor with a USB device driver to rewrite it!".)
May we never see th
You need a plotter driver that works with all different Windows and different plotters and different AutoCAD versions. Hey - that sounds like the plotter driver we make and sell to people in your situation...
WinLINE
You doe realize that this will make a hell of a case at the EU Microsoft Monopoly Appeal
They have lost in Europe because they tie their WMP into the OS and lock companies like Real out of the market. That's the case. But when they can rebuttal that Real consists of a bunch of lying dorks who do everything that can go Bait & Switch, the case may get a little weaker, "You're honor, everyone in the Computer Multimedia business is a bunch of back-stabbing, cheating, deceitful assholes. You're asking us to be non-competative!"
Slashdot is not a research facility, it's not a debtate, it's an informal discussion, and you can't come in and demand that people involved in the discussion be less biased - accept that this is the tone of the group, and if you want to, join in.
No one's forcing you to read....
content management for designers
I need to install RealPlayer on my machine, so I followed your link.
It doesn't work, try it yourself.
The closest you'll get is another Flash crammed page that tries do download some EXE file without your consent. After you reject that one, you're staring at ... nothing
If you can find it so easily, please help out the ignorant masses who can read by just posting the URL instead of blubbering that anymore moron with an IQ in excess of 3.14 can find it
If what they say is true why aren't they just using an MP3 stream? that works everywhere. Could it be this has something to do with their hosting company being a big Windows 2000 server farm?
I was just thinking the same thing. Winamp Shoutcast (although a little funny) or IceCast would work great. I have been playing with this stuff myself (check my homepage -err rather don't my little box can't handle more that a few streams) and the standard MP3/M3U combo works great. Am I missing something? Or are these people just not "with it" and have to spend money and go with a propriatary system. I have not used one of these streaming media packages but my fooling around with pure audio is great. Every damn player I have used can deal with good ol MPEG audio and I have messed with streaming MPEG video. MPEG1 at 336 is just about as good/ little better that news.com's Windows Media at 220 plus it plays everywhere and best of all, Bill isn't involved.
Can someone enlighten me please... I have been trying to figure this out and I just don't get it.
Sigh !
Linux is a great thing, and there are lots of great people working on Linux.
But when I see guys like Raymond Chen working on Windows, I just can't fanthom what types of wonders he could have created for those of us who use Linux, if Mr. Chen focus his works on Linux.
Sigh !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I'm trying to understand the licensing of NPR programs. I've written NPR several times regarding the NOVA series and they never get past the standard reply to my questions.
;);)
I would have naively thought that publicly funded t.v. would be, if not free, at least publically available... but it's not. Only a select few NOVA episodes are available for puchase, much less those free on the web.
I have been waiting for years for the day that I can sit down and watch all those *good* old NOVA episodes that I missed over the years... (tired of this "let's reconstruct a pyramid" crap).
They responded to my query once telling me that, basically, it's expensive to stream video over the web... which is not really true...
At the very minimum, it should be possible to get access to any publicly funded program at some reasonable media cost...
Perhaps I can FOIA them
Pat
When I glanced at the headline I thought (hoped) it said: "NPR Dumping Car Talk". At least it's got all the right words in the the headline, with the exception of "RealMedia" (not one of the right words).
http://soundblox.blogspot.com/
SoundBlox is an MP3 audio playing Internet application that can be embedded into a personal blog template or Web page, and displayed in any modern Web browser.
John Perry Barlow has it on his blog page.
The so richly deserved backlash is starting to occur!
In addition to all the other complaints listed, my experience with Real has been that their software is the most consistently buggy stuff I've ever used. Once it works, it's fine, but I've had to install it several times (including several versions... they seem to change their naming conventions with every release... what's up with that?) to get it work on a number of machines.
I've finally just given up. If someone offers Real Media and it doesn't work with the version that came preinstalled on my laptop then I just go without. The only reason I don't uninstall it completely is because I have some files that my kids like to watch.
This company has managed to practice deception, greed, and incompetence that makes Microsoft look competent and virtuous by comparison. Good riddance, and a big thumbs up to NPR.
The few times I've listened to other links on NPR I've noticed that they offer both Real and WMP. I'm no big fan of Microsoft, but WMP always works for me, and you can get software to capture streaming WMP media to your disk. I have no problems giving Microsoft credit when they deserve it and WMP just works (stupid DRM issues aside). Of course, for 99% of my use, I actually use WinAmp.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
On the other hand, you'd think the Lefties (God bless 'em!) at NPR would be inclined to use the cheapest and most accessible software solutions.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
There has been a version of AutoCAD available for DOS for as long as I can remember. You don't *have* to run the windows version.
And they always have been assholes to deal with, on the server and client side. You know you suck when people would rather deal with MS than you. lol. That's bad.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
The weekend NPR show On The Media recently added a free mp3 format download of their show. I think many npr shows are reluctant to do this because they have an alternative income source by selling mp3s at audible.com.
Perhaps the recent significant contribution to npr by the McDonald's widow, and president Bush's new found appreciation for the NEA, has loosened the noose a little.
You can find mp3 streams of various npr affiliates via shoutcast.com, but I think we would all love to have a national stream, and individual shows in an open format.
The only way to get this is to A) Pledge, and B) Suggest it.
It would also be nice to download official Nova episodes in an open format.
And NO, I am not going to suggest they use Ogg - yes, it would be free, MP3s not, but I'm trying to stay on-point that WMA is bad, not muddy the issue with a format that Click and Clack may never have heard of, and certainly a large portion of their audience has not heard of.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Every six months or so a charge from Real appears on my credit card. I did at one time agree to pay Real for its service, but I canceled it. After a period of not being billed the charges reappeared on my credit card bill. I called them up and complained. They removed the charges. This month, guess what reappeared on my CC bill, a $9.95 charge from real!!!!
just kidding =)
I don't know, I don't think that _everyone_ in the Computer Multimedia business is like that.
For starters, take QuickTime. And I'm no Mac fan. But QuickTime even under Windows just does its job, with the absolute minimum of hassle.
