Slashdot Mirror
Gamera = AOL for Linux
Uart writes: "AOL is building a Cross-Platform FDO to allow AOL content to be viewed on any number of platforms/environments. This includes a Linux client. Why is this big news you ask? Because it allows many many more people to use Linux, or other non-Microsoft operating systems. An image of the AOL site is right here. BTW, there will also be a Netscape\IE plugin to allow people to access AOL content from their Web browser." Rather then the traditional desktop PC model for viewing, a Linux-client allows AOL to make small devices that /just/ run AOL. Why on Earth would you need anything more? *grin*
I do know something about this. Many SGI's are used for high-end video processing, editing, and compositing. The people who use these systems (some of which sell for over a million dollars per system, and then allow them to do work that they bill out for several hundred dollars per hour or more.) know the technology of video like the back of their hands - realms of knowledge that would make the knowledge your typical Perl-monkey know pale in comparison. And they know virtually nothing about the systems underneath - it's essentially a black box to them. They don't know /dev/ from /bin/, they don't know a single shell script, they never have installed a piece of software, a browser, or a patch. They don't know much on graphics programming, any more than a writer knows the source code to a word processor. For a million dollars per seat, they get tech support that protects them from having to worry about it.
312 Gamera vs. Guiron
"Bouncy Gamera Song"
[On the satellite:]
JOEL: Let's go, Gamera!
[music starts]
ALL: Gamera! Gamera!
Gamera is really neat.
Gamera is filled with meat.
We've been eating Gamera!
Shell
Teeth
Eyes
Flames
Claws
Breath
Scales
Fun!
SERVO: Dr. Forrester is kind of a jerk,
and Frank is really dumb, too.
CROW: We have to take part in these lame experiments.
JOEL: But do we complain?
SERVO: No!
JOEL: No!
CROW: Yes!
SERVO: Huh?
So we hi-keeba all over the place--
JOEL: --and talk of a thousand wonderful days.
SERVO: Everybody now!
ALL: Gamera is really sweet,
he is filled with turtle meat.
Now we have Commercial Sign!
Actually this'll be quite helpful in my job. We're doing a small appliance type thing and will want to have it capable of attaching to as many ISPs as possible. AOL is a major one, and having something like this could get us millions of sales we could not otherwise have got. We're doing all the hard stuff behind the scenes, so the average user should know just enough to turn on a TV.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I'm actually serious... LOTS of people use AOL because it covers up the complexity of connecting to and using the internet on _Windows_ and the _Mac_, two systems routinely proffered as more user-friendly than Linux. With AOL clients on Linux, those people can use it. Toss in StarOffice and maybe Netscape/Mozilla/Opera, and they've got all they need.
I wonder if the AOL/linux web browser will be Mozilla? The Windows version uses IE... but now AOL has this spiffy portable web browser...
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
RedHat 6.0, circa November 1999, on a Dell Optiplex GL-5133 (Pentium 133) with a genuine SoundBlaster 16.
conf.modules was my friend. And so was vi, which I voluntarily use over pico or emacs, mostly because when I got my first internet access in 1988, that was the only text editor available to me at shell. And therefore, nebulous and clumsy as it is, I know it well.
Urk.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Configuring sound in Linux is a new priority.
I mean, how will all the AOLers know they have new mail if they don't hear the "You've Got Mail!" message?
Assuming a kernel recompile isn't required, can you imagine that process?
I'd pay money to see an AOL user opening up /etc/conf.modules with vi:
"Remember, you can save your changes and exit very easily. Hit Escape, then colon, then 'wq!' It's very intuitive. You'll like it."
So easy to use, no wonder it's number one!
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
It would be useful for people like me who run linux but have a wife and kids who _really_ like AOL for some unknown reason. They could still run AOL without having to run Win9x( or MacOS). Dual booting would be a thing of the past and the disk space taken up by Win9x could be used for more productive purposes.
It certainly could be something that RedHat or any of the other distributions could bundle in their retail boxes and might attract users that would like to try out linux, but don't want to give up AOL. I might also make other software developers a reason to take a look at porting their consumer software to linux.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
It's pretty obvious that you have never used AOL recently as your Provider. If you have, then you'd know that it's almost impossible to connect with any medium.
Really? My wife can access AOL on an IP-Masq'ed box with a linux machine providing the TCP/IP link to my ISP -- we've done this with dialup and cable modem without any problems. They've had the 'bring-your-own-access' feature for quite a while. If that's the only method being used, one can chop the monthly AOL bill to only $10. I have also setup relatives machines with AOL 5.0 and they still can use the ISP of their choice (usually a free one) if they don't want to use AOL. It's not that difficult. When installing it, you just have to remember to select 'No' when it asks you if you want AOL to be the default internet access method.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Are you serious? "we can use standard TCP/IP client setups..." - Have you ever installed AOL 5.0? Goodbye DUN on Windows - if you had another ISP, AOL disables it.
