so what did you do when someone refused to pay the bill because they claimed not to be using the service? Or, did you ever get abuse@your.small.dial-up.ISP emails? Did you follow up on those? I'm not trying to be a flaming troll here, but the ISP I ran was small time also, and I found out pretty quickly that these logs were more important than other logs (apache access_log, maillog, etc.). I'm not gonna keep harping on this, but claiming you didn't have enough space for the logs and talking about running email on an NT server make me think that your ISP wasn't well-managed / well-planned from the onset.
i_r is right on here. I used to run an ISP and there are simple reasons that these logs are kept: abuse complaints and billing disputes. In my case, we used a hacked version of RADIUS that told us the username of the user logging on, the CID info (when available), and the IP leased to that user. Each ISP handles abuse and billing problems differently, but they tend to learn pretty quickly (usually by being blacklisted by another ISP) that it is in their best interests to at least keep the information listed above.
wow, if you weren't so pissed off at me, I wouldn't have responded, but since you resorted to insults, I'm inclined too...
RTFA, obatining the screeners meant signing an agreement, in effect a license agreement (like the GPL).
You may not believe this, but I did read the article and one thing all you YRO/. hippies forget is that contract law does *NOT* supercede all other forms of law. Just because you sign an agreement, you are not bound to that agreement if the terms infringe upon local or federal laws. This was a *FREE* copy, so why shouldn't it get distributed for free? The copyright owner distributed it for free? If they didn't want people watching it for free why did they send it to this guy? He isn't an employee of the studio in question... He is simply an old guy with a vote, a vote they need, so he gets a perk.
And please don't try to ascribe people's unethical behaviour to some sort of protest over movie quality. If a movie is bad, you don't go see it, period. That is not license to obtain an unlawful copy. That kind of reasoning is childish, narcisistic, and anti-social. If all movies suck, you don't go to any, and you certainly do not obtain unlawful copies.
I haven't seen the movie, I didn't download the movie and I probably won't see it until it shows up on the Starz channel. However, by sending these free copies out to Oscar voters, they are trying to sway them toward this movie for a prestigious award. I believe the movies should win awards on their own merit. If you had RTFA, you will remember that getting an Oscar means more sales. Although not illegal, this practice seems deplorable to me. Do you see that the film execs are playing timing/perk games with the voters so that people will be duped into viewing the film earlier than they might otherwise? I do believe I have every right to pronounce that I disapprove... In fact, you might take a second to RTFP that I had earlier, all I said was that it is *ironic*. I never at any point said that this guy shouldn't be punished. However, you think I need to 'Grow up' based on a three-sentence comment that I thought it was ironic that a free copy was posted in a free forum. I implore you to Get Literate. Maybe if you could read, I'd consider adhering to your standards of maturity.
There is no moral reason to obtain unlawful copies of music, movies, software, what have you. The motive is greed pure and simple.
I had to keep arguing, but are you telling me that listening to the radio is greedy? I mean, I've never paid the radio stations a dime, but I've been known to listen once in a while. What about watching a movie on a non-cable TV network? You can get plenty of media for free, and the thing that people need to realize is that you can't use a copyright when you want to, but ignore it when it suits you. The door shouldn't swing both ways. The current situation might not reflect my point to well, but I believe that if you allow a song to be played on the radio, you are giving the public the right to listen to it whenever/however they want. Now, my opinion isn't the law, but according to Martin Luther King Jr. 'civil disobedience' is a worthwhile protesting method.
And the oft quoted argument of try and buy, is worse than useless. That kind of arrangement requires trust. Why should the MPAA or RIAA or anyone else trust you? If they could trust you the problem wouldn't be as pandemic as it is.
I don't understand how you inferred that I have ever downloaded a movie from the 'net. In fact, I don't even have broadband at home! I am posting from work where I get a few free minutes every once in a while. Not nearly enough time to download movies and watch them. In fact if you think I am against paying for videos, I wish I could show you the library of children's videos I have at home (Barney, Blues Clues, Wiggles, Thomas the Tank Engine) for my kids and the small library of DVDs (all Matrix, Harry Potter, and LOTR available currently). However, I k
Sorry, I don't think I made my point clearly... The film execs spend too much time playing games close to the oscars nowadays rather than just releasing as many good movies as they can. Am I the only one that noticed that the time of year dictates what type of movies will be in the theatres? Summer means blockbuster action flicks (since the teenagers are out of school), and the end of the year brings all the good movies that I would have paid for earlier in the year (since the oscars will be coming up and we want those movies fresh on your mind).