Showing a tame registration reminder upon startup -- and even that not on every startup -- doesn't even start to compare with the annoyance hell that Real unleashed upon me. _And_ you can tell QuickTime not to preload itself. _And_ the Apple web site never tried to trick you into getting the premium version, when you're getting pointed there by a site where the files are in QuickTime format.
So, honestly, filing Apple under the same scumbag category as Real is just unfair.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
NOVA is PBS, not NPR.
First NOVA is a PBS program not an NPR program. NPR is Nation Public Radio, PBS is the Public Broadcasting Station that does video, television shows, and such.
Secondly, yes it takes quite alot of money to run video streams of all your major or even just a few minor broadcasts, to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people around the world. Just because a media has a low entry point, doesn't make it anymore feasible when your talking about scale. Just ask any of those guys who set-up cheap linux boxes doing Bit Torrent or other types of file exchange. At the very least bandwidth cost money. The more you use, the more expensive it is. It's one thing to offer a 1GB file that only 5 or 500 people use, it's quite another to offer a 1GB file that 1 million people might use.
Thirdly, its publicly funded TV, not free. If you've skipped all the ongoing pleas for more money so that stations can continue, or missed the numerous stations that have closed due to lack of funds, or if you seriously thought the $30 Christmas check would do more than by pens, pencils, and a few notebooks for a couple of strategic planning meetings, then you were wrong.
What's that? Didn't give $30 bucks even as a Merry Christmas, hope you stay in business present, probably because, "well its publicly funded, that means my tax dollars support it, so I've already gave." Well, thanks for your extreme generousity, because it takes so little resources to produce quality television shows, and do extensive research, and set-up web sites on each program, and each show of each program, to secure the rights of various shows, etc., etc. I'm certain you'll be doing it in your basement in no time.
NOVA (which ironically, I've never watch, but I have been through their website) is located http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ a quick read of their website lets you know that you can purchase MANY but not ALL of their shows from the WGBH Shop at http://shop.wgbh.org/ . It also indicates that some shows are not available for sale due to licensing issues. The videos are mostly $20 a pop, unless your a member, then you can save about $3 per video. If you don't want to purchase the video, you can always read the shows transcripts online for free, and or visit the shows companion web site, the various links and resources that are fairly meticulously maintain.
I have to say, I love Slashdot, but I soo get tired of the number of whiners who think everything should be free. I'd probably be more sympathetic to the, "well they are using public funds argument" if
(1) I didn't already know how often public funds in terms of federal and state grants don't meet half the financial need;
(2) I really thought these weren't the same people who argue that taxes should be cut, and I don't want my hard earn tax dollars going to "blah, blah, blah" show, organization, or service; and
(3) I thought more than 50% of us would vote for an increase in taxes to keep the services we use, enjoy, take advantage of, and often times destroy with our careless disregard, and egocentric thoughts of I could do better, with less money.
NPR and PBS make much needed money of the sell of video tapes for their programs. If they are lucky, some segment producers give away almost all rights, and the VHS, DVD, or Audible.com versions of the various shows and episodes can be used as a funding tool. But unless your endowing the government to truly give these public treasures the extra millions of dollars they really need to make the shows public available for free online, or providing it yourself, then just fork over your $20 bucks for the episodes you want and shut-up.
(Sorry, I don't mean to be inflammatory, but I'm tired of these uninformed, ignorant of reality posts, that people actually mod up).
Except it is illegal to use the wma codecs unless you have a paid copy of windows. So ya I can listen to car talk with linux, but that means the FBI will probably be beating down my door.
http://www.windmeadow.com/
Guess who RealNetworks is going to sue when their share runs into the toilet, Even though that it's the way they've screwed their userbase rather than their competition that's made them lose market share.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
LOL, warez humor is on teh spoke!
Check it out
Is there something I could do to fix that?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Get a sattelite radio, Sirius carries NPR and doesn't involve microsoft. As a bonus, you get some great music stations that aren't clearchannel directed!
-- dieman - Scott Dier
First, I meant PBS, not NPR when referring to NOVA, but I perhaps they are similar in terms of how the funding affects their licensing.
Second, I did not say that I want anything for free... I would gladly pay a reasonable price for these episodes. What I find hard to swallow is that work produced in part with public funds is *unavailable* to the public.
I am for funding the NEA but I wouldn't be if the art work weren't available to be seen.
I can't even think of a rationale for why they would not want to make more money by selling the series... It's not like they are making advertising dollars by running them... (Or maybe they are... those "supported by" promos are basically commercials now and perhaps the contributors want a certain viewer share...)
The closest thing to an answer that I got from them was that licensing issues make it difficult to offer some of the shows... So maybe the answer is that they never should have been allowed to enter into those bad agreements with public funding. Which is more important - that the show have good background music or that it be available at all?
I really don't think it's unreasonable that government funded programming and radio should be available by reasonable means to the public... And I think that people will be far more eager to support it with more tax dollars in the future when it is (as it inevitably will be) available on the web.
Pat
see subject
I listen to radio shows on my iPod. Therefore I need to be able to convert to MP3 or MPEG-4. Right now the only way to do this is to capture the RealPlayer output and encode back to MP3 in real time. Until they fix that and allow conversion from Real to other formats, I'm going to keep treating Real as a PITA closed format to avoid.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
As of recently, they appear to be much nicer and user-friendlier. Finding the free version on the site is not easy, it's extremely easy. Yes, you might be duped first into getting the "FREE 14 day trial" version, but, hey, it clearly says "TRIAL" and "14 day" is also a good indication. :) The link to the real free Real player is near the top of the page, on the right. Yes, it doesn't really stand apart, but once you take your eyes off the cute girl on the ad for FREE TRIAL, you can easily see it. :) On the next page you are given your LAST chance to get the premium version, but it is in no way deceptive.
