The Boston Diaries

The ongoing saga of a programmer who doesn't live in Boston, nor does he even like Boston, but yet named his weblog/journal “The Boston Diaries.”

Go figure.

Tuesday, Debtember 07, 1999

A Real Conspiracy?

So I come across the The Jenni Show, which uses RealVideo as one of the formats. It's intriging enough for me to take the effort to install RealVideo on my system. Or rather my roommate's system, as he has a soundcard and I don't.

So I go to Real Video and oh, there's the latest version, only $29.95. Not sure if I'll actually get $29.95 worth out of the program, but the point is moot: they only cater to Windows. Okay, a token gesture to the Mac, but Windows. Window Windows Windows. Marsha Marsha Marsha!

Sigh.

I do find an older version (version 5! Current is 7. What happened to six?), download it and try it out.

The codec for this video was not found on your system, please upgrade.

Followed by:

File compression not supported. Cannot locate the requested RealAudio decoder.

Mind you, this was trying to load up the supplied welcome.rm file that came with the distribution! Grr. But I suppose that's to be expected. But why the non-support of Linux? It's not like they never supported it before, so why the lack of it now? Could it be the current version of RealVideo isn't all that portable? Or could it be something else?

Well, they lost a sale with me, my roomate, and my friend. Not like they care though.

As you probably can tell, I'm not using Windows, nor a Mac. What I am using is Linux with an older window manager. The latest ones are just too … cluttered … for my tastes. Twm is too plain for my tates, while 9wm is way to Spartan for my taste.

A sound legacy

I was given a sound card, but I can't install it. Long story dealing with the nasty IBM PC legacy that all current PCs still live with, and what I was given was a multifunction card were the functions I don't need can't be disabled, and it would be difficult to find enough free IRQs on my system.

Obligatory Picture

[The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades]

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