All I am saying is that if they weren't playing that game with the Oscar-worthy movies, the videos wouldn't be necessary for the screeners. The movies that are good enough to win the awards would get seen at some point since word-of-mouth is still a valid form of marketing.
The MPAA sends out *free* copies of their films, one of said *free* copies makes it onto the Internet where the general public can consume for free. Now the MPAA is upset?
On another note, if these guys were working harder to make their movies better, the voters would go out to see the movies on their own (without expecting free copies) and they wouldn't be in this situation.
You're probably right, but I do want to a make a few more points since my first post was just me spouting off my mouth against SCO.
Sales have been disappointing for a "boom year". Maybe SCO was a factor in that.
One of the great things about linux is that you can get it for free. It is very tricky for the companies I mentioned above to operate like a normal company since their primary products are available through other means some that don't include cost. However, let's take a look at the following accounting numbers: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=RHAT&annual
Despite some poor numbers in general, this is the most interesting to me: Selling General and Administrative 51,666 57,739 93,678 You can see that RedHat did have a good year in sales. Despite all the obstacles and (IMO) poor management at RedHat, they are selling more than they have probably ever. Over 93 million in '03, that is quite a jump from 57.7 in '02.
If nobody believed them then they wouldn't have lawyers working at 2/3 their normal rates and banks giving them millions of dollars and analysts singing "rah rah SCO".
I remember a day when analysts sang "rah rah WorldComm" or "rah rah Enron". Stock analysts are like the movie critics of the investment world. They can easily be bought and the general public will usually trust the rest of the community's opinion before theirs.
I mean, other than the dolts that may actually be paying the licensing fees. But, I don't see any steep declines in RedHat, Suse, or Mandrake sales. People don't believe these guys and it will be a matter of time no before the press quits attending Darl and Co.'s press/phone conferences
I wouldn't say that Java's main advantage is compatablity with almost every platform
I would say that it is definitely one of Java's advantages. I think this feature is useful from the perspective that more small applications will be written by developers that may not be skilled with SQL coding. Many open source projects start out with one developer, and that single developer might not have an arsenal of skills. That is where this sort of thing helps out, that single developer will now be able to use his/her favorite host-language (if Java is his/her favorite host-language) to solve a SQL problem that he/she may not be capable of solving with SQL. Later on, if/when the project grows, the embedded Java may get removed, but at least something had been released, and the concept gets proven.
AHA! So you finally found an article to back up your point, however your math is still wrong... Your article talks about 846,000. I'm telling you that AOL has millions of subscribers. You think I am uninformed, but I am telling you (even though it is your choice to believe me or not), that I have access to both the billing systems databases and user account databases. That is the joy of working in a group that generates reports.
So, I'll give you your >1 million accounts w/o arguing, just so that I can say I am arguing fairly... 25 million - 1 million still equals over 24 million customers. I don't even care about subscriber size, look at our quarterly reports: http://biz.yahoo.com/e/031107/twx10-q.html
Scroll it down to the part where we report on the quarterly revenue from AOL subscriptions, you'll see $ 1,892,000,000 for the quarter... Some quick math would show that it is around 25,277,000 and some change if all of them are paying ~25$ a month. If you are correct and AOL having millions of subscribers is indeed bullshit as you stated, then that would mean we would have less than 2,000,000 subscribers, let's say 1,999,999. That would mean that they each paid over 315$ a month for their service. Unlikely says I, I think that we do indeed have millions of subscribers, and that it is not bullshit.
You might point to restated reports in the past, but do you really think a company would lie on their financial reports during an SEC investigation? Any-who, back to my original point (that you have yet to prove is bullshit) AOL has millions of subscribers. It was a simple fact, that you challenged me on. I am still right, your articles mention a small number of accounts and used the number of accounts churned to make the article seem like big news... Read it close you'll see that they don't mention how many accounts of the 846k were the Sears accounts, if it had been a high enough number to be concerned with, they would have given the real number. Read closer and try to learn how to put on your BS detector before you believe everything in the news. As for your Forbes article, they are just proving one of my posts a while back, AOL is losing customers (no doubt to broadband and some low-cost outfits), but it will be a long time before our customer base is bled dry. We have had slow time periods in the past even during the.com boom, but many times it is due to less marketing, or unsuccessful marketing campaigns. If all the sudden you receive less AOL CDs in the mail then normal, it could be that we aren't marketing as hard, so our normal churn surpasses our subscriber rate. It could be, maybe, just maybe, our marketing departments are trying to figure out how to get a hold of other markets currently and have laid off the narrowband marketing for a while.