:)
I applaud the Real guys for going the right route. I really do. I still don't want their player, now that there is Real Alternative, but I honestly think they changed and they are no longer disgusting like they were.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
from the home page I experimented.
type in real.com- click "download real player" mid home page
on the page that opens, 2/3rds of the left side are for the premium player, flashy and obvious
and the right 1/3rd is in non-vibrant grey on grey and says clearly this is where you download the free player. and opens another page
I really think this is a reasonable amount of webnavigation and clarity to download the free player
now, I agree real player sucks, for all the other reasons mentiioned, in this post and others,
but I think the first item is unfair.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
^-"That show is way left of Stalin, which is not unusual for NPR."
"I agree, . . . "
^-"Why is it that when someone has an opinion that is more than one step short of outright facism in this country..."
"Hyperbolize much?"
Pot, kettle, black.
Oh, as extreme as it sounds after 2001, people from the "in" group of the Republican party have either implied or outright accused me as being such. Oh, and I'm talking about Joe Averages. Don't even bother trying to spin that around into making it look like I'm scared "Uncle Bush is out to personally get me!" As for the current political state, that's an observation and opinion. Whether or not you agree with me is irrelivant.
iTunes (which runs QuickTime underneath) streams Sean Hannity (in MP3) for me without a hitch on WinXP and Win2K. That's three hours a day with no glitches, unless there's a problem on the server side.
;-)
Yes,
There is definitely a problem on the server side. Sean Hannity
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Everyone should be using BSPlayer, which comes with the K-Lite Codec Pack, for all their non streaming media needs. It plays EVERYTHING (I download, capture, edit a couple hours of video a week and I've never encountered a file it didn't play perfectly). http://home.hccnet.nl/h.edskes/mirror.htm No spyware, great interface, perfect video quality.
If you read here long enough or hang with any specific group of tech type people in the real world, you would find out what frustrations and experience individuals have with MS or any company for that matter. Wether you agree with their individual opinions on what bothers them is up to you. There is no one thing that MS does that everyone here does not like (although there are trends). Slashdot readers and posters can not be globbed under one set of general dislikes and likes. Bottom line, people have been dealing with MS for years in many capacities (administration, end users, tech support, purchasing, development, integration, competing products etc...), they have formed an opinion on the company based on past experience. There is no bulleted list that someone could post that describes what an individual likes and dislikes about MS that would apply to everyone.
I work with people that administer MS networks very well, they have very little to complain about with MS, oddly enough, every one of them has NEVER used anything else and probably don't know what CLI means either.. You can take that either way.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
I'll give you a hint: liberal and conservative have nothing to do with democrat and republican. They are separate concepts. Your misconception that they are linked shows that you probably received your political opinions from talk radio which typically pushes both the republican and conservative agendas as if they were one front.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
K++ Codec Pack has QuickTime/Real plugins for the browsers, so you don't have to install quicktime/real. The media player classic that comes with it doesn't really work, so this browser plugin only works for those sites that have the players embedded. Look arround the net, you'll find them. They are called QuickTime Alternative v1.22 and Real Player Alternative v1.11. There might be newer versions, or ones intergrated with K++ Codec Pack, but those are the ones that I have.
Well, considering the open-source Darwin Streaming Server runs on Solaris AND Linux, I don't know why you're waiting forthe Xserve's. Sure, the GUI isn't quite as nice, but all the features are there.
a mi ng/
http://developer.apple.com/darwin/projects/stre
My video compression blog
...profit motive damages another useful cross-platform format. It happens time and time again. You get some company with the idea of becoming the next Microsoft in their arena, and they have to resort to trickery just to try and get more marketshare. Why not just make a damn good product with features (features that "Joe Average" actually wants) that clean the competitor's clock? If the "free market" works as it's supposed to, then this product will rise to the top. Sure you might need to play some dirty tricks behind the scenes, but that has less to do with tricking your customers than damaging the competitor, right? One thing these moronic companies always seem to forget about is the customer. They put profit first. Then second comes profit. And finally in third place the put profit. Anything else is left over for the shareholders. When it's all said and done, R & D gets some meager pickings and then the customer eventually gets some crumbs. Can you see what's wrong with this picture? It's pretty elementary.
I can applaud Real's efforts with the Helix project. But, are they serious or just using that community in the same way they use their customers?
If you want to stand behind something that should eventually become the standard, get behind Vorbis and Theora. Besides being technically superior, they actualy "get it" in regards to how open source/free software is supposed to work.
Mod me down if you must, but remember that I am speaking truth and you can't change that.
Un-news
According to Boing Boing Blog here the BBC has a special deal with Real Networks to provide a spy-free, nag-free version of the player. Apparantly to do with the fact that the British public already pay for the BBC content. I don't know the details but Real has special download pages for BBC readers.
For YOU it's a sleezy one-time affair.
But for the broadcaster, it's every new listener/viewer having to suffer a slimey negative experience, before they can even hear/see what you are offering. It's an endless stream of complaints (hmm, bad pun).
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Microsoft gives away the Windows Media server. You as a content distributor can serve up as many Windows Media streams as you want, no charge. Microsoft develops state-of-the-art codecs and integrates them into a platform that is literally a no-brainer to install and use. Windows Media is a loss leader for Microsoft that makes it a lot easier for them to sell servers.
.mp3, have begun to try to collect royalties from the authors of all the various implementations of .mp3 technology.
.mp3 standard is 14 years old now, which accounts for the 50% bitrate penalty you pay vis-a-vis Windows Media for comparable performance.
a te/licensing.aspx . In general, they're considerably lower than MPEG's.)
Despite widespread popular belief, MPEG technology is not free; there are many components of various MPEG standards that are patented. Typically, in exchange for a license to implement an MPEG standard, a manufacturer pays royalties to the patentholders, which it typically recovers in the price paid by the consumer. In the last few years Thomson and Fraunhofer-Institut, the main holders of patents relative to
For more details check out http://mp3licensing.com/ (for audio) or http://mpegla.com/ (for video and systems like your cable modem - yes, your cable modem tunnels IP over MPEG-2). In general, MPEG royalties are not what little guys like you and I would think of as "cheap".
