I worked for Real (Progressive Networks originally, the name changed while I was there) way back in '96. The REALLY early players, RealAudio up through 3.0 and

I worked for Real (Progressive Networks originally, the name changed while I was there) way back in '96. The REALLY early players, RealAudio up through 3.0 and the first versions of RealVideo didn't install any of that crap. They didn't install anything but the player (including a browser plugin, but that was just a version of the player too). The malware didn't start until a year or two later, after I'd left, but it always made me sad the direction they went. When I was there, it felt like we were doing good things for the world. At least the part of the world that wanted to stream tiny blurry videos over 28.8k modems. This is pretty awful too. I don't really know what reason Real has for existing any more. Rhapsody seemed like the only sort of worthwhile thing they had, but I just learned yesterday they spun that off last year. Weird.