If you are truly interested, you can look around at some of our competition (MSN, SBC/Yahoo!) and count their subscriber numbers, you'll see that we have more than triple anyone else (even after your 'steep subscriber loss').
biased... probably, but you can't say it is meaningless, you are the moron that hasn't brought one fact to the table. If my arguments are meaningless, why would you say: you go ahead and content yourself with knowing that you were right ?
Look, you spouted out some anecdotal BS, you got called out, and you can't back it up with any facts. You can refuse to believe me, but it is similar to a child who thinks you can't see her because she has her eyes are closed. I am more informed on the topic than you are and you can't seem to let accept it... A real man would be able to accept defeat, but instead I feel like we are both living up to the following pic
My understanding was that they wanted to fit the client on to a floppy (remember the good old days of asking AOL if you could try their service, just so you could get some free floppies...). I don't know if they would be able to fit a dialer, configs and Firebird on a single floppy.
That's like arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin- it's meaningless.
Meaningless? No, arguing on the Internet is meaningless... Having millions of subscribers is significant! They are there now and will be there for at least a while longer.
In the meantime, the rest of us will analyze how well they can hold on to those customers- something that in the real world is meaningful.
Don't tell me that my argument was meaningless, I actually work for AOL. I didn't see any mention of your employment here. Your analysis doesn't mean shit to anyone I know, so you might as well be analyzing your angels on pinheads.
Google runs off commodity equipment, but there is a difference between running a cluster of linux machines with varyingly different hardware and running a heterogeneous environment of networking equipment. Each piece of equipment that comes from a different manufacturer will have a completely different CLI. Also, one of the things that commodity equipment skimps on is the monitoring facilities, if it doesn't support at least SNMP it will be difficult to monitor. With the commodity equipment that google is running, all of these details are abstracted by the Operating System. Where we can, we do use commodity equipment (web servers, etc.), but the kind of equipment I was referring to in my original post doesn't qualify.
Hey, I didn't claim to know what AOL's long-term plans were for dial-up, in fact, I concede that AOL is in big trouble if they can't find a better business model. However, you said that their subscriber base numbers were bullshit... I can tell you with confidence that it is not bullshit. They are huge, they may not be that way forever, but right now, and at least for a while longer, the AOL subscriber base is a force to be reckoned with.
call it as many times as you want, it doesn't make you right. You have never tried one of these AOL promotions have you? You insert the CD and it gets your billing information and verifies it before you are able to sign on. The billing system lets you slide for the first X hours (where X is the promotional number of hours, right now 1045 in the first month, or something like that), then starts billing you automatically. The people that claim to get free AOL are smart enough to cancel when the billing starts. This bicycling (using free time then canceling over and over again) has been shut down. This was the biggest dent in subscriber base thus far. It happened over a year ago that AOL made the concerted effort to put a stop to it, and they have done really well. The rest of the masses use their AOL casually from time to time and pay the 24.95$ a month without second thought.
You can deny it all you want, but it is a fact that AOL has more dial-up subscribers than any other ISP on the planet.
Well, there you go. Sounds like you didn't get screwed... You saw it coming and you sold, you weren't forced to lose any money, and you probably prospered more than most. Those of us that didn't read the indicators are to blame, not AOL.
I never said they would have fared worse... Check some of my other posts, I just said that they aren't solely to blame as everyone likes to do. I outline a few scenarios in another post. One is that the merger never happens. Two is that the merger happens, but stockholders get out at the right time. And three is what everyone complains about. You can find it here
You've changed your stance again!!?! Here is your original comment that I took offense to:
but the real change came when the TW people found out that they got screwed in the merger and won a sucessful fight to take control of the company including the former AOL holdings
Here, I read 'TW people' as being Time Warner the company (employees, mgmt). You don't refer to the stockholders there...
If you are concerned for the welfare of the stockholders of TW, I can sympathize, except that I lost a ton too, but I didn't panic sell. I don't think AOL will bounce back any time soon, but I also don't blame them for riding the same bubble that everyone else rode. Let's not forget that the shareholders that 'did get screwed' (with your emphasis) could have sold if they took a look at AOL's books and saw the outrageous P/E, and OPS. I mean, during the bubble, everyone ignored even these fundamental stock value indicators, I continue to hold my stance from another post, that if you (or any shareholder for that matter) saw this tumble coming, you could have got out when TW stock was converted to 1.5 shares of AOL stock. If you had right then you would have prospered greatly. Only a few old-timers like my father, told us over and over again that it wouldn't last. Did I believe him? Well, I am still working for a living right ?:)
If you knew that this was such a bad deal, how come I don't see any of your posts in the original 'AOL merging with TW' articles on/.? I did a few simple searches, but my guess is that no matter how hard I look, I won't find it. You are playing Monday morning quarterback and getting modded up for it... So be it.
