Justin Frankel On AOL, Subverting The Status Quo

linuxbaby writes "Rolling Stone has an excellent feature on Justin Frankel, the creator of Winamp, Gnutella, Shoutcast, Waste, and other projects. The article calls him 'the world's most dangerous geek', and after years of being muzzled by AOL for igniting the pirate nation, Frankel is breaking his silence." The article ends by asking: "In many ways, Frankel's future encapsulates the debate over the future of the Internet itself. Does it become just a distribution system for corporate product or more of a way to subvert that corporate control?"

Comments

Typo?

[Meneudo]

"Eighty percent of the people at AOL are clueless," he says. Was this supposed to read: "Eighty percent of the people using AOL are clueless?"

Re:Typo?

[bsharitt]

No I think he meant eighty percent who work at AOL. Eighty percent is way too low for amount of their customer base that is clueless.

Re:Typo?

[PakProtector]

Hi there.

My name is Eric, and I use AOL.

I also know what binary is, I used to program in C++ (not so much now since I had to move and don't have my good old linux box), and I'm going start at UF in the fall (hopefully) double majoring in Computer Science 'n' Engineering and Japanese.

I speak enough latin to translate pretty much any text I want to read from the classical into Modern English, and while I may not know every little thing about what exact instructions my x86 machine uses (since there are several thousand of them, I'm told CISC to RISC processor like the Athlon and P4) I can modify registry settings on my Windows box and code nice, nearly compliant CSS webpages.

Not everyone who uses AOL is an idiot. I use it because I'm too lazy to get off my ass and find an IRC server for Roleplaying that has people on it who can actually spell and know what Dungeons and Dragons and Shadowrun and Call of Cthulhu are, not morons who type in 'want 2 cyber?' when I ask they about roleplaying. I've spent 7 (yes, read seven) years building up a group of friends who are intelligent people who are good at roleplaying and know their DnD backwards and forwards, and can quote you page number in what book for what rule.

If I have to pay 20 dollars a month (actually, I haven't checked the rates for people who 'bring their own access' lately) to be able to read member profiles and access chat rooms, then maybe I am stupid, but that 20/month is worth it to me.

Rant off

aol?

[Anonymous Coward]

i heard that aol sucks? should i believe htem or should i use it? iw ant the internuet

Half a billion?!?

[El]

He was paid in AOL stock, not dollars. What are 400 million pieces of toilet paper worth?

Re:Anyone been following Winamp?

[Lochin Rabbar]

2 + 3 = 5 They're using Winamp's 2.x engine that allows 3.x skins to work with it.

That's what they say. Personally I think they didn't like the idea of Winamp 4 Skins.

That makes sense.

[zealotasd]

There are some pretty angry ex-AOL subscribers.

This post was meant to be Informative, not Funny.

Suspicious....

[whoever57]

He ran the school's computer network and racked up a better than 4.0 GPA.

Am I the only person that thinks these two items might be connected?

Actually, it sounds like he is the sort of person who would not need to cheat.

Re:The internet?

[I Be Hatin']

Teh internet, what's that all about? Is it good or is it whack?

It's pretty cool... when it's up, that is. Seems like every weekend lately it's been shut down for cleaning...

No.

[Anonymous Coward]

it was seth green. what are you thinking?