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AOL Lays Off 450 In California
bmarklein writes "AOL has laid off 450 in California. The former Netscape campus is going from 675 employees to 300. The San Francisco office, which they obtained when they acquired Spinner (now Radio@AOL), and which housed Nullsoft after their acquisition by AOL, is being closed along with an office in San Diego. 100 employees have been offered jobs in Virginia or New York. No word on how this affects products like WinAmp. Justin, are you out there?"
That has to be a good .03% of their workforce.
Slow day already?
Hardly a surprise given their sudden lack of enthusiam for non-microsoft products, now they've kissed and made up with Redmond.
Anyone would wonder if Winamp and Netscape were just tools to help them get their way.
Go mozilla...
Q: What do you call 450 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?
A: A good start.
"What we're doing is actually moving some of our projects into teams in other facilities."
Sounds to me like winamp will have a distinct bangladesh feel to it next version
675 - 450 = 300?
675 - 300 = 375
Am I missing something? Where does 450 come from?
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
what about other aol services that non aol people use? aka aol instant messenger, icq, etc etc?
...especially since the new Winamp is supposed to come out sometime really soon.
I think we all now where AOL's interests now lie.
This highlights one of the dangers of acquisition: once the mother ship no longer thinks your trendy to have in their portfolio - they'll cut you out faster than they acquired you.
[ Monday is a terrible way to spend one seventh of your life. ]
I wouldn't be surprised if XMMS suddenly got a whole lot of new talent on the dev team and it suddenly becomes the defacto media player if WinAmp is left to die.
Its quite a shame to see Netscape being disassembled like this. I remember the glory days of NS, back before IE was even a player on the market.
Two Nullsoft employees (Brennan and Aus) were yesterday. Winamp will continue though.
AOL started out in the dial up industry which from what I can tell has gone right down the shitter for them, however they still managed to merger with Time-Warner before they figured out. Now what have they got? Certainly dial up won't get them anywhere, and the broadband service they offer is just a piece of seemingly annoying proprietary software. Where can they go from here ?
If the dollar is an "I owe you nothing", then the Euro is a "Who owes you nothing." - Doug Casey
So does this mean I can expect a reduction of AOL cds in my mail?
Looks like he still works at Nullsoft to me, though it doesn't look like he knew that this was coming, or he didn't care: http://www.webdog.org/plans/314/
I heard from a friend who works for AOL - their entire internal support staff is being moved offshore (to india).
i have no idea if this is the same layoffs though...
Hello!
You got laid off!
Goodbye.
%$##@!
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
At least Microsoft never bought winamp, or next version would be "winampXP", which would have digital rights management, and to greatly improve productivity, an MSN banner scrolling at the bottom... And of course that awful format known as MP3 would be replaced with the superior microsoft (T) wma codec
You've got a pink slip!
Goo goo g'joob.
It has all the features WinAmp2 has, minus quite a few :-)
Seriously, though, it's awesome.Has replaced all audio playback players I've had/used.
/. Where the truth
A Google search will find you lots of places to get it though.
No actually it's an increase that's coming in the future. They've actually laid off a brewing anti-"cd shipping" group within the company that was distributing propaganda to eliminate the cd's that we enjoy getting in the mail. Thank God they shut these guys down. Now I can finish building my house of CDs...egg-cellent.
___ Shout Central - Crushes your nuts!
Tis the Christmas Season, I got my notice yesterday,
though I don't/didn't work for AOL.
That drops our ratio of UNIX admins to UNIX servers
from 1/200 to 1/400.
"The last thing I want to do is deal with a bunch of people who want something."
Major Major
Oh well, it can be worse. You could get ranked and yanked, like I did. When that happens, they paper your file, rake you over the coals for a few months and fire you individually. It looks great. In my case, my supervisor made sure he nailed me on my birthday. Another great and integral part of rank and yank is bonus incentives for those not fired. The company was talking about bonuses as high as 15%, knowing they could split the salaries of the people they planned to fire. It's strange how no one but supervisors were excited about that.
Look forward to getting the usual communist propaganda from the company by mail for a while. The idiots in HR sent me a big fat glossy book, personalized with my own numbers, about what great benefits the company has for it's employees. The only thing they missed in the personalization was the fact that I was fired. How sofisticated, the company really loves me.
My company was big, but Time/Warner is much bigger. I wonder if the Netscape people are going to have it that much worse than I did. Nah, it's hard to get worse than fired, no matter how the jack-asses dress it up.
