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Hacking AOL From The Inside
gizmo_mathboy writes: "It looks like the people that brought you Gnutella and Winamp, Nullsoft, are having fun hacking AOL code after AOL absorbed them. The story is here." One old idea this illustrates is that large, merger-ridden companies like AOL are hard to categorize simply -- they simply have too many parts, not all of which will ever be in complete concert. This kind of semi-allowed internal hacking could be the most valuable thing at AOL right now, though.
So, after making millions and millions of dollars selling their company to the highest bidder, they still consider themselves "legitimate nihilistic media terrorists" whom history will "no doubt canonize".
If they mean shot out of a canon (not the real definition, I know, but we can hope) then I'm all for it. These guys are not only trying to both have their cake and eat it, they're trying to eat that cake after they've sold it!
One more target for the clue stick.
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No, one RIP in a few hours (depending).
As opposed to using MusicMatch or something, which lets you rip your CD to a crappy-quality MP3 with skips and pops in faster than real time!
I figure if I'm going to bother to RIP a CD I may as well do it right...
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
I thought it was highly interesting when AOL bought Nullsoft. I equated it to their purchase of Netscape... even though some people might have a problem with that analogy, I'd say that the amount of people using Winamp at the time was probably about equal to the number of people using Netscape. (Market share aside... although Sonique wasn't as popular and there were no other decent MP3 players for Windows at the time)
Netscape withered and died, though. A lot of good talent left the company. But with Nullsoft, the whole team went over... and they're still there.
Now, it's only a matter of "When's Justin Frankel gonna get fired?" Don't get me wrong, he's a genius and a hero in a lot of respects (Shawn Fanning doesn't hold a candle to him, IMO) but he has a knack for doing things to piss off the big corporations... including those that are in the same company as his now. This is a GOOD thing... generally, the stuff that he has made has went pretty far (Winamp, Shoutcast, Gnutella... that's one hell of a resume) but one day someone in another branch of that giant media conglomerate is going to overreact and demand Justin's termination.
It's not as if that would matter, though. So far, anything of his that AOL has shot down made it into the public domain, anyway. He's smart enough to know how to get things out there too, under the radar of AOL until it's too late.
Nullsoft is proof that good things can come out of corporate America, that large corporations don't always go for the loot at the expense of innovation. I'm not saying that AOL actively supports Nullsoft, but their general hands-off approach is almost surprising, considering since they own the company, they can just send a few managers in there to look over everyone's shoulder and make sure that they're not writing the Next Big Thing in Copyright Violations...
If AOL kills winamp, then more people will switch to freeamp, a free and superior project. I'll be the first to lose no sleep.
-- Anne Marie
For a long time I felt AOL was the evil empire, but they really have raised themselves a few notches in my book.
Not Evil Empire, think Roman Empire. Oh sure, Rome had its orgies, slavery, egomaniacal emperors, and gladiatorial games but they also had one of the most vibrant and advanced civilizations of their day and paved the way for modern Western society.
AOL could turn out the same way. Oh sure, Steve Case will continue to sucker in clueless newbies into his empire with inferior but easy to use Internet access; raking in cash and censoring the word "breast" chatrooms while pedophiles prowl his online service unmolested. But AOL is also nurturing some of the most exciting software development today. It's all part of the big chaos of the online scene with both good and bad coming from the same big corporate tent.
Does this
The only thing AOL is good for are all the free "coasters" they thoughtfully include with computer magazines.
Not so! You can also use them as frisbies or build yourself your own, homemade disco ball out of them.
Does this
Well, one extremely obvious application would be to decompose the images into component parts (faces, hair, arms, legs, etc.), then cobble up a "screen blanker" that morphs each part independently. That is, the face would morph to another face; the left arm would morph to another left arm, etc.
Not only would this make an interesting piece of eye candy, it would also serve as a subtle social critique on pr0n in general (i.e. the people in the photos are stripped of their individuality and humanity, reduced to a set of interchangeable parts).
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
File Format = Felony
More like File Format = Civil Liability when MP3 is licensed and Vorbis isn't.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Er, mind translating?
I love the comment that matchbox 20's album that has winamp on it give someone tools to "ILLEGALLY PIRATE" the music.
I can copy all my cd's 10000000 times legally you morons!, I can convert the music to whatever format I want. If I give it away or sell it then it's illegal.
Someone please slap these stupid reporters that think anything mp3 is illegal.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
One old idea this illustrates is that large, merger-ridden companies like AOL are hard to categorize simply -- they simply have too many parts
I notice he was careful not to say "too many moving parts.
When a big company buys you out, it usually has a stipulation in the purchase that the principals stay around. See, Justin is getting paid to do what he wants. What's more, he can only get fired to be released from the contract. He's probably got a 3 year term in the purchase, to stick around. There's only an upside for him.