That's only true if you do not select 'No' when it asks if you want AOL to be the default connection method for accessing the internet. This is the very last thing it does when it's being installed. I've setup Win9x machines this way for relatives and they don't have any problems using DUN or whatever methods their free ISP use for establishing a PPP connection.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Why have they been putting *so much effort* into making it suitable for embedded devices ?
Ugh. The elitest attitude of some of these posts is, quite disturbing.
I have been using various *nix's for a number of years. From SCO in high school and College to Slackware 3.2 and RH 5 and FreeBSD 3 on my home puter. It is a great OS. And AOL coming to Linux can be a good thing if one thinks about it. It isn't just newbies using AOL *GASP* it is also made up of many people who are using it because either work or parents pay for it. Nothing like free internet access. There are also many places where AOL is the only (decent) choice. When AOL first came to town here, it was a better and faster solution than the generic ISP's. Who do you think I went with?
Did I curse and complain that it wasn;t available or *nix? No. At that time it just wasn't possible to do in *nix what I could in windows so I was in windows to do work. Now that Linux has become a viable alternative to Windows people like AOL are taking notice and allowing for those people who are using AOL for one reason or another to use it AND Linux at the same time.
If people want Linux to take over Windows, they are going to have to accept that the companies that will be affected by this will also want to get on the bandwagon. It is simply self-preservation.
And now I am seeing anymosity towards RedHat. Why is this? Could it be that one of the companies who helped bring Linux to the fore-front is now being regarded as monopolistic because they are making money? People do have to do that you know.
The greater the number of mainstream apps that come to Linux means a greater number of users and less reason to have to keep that Windows partition on the system.
tinfoilmedia
This is almost certainly for the AOL/Transmeta/Gateway "web pad" devices that have been mentioned before, more or less like the I-Opener. The users won't have to deal with "Linux," they'll just click the pretty buttons. Plug it in, turn it on... and you're ready to go.
Regarding the issues that people have brought up about more and more people using Linux, though... it does concern me a bit. The traditional "ask a question on Usenet" model may fall apart when 100 questions a day ask how to set up XFree, or Linux-Kernel is flooded with "what's an 'fdisk?'"
I'm sure we'll find a way to deal with it...
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The image @ http://www.inside-aol.com/ss3/cris@aoledited.jpg has apparently been slashdotted
You can now view it at
http://www.nols.com/slashdot/cris@aoledited.jpg without having to wait an hour for it to load.
I can accept the point that aol is perhaps easy to use but then WHY OH WHY couple it with linux. Whilst I love linux it really was a complete bugger to install and I still keep it for my server and run Win2k on my workstation.
Why? Well, let's just think about this. AOL wants to develop a bunch of "AOL Appliances". Things like the I-Opener (but I'm sure locked down better). Why the heck would they want to do this with a windows platform? Then they have to pay a license fee for windows for each and every device.
Why not just port the client to Linux, and put Linux on these appliances? No license fees for the OS, and the interface, to the user, is pretty much the same. That's what they've done.
I saw the Netscape plugin portion of the Tokyo project work when I was still working at AOL. This was probably about 6 months ago that I first looked at it, and it was pretty slick then. Had a few bugs, but it was good for an alpha. I never did get to Gamera, even though I heard a lot about it. Mostly because I never took the time to download it off the internal servers.
IIRC, AOL was moving towards using Gecko in the clients (and therefore Netscape/Mozilla) instead of IE. Most of the holdups were concerns over the agreements with MS that keep AOL on the desktop of fresh Windows installs. However, I seem to remember that as I was leaving, they sorted it out and were pushing ahead. Although, it was always discussed as making an interface to plug a third-party browser into AOL, and never about Netscape/Gecko specifically. But I didn't live in that part of the AOL house, so I could be mistaken.
-Todd
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"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
If you really want to see Microsoft eat dust, you had better stop trashing Time-Warner/AOL and get behind this!
Heh, you're a funny guy :-)
Even on a Sunday morning, when there are only 7 comments in the story, the link in the story is already slashdotted. :-o
aol for linux??
it must be snowing in hell right now
Why? I already HAVE a computer...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
First of all who actually uses aol. Maybe they do keep america online but in the uk they are the isp that people use free for a month before they find someone that actually works.
I can accept the point that aol is perhaps easy to use but then WHY OH WHY couple it with linux. Whilst I love linux it really was a complete bugger to install and I still keep it for my server and run Win2k on my workstation.
Perhaps there are some embedded applications for it but in these field you want as light an installation as possible and as I recall AOL isn't all that small.
Where does it fit in?
It'll be the slashdot-thinks-it's-cool-cos-it-has-linux-in-it category.
This summer, I'm interning in a state different than the one I live and go to school in. Naturally, I needed internet access. I thought I'd try an AOL free month-long trial, just to get me started, and switch later to a local ISP after doing research online. My last experience with AOL was a number of years ago, before the WWW existed and gopher reigned supreme.
