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Justin Frankel of Nullsoft Hacks AIM
Trinition writes "Justin Frankel from Nullsoft, the creators of WinAmp, as gone and hacked away at his new Parent Company's popular AIM service. He's remove the ads. Read the ZDNet article for details." Apparently AOL yanked it from the firehose page, but it's on Zeropaid.Update: 09/22 02:40 AM by H :Thanks to a couple people who pointed out that it is still on firehose.
Personally I find this rather amusing. It seems that nullsoft is trying to cause as much trouble for AOL as possible. You will remember how gnutella was created and then removed by AOL and now this.
I wonder if Frankel and other at nullsoft are trying to see how far AOL will allow them to go, or maybe they are just unhappy with their job at AOL. Most companies have you sign a non-disclosure agreement in regards to the software owned by the company. This would blatently infringe on this contract.
Perhaps Frankel is doing this to get back at AOL for buying his company out (even though it made him rich). To me this course of action doesn't seem logical. It would be like a microsoft employee putting out a free version of a windows like operating system which he based on the windows code.
Just goes to show what happens to the bloodflow from wearing a tie around the neck. :-)
;-)
Maybe they could buy an ad on zeropaid
It's all true! ±5%
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Here's how you disable AIM Advertisements:
Make sure AIM isn't running (not even the icon in the tray). Use notepad to open aim.odl. Scroll down to where there are two sections that have "advert" followed by "required". Remove the word required in both cases, and save the file. Now delete or rename your advert.ocm file (I renamed mine advert.bak). Now start AIM. When you sign on, no more annoying advertisements at the top of your buddy list.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
That .5" by .5" square was taking up valuable room which could be used for porn and UT and watching RIAA sanctioned DVD's.
First off, it's firehose.net, not firehouse.net.... secondly, the software is still posted on the webpage, unless I'm hallucinating....
http://www.firehose.net/free/aimazing/
1. He could get fired and sued.
2. He could get promoted and told to "lay off" the special projects
3. He could get "talked to" and fold like a napkin.
Me, I'm guessing he gets promoted.
Dirty Pirate Hooker
Simply put, time spent using non-company resources is your "free time." For instance, if you go home and use a PC that you own to do anything, you own that work (unless the company has a claim to it otherwise [i.e. copyright, it started as a work project, etc]).
Also, depending on the terms of your employment, there are "work hours" for which you get paid (even on salary). If you do non-work-related things outside of "work hours", that would be free time.
Although I bet that some employers would see it differently.
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We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
Perot sold EDS in 1984 to General Motors for $2.5 billion. He retained ownership in the company, which made him GM's largest individual stockholder and a member of the board of directors. From the start, Perot and GM head Roger Smith quarreled, and Perot criticized the quality of GM automobiles. In 1986, GM bought out Perot's stock for $700 million with the agreement that he could not compete with EDS for three years. Perot ignored the agreement. Two years later, he started a new computer service company, Perot Systems, which operates in the United States and Europe.
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
Come on, AOL offers a service, Instant Messenger, which costs them money to maintain and support, for free. The ads allow them to recoup some of their costs.
How does stealing from AOL amount to someone being a 'programmer's hero'?
When is everyone going to get it through their head that most of the services on the internet eventually will not, and cannot continue to be free. You will either have to pay hard cash, or pay with your eyeballs.
-josh
Or his $86 million dollars...
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
http://www.nullsoft.com/free/aimazing/
Source code included! Apparently, AOL took it off of Firehouse, but forgot about Nullsoft's own website. Heh heh.
And, just in case they take it off of that website, you can still get it (a slightly older version) from BetaNews, right here:
http://fileforum.efront.com/d etail.php3?fid=968658671
"As for AOL, it says it isn't troubled by the software because it doesn't affect outside advertisers. The Instant Messenger box has two advertising spots, and right now they are being used to promote AOL's service. "Since AIM does not have [paid] ads, this is a moot point," says Tricia Primrose, an AOL spokeswoman."
The article is available for free at MSNBC. Also, here's a screenshot from a link at Zeropaid.
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www.sitesherpa.com
Actually, Mozilla.org released the API for AIM, but it got pulled soon afterward. Here is the page where it was and it tells why the API was pulled from the site.
Thank you. Thank you. Please no applause; just throw money
I wonder about this, because the suits try to convince us annually that anything we create belongs to the company. All the employment contracts I've seen try to tie down developers so that the company gets first shot at anything they come up with. I don't know what his contract states, but how many of you working engineers could get away with releasing something to the public and then proclaiming that you did it on your free time?
What is 'free' time when your on salary?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
AOL must be regretting getting Frankel on board the way General Motors came to regret ending up with Ross Perot after acquiring EDS. Maybe Frankel is pursuing the same strategy; GM finally paid Perot huge bucks just to go the hell away and stop making their lives miserable.
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
He didn't just pull the adspace out, he lets you replace the adspace with an oscilloscope from the winamp mp3 you're currently playing. less of a hack than an overlay.
but he does seem to be a 6 million dollar loose cannon. more proof to time warner that the truly gifted are beyond their control?
perhaps.
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What happens when you outlaw guns
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's much easier to reply to the parent than to all the "but they are only aol ads" or "but they allow free *nix clients" or other people objecting to this post, so, I am.
I bring you a dictionary definition:
loss leader (lôs ldr) -- n. -- A commodity offered especially by a retail store at cost or below cost to attract customers.
AIM is, in a sense, a loss leader. They provide the service free of charge in order to get more people using the service. The ads may be only AOL ads, but they do get money when someone signs up.
AIM has another loss leaderish aspect. "Look how good this product is, and imagine how great the whole service must be!" Sure, that doesn't apply to the TiK using group (and other flavors), but it does to the geek's friends. (I'll refrain from posting the definition of "friend.") One doesn't lose the ability to "talk" with TiK using buddies when they sign up for AOL.
Oh, and my Win AIM client just put up an ad for th is page, which seems not to be an AOL site. But that has nothing to do with the idea of AIM being a loss leader.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This software could be considered a circumvention-mechanism under the DMCA, violating AOL's intellectual-property rights to its ads. I'd be very wary, if I were Justin Frankel.
Here's another program that actually hides the ads (resizes your aim window smaller). It's also open sourced.
win32aimad
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I'm on a chair.
The url was not firehouse.net but firehose.net and the plugin is available freely at firehose.net/free/ or nullsoft.com/free/ no one knows how to read these days.