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The company I work for got bought, and they had the CEO stick around doing nothing because of the purchase contract.
Guess I wouldn't know as I'm using a Fraunhaer(sp?!?) MP3Enc for MP3 encoding. Like I said, the free encoders suck for my kind of music, they leave all kinds of high end noise in the finished product.
Bite my yammer.
WinAmp doesn't enable you to make any sort of copies. WinAmp doesn't include a ripper, doesn't include an encoder, and doesn't include burner software. WinAmp is a playback utility.
The guy also mentioned that WinAmp doesn't distinguish between legal and illegal files. That's because it is impossible to do! If WinAmp refused to play MP3s with the copyright flag on, then everyone would encode their MP3s with it off.
This reporter is either clueless or on medication.
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
I have a Plextor 40x UW SCSI - true digital rips at 20x and a Plextor SCSI Burner 8/2/20 (a little old). I will often dump the disk to an image first - takes a couple minutes - a full CD burn takes less than ten minutes...
If you are ripping a CD with a crappy IDE drive, you deserve to wait a few hours...
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"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
What kind of dumb shit is that? Does Winamp rip CDs and encode MP3 now? I though it just played MP3s.
Cunning linguists
Get a real drive that supports high-speed error-correcting digital ripping (think Plextor) and do it better with less errors. If you don't have the hardware to do it, why bother?
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"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
So there's this group of hackers creating cool pieces of free software while being condoned and payed by AOL. So if this is true, then this is AOL actually doing a good thing. First, that can't be true. Second, what's it doing on Slashdot? Don't tell me the discussion on journalistic integrity is going to affect you people?!?
It is the end of The Dot as we know it, it is the end of The Dot as we know it, and I feel fine..
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
"Atlantic Records has even begun to include the Winamp program on some music CDs, such as Matchbox 20's latest release, ``Mad Season.'' This basically provides all the software someone with a CD burner would need to make illegal, high-quality copies."
Funny - I've never needed winamp to make copies of any disk (software or audio). CD->CD copy works - - and most burning programs let you dump to a HD img if you need it... they don't ship a blank CD, either. Just another misleading statement.
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"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
that the powers that be up at AOL dont try to get their paws in Winamp. Ive been using that program since my win 3.1 days and have watched it grow. If AOL was to start telling these people how to code it..... Just look at what happened to netscape when they got bought out. A good documentary about big biz mucking up good sw projects is on jamie zawinkis (sp?) page. he was one of the original developers at netscape and eventually left in disgust.
"sex on tv is bad, you might fall off..."
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
"It was an odd admission considering that the Winamp player doesn't distinguish between playing legal and illegal MP3s either."
Funny, neither does my walkman.
Get a Plextor Plexwriter 12/10/32A. With its new Burn-Proof technology (essentially it stops the write if it runs out of data, then resumes), you'll never make another coaster. I've had one for months, and I can do anything on the computer that I want without messing up a write. You can even do a CD-to-CD with no problemos. Love this product (and no, I have no financial interest in the company or product.)
Well, MP3 the format isn't illegal in and of itself. You can still make copies legally for yourself. As you said, it is 'units shipped' that you are charged for. If you aren't distributing, then you don't have any reason to worry about using MP3.
Don't get me wrong. I like the idea of Vorbis (I haven't used it yet, but am keeping my eye on it), but I have spent hundreds of hours (not really, hundreds of hours of batch time on my Linux server at home) encoding all of my CDs to MP3 so that I don't have to constantly fiddle with the CDs themselves (and I did purchase a legal MP3 encoder to do this work, the 'free' ones give me really sucky, squeaky quality). It's going to take some convincing to get me to switch without a real reason. And thus far this entire, *MP3 is illegal* thing just doesn't seem real to me. If the format itself ever is outlawed, and Vorbis begins to take its place, it won't be long before Vorbis is outlawed as well.
It is the concept of copying which seems to bother the big corporations. And unfortunately at the moment, the big corporations are all that really matter in the US. God knows the law is bought and paid for by them. Just a few more years and they should be able to remove that pesky voting process where people even have the illusion that they matter.
Everybody knows that government is there to protect the poor abused big businesses from the big bad and nasty consumers. That's what this entire, *MP3 should be illegal* thing is really about. Forget fair use. If you want to listen to a song on your home stereo and in your car you should have to pay for it twice! Now, if they could just convince people that this is *for their own good*.
Bite my yammer.
Could this be AOL's attempt to get some "street cred" by sponsoring a bunch of hackers? Kind of like Sprite running commercials telling us not to believe the hype commercials, or lifelong politicians portraying themselves as "outsiders"?
This is exactly what it is, Suck recently ran a great article on this phenomenon. Basically, Americans like to think of their heroes as outsiders. No matter how well-connected you are, the system is set up so that you can reinvent yourself as a renegade.
Why? Because this country was founded by wealthy, well-connected men who modeled themselves as rebels in order to rally the people to their cause.
That's how AOL wants to be seen, as being on the cutting edge of technology, so they'll put up with Justin Frankel's antics so long as they can point to him and say, "You see, we're not like those other corporate sheep. We're outsiders who take chances!" He is worth more to AOL as a human marketing tool than he is as a brilliant programmer. Frankel have to pull some seriously illegal crap before AOL would give up what he represents.
Does this
some music CDs, such as Matchbox 20's latest release, ``Mad
Season.'' This basically provides all the software someone with a
CD burner would need to make illegal, high-quality copies.
I'm sorry? When did winamp *make* mp3's? And since when could you burn cd's from winamp?
Whatever they're on, it should be illegal - unless you're (insert name of relevant drug-using "star" here).
"I am so cool, you could keep a side of meat in me for a month
io hymen hymnaee io
io hymen hymnaee
Is it possible that nullsoft made some sort of agreement to keep their working environment in tact when AOL sought to take them over? Tivoli did something similar when IBM took them over. If so, that would have been a neat trick. If they did, they should be commended and imitated.
If you have a badly burned CD:
1) Why rip from that one - get a better one
2) a real drive will still help. A plextor ripping at half of it's normal speed for extra error correction will still take less than 20 minutes to rip a full 70 minutes of music.
I don't work for Plextor, but ever since I purchased the 12/20 back in 1996, I'll never buy another brand - they work better, more reliably, and last longer than other readers or burners I've had.
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"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
I do a bitwise verify after a disk rip for each track, and verify the sound for any discrepancies. I also re-rip the burnt disc and verify that against the original (repeat error screening). I've never had any problems with the burns, except for Imation media (never any other kind), or my old HP SureStore 6020i (there's a class action suit against HP for that drive, among others).
I've never used EAC, but I might have to check that out.
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"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
After the Time Warner Merger, Nullsoft will be back in the news... hehehe... I can't wait!
.sigs??
-- Don't you hate it when people comment on other people's
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
...that besides buying Nullsoft, AOL acquired a clue at the same time?
Heh. "You bring the money, I'll bring my big ol' Clue Stick." LOL.
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Well, if that's how you're going to define "profit," then yes, we all live in an ocean of unlimited wealth, free for the asking.
But just consuming stuff tends to get kind of one-dimensional and boring after a while. The important next question is, "What can you do with it?" By which I mean, can you take all that raw material and put it together in new, creative ways?
The value is not in the artifact, but in the imagination.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Sounds like some damn money grubbing management doesn't care what their employees think about where their going. I bet the high-ups bailed after the big check can in the mail too...
you don't have a lot of work experience, do you?
some? try all.
...dave
Think different? I'd be happy if most people would just think...
I never knew this..but cool!
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MP3 = Illegal
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3 letters = 6 letters -- Close enough for a braindead reporter!
No letters match -- Close enough for a believer in this following!
File Format = Felony -- No match but when's the last time a staff writer made sense? Hehe 3 F's!
Music = Intellectual Property -- Not in my belief, but sure in a Luddite's!
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Obviously the real equations here are:
Media reporter = Head up ass
Technology analyst = Brainwashed
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Try that on your calculator!
Definitions:
XML: Leading the way to make the web a ebiz thing
As it stands, the last AOL CD that came in sparkled nicely in the microwave, and I was able to rescue a quite nice CD case of the style usually used for DVDs...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Article's Quote:
The REAL Quote:Somehow, I think that the meaning changes a bit here, don't you? The article seems to want to portray them as hackers who are glory hounds, whereas, I think their real quote reveals that they KNOW they will have their public image assassinated at every chance no matter what happens (as this example blatantly shows)
Hacking away from the inside can be the only thing that keeps you sane. When I found that our corporate http proxies were blocking chiark I started playing with ways to avoid them. So far I am winning (witness this post), but I have had the interesting experience of having my home IP address blocked at the corporate firewall.
Sometimes it doesn't seem fair. After all, if they had any brains at all they wouldn't be working in information security, would they? But they have all the budget, and all the hardware, so it evens out.
At the time of writing, this is the first non-troll post.
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E_NOSIG
- Winamp can be used to listen to illegal mp3's
- Shoutcast can be used to play copyrighted music and not pay any royalties
- Gnutella exists
- The guys from nullsoft released a winamp plugin to change the AOL Instant Messenger ads with something else.
There really isn't much new information here, it portrays the guys at Nullsoft as whimsical, ecentric, crazy kids while showing AOL to be the mature but understanding adult that is simply putting up with their youthful antics with a grin.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.