It was disapointing. Keywords are one-word "addresses," if you will, to content on AOL. I tried a few- all of them pointed to websites! Ones accessible by anyone with a browser and internet access. As another experiement, i tried out a couple chatrooms- all cheezy sex. Perhaps the christian singles rooms are better (ha!), but this was far below the quality of IRC. Also, the built-in Instant Messanging client was years behind the one you can download seperately from AOL.
The only real difference I saw between AOL and a regular ISP is that when I logged on, it flashed some adds before letting me do anything, asking if I wanted to buy.
The AOL client made my computer extremely unstable. I have a Mac, and was used to crashing about once a week. AOL installed and required a background application, which appeared to be some IPRouter, that would crash randomly, when I was on- and off-line. I had to reboot once, twice, or three times a day. It was absurd. And when I was on-line I would get kicked off randomly, even whilst active, with the helpful error that someone picked up the phone, or the phone plug fell out of the wall (!). I'm sure glad that this was only a trial- who would pay $20/month for this garbage when other quality ISPs charge far less?
Needless to day, I dumped AOL before my month was up and found some schmucky AltaVista free access. Yes, I have to look at adverts, but I had to do that on AOL, and now I get faster more stable connections. And the client doesn't happily bring my computer to it's knees.
And AOL isn't the only way for people new to computers to get on-line. I think the only reason it stays in business is that centiment is commonly circulated. My grandmother, completely new to computers, got an old pentium for last christmas. With the help of her also-new-to-computers neighbor (who's also an older lady), she was on-line with one of those free ISPs, sending me goofy e-cards.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Since I just left AOL recently, I can say with some authority that this is not a fraud. I've actually looked at manda.office.aol.com when I was working there, and I've played with some of the Tokyo project software.
.jpg tells us nothing of the validity. So they took a screen shot? Whos to say they didn't compose that website, loaded it and then typed "http://manda.office.aol.com" in the Location bar and just didn't press return?
1) First, being, that www.inside-aol.com is obviously not an official or trust-worthy source of information.
2) I may be thinking of a different website but I believe that www.inside-aol.com has done hoaxes before.
True, however that doesn't mean it's immediately wrong.
3) The
Absolutely. However, in this case that site does actually exist. It's internal to AOL, and not accessible outside. Likely they have an inside contact that sent them the screenshot. I don't believe you can access the office.aol.com network from the PCs in the lobby of the Reston and Dulles AOL offices.
4) Theres something of an informal nature about this website that reeks of hoax, its written in such a manner to imply something informal (read: "The Long awaited.. etc.. blah blah") yet it contains a dubious confidentiality clause at the begining ("Do not distribute or show..."). I dont think that "Do not show..." is common legalese.
Yes, it is a semi-informal site. It's an internal site, for AOL employees. This is not a site that was designed to be used by anyone outside the company, and the people who put it up are not web designers. The "confidentiality clause" at the top is not legalese. It's a reminder. Everyone who has access to view office.aol.com websites has already signed either NDAs (in the case of on-site vendors), or employment agreements that contain much stronger language.
Anyways, you can believe me if you want. I've seen that web site first hand, and can tell you that it's real.
-Todd
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"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
If the stereotype for linux users is improved or smart(er), and AOL are clueless lamers..
Now what stereotype do I put them under? </joke>
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
I like Linux, a lot, and I use it for more houts per day than most people reading /., I'd wager. But a big part of why I like it is not because of what it is or the political aura around it, but because of its potential to grow into something the "numbnuts" of the world can use as a legitimate alternative to Windows. If LInux gets there (and I believe it will), freeing tens of millions of users from the grip of MS's monopoly will be its greatest achievement, no matter what else it does.
This could actually be useful to the general Linux-using public. Imagine, if you will, that AOL puts pressure to get cheap Linux/AOL boxes out there. Notice that if they do that, that means that those cheap boxes are already Linux-friendly.
If Linux/BSD/etc. users can hack systems that weren't made for our OS's to support Linux (BSD, whatever), imagine the utility of a box that was *made* with Linux in mind. The possibilities are positively staggerring (especially when you consider that AOL could make small Linux computers an economy of scale).
we are the aol, lower your firewalls and prepare to install. we will add *our* technological distictivness to your own. Uninstallation is futile!
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
Yahoo given a rundown on this allready. Much more info than some (possibly made up) screen shot.
Story is here.
Looks like Gamera works on RH 6.1 and is built from the Gecko technology.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
Folks,
While it's fashionable to dump on America Online, this idea of having any web browser be able to display AOL-formatted content may be a major Godsend for many users.
The advantages are extremely obvious: instead of using AOL's custom-written interface and communications front end, we can use standard TCP/IP client setups for dial-up analog modems, LAN, or broadband modems to connect to AOL. It also means AOL may change their email and newsgroup access so you can use any standard TCP/IP-based email or newsgroup reader.
People forget that AOL has POP's all over the USA and also much of Europe and Asia (far more than any ISP on this planet); the elimination of the need for a proprietary interface and communications setup could mean AOL access to anyone who can do TCP/IP connections.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA