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The Sinking Ship that is AOL
EyesWideOpen writes "This article at Salon discusses the ways in which AOL is trying to stay afloat, with the release of version 8.0 of it's software, in a time when AOL (which recently merged with Time Warner) has had a string of bad press -- falling stock prices, SEC investigation, etc. -- attached to it's name. One of my favorite quotes from the article says of AOL: ''It was never really an Internet company. AOL was based on the idea that people needed to live in a halfway house while they became accustomed to the Net.'...If folks can get a better, faster, cheaper online experience by ditching AOL, they'll do it in a heartbeat.'"
Come on mods ... that's pretty funny!
It is official; Netcraft confirms: *BSD is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community
when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now
down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the
heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has
lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've
known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly
exemplified by failing
dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to
predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a
bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because
*BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of
us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows
like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core
developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD
developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the
point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is
dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How
many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus
NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there
are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about
half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users
of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD
market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD
users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD
went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another
troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to
yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market
share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very
dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante
dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save
it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
Stupid human lost with white in round 6!
I would mod this as "Paranoid" instead of "Insightful".
Although, you do make a good point.
See ya! cool or what? I pray every day!
My direct supervisor is a fucking idiot. Chime in people, please.
This should be modded up as funny. Come on mods!!
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
Yeah, right! The world could not possibly be a stupid enough place to allow a place called "Spazebo, North Dakota" to exist! Nice Try!
I'm still waiting for people to realise that Starbucks has nothing to do with selling coffee and McDonald's has nothing to do with burgers. Both businesses are in the real-estate / branding game. Starbucks sells awful coffee and yet it's a hit. Why? Because it's everywhere - starbucks buys up property left and right, sticks their store-fronts in 'em, and smothers local coffee houses with sheer marketing pressure. There was a great figure in harper's index a few months ago...(looking)...(can't find it. Damnit) well, it basically said that a huge number of Manhattan's hundreds of Starbucks' are within three blocks of another one. I don't think many places can coexist with that kind of marketing pressure.
Triv
BAR