Moreover, MPEG, being an international standards body, moves with all the blazing speed of diplomacy. The
(To be thorough here, Microsoft also charges royalties to third-party developers who implement Windows Media. You can read all about them at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/cre
Real's situation is more difficult than in that licensing the streaming technology is its primary source of income - which in general is not true of Microsoft, the MPEG patentholders, or the various businesses associated with Quicktime streaming. Consequently, RNWK tries to hit up everyone it can find for as much money as possible. This is not only distasteful to the consumer, but also to the streamcaster whose largest single operating expenditure is license fees to RNWK.
There's nothing really wrong with RNWK's technology, except maybe that they don't have the cash flow to spend on codec development that Microsoft or Apple does. They've done well just to stay in business this long, given the market they're in and the competition they've taken on.
I think I found the link to where the streaming music should have been, but the link was dead?
Umm, no, let's try again:
^-"Too much banter amoung the hosts,..."
"I agree,..."
If you look at my comments in context, you'll clearly see I was commenting on the entertainment value of the Click & Clack idiots. I pretty much ignored the content of the first sentence.
Okay, AC?
Funny. My station says that Prairie Home Companion is the most expensive show. Probably has something to do with paying the guest artists, and the huge staff, as well as the demand.
Perhaps the producers of Car Talk simply charge what "the market will bear", and funnel the profits into subsidies for other programs, high salaries, and perhaps a auto repair shop.
Are these subscriber fees public? Is there any way to determine how many hundreds of thousands of dollars are charged for a particular show?
Then there must be some disagreement over what constitutes reasonable. As far as I'm concern, less than $20 to purchase an episode is fairly reasonable, especially if I'm not expecting the vendor to make millions of bucks doing mass marketing of the episode. Also having free access to the transcripts, files and research related to the show, and other tidbits via the web for free also seems reasonable to me. Having the shows aired on free television, I'd also call reasonable access.
What you want is immediate, on-demand access, which is really a privelege, and an expensive one at that. The reason that others can and do or are at least attempting to provide it, is because its a viable business model, and business know that people will pay for it. Artwork from the NEA is viewable, but often only at very specific venues, which you may have to travel to get to, and even once there, you may have to pay a reasonable entry fee to view the items.
From what I can see, of the NOVA programming is that a relatively large amount of it is available for purchase. Sure it be nice, if all of it was, but I'd say more than 75% of it seems to be available, from when they started earmarking money for multiple media efforts (1997-1998 forward).
Sure VHS and DVD is fairly cheap, but that doesn't mean making a copy of a particular show on VHS or DVD is significant less expensive than the $20 they are charging you for it. You have distribution media, distribution materials, employee time and benefits, storage, and other administrative costs coming to play on these. I'd say, unless they were planning on selling more than 100,000 copies of an individual episode, their per episode reproduction costs is probably over $10, possible as high as $15, which means that they maybe making $5 to $10 per VHS or DVD that they sell. Not unreasonable to me.
Scale counts for alot. If they could sell over a million copies of each episode, I'm certain the cost could fall below $10 mark. But I doubt if some episodes sell more than 1000 copies, so that's a lot of effort for your next day viewing pleasure.
I'm also certain, that as the media and means for distribution changes, NPR and PBS are struggling to make adjustments to contracts, production, and distribution so that they can provide more and more availability. But its still not that reasonable to say, contracts you entered into 3, 4, 5 years ago should allow you to do this with no argument.
Look at companies that are being sued by Photographers and Writers alike because back issues of magazines are now being made available via CD. Licensing is a tricky world, and most people are out for themselves in it. Personally, I'm a you paid for it once, do whatever you want with it except use it as propoganda for things I hate or don't support, type a girl. But most people like more control, or at the very least multiple returns on their efforts. Hence the entire copyright, digital rights management, intellectual property debates going on now. If it was reasonable and simply to avoid the minefield, I'm certain more places would be doing it.
The other part of this requires thought on your part and reading between the lines. Granted, Realnetworks DOES do their best to convince you to buy the the player, but they cite in their letter people who accidentally paid money for something they knew should be free.
This should indicate to you we are not dealing with someone savvy enough to ask for a non-microsoft alternative, especially when the non-microsoft alternative requires them to download a seperate product to avoid using the exact same microsoft product to beginning with. Keep in mind this is computer user who has already failed the "giving credit card number will result in charges" test for RealNetworks.
FYI -- See how long it takes YOU to find the free player. While I see the problem* it only takes reading the webpage for someone to figure it out. As a school teacher, I can unfortunately tell you that reading is one of the biggest problems we have in our society today.
*Problem: On the first page you click a link to go the player section, on the second page you click "Download Player" graphic button to continue, on third page the two graphic buttons are for paid player, while the free player is on the right side with a text link again.
Never confuse volume with power.
Except it is illegal to use the wma codecs unless you have a paid copy of windows
Damn, somebody better tell Microsoft to stop illegally distributing WMP to us Mac users!
it's a free download from microsoft; i'd say it's a reasonable bet anybody who downloads it doesn't have a copy of windows. is this microsoft's sneaky way of killing the competition - wait till most mac users have wmp, then nail them all?
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
I can definitely see your point, and yes, you make a very good point there. But IMHO surely the barrage of popups, and the general annoyance of having RealOne even installed (i.e., before, after, in the middle of, _and_ in between hearing/seeing what you are offering) must have generated even more complaints, dissatisfaction and lost users?
I know I didn't yet stop visiting a site because of a hard to find link, but RealNetworks's endless annoyance did do a great job of convincing me to avoid any site which has RealMedia files. Heck, even if it was a word from God himself, or the secret of eternal youth, if it's only viewable through RealOne... no thanks.
Well, either way, that's just debating details. I think it's safe to say that we aggree than RealNetworks are scumbags, and that their retarded approach does cause the broadcaster a ton of grief.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Has any one else noticed the all these writer from MSN's Slate appearing on NPR now!
My local public radio station only does window media now. I would offent often complained about this fact during pledge time till I got xine and gmplayer to work with the windows streams.
just asking... I use a mac, but would be interested in anything, even a non-Apple product, that doesn't rat on me and that works well. AKA QT. Is there a feature it's missing?