Are you just spouting this stuff off? I mean, some of it makes sense, and I acknowledge it when it does, but *so* much of it doesn't.
A Subscriber list can't compare as an asset to TW's Copyrights to Time Magizine, to Warener studios, to Turner Broadcasting.
With the exception of Warner Bros. Studios, these companies are based on subscriber base. How can you sell ad space without a large subscriber base? The millions of people AOL reaches through it's service, and the billions it reaches through it's properties (AIM, etc.). Goes further than the subscriber base of Time. The content of these channels is not so valuable, if no one is buying the magazines or watching CNN, which seems to be the case lately at no fault of AOL...
You are assuming that the present decline in AOL subscribers will stay at a static 5%. It won't it will increase as low cost dial ups eat at the subscriber list from below, and the cost of Broad Band access falls and eats at the subscriber list from above.
You didn't hear about AOL undercutting these guys did you? AOL will be able to throw their marketing power at their own low-cost ISP, and stem the exodus before it gets out of control. United Online has a small customer base, only a fraction of the total dialup market, broadband is a much formidable foe, especially with SBC/Yahoo! offering broadband at a rate only a few dollars more than standard AOL. But, even if the customer dropoff doesn't stay static, do you really think that everyone will dump AOL all at once? Show me an example of this happening to any subscription based service. AOL has time to find a way to compete with Broadband. If they don't, they will die, there is no doubt about that. What I am saying is that there is time for them to find this competitive product. It ain't over till the fat lady sings;).
The doctoring of the books you talk about was only a small percentage of the customer base. We called those accounts 'bicyclers.' We eliminated the bicyclers in '02. And, it didn't affected the books so drastically as you seem to think.
My point is that AOL has quite a bit of time before they close all the doors. And, my other point was that they didn't 'screw' TW in the merger, and if you still think they did, you have to admit, that it wasn't intentional.
Oh yeah, and another thing. AOL's stock has tumbled drastically, there is no denying that. But, there are a few things to note here. If TW had stayed TW, they had an inflated market cap, and their stock would have probably dropped to half of what it was at it's peak. That was the general decline looking at Disney and Viacom. That is scenario one.
I can't seem to find what TW traded at pre-merger, but I am sure it jumped when AOL mentioned buyout (that's what normally happens). But, after the merger, that stock is converted to AOL stock at what is thought a reasonable conversion rate. At this point in time, TW stakeholders have a choice, they can get out, or stay in. If they are getting out, they see things the way you do. Many people weren't trading heavily during the bubble because they hadn't forgotten the basic rules of accounting and investing, but these people were teased by other day traders at the time. Any-who, back to my point. The people who got out, would have fared the best of all my scenarios because they would have gotten a decent amount since the TW stock would have been inflated from both the bubble and the prospect of buyout.
Another scenario (which is the scenario that people claim that TW got screwed), is that people kept the AOL stock and watched it tumble. Now, my point is that this can't be blamed on AOL. If AOL was the only inflated stock at the time, then I could see your point. However, everyone's stock was bogusly high, especially in the tech sector! I remember hearing terms like 'The New Economy.' If AOL is at fault for this tumble why aren't companies like Yahoo! and Ebay being bashed on a daily basis? You might mention the accounting problems for the lack of bashing. Well, the accounting problems have been tracked down to one person in a high enough position to affect the bottom line. And before anyone asks, rest assured, that person is gone and AOL is recovering from it. But, anyone expecting AOL to pull a WorldCom will be waiting a while. There are many reasons why AOL will continue to exist, look for another post further down on the board by me for some of those reasons.
You consider millions, I repeat, MILLIONS of customers damn few real assets?
Everyone forgets that this is real revenue... AOL has more paying customers than any other ISP on the planet. Last time I checked in the U.S. AOL was kicking the crap out of everyone (broadband providers included). There will be a continuing migration to broadband, but this will take a while. People like to keep their email address, and the mass exodus to broadband is only happening at about a 5% subscriber loss per year. By my math, that means AOL will still have customers for over twenty years. That gives them some time to find a new niche, or a slow death. Neither one has them dying overnight.