Welcome to the great suck that is the "recovery". I've been out of real work for more than a year. I'm not really happy to have lots of company.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
So I can listen to my CDs in 1/10th the time. Cool!
I for one was expecting this. Considering that earlier in the year AOL Time Warner decided to change its name back to just Time Warner. It is common knowledge that they have been losing thier clients to other ISP services like MSN and Comcast. When your user base shrinks the company must as well to keep from losing to much money on having to large of a workforce for thier userbase.
-Certified TechnoWeinie
Believe it or not, not everyone uses linux. Winamp was for a long time the best media player for windows. It was light-weight and robust...it did what is was supposed to well and didn't try to take on lots of other functions (ala winamp3.) Hopefully the XMMS dev team will get some strays and release a nice windows port.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
From what I heard AOL rushed out the release of Winamp 3, which is why it was such a piece of shit. But the Winamp 5 Beta RC 10 seems to have combined the few redeeming features of Winamp 3 with the functionality and non memory whoringness of Winamp 2....while being compatible with plugins and skins from both versions.
Well its not suprising. I'm just expecting an announcement in the next couple of days that they are outsouring themselves to India
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
If you read the winamp forums this isn't their whole team that's going away. Two of the guys that were 'let go' were the lead developers for Winamp3. From my take on it, they're still working on 5.
Read up here
So do I. Though only as an event in history. Netscape Communicator is gone. Dead. Arising from its ashes, however, is a top class browser that leaves netscape communicator and internet explorer coughing in its dust. Let go of netscape. AOL had no problem doing so.
ibhear
It's: Winamp, it is really whipping the elephant's ass!
Somebody tell me that little icon fscker running man was included in those layoffs, and also will some of their users be laid off ...
source http://www.antioffline.com/aolstory.html
Confident with the US government's standing on its purchases, AOL announced today they will purchase themselves in a hostile takeover move in an effort to ensure they don't compete with themselves.
Time Warner an AOL subsidiary backed AOL's decision with the company's spokesperson stating "We as a company are please to announce that customers will have the ability to choose between AOL and the new line of products titled XAOL which simply translates to eXtended AOL which will feature more robust happy face icons with a slightly higher 102 megabyte overhead of icons and sounds.
"In addition we are now ceasing the abilities of hackers by bundling XAOL with the latest in our very own firewall which features will include packet filtering, AOHell punters for our chatters, and SpamGod v.1 for our users who send bulk mail."
As for the takeover plans include an overhaul of the technical support group which will now have mandatory classes at Romper Room and a new set of AOL for Dummies, Internet for Idiots in 21 days for Dummies, and The Internet Who'd of Thunk it, books in order to facilitate their skills.
"Customers will also have new screen names to keep up to date with the changes of the net, so a user named billybob will have all aliases associated with that name to keep AOL as hip as ever. BiLLyBoB, xXxBiLLyBoBxXx, b1llyb0b, are some of the combinations available at this time." states Justin Case CTO Operations.
Along with these added new functionalities in AOL, monopolies will be built around Time Warner's existing empire and the entire cast of the WB's popular will fill chat rooms from 6-9pm and the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer will also join popular chatroom channels such as DesperateAndDumbHousewives.
Investors are delighted to this deal and are pouring millions of dollars into this new venture in hopes of someday being able to interpret anything related to technology. "As long as its on the Internet it must be profitable, so we filled out portfolios and dumped our life savings into this wonderful idea."
Phil McGroin analyst Meryll Lurch
MoFscker
Personally I don't want Winamp 3 because every version I tried was horribly unstable and I had to end up uninstalling it. The only really cool thing about it was the media library and that ended up in 2.x. So, I never saw any need to migrate.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
XMMS is technically a competitor of winamp that stole its look and feel. I would bet that all of the developers on winamp would sacrifically kill themselves before joining the xmms team.
Nothing against xmms... but... pride in "your" code is what pushes a lot of development. I would see them re-creating a new player first. Also, they probably signed a non-compete clause in the first place. They are probably forbidden to write media players other than AOL related.
For real.. Show you "buy american" spirit and protest or cancel your accounts or get your family switched off aol.
Doesn't is PISS YOU OFF that not only are these workers being layed off and jobs being transfered out of america, but they continue to jack up prices, restrict service and push cheasy upgrades as major features. On top of that, how can any company keep the word AMERICA in its title and start transfering jobs overseas.