As if 1 out of 100 people outside tech even know what slashdot is. Don't give it too much credit...
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
I just found this on boingboing.net
"The BBC made a unique deal with Real Networks which disposes of their spyware tactics. Basically, if a user clicks on a link to download Real Player from a BBC website, the referrer script sends them to a page where they can download an expiry-free, spyware-free and nuicance-free version of the player. It's because the BBC have such a stringent public service remit, that it was offensive to charge people a license fee for BBC content, then make them pay all over again for the facility to view/listen to it."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/audiohelp.shtml?help
I'm a big fan of streaming Java, such as that offered by Hello Network. It runs in a Java applet, so it doesn't require a special player. Server side costs are about the same as with commercial grade versions of competing products. Quality at low bitrate levels is comparable too. I can't understand why streaming Java isn't more popular. Hello Network's major markets seem to be corporate conferences, and porn -- both of which benefit greatly from idiot-proof player software.
But they certainly aren't very funny. They laugh a lot more at their own jokes than I do.
Both Real and Quicktime do the same thing: install an auto-run user agent if you spawn their player. I use Startup Cop to disable it. I despise any application that insists on acting like a virus once its run and that's exactly what these two programs do.
Real installs a script called "TkBellExe", and Quicktime installs "QTTask.exe", neither of which need to be autorun upon bootup. This crap has to stop!
I won't complain about the "free" real player since all of the rest of you have done a very good job of hitting all of the problems. It seems everyone installs it gets pissed and then un-installs it. But do you return to the content provider and tell them that you won't or can't listen because they only support real media format (if thats the only one they use)? Send them the link and ask them to find the free real player. They may not even know that there is a problem. They may get a lot of flame complaints but assume they are from the same group of people that want to know where the anykey is so they don't investigate.
I used to use REAL Jukebox to listen to my MP3s. I even purchased a copy I liked it so much. When I lost my copy due to a PC crash, and lost CDs I was ready to buy the latest version. After a rather frustrating time trying to find the purchase page, I ended up calling them. The told me I had to subscribe and use the new REAL One player. The person explained that I could get all this content (Which I wasn't interested in). When I told them I just wanted to buy the software, they said it was not for sale anymore. They didn't get people dont like having to subscribe to purchase Software.
I'm not sure if their policy has changed, but it was enough to get me to stop using their stuff.
The reason that public broadcasting (NPR, PBS, etc) charges for shows is simple:
1) It takes real money to create their programming.
2) It takes real money to distribute their programming. And yes, it is rather expensive to distribute video over the web, at least it is if you have something everyone wants to see.
3) It takes real money to maintain their broadcast facilities.
4) They have to raise that money somehow.
5) Like a lot of traditional media organizations, they haven't yet figured out how to embrace Internet distribution and still get paid what they need to get paid to keep producing their existing programs and develop new ones.
If you have a simple solution to their problems, I'm sure they will be happy to hear about it. Let me know too, please.
Eversince RealPlayer went AdPlayer, plus all the other crap, and anoyances they have surrounding it, I gave up on real once and for all. Kinda sux, because there is still a lot of content that is real only outthere..oh well guess I won't be doing bussiness with them!
Well, considering the open-source Darwin Streaming Server runs on Solaris AND Linux, I don't know why you're waiting forthe Xserve's.
Yes but the Broadcaster requires OSX Server.
boingboing.net is reporting that the BBC has entered into an agreement to provide an ad-free, spyware free version of Real Player, if you download it from the BBC's website.
JP
You say self-important egomaniac like it's a bad thing. - Peter Dragon
There are two obvious, simple solutions:
1) Sell the programs to make more money. Right now I can't buy them... just a few selected ones. If licensing makes this problematic then stop creating programs with that licensing. I think making them available also happens to be an obligation.
2) Do less and make truly free programming that can actually be owned by the public.
And as far as streaming goes - truly free programming doesn't need to be streamed. It can be released and other people will distribute it for you. Less free stuff (which is fine too, as long as it's available) can pay for its own bandwidth.
I think a combination would be good.
Pat
The BBC made a unique deal with Real Networks which disposes of their spyware tactics. Basically, if a user clicks on a link to download Real Player from a BBC website, the referrer script sends them to a page where they can download an expiry-free, spyware-free and nuicance-free version of the player.Try it.
Actually, what occurs to me is that we should probably be including it as part of the Helix Player.
splay is admittedly pretty rudimentary player. There are better options if you don't mind doing a little work. A long time ago, trplayer, which is a more advanced commandline player for use by blind users and others with no need for graphical user interface. It's a little rusty, though, as it needs to be updated to use the latest interfaces. The author, Matthew Campbell, is no longer interested in developing it, and would happily turn it over to a new maintainer if someone emerged.
Hope this helps,
Rob Lanphier
Helix Troublemaker
RealNetworks
Stuff like that comes from your local station and not the programs that run nationwide. I'm near Dallas and the local stuff tends to be more conservative. When I say that NPR is more balanced I'm speaking of the nationally syndicated shows.
As for intelligence? No, the use way more emotion. Almost everytime I pass the station they have something like: "grandmother in Iraq who is blind who lost her grandchild" because of a war or some other depressing story.
What news outlet doesn't do this?
The Anti-Blog
Wow the topic certainly disappeared on this one.
First of all I didn't say that all news had a right wing bias, I said they play to people's emotions to get higher ratings. I think that the news media panders to the side that their target audience wants to hear about on any given day.
I also stated that I feel NPR has less of a reason to do that as their existance doesn't depend on ratings and they don't have shareholders hounding them to make more money. Thus they are more likely to be balanced and I don't feel they treat me like I'm stupid.
Now how someone's political leanings have anything to do with their OS choice is beyond me. Slashdot tends to be a haven for young left leaning people that support Open Source. I bet most of them didn't pick Open Source because they lean left, that's a strawman and really it doesn't make any sense. There are plenty of conservative people who use open source and like Fox news just fine.
