On Wed, May 17, 2000 at 03:41:53AM -0600, David Porter wrote:
* John Grant
: I'd rather have no app than one that secretly sends information I consider personal back to the company:
http://netsecurity.about.com/compute/netsecurity/library/weekly/aa110299.htm
Thanks for the URL. According to the 11/09/99 update on that page, the newer version supposedly doesn't use tracking. Perhaps the one you use now does?
Perhaps.. that's why I'm trying to get into the prefs instead of opening up my firewall.
Probably the only thing that would come from that is more spam, but that's plenty, IMHO. Enough to make me think twice about just running any old .bin from them anyways, just on general principles.
Well, the realplayer executable is a .bin without the extension, and there is no source code to see what it does either.
Nothing I can do about that, unless you know of an OS solution that can play RA streams? The problem with the install .bin is that I can't tell ahead of time what it's going to install/change or where.
I was unaware that they did this (though not at all surprised). I always use my throw-away address for any type of registering, and sure enough all I get are spam messages sent to that account.
Then too, "setup.exe" was one of the things I _hated_ about that "other" OS, and I'd just as soon not condone that kind of crud here on Linux. What does a .bin do for me that a .rpm wont?
Agreed. OTOH, not every Linux distribution uses RPM. How will companies distribute their products if they don't know how to package them? Perhaps
I see no reason not to use RPMs over binaries. There is supposedly a directory standard, and it's no harder to distribute an RPM than an executable. The RPM utility itself is OS and GPL.
there will be a lot more of these types of install binaries coming from the Windows-centric companies.
Not if they want me to use their products.
IIRC, you can run the .bin as a user, so it can't do anything serious to your system (not a luxury allowed with that "other" OS).
If it's critical I might do that. I'm not sure RealPlayer qualifies as such. I suppose I could also run the executable under a debugger, but that's kind of extreme just to install a media player. Do I detect a wide open opportunity for some enterprising OS coders? -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/