The ISP land is already a joke. You can pickup AS5200's, Ascend Maxen and other terminal servers with high port densities for pennies on the dollar.. i know it certainly isn't IT expenses infringing on profits..
Why don't they quit spending out millions of wastefull cd's and pushing stupid commercials..
Is america litterly going to shop itself out of existance with a blind eye towards supporting our own economy and local jobs?
Perhaps; that seems to be where it's at. Windows only (hey, like >90% of computer users!), but excellent. Can't comment on XAMP, never heard of it! (probably what most of you are saying about foobar?). I agree with you that Winamp's time is over, but it takes a long time for most people to move on - WA is/was an incredibly well penetrated (can i use the verb like that?) product. It's still synonymous with MP3s and 'computer music' to many people. They might just be using it for as long as it works on their OS.
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
Netzero and Juno are fine for dial up. If they had placed as many CD-ROMs at Blockbuster and Best Buy they would have almost all the AOL customers by now. Broadband will eventually pound the last nail in the AOL coffin. I sure hope it gets cheaper. My comcast is $47 / month.
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
Do we really need to see the Yellow Guy?
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
'You've got dole!'
'You've got a P45.'
'You've got food stamps!'
. Any more? I suspect said ex-employees will be finding out if you can build a house out of AOL cds.
what version you are using, but i've been using xmms for greater than a month, and havn't had any problems with it.
granted, i havn't heard anything above 192kbs so mabye in the high ranges things go to hell, but over all it's a great system. and i've been using the version that comes with Debian --stable.
mabye your soundcard just sucks?
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
that's what being anonymous on the net is all about.
IHATEAOL69 and AOLSUCKSCOCK3 could join the xmms team, and so long as they stayed that way, i don't think anyone would care, as long as the software worked.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Totem for me, thanks.
There's nothing wrong with choice, variety being the spice of life and all. I personally use(d) WinAMP in Windows because I could feed it a directory of tunes and it would parse and play them for me, complete with pattern searching and sorting by genre (like iTunes). Find me an mp3 player in Linux that does that and I'll marry it. Yes, I'm familiar with Rhythmbox, but I'd like something a little more mature if you don't mind.
El riesgo vive siempre!
"Consider McDonalds. If you go in, you can take a napkin for free. 300 years ago, a napkin was a much more valuable thing. They wouldn't give them away. Somewhere along the line, it became easy enough to make them that they lost their value. The same thing is happening in the computer software and support industry. If someone can do it as well (the tough part) and more cheaply, than they will have a market. The napkin makers got over it. So should you."
Well it's nice to hear you're taking the unemployment line with such good grace. The present situation is more than just "outmoded and gotta go", although that's a common refrain from those who get their news from CNN, and Time magazine. I suggest you look a little deeper.
They have also layed off people at their Tucson, Arizona support site...so that should be up to about 2.2% of their work force. So you AOL'ers have a longer wait time on hold for your 7 minutes of support now (;
Yuma, AZ...You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.
Didn't Justin leave several months ago? Slashdot says he did!
Lasers Controlled Games!
I hope that their layoff comes with a nice deal, like maybe getting an AOL CD in the mail.
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
How sofisticated, the company really loves me Ever think they could have fired you for your spelling? I've been out of real work for more than a year. I'm not really happy to have lots of company. Or your cheery outlook? Get a grip and go to Dice I get calls and offers all the time via Dice and Hotjobs and haven't had my resume listed their in eons.
MoFscker
Oh grow up. You're putting words into my mouth that are utterly without basis from what I posted. I think any job loss is bad news, and 450 is really distressing. I've been in situations where I've put my shirt on the line for a company I believed in and, in some cases, just wriggled through, and, in other cases, paid the price with my job. And, hey, guess what? In one of those cases I was the sole programmer at a company that ended up struggling and decided to cut me loose first.
If you read my direct quotation of the 2% figure as being somehow trivializing, then you're deliberately trying to spin it. 2% of a company's workforce is, to me, fairly substantial. Getting rid of innovative people such as the undisputedly talented programmers under discussion here is a very real and serious action.
Looking at your other post on this topic, it looks like you've got a chip on your shoulder, but it's certainly justifiable. Unlike you, I'm not going to wish you ill or gloat, because I've been there and know how much it sucks, and it's just not worth it to spread the bitterness. I really do hope you find a job soon.