Personally I use OSS because Microsoft is a pain in the arse when it comes to interpolibility. So sure while a lot of their stuff works just fine for what its intended to do if it doesn't play nice with my OSS stuff then it won't be on my network. That doesn't make me a fanatic it makes me practical.
The Anti-Blog
I still don't see why you can't buy them. The programs (most) are for sell. I looked up all 15 episodes for 2003, and all 21 episodes (including a 6 part series) for 2000, ALL episodes were available for sale at the Shop WGBH Store, which NOVA provides the link to. Close to 100 percent of the episodes done with in the last few years were available for sell. Most of the missing episodes is from their older back catalog, which is true for almost everyone who has a back catalog. And then for those items publishers are often dealing with (1) time, it takes time and energy to convert media, and (2) very different agreements/contracts with those involved in the development of the episodes. Hopefully more of their back catalog will become available for sell, but in all honesty, with the number of places who start at a specific date and go forward, I find it hard to complain about someone who'se making the effort to get even some of the back stuff available. Hell they don't if have transcripts for a number of the back episodes (I'm talking after 1999).
...let This American Life do the same so I can uninstall RealPlayer finally.
I'm not sure how investing millions of dollars in our Linux and open source efforts constitutes "dipping our toe in", but whatever. This is much more than that.
I never said it invalidates any criticism of our organization. I'm asking for you (and others) to cut us a little slack. As I've pointed out elsewhere in this thread, we're admittedly an imperfect company, but one that can really help out the community if you give us a chance.
I guess I've got to assume you aren't a Linux user or a fan of open source software. Because, if you are, you should be very, very careful what you wish for.
Even if you think RealNetworks is evil, you are doing the free software and open source movements a terrible disservice. There are many companies and individuals who are watching what happens with RealNetworks (including the board of RealNetworks itself). When you sneer at Real's move in a more open direction, you are causing others to question the value of working with a seemingly fickle and ungrateful community.
Rob Lanphier
Helix Troublemaker
RealNetworks
According to Boing Boing, if you download RealPlayer One through the BBC, you get sent to a Real referrer page that downloads a version without the spyware, nagware, etc. Supposedly this is because the BBC has a significant public remit and is not allowed to foist spyware and payware on their listeners.
I downloaded it today but haven't tested it to see if it's true.
You can also get the free Linux version via the BBC download page.
You DO have to provide a name and email link but of course that's what spamtraps are for.
Go to Boing Boing for the link - I'm too lazy to put it here.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
http://www.real.com/R/RDX.fail-click.R/software-dl .real.com/01cf584c922175318a22/windows/RealPlayer1 0Beta_bb.exe
I actually bought the "premium" edition of realplayer and the fucking thing has never worked. I have download patches, new versions, to no avail. I thought quicktime pro was a scam, but at least it works (mostly). I hope realmedia goes out of business.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
We're in the process of migrating to some new site software now. After that, things should be a little better in that regard.
Supporting MPlayer is not going to be a viable long-term option. They take the "Catholic only on Sunday" approach with the GPL. They like the fact that the GPL imposes all sorts of terms on anyone who would take their source code. However, they don't respect the license terms of the components they link against. Moreover, it's just a matter of time before Microsoft makes this impossible.
If Linux is to get any mainstream acceptance, the tools on the platform need to be totally above board, legal, and useful out of the box. We're working with the major Linux distributors to provide something that meets that criteria, and we hope that you join us in that.
Rob Lanphier
Helix Troublemaker
RealNetworks
And if it's not (sufficiently) broken, don't fix it.
My favourite tale from MS-Windows XP, if you want currency, is a mate's laptop. One day after a reboot (which involved no network fiddling), it decided that the loopback device needed to obtain an address automatically. Due to a dearth of DHCP servers advertising on the loopback interface, it chose a number in the 169.254.*.* range. Some services find out what the loopback interface's address is and connect to that, and they were unperturbed. Some services connect to "localhost" so could be "fixed" with an entry in the hosts file. But some worked through 127.0.0.1 and they promptly became sad.
Setting the address to static was fine, but we couldn't set it back to 127.0.0.1 because that was a reserved address, explained the helpful GUI. We eventually worked around it by setting the address to 127.0.0.2, which is a bit of a headsmacker because there's no point in forbidding 127.0.0.1 if you don't also forbid 127.*.*.* since the loopback interface accepts all traffic in that range.
BTW, this particular loopback interface was even more voracious than that: experiment determined that it was accepting any packets routed to the interface, regardless of address.
This was all by the by eventually anyway, since XP (following in the best '98 style), eventually burped and trashed the entire drive.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
"Your honour, we're not a monopoly! Our code is so crappy that there will always be a fringe market supplying modular replacements that actually work."
Thanks for the link, I'll use that when they update. How does your stuff go under WINE?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
When they started this, there was no MS-Windows 2000.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
They want my name, etc. before I can download. Doesn't sound very open to me.
Are the Real codecs open? No.
What about Real's proprietary RDT protocol (the "RealChallenge" stuff that shows up in the RTSP stream)? That's not open, either.
Helix is just an RTSP server and client. Thanks for nothing, Real.
...they really did recommend using ME in place of 98. They said that the drivers often worked better under ME, but perhaps they were just encouraging me to roll the dice at a different angle (think: reboot, and if that fails, reinstall).
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Story on BoingBoing.net
Holy christ, what's left then? IE? Oh.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
on both ME and 98. More often it goes all wonky and gracelessly flies into the deck, so they have some warning and can save.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Sure, but there are open-source broadcasting tools compatible with the Darwin Streaming Server.
Like:
http://mpeg4ip.sourceforge.net/
Been around for over 2 years, and is an honest to goodness 1.0 release now.
Of course, it's hard to beat the simple integration of an iBook G4 + QuickTime Broadcaster. Dead simple, decent quality, and under 5 lbs and under $1000.
My video compression blog
I've been saying this for YEARS, that a RealNetworks "monopoly" would have been far worse than Microsloth's (which makes their participation in the antitrust lynching all the more egregious). I haven't forgotten their highly invasive installers in the mid '90's, and resolve never to use their crap anymore.
