Real player for Mac download site hangs Safari
in [UK Mac]
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From: Rowland McDonnell on 18 Jan 2010 19:31 James Taylor <usenet(a)oakseed.demon.co.uk.invalid> wrote: > Peter Ceresole wrote: > > > What do people have aginst the iPlayer? > > It's a bloated great Flash based install. Who cares? You've got too much RAM and HD space anyway. > It uses DRM. Programs disappear after a few days. Digital Rights Management is a lie: it's digital rights *removal*; our rights are trampled on in an attempt by the big rich copyright owning firms to hold on to their ill-gotten gains for as long as possible, milking them for as much profit as possible and screw the creative artists. Call it `consumer rights limitation' or CRL, not DRM. > I can't manage the media in my normal media manger or play it in my > preferred player, I'm stuck using their interface instead. > > It requires me to install with root privileges an opaque lump of > proprietary code from the notoriously insecure stable of Adobe. Yeah, but that process hasn't bitten anyone yet. Remember, this ain't the Dodgy Video Corp, Alabama: it's the Beeb. We know where they live. A lot of people would complain very loudly if it were ever discovered that the iPlayer was doing evil. > With encrypted communications I have no way to verify what it is sending > or receiving. It could be spying on me, and almost certainly is, I just > can't tell how badly. The thing offer options to turn off feedback. I'm not sure the Beeb would be lying to us about that side of things too much. <shrug> I don't see any reason to mistrust the iPlayer on that subject any more than I mistrust the RealPlayer. [snip] Rowland. -- Remove the animal for email address: rowland.mcdonnell(a)dog.physics.org Sorry - the spam got to me http://www.mag-uk.org http://www.bmf.co.uk UK biker? Join MAG and the BMF and stop the Eurocrats banning biking
From: Peter Ceresole on 18 Jan 2010 22:56 Dorian Gray <D.Gray(a)picture.invalid> wrote: > Wait, I don't understand what you're saying. All I'm saying is that > <http://www.real.com/mac/realplayer> (which I am directed to from > real.com in order to download the free Mac player) hangs Safari 4.0.4 on > OS X 10.4.11, well and truly, in the way I described. > > Is your experience the same, or not? Not the same as that, no. I was going by the '5 pages wide' bit. And it certainly does that in Safari 4.0.4, but not in Firefox. It doesn't hang Safari, though. -- Peter
From: James Taylor on 19 Jan 2010 01:23 Rowland McDonnell wrote: > James Taylor wrote: > >> Peter Ceresole wrote: >> >>> What do people have aginst the iPlayer? >> >> It's a bloated great Flash based install. > > Who cares? You've got too much RAM and HD space anyway. Actually, I don't. I have many computers and some of them are very tight on resources. >> It uses DRM. Programs disappear after a few days. > > Digital Rights Management is a lie: it's digital rights *removal*; [...] > Call it `consumer rights limitation' or CRL, not DRM. I think the FSF have it right when they call it "Digital Restrictions Management": <http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/drm.html> >> It requires me to install with root privileges an opaque lump of >> proprietary code from the notoriously insecure stable of Adobe. > > Yeah, but that process hasn't bitten anyone yet. There's a new vulnerability discovered in Adobe software almost every week! > Remember, this ain't > the Dodgy Video Corp, Alabama: it's the Beeb. You might trust the BBC, but it's trust in Adobe you need here, especially trust in their ability to write secure code. Their track record makes that trust impossible. >> With encrypted communications I have no way to verify what >> it is sending or receiving. It could be spying on me, >> and almost certainly is, I just can't tell how badly. > > The thing offer options to turn off feedback. I'm not sure the > Beeb would be lying to us about that side of things too much. Agreed, they're probably not lying *too* much, at least not too much to get away with it, and after all nobody could object to having their viewing habits profiled by dear old Auntie surely. > <shrug> I don't see any reason to mistrust the iPlayer on that subject > any more than I mistrust the RealPlayer. But in your other post you seem to totally agree with my reasons for not wanting to run iPlayer. I do like to see such friendly accord. -- James Taylor
From: James Taylor on 19 Jan 2010 01:35 Rowland McDonnell wrote: > Peter Ceresole wrote: > >> What do people have aginst the iPlayer? > > It's *HORRRIBLY* inefficient, it's unreliable, and the UI is VERY bad. Totally agree. > Everything done with Flash on the Web is inefficient and unreliable, and > almost all of it has a dreadfully poor UI. My heart sinks any time I > come across Flash stuff because I know I'm in for a bad time on the Web. I'm right with you there brother. > My new Intel iMac doesn't show slow panning hiccups, but it does take it > a lot of CPU (not quite 70%) to play a BBC HD stream - that is just a > waste of electricity if you ask me; they should have picked a more > efficient method. QT player doesn't have any of the same troubles when > doing Web streaming, for example. But QuickTime is full of security holes too. Another remote code execution vulnerability discovered this week in fact: <http://www.offensive-security.com/blog/vulndev/multiple-media-player-http-datahandler-overflow/> That's just the kind of thing you don't want and, knowing Apple, they'll leave it unpatched for months. Any man-in-the-middle on any hostile network could use this to pwn you as you surfed. > AND: I want something small and efficient and unobtrusive for playing > the radio. Why do they insist on giving you a bloody picture when you > ask for a radio stream? Exactly. >> I use it here, and it works very well, for both video and sound. > > It wouldn't take me long to show you how to persuade iPlayer to need a > relaunch before it'd play anything. I can also show you iPlayer > refusing to show subtitles (probably - not quite worked out the trigger > for that one, but it's common enough that it wouldn't take long to show > that bug). Wow, if the bugs are that easy to find, just imagine how easy it would be for a hacker to find exploitable bugs. Sends shivers down my spine! > And the UI is *awful*. It's not great. It's main problem is that you have no choice. The DRM prevents them from allowing you to play the videos in your own choice of media player, or organise them in your own choice of media manager, or on your own choice of computing platform. -- James Taylor
From: Jim on 19 Jan 2010 01:54
James Taylor <usenet(a)oakseed.demon.co.uk.invalid> wrote: > > Yeah, but that process hasn't bitten anyone yet. > > There's a new vulnerability discovered in Adobe software almost every week! According to the recent Security Now podcast (can't remember the number but it's the 2hr one) Adobe are expected to surpass Microsoft in terms of targetted/exploited vulnerabilities in 2010. I'd say they may already have done so. What worries me slightly is: how long before something nasty is found in AIR that could be triggered through something like Tweetdeck (like our old friend, the malformed image). AIR and Tweetdeck are cross-platform. Jim Jim -- http://www.ursaMinorBeta.co.uk http://twitter.com/GreyAreaUK Please help save Bletchley Park - sign the petition for Government funding at: (open to UK residents and ex.pats) http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/BletchleyPark/ Thank you. |