There is no problem with my comment. Offshore coders get paid. Napkin makers get paid. Those who make commodities get paid, but margins are slimmer than for items that take more skill to make.
If you are in a market which is being commoditized, you can't expect:
a) to make a lot of money
b) that people in other countries won't compete with you
All of these products are bought and sold by people who have learned to survive within the tough commodity market. The way to survive there is to keep costs low. If the US prices itself out of that market, it should either cut its costs or chase after a newer, more lucrative market.
Sorry if this is stupid, but Winamp 5? What happened to winamp 4?
http://wsulug.org
Your exatly right. Around here its a standard roadrunner connection and has all the crap expected from dialup aol, thier software, startpages, 'content' etc. Oh, and it costs $10 more a month than standard roadrunner.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
All I want to know is... when is Sonique V.2 going to be finished, and is it going to suffer from the horrible syndrome of trying to be a general video/media player instead of simply an audioplayer which killed Winamp for me?
The idiots in HR sent me a big fat glossy book, personalized with my own numbers, about what great benefits the company has for it's employees. The only thing they missed in the personalization was the fact that I was fired. How sofisticated, the company really loves me.
That sounds sadly typical of the people who work in HR departments. A few years ago, my mom was laid off from an insurance company after they decided to close the office she worked at. Several days later, they called her at home to do an exit interview, and one of the questions they asked was "why did you leave this position?" - which made her start crying.
Come to think of it, this was just after Christmas - I was home at the time on Christmas break from college. The timing may have been more a fiscal calender that conincided with the calender year, but it still seemed kind of harsh.
I have blog like everyone else
Please, be realistic. Mozilla (as weel as Firebird) are both truely excellent products. I use them all the time.
But Mozilla isn't going that strong... Unfortunately, IE is still the (very) dominant browser, with a huge market share.
Juts like everyone here, I would love to see many more use Mozilla but as for now, it remains a dream
Over at the Four Seasons, events of some significance are on the menu along with the white truffle risotto ($130 for an appetizer portion) and grilled dorade. On Nov. 20, Edgar Bronfman Jr. and Roger Ames spent a good long while chatting amiably with heads bent toward each other while other captains of industry, including Ronald O. Perelman, Steven Rattner and Ronald S. Lauder, casually took in the significance of the pairing. A few days later, Warner Music, of which Mr. Ames is chairman, was sold to a group headed by Mr. Bronfman for $2.6 billion, which sort of puts the price of risotto in perspective.
Oh yeah, that's real good perspective. People who think a $1,000 lunch is a reasonable business expesnse think shit - canning programmers is a good idea. The article goes on to predict good economic times. Ugh.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
APPARENTLY...
They skipped 4.
Since winamp 2 + winamp 3 == winamp5
The speed and stability of 2 with the features and more of 3
*cough*
[I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
I remember when Netzero was making TV ads saying "we are free, and always will be." So there is hope that "AOL will dominate the ISP market" will prove false very soon.
I know your gut reaction (and that of those directly effected by the cuts) is that this is a travesty of justice and that AOL should burn in hell (and it should along with that ridiculous yellow d00d).
There is a sunny side to this. Think of all the talent that has been freed into the California landscape... All of those coders, with nothing but time on their hands (in between job searches)...
I think we can expect to see some interesting and potentially ground breaking start-ups to appear come June/July when they've all given up trying to join a big company. Isn't that how we got from 16mHz machines only good for word processing to the current state of internet, gaming rigs, media servers and TiVo's in the first place?
To those who are unfortunately out of the job, please keep your talents current. By all means, discuss the idea you had in the shower this morning for that great new piece of software/hardware with your best friend over a beer. Put a desk in your garage and start typing. Give the tech power so horribly mismanaged by corporate America (online) back where it belongs: with the geeks.
--KS--
"You've failed to grow the company but you got a multimillion dollar bonus anyway!"
..Should be ported to Windows if Winamp goes down. Shoot, I don't know if I'd tell the difference.
The text is not black, it's different dark purple colors.
Looks "good" in Safari. Maybe you have your screen brightness low?
WinAmp 5 rocks so far. Defenitly worth the hunt to find yourself a copy. I grabbed mine off of a weekly software posting on IRCSpy.com about 3 weeks ago. The beta I use at work is as stable or more so than the copy of Winamp 3 it replaced. --KS
So did Stalin.