When I sought to upgrade my AudioCatalyst 2.0 to 2.1, I found that Real had bought it, and their Web site said I was entitled to a free upgrade to 2.1... but I couldn't find out how to do that anywhere. Plenty of opportunities to *buy* it, of course... thankfully I discovered CDEX and the vastly better LAME encoder anyhow.
I boycott any Real-based streaming media, and am working to convince some friends of mine to switch their content to something else.
Anything else.
... you just don't know it yet.
I loathe the Beast just as much as anybody else, but I am quite convinced they have already won the media format "war" (if there ever was one). Not even the same kind of fight Netscape had - they, at least enjoyed some loyalty from many users who held on for years after it really was all over. (Mozilla is King)
Real, on the other hand, is now almost universally despised - their thuggish marketing methods about as subtle as bricks through your windows. I myself didn't bother installing it on the last two PCs I had. Last time I tried installing RMP, maybe a year and a half ago, I uninstalled it again within ten minutes after seeing what it did, or tried to do with my desktop and file associations.
Never again will I want to WRESTLE with a fucking piece of software to regain control of my PC. The nerve of these people! Virtually everybody I speak to has given up on Real entirely, switched to Windows Media Player instead. The content selection is the same, or better, and together with Winamp5 WMP is all I use for playing music and online radio.
I do feel rotten for having to support the Enemy, but really - best option seems to be go for the Lesser Evil. I do feel sorry for the Real engineers, but Real management must be a gang of particularly nasty assclowns and I hope they all rot in hell.
The engineering in the WMA and WMV media codecs is impeccable. I'd like WM9 integration into Virtualdub and Avisynth, but I figger that'll come eventually. DivX, XviD, all the MPEG4 stuff is pretty good but WM9 knocks its socks off. The same quality at two-thirds the bitrate, or lower. Super quality high def 1080i / 720p video at DVD bitrates, great multichannel sound and all the multitrack features you'd want from streaming formats.
You better believe that the future of online streaming video (and audio) has Microsoft written all over it. I know for a fact that Hollywood loves what Microsoft did with their rock-solid DRM tech, and several hardware manufacturers are building high-def capable players with WM9 decoding. MPEG4 will remain hot for a little while yet (and you have that nice huge library of ye ripped moviez traded online), but WM9 is coming right at you like a freight train and there's no escape.
Umm... they have a free player link on the top right of their front page. Right there, just click & download.
Sure the pay for players are more prominent graphically but that free player link has been on their front page for as long as I've looked for it.
I have to use XP at work but try to use non-M$ software whenever possible (Mozilla, QT, etc.). QT runs fine. IF people are having problems, ti is probably because of the brain registry and otehr evil M$ machinations that keep many applications from being stable when mass-installed on Windows. Mostly things work for most people but sometimes not. Your failure to get it working says more about your lack of skill with computers than it does about QT quality.
If you would take the time to read the end user license you would see that Microsoft prohibits using the codecs in any other product ie mplayer
Not really. One should want to revise his own biases once they are evident, even for pure self-interest. Having someone pointing them out to you may help that.
The epitome of a corrupt pol. "Slade works for me!" my ass. Slade worked for resource extractive industries, period. That salvage timber rider he got stuck in an appropriations bill was pure sleaze, and I hope he dies, soon.
Actually, you can get a slower computer completely free these days... People are falling over themselves to give away 200MHz systems.
But the issue was choice really... You can use any type of computer you want, and still would be able to play those streams. On the other hand, you can't use any OS you want, you have to use Windows.
Yes, but if you are already using a Mac with OSX, you aren't paying the money just to listen to one propritary audio stream.
No, you can't. MPlayer doesn't support this variant of WMA, so you can't play it. Even if it did support it, using Microsoft's DLLs is most certainly illegial (at least here in the USA).
You're doing the straw-man thing again... He doesn't have to pay a "PC tax" because he already has, and uses, a PC. If you were directing him to a Photoshop format image, then there would be a Photoshop tax...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
On Mac OS X, at least
System Preferences > QuickTime > Update
or
QuickTime Player > Preferences > QuickTime Preferences
Uncheck 'Check for Updates Automatically'
Voila! No more update notices.
It's not that difficult is it?
...perhaps we should ask Bernard Blackham or Trent Lloyd about it.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Tom and Ray Magliozzi have made there reputition on being honest, plain talking, as well as funny. I have never understood why those other spuds at NPR are so in bed with Real Player. It is so nice for Real Player to be recognized for the dreck that it be and the crime of making Microsoft look GOOD!
It doesn't seem as invasive as the Windows version.
I'll give you a hint: The vast majority of democrats are liberal and the vast majority of republicans are conservative. At one time in the past (pre-60's or so) the roles were fairly reversed. But since I live in the 2000's I'll use thier current political agendas.
I learned this by listening to what the candidates/electorate for the parties say on c-span, I don't particularly like talk radio or talk TV for my political news, much prefer listening to the individual politicians speak themselvs. Though I do have an addiction to Drudge Report who many consider a right wing shill after his exposings of Clinton.
What would you consider the democrats to mostly be? Conservative? Since the Democrats also claim to be either liberal or progressive I would also tend to take thier word for it. Your idea that dems are not liberal is in a very small minority among political circles, even inside the party and among thier supporters.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
Look again.
They fixed up your complaints to my satisfaction, at least.
± 29 dB
no they did not. that page is exactly the problem.
I agree they are greedy little fucks, but they are doing a piss poor job of sucking up to the administration or the republicans.
I wouldn't say that. The chief weapons inspector was just testifying in the Senate that Iraq doesn't have any WMD's, but what does the media decide to harp on? The so called "Dean scream".
But we could compare anecdotes all day. What I really think it comes down to, is: the vast majority of American media doesn't cover the news, they present it. They couldn't just state the facts and What Really Happened to save their lives; every story is presented with spin and bias.
Which is why its soooooo nice listening to NPR, because unless they're interviewing someone or doing investigative reporting, they just state the facts.
