Comments on: Jobs to Glaser: Buzz off

CNET News.com's Charles Cooper says that if RealNetworks' CEO wanted to threaten his opposite number at Apple, he should have used anything except e-mail.

[hutchike]

A Real offer

Apple should consider Real's offer seriously. Microsoft has a wave of Personal Media Player products debuting 2004, and coupled with Janus DRM they truly are iPod killers. Unlike Jobs, I'm a keen fan of subscription services and would welcome any way to listen to my Rhapsody subscription on an iPod. Until Apple embraces interoperability (the way Sun is starting to do), I'll stay away from their products/services.

[Ipod Apple]

Janus DRM

http://www.analogstereo.com/turntable_stanton_smx_201.htm

I gave up on RealPlayer, but found a BETTER solution

To watch Real streams, I now use Media Player Classic. It's at:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli

I can't reccomend it more highly. No popups, no spyware, just a media player that WORKS. Real wouldn't play full-screen on my laptop. Why? Who knows. But MPC worked full-screen beautifully. MPC plays Real, Quicktime, and DivX.

This is a great GPL-licensed project that as soon as I'm employed again, I'll be donating to.

mike

[hutchike]

Real plays full-screen

Real Player 10 plays full screen fine on my old Dell Latitude 400.

[atmca]

soo what...

are you trying to defend real give it up it sucks

[leoofborg]

CEO of Real thins own herd. Film at 11.

CNET's headline was:
> RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser just proved how very bright
folks sometimes wind up making the dumbest decisions.

No, Real has been making dumb decisions from the getgo.
=They= closed their standard and forced authors to buy
expensive encoders. -They- embraced DRM and ergo choke
their own market. And -they- don't know where they are in the
food chain of hardware and software providers.

There are one too many formats for audio and video, and the
crappiest one is Real. Congratulations, Rob. Same time next year
I won't have to look at music videos with shabby compression or
audio streams that choke, because your company won't be
around.

[DVDJ]

Cooper to Glaser to Jobs to Glaser

Charles Cooper make lots of sense -- it's virtually inexplicable that a crafty cyber-executive would "trust" email correspondence to stay private.

It evokes that crazy axiom: "information wants to be free."

That's a certifiable canard when it comes to the cost of information -- you have to be terminally naive to believe it, let alone espouse it. It's akin to saying "information wants to be worthless." But it does ring true in terms of digitized content -- emails especially -- being freely distributed since that it is ipso facto impossible to control once it leaves your desktop.

Also, like Charles Cooper, I found RealPlayer -- in a trial period -- to be a really underwhelming experience. It didn't help that my trial sub was prematurely canceled, and when I called to inquire, was told by the customer rep that "sometimes that happens by mistake" but that he couldn't help me; I'd have to contact the RealNetworks executive who extended the professional courtesy. That person never responded to my email. Guess he no longer wanted RealPlayer "information" to be free to me.

I didn't find the content sticky enough at first blush, but the indifferent customer service wasn't worth the aggravation of sticking around to give it another chance.

About the only thing I can't agree with in Mr. Cooper's column is his corrupting the time-honored expression of irony -- "could care less" -- into "couldn't care less." He's literally correct but literately wrong.

[Ipod Apple]

can't agree

http://www.analogstereo.com/turntable_linn_sondek_lp12.htm