Industrial consolidation of the kind we are seeing is not capitalist, it's the result of excesive regulations and predatory practices. Where those regulations are most restrictive, you have the greatest consolidation. Music and media, FCC, RIAA, MPAA. Telecomunications, FCC. Electric power, too numerous to mention, though there are reasonable justifications that have been abused. Medicine is being socialized. The end result is functionally equivalent to communism - you are not alowed to compete or even complain about it and poorly informed drones make decisions for you.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Winamp 2 was ancient. WinAmp 3 sucked.
Winamp 5 (2+3) was looking real good, I really really like it.
Wish it would continue. I really hope it does.
Unfortunatly if that guy tried offering wages like that around cities like Boston you'd be spending most of your income on housing. You'd always be one paycheck away from being homeless. As long as companies gravitate to expensive areas like the northeast they have to pay a reasonable salary.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
did anyone else pick up the Arising from the Ashes pun? You know..Pheonix, dies in a burst of flames only to be reborn from the ashes...was it intended?
I had read about this as a rumor on some site yesterday, being pointed there about some layoffs at Vivendi I think.
I hope this doesn't hurt the Nullsoft guys that much, since Winamp5 is now in beta testing according to their forums
Insert Sig Here
It doesn't matter how you justify yourself.
Your time of retribution is coming. Every year more and more people lose their jobs, their future, and ultimately their life(but perhaps not their existence).
People only choose to be a part of a society when it benefits them. As soon as the people gain nothing from following your ridiculous economic laws they will start their own society in its place. A man who has lost everything has nothing to lose by fighting for change.
In the end you are a traitor, and when the revolution comes, you will have no place in the new order. Your ideology is destructive because it depends upon the bourgeois as its justification, but it ultimately leads to its destruction. You are not guided by any ideal of human advancement, only materialistic gain(and your belief that is the prime motivator of human existence). The nihilism of the western world you see all around you is just the beginning. For now, sex, drugs, and rock and roll is enough to keep the people amused. We have reached the apex of that ploy however. No one cares about rock and roll anymore. Alcohol consumption is declining. Party drugs have lost their thrill, but heroin is coming back, a sign people need a powerful pain killer for their troubled souls. The vast numbers of whores on every communications medium has trivialized sexuality. People rightly view now as no different than eating. Its just a different kind of hunger.
The only animal instinct left to tittilate is bloodlust. It is the desire for war which affects all great change. Every other desire simply placates.
The only question left to ask is what side will you be on?
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Winamp 5 is nearing release, and these layoffs (as regrettable as they are) will not effect the Winamp 5 release.
The nullsoft members who were laid off were working on streaming media.
I believe that with the advent of winamp pro (for full speed cd ripping and burning and mp3 encoding) which will cost a small amount of $. We will see winamp having a steady revenue stream that will hopefully keep the core winamp team safe.
couldn't this just be because they had to free up some revenue to pay for that witty commercial with Jerry Stiller and Snoop Dogg?
I mean, now that I've seen that, and AOL's brand of self-deprecating brand of humor, why, I almost went out and installed AOL myself!
Oh wait...no I didn't.
I hope AOL goddamn dies.
I know that my math skills suck, but 675 - 450 != 300
Open source advocates again scored another victory in the war against proprietary software as for-profit megacorporation AOL decides to stop paying hundreds of programmers for so-called "development". Open source advocates see a change in the tide of their long-running battle for free software. "Companies are finally beginning to realize the power of open source means not having to pay for programming", states open source guru Gunna Notwork Agin. Industry watchers perceive AOL's move as significant given the high profile of AOL's Netscape browser, which is based on software contributed -for free- by a large and active commumity of hobbyists.
"AOL's new corporate policy is to never pay to develop sofware that AOL can receive for free. It's a big shift for us.", states AOL's CEO Richard Parsons. "In the past our IT budget consumed vast resources, mostly personnel expenses, that had a negative affect on earnings. Not any more. Those days are over for good".
Many open source advocates questioned could not respond to the publishing of this article because in the words of one advocate, "Somebody has to bus these tables". Where this trend leads is difficult to say, but this reporter is betting that happy days are here again as a result of GNU movement. Hurrah!
Happy 15th Birthday, tough guy!
was it intended?
Given that this is Slashdot, home of the illiterate ill-spoken many and one of the few places that can make a grown grammar nazi cry, I'd have to say it wasn't.