"The chief weapons inspector was just testifying in the Senate that Iraq doesn't have any WMD's, but what does the media decide to harp on? The so called "Dean scream"."
Much as they ignored Clinton's felony perjury and focused on sex. Nor did the weapons inspector say that there was no reason to believe before hand there was no evidence (in fact his testimony was the opposite - plenty of evidence). His testimony was that there is no WMD program which is pretty obvious at this time with full hindsight, but that Saddam and many other saw ample evidence that there was - though obviously faked or faulty intelligence.
"But we could compare anecdotes all day. What I really think it comes down to, is: the vast majority of American media doesn't cover the news, they present it. They couldn't just state the facts and What Really Happened to save their lives; every story is presented with spin and bias."
Agreed, but that is why something like 70%+ (and averaging much higher than that) to the democratic party in the mainstream media that many try to pass as unbiased or biased towards republicans is important. I don't mind bias in the media, in fact it is quite hard to do without it. There is a great deal of information out there and it must be filtered. Just wear the bias outside so we can interpret it. I would rather listen (and do) to extremely biased media on both sides than those who say they are unbiased but are not. As such most mainstream media is useless.
"Which is why its soooooo nice listening to NPR, because unless they're interviewing someone or doing investigative reporting, they just state the facts."
In this, I do not agree. the choice in which fact to report is important. Ultimatly no matter what you do there will be a bias - you can minimise it or maximise it, and the bias may be anything (I personally feel most of the TV media is ratings first and liberal second). NPR can vary greatly depending on the particular show, much as other talk radio can.
Nor have I ever, nor will I ever, claim to be unbiased.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
Ultimatly no matter what you do there will be a bias
I never said that NPR didn't have any bias. But as others have said: name some that have less than NPR. Other than maybe the Associated Press, you aren't going to find one in this country.
Nor have I ever, nor will I ever, claim to be unbiased.
Bully for you. But if you're going to be biased, you might want to get the facts straight at least...
Much as they ignored Clinton's felony perjury and focused on sex.
If you're talking about the 'sexual relations' fiasco, it wasn't perjury, much less a felony. In fact you can't even prove what he said in court was a lie. For a statement to be perjury, it has to be relevant. Which is exactly how the judge ruled: wether or not he lied about the blow job, it was irrelevant to the rest of the case.
"I never said that NPR didn't have any bias. But as others have said: name some that have less than NPR. Other than maybe the Associated Press, you aren't going to find one in this country."
2 /clinton.disbarred/ and http://www.hench.net/2001/z100101a.htm). Seems the state supreme court and the federal supreme court quite disagree with your assertion. AFAIK they pretty much overrule any other courts you can cite.
I disagree, NPR can be very biased in which facts they choose to talk about. They are probably one of the worst as telling highly biased information while sounding non-biased. I've listened to some of thier discussions on guns and they are quite mis-informed almost to the point of outright lieing.
"If you're talking about the 'sexual relations' fiasco, it wasn't perjury, much less a felony. In fact you can't even prove what he said in court was a lie. For a statement to be perjury, it has to be relevant. Which is exactly how the judge ruled: wether or not he lied about the blow job, it was irrelevant to the rest of the case."
Yes, I'm talking about being asked if he had sexual relations with her and he said no. Seing that it was relevent in said case it was perjury and was thus disbarred (http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/05/2
While Clinton continually calimed it to not be perjury most other judges and lawyers said it was. The only reason he wasn't prosecuted was because he was an ex-president agreed to the disbarring - you do not get disbarred for following the laws. Not to mention that if it really was irrelevent (and even relevant) to the case he could have refused to answer.
Most people call getting a blow job sexual ralations and saying "I didn't" to mean, well you didn't. I think there is ample proof that he ejaculated by her ministrations - once more what the vast majority of people consider sexual relations (to put it another way, would you consider your signifigant other being orally stimulated by other people to be ok and not sexual relations? I bet not).
That is why the focus on only what Clinton said and sex in the oval office is extremely biased while not mis-quoteing anyone. Those two things are irrelevent and the courts gave decisions to the contrary of what is reported.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
I disagree, NPR can be very biased in which facts they choose to talk about.
As I and others have said before: name one source of media that is consistently less biased than NPR. Put up or shut up.
I've listened to some of thier discussions on guns and they are quite mis-informed almost to the point of outright lieing.
Ah, I see. They must be biased because they don't share your bias?
Yes, I'm talking about being asked if he had sexual relations with her and he said no. Seing that it was relevent
Since you missed it the first time: whatever happened between Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton is irrelevant to what happened to what happened between Bill Clinton and Paula Jones. Monica and Paula never met, never worked in the same office, and so on. Ir-frikkin-relevant.
was perjury and was thus disbarred
Bzzzt, wrong. Since it wasn't relevant, it can't be perjury even if he lied through his teeth, but its impossible to prove that he lied rather than misunderstanding the courts definition of exactly what "sexual relations" amounted to. Here's a nice article debunking the various right wing poppycock on the subject.
As for your links, notice that neither one even mentioned perjury, not even the one with the animated elephant on the page. The Arkansas Supreme Court disbarred him for misleading testimony, which is very weak considering that this was a witch hunt. Clinton had plenty of grounds to challenge it, but he made an agreement to get the whole situation over and done with.
While Clinton continually calimed it to not be perjury most other judges and lawyers said it was.
Obviously you need to talk to some smarter lawyers and judges.
Most people call getting a blow job sexual ralations and saying "I didn't" to mean, well you didn't. I think there is ample proof that he ejaculated by her ministrations - once more what the vast majority of people consider sexual relations (to put it another way, would you consider your signifigant other being orally stimulated by other people to be ok and not sexual relations? I bet not).
Which is why the lawyers argued over the definition for some time. Which is why its easy for Clinton to say he misunderstood the courts definition (and its even arguable that receiving a BJ fit said definition). Which is why its impossible to prove that he lied. Remember that lawyers can split hairs with the best of them, and Clinton was a lawyer for 25 years.