What is this blog about?

"Hello, my name is John. I'm a recovering architect."

I like all sorts of towns, cities and buildings, but what I design are Classical buildings and Traditional towns and cities. You can see some of them at www.massengale.com.

With Robert A.M. Stern I wrote a history of architecture and urbanism in the Progressive Era, New York 1900, Metropolitan Architecture and Urbanism 1890–1915 (Rizzoli, 1983) as well as an introduction to the history of suburbia before sprawl, The Anglo–American Suburb (St. Martin's Press, 1981). With Victor Dover, I am writing Street Design, The Art & Practice of Making Complete Streets (J. Wiley & Sons, 2013).

I'm a Board Member of the Congress for New Urbanism, the former Chair of CNU New York and a former Director of the Institute of Classical Art & Architecture and Federated Conservationists of Westchester County.

A co-founder of the New Urban and Traditional Architecture Councils.I was also a co-founder of the pro-urb list, a forum on the internet for an advanced discussion of New Urbanism. And in this blog you will find some postings from that list, along with other writings and clippings on architecture, urbanism, Classicism, Tradition, metaphysics and culture.


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Wednesday, July 27, 2005

“Why Real Player Sucks”

“REAL PLAYER SUCKS” gets 780,000 hits at Google. The number one choice, recommended by Jason Kottke, is here.

I groaned when I had to download the latest RealPlayer to watch some NPR clips. I don't know why NPR techheads have such bad taste that they almost always pick the worst Windows products. My experience is below.

  1. RP software is notoriously buggy and badly documented.
  2. RP software is notoriously invasive and problematic for the system.
  3. RealMedia tries to sell you many services with the software, and includes extra charges they try to conceal.
  4. I’ve downloaded many versions because of corruption and failures.
  5. Then the new download has a hard time with the previous version, which is hard to uninstall.
  6. I had trouble with RM not canceling my account and improperly charging me for several months.
  7. That’s precisely why they use to force “trial subscriptions” for “free software” -- it’s a scam.
  8. I couldn’t download the latest software without the last four digits of my credit card even, though I canceled my account in 2003
  9. It took RM 4 hours to respond to my download problem.
  10. Then I had to wait on the phone for 15 minutes to talk to an RM representative.
  11. “What do you mean?” he said, “your account was canceled in 2003.”
  12. RM stole iTunes code in an attempt to force Apple into letting them into the iTunes market
  13. Installing the latest version crashed my browser.
  14. The latest version of RP won’t run without keeping an icon on my desktop -- unlike all my other applications.
  15. AFTER running a file I downloaded it told me there were two security updates available.
  16. Apple tries to make QuickTime compatible with the newest file type, but RP doesn't update them -- intentionally, because of the iTunes lawsuit?
  17. The new RP crashed the first 3 times I used it.

July 27, 2005 in Web/Tech, Weblogs | Permalink

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"I don't know why NPR techheads have such bad taste that they almost always pick the worst Windows products."

It isn't that they have bad taste. The tricky part about streaming for an organization such as NPR that has a lot of feeds, is setting up and maintaining the server. Real almost certainly has offered them a complete server package (machine, software, probably maintenance) for a very reduced rate. It's too good a deal for them to pass up.

jck

Posted by: John Kenyon at Jul 28, 2005 2:17:36 PM

Try Real Player Alternative at:

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternative.htm

A great way to play all those Real files and streams without having to install their terribly buggy and invasive software...

Good luck!

Posted by: Paul at Aug 8, 2005 2:26:16 PM

Thanks, I'm told it's good, but I have a Mac (for which there's not RP Alternative).

Posted by: john massengale at Aug 8, 2005 8:08:27 PM

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