Why do you watch their crap anyway?
:)
Hell.. I bet you even PAY to watch that stupid shit.
Don't blame yourself... you were brought up that way I'm sure.
Those America Online employees are in my hopes and prayers. Who knows maybe America Online is outsourcing their jobs. That would make me laugh.
You might know everything, but you certainly don't know everybody...
The more American jobs are lost here, the more
it becomes harder for everyone to live.
Ok troll, I'll bite. AOL bought Winamp. AOL bought Netscape. AOL bought Time Warner.
After the merger, the the value of AOL dropped faster than CmdrTaco's pants when he's got the shits, Steve Case left, and "AOL Time Warner" renamed themselves back to "Time Warner", but it wasn't Time Warner that bought AOL.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Please switch over to phone sex chat lines
in protest!
oops... mistake in my post...
I should not have referred to anyone being "fired". Instead, we are talking about lay-offs. So, replace fired with laid off...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
If anything, AOL Time Warner sued Microsoft. Sure, AOL shouldn't have settled their antitrust case, but large institutional shareholders have been pressuring the board to start cutting costs and reducing debt (kinda funny how AOL Time Warner has $25 billion in debt and shareholders are complaining yet Comcast has a debt of $30 + billion and its JUST a cable company) and they didn't have the stomach to continue fighting Microsoft which probably would've lasted in court another 5 years. So instead of winning a $10 billion case, having the damages trippled to $30 billion and then having to fight Microsoft on appeals for several more years, AOL Time Warner took the $750 million settlement and "promised" to look at Microsoft's Windows Media technology.
Since then, AOL has been aligning itself with Apple. Instead of using WMA files, AOL has been shifting to support the iTunes Music Store. Big loss for MSN. Sure, AOL has been cutting out Mozilla development, but they haven't snuggled up to Microsoft either. I would be willing to bet that AOL Time Warner was embarassed to fund Mozilla once Apple brought Safari to market (I'd bet money AOL would offer a Windows-based "Safari" if Apple made an official port). Check out that AOL PC. AOL is rebundling Star Office as "AOL Office." That's not exactly endearing themselves to Microsoft. AOL also gave lipservice in the settlement to AIM/MSN interoperability, but nothing has happened on that account (I'd expect to see AIM/Yahoo Messenger interoperability before that). AIM is now available on all the major mobile phone services in the U.S. (Cingular just signed on).
So where exactly is the so-called Microsoft-love? AOL is still fighting Microsoft, although it is more special ops style than overt displays. And if AOL cuts Nullsoft, it isn't because of Microsoft, its because of Apple's iTunes... After all, Steve Jobs pretty much praised AOL in that interview with Rolling Stone, plus anyone with a Mac with Safari as their browser knows that the Netscape/Apple webpage is the default homepage for nothing...
ps. Oh, I completely forgot about AOL and Apple's cozy relationship with iChat...hmmm...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
This is terrible news (workers losing jobs is never good--take it from someone who is unemployed) but this lay-off was almost inevitable. AOL simply is overvalued and doesn't even make much money. It simply became so large due to the Time-Warner merger. Since that fizzled (there wasn't even a case for the merger in the first place), AOL is in a sad state... It wouldn't surprise me if even more AOL employees are laid off within 3 quarters...
As a side note, notice how the CEOs that WASTED billions with the merger (yes, stockholders lost BILLIONS) were never ever fired. AOL CEO stepped down (never fired) but well after making his money. I'm sure Steve Chase "resigned" with massive bonus payments and perks...
BTW, there is some guy who is blaming problems like on Communist propaganda. lol... pretty soon, these guys are going to blame communism for the Iraqi war boondoggle...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
But if you recall, until recently they were free ISPs. They would have sunk like one of Dick Cheney's kidney stones if they had sent out a massive amount of CDs back then.
"You've got fired!"
They don't give a fuck about their fellow man.
I think AmeriKKKa needs to have it's economy
destroyed so people here will wake the fuck up and
start caring.
inefficient == less than full capacity. Central planning wastes resources that people would otherwise exploit as they pleased. The net result is a lower standard of living and under-employment. It's generally for the benefit of those in power under both systems too.
Music is a good example of market consolidation resemeling a socialist state. The FCC decides who can broadcast and collects lots of money. The big music companies decide who they will promote and collect lots of money. People who could promote alternate acts are locked out and musicians end up doing anything else for a living because music does not pay, even for best selling artists. So the whole structure of restrictions is really supporting the FCC and RIAA. It can be argued that musicians would be better off, ie employed, in a system that was free.
Don't worry, I was fired.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
doing lines off a supermodel's chest. rich/lucky bastard. :-P
Nice. So first they'll fire possibly the wrong people and then decide which projects will suffer the least by the layoffs? The usual AOL priority screw-up witnessed again.
I hope it's everyone responsible for sending me a tin can with a CD in it every ten minutes for the past five years.
There must be whole landfills full of those things.
Company's like AOL tend to do their layoffs at the end of the year to make final numbers look better to the board. But in the process, they ruin holidays and otherwise good family events. I can understand when a company goes bankrupt, but you'd think that when they're just doing it to make the numbers look a bit better, that they'd have the decency to pick a better time of year. Read through f'dcompany.com and you'll see a trend of near year-end layoffs. Sas that money hungry corporate types are insensitive to the familys and needs of the average worker. Not everyone makes 6 figures. Many live month to month and unemployment isn't always enough... especially at the holidays.
And Jim Clark is still rich.
We need much longer holding periods for insiders, as Buffett (Warren, not Jimmy) used to point out.
I noticed they're charging for the mp3 ripping... (understandable; they have to pay for the licensing) Couldn't they make a freeware 'ogg-pro' version that doesn't have to pay for the stupid mp3 licensing, and still gives people the 'pro' name? That would help ogg take off pretty seriously, I would think.
Did anyone make the obligatory Snoop-Dogg joke yet?
In my snail mail. AOL 9.0 in a tin box. I wonder how much they spent on these tin boxes. I also wonder if it was worth the jobs of 450 people. The idiocy of some corporations new cease to amaze me.
-- kortex "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts"
There is a sunny side to this. Think of all the talent that has been freed into the California landscape... All of those coders, with nothing but time on their hands (in between job searches)...
And nothing to pay the rent with, or to buy new development workstations with.
I think we can expect to see some interesting and potentially ground breaking start-ups to appear come June/July when they've all given up trying to join a big company. Isn't that how we got from 16mHz machines only good for word processing to the current state of internet, gaming rigs, media servers and TiVo's in the first place?
No, that was Intel and AMD racing to get customers by offering faster and faster chips.
To those who are unfortunately out of the job, please keep your talents current.
Books cost money.
By all means, discuss the idea you had in the shower this morning for that great new piece of software/hardware with your best friend over a beer.
And now you want them to become alcoholics?
Put a desk in your garage and start typing.
You expect unemployed helpdesk people to afford houses?
i posted on-topic entirely and got modded down from 1 to 0 as 'overrated.' how the hell is NO additional mod points 'overrated'????
i sell illegal drugs
That's where I used to work. 475 Ellis St. Now I work at NASA, literally down the street from the Netscape/AOL campus.
AOL took the "Netscape" logo OFF of the signs facing the street. The Netscape flag is gone. The parking lots are almost always empty and there are several "FOR LEASE" signs dotting the campus.
Meanwhile, the *old* Netscape building houses Verisign and the old Netscape fountain has the %$#@! Verisign logo on it.
It's really sad and depressing.
Oh, about 15,000 employees in their "AOL trial CD" dispatch department then?
Nice worshipping there. Who cares? He's just another programmer who happened to write a (rather poor, unscaleable) p2p network. He's not god's gift to humanity, by any stretch of the imagination- and certainly not worthy of front-page mention.
Please help metamoderate.
Not sure what to worry about more... being proud that Winamp is good enough to be used in space... or being afraid that the US gov't uses Microsloth for the systems in space.
"You got it right on the nose! "Buy American" crap is just racist protectionism."
Well as Regan would say "There you go again...". Pulling out the race card. There's nothing "racial" about it, because the call isn't coming from or going to a "Race". Nationalism would be more accurate.
I'm running Winamp 5.0beta2 and it's rather nice. All the features of Winamp 2 + all the features of Winamp 3 = Winamp 5. That means all the fancy skins, plus all the video support and everything else.
You can get it here if you want to try it out, though it is an *unofficial* release. Works great, though.
you will be running out of points soon, so no more modding me down for no reason. what the hell is your problem?
Probably you! You support AOL if you have investments with any of these companies or mutual fund holders...
Capital Guardian Trust Company 1,177,800 8.51 $16,288,974 30-Sep-03
Integral Capital Management Vi, LLC 316,600 2.29 $4,378,578 30-Sep-03
Royce & Associates, Inc. 1,441,200 10.41 $19,931,796 30-Sep-03
Integral Capital Management V, LLC 246,730 1.78 $3,412,275 30-Sep-03
Empire Capital Partners LP 205,000 1.48 $1,961,849 30-Jun-03
Barclays Bank Plc 174,686 1.26 $2,415,907 30-Sep-03
Bjurman, Barry & Associates 160,000 1.16 $2,212,800 30-Sep-03
ING Investments, LLC 143,100 1.03 $1,979,073 30-Sep-03
Oberweis Asset Management Inc. 112,000 0.81 $1,548,960 30-Sep-03
Whitney Asset Management LLC 76,967 0.56 $1,064,453 30-Sep-03
Royce Technology Value Fund 105,000 0.76 $1,004,849 30-Jun-03
Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund 24,713 0.18 $236,503 30-Jun-03
Vanguard Extended Market Index Fund 17,875 0.13 $171,063 30-Jun-03
Marketocracy Masters 100 Fund 3,900 0.03 $53,937 30-Sep-03
Spartan Extended Market Index Fund 3,753 0.03 $54,831 31-Aug-03
Spartan Total Market Index Fund 3,132 0.02 $45,758 31-Aug-03
Vanguard Balanced Index Fund 2,125 0.02 $20,336 30-Jun-03
Quantitative Master Series Tr-Extended Market Index Seri 1,775 0.01 $16,986 30-Jun-03
Vanguard Institutional Index-Inst Total Stock Market Ind 705 0.01 $6,746 30-Jun-03
Manufacturers Investment Trust-Total Stock Market Index 349 0 $3,339 30-Jun-03
I don't know about you guys, but I havn't upgraded winAmp since 1999... or somewhere in there. Anyway, my point is, why would AOL continue to support its developers when there's nothing left to do? WinAMP 3 just plain sucks ass. I'd cut Nullsoft too, just to increase profits. Seriously, what has Nullsoft done lately? Nothing. WinAmp 2.x kicks ass, but it's done.
You are correct. My appologies. However, I don't doubt that for a certain percentage of the population (a vocal one I might add), its racism disgused as nationalism.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
come on moderators this comment doesn't deserve -2.
its true, winamp2 good, winamp3 bad. and whats this adding -1 overrated to an already -1, that just doesn't make sense.
winamp 3 is a pile of shit.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
And quite frankly, I still see them with enough brand loyalty to get a HUGE amount of money, even if they're charging something as small as $5.
CNN had a story the other day where they confirmed AOL was among the companies sending jobs overseas. I'm sure this is just to make room in their budget to open up their offices overseas for cheaper labor. It's not like they shouldn't already making more $$ than any other ISP with their prices.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
Hopefully the laid off guys will start their own companies that will give us something more exciting to talk about than AOL.
I think it's clear that the techies shouldn't have trusted the business types in the mid nineties and retained control rather than relinquish it for venture capital. We would have all been better off.
But I think the year 2004 is going to be the revenge of the techie - there will be new small innovative companies popping up, and they will not be for sale to AOL's of this world this time.
grisha.org
I got the latest AOL CD in the mail the other day, and it went in the microwave as it always does. However, the little tin it came in is actually rather nice. Now I just have to figure out a use for it beyond the obvious "protect CD/DVD" and "target practice" applications.
Keep on sending them, AOL! Keep the discs, send more boxes, that is!
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
FYI - From what I've heard from sources within Nullsoft, only Winamp3 development has been affected. And that product wasn't going anywhere in the first place. Check out Winamp5 btw, it's fun. :)
Ow. That was mean. Slashdot is also rampant with people shooting their mouths off without a modicum of research. At least I try.
I'm probably going to get modded down for this, but here we go...
While I'm ignorant of a great many things, illiterate I am not. In fact, one of my chief interests is history. I also have a tendency to include a certain flippancy into most comments I write. This makes it more likely that I "it" was intended, don't you think?
I'm also a pedant, and something of what you call a "grammar nazi" (horrible term).
Go easy, and if you're going to utter a stereotype, make sure your subject is a member to the class.
Eibhear
My subject was grown grammar nazis, and I believe I'm a member of that set. Therefore, I didn't have any issues with you or your postings; I was referring to Slashdot in general.