None of that affects the key part of my statement that the turn around in how AOL viewed Microsoft came After TW people stagged their revolt and took over management of the AOL holdings.
This isn't necessarily true. I work here at AOL and I remember when we started using the Gecko engine in another re-branded version of the AOL client (CompuServe). I was disappointed that we stuck with IE in the AOL client. However, it was asked in an All-Hands why we were suddenly happy with Microsoft. The answer was never clear, but I do remember that this decision came shortly after M$ settled with AOL over an old Netscape lawsuit to the tune of 750 million dollars. Up to that point, I think Netscape and Mozilla were just bargaining chips and backup plans. The TW big-wigs don't run the day-to-day decisions on implementation of technology. In fact they really don't care how we do what we do, just that we get it done. Before the lawsuit was settled, M$ was a foe, afterwards, we wanted to be friends again, which makes sense. The AOL mgmt was smart enough to figure it out on their own.
I heard from a friend who works for AOL - their entire internal support staff is being moved offshore (to india).
I actually do work for AOL, and I can clear this up a bit...
There was an attempt to open *one* Indian call center. The call centers for AOL in America have been very difficult to maintain, they have a 35% churn and this gets costly when you think about it from a maintenance and training perspective. Someone had the idea that maybe we could take advantage of the cheap labor in India (this was before many other organizations moved dev work to India, like in 2000). It didn't garner much press that we were opening a call center there. In fact, one of the guys that works here in my location went to India on a regular basis (three weeks out of every month).
I don't know when the call center was closed down, but I know that it ended up not working out the way it was planned. So, before everyone gets their panties in a bunch about moving some work to India, remember, that AOL did it before everyone starting griping about it, and when it wasn't working out, they pulled out and pushed the labor back to the US. The jobs that would have been lost pay $8 per hour with little to no benefits (phone tech support).
On another note, I saw a post above where someone is bashing AOL... He mentions commodity ISP equipment. Now, think about that for a second. Do you really think AOL could run its service off commodity equipment? We are talking about an ISP with over 20 million customers! They had over 35 million during their peak. I'd like to see this bozo run an operation that large with his commodity equipment. Just because you learned the name of some equipment on the tour of your local ISP's server room doesn't mean you'd know how to handle our load;)
but the real change came when the TW people found out that they got screwed in the merger
Why is it that every time someone uses a phrase similar to this one, they get modded up insightful? I am voiding my mod points right now to respond to this uninsightful BS.
TW was not a clear 'victim' in the merger... So the stock fell... Is that AOL's fault? Everyone's stock has fallen since the late 90s. If you think that the entertainment industry wasn't hit, take a look at the following graphs: Disney Viacom
So, just because the stock tumbles, it is AOL's fault? It looks to me that TW stock probably would have fallen just as well... Has anyone ever thought for just a second that maybe AOL was the victim? I mean, didn't TW accept the terms of the merger because they were in debt up to their neck? In fact IIUC, a great deal of AOLTW's current debt is left over from TW pre-merger. So the bubble burst before AOL could pay it down for them, does that make TW a victim (or a bunch of whiners)?
I have a vested interest in TW, but I don't think AOL bashing does any good. It also seems like this is just another case of people letting the press think for them, and not doing any research on their own.
One note I will make though, is that the AOL management was inexperienced compared to the TW management, and the company is in good hands now with the previous TW management in charge (Dick Parsons, et al.). But that doesn't mean it was a fight to push AOL mgmt out because AOL screwed TW, I think that the board just saw the value of TW mgmt experience and moved them up the ladder.
Re:Lets all stop bashing AOL....
on
AOL's $299 PC
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· Score: 1
Soooooooooooo....
Today we like AOL?
/me checking lunar cycle, shift day of month by 3 bits....
Slashdot Mirror
so what did you do when someone refused to pay the bill because they claimed not to be using the service? Or, did you ever get abuse@your.small.dial-up.ISP emails? Did you follow up on those? I'm not trying to be a flaming troll here, but the ISP I ran was small time also, and I found out pretty quickly that these logs were more important than other logs (apache access_log, maillog, etc.). I'm not gonna keep harping on this, but claiming you didn't have enough space for the logs and talking about running email on an NT server make me think that your ISP wasn't well-managed / well-planned from the onset.
i_r is right on here. I used to run an ISP and there are simple reasons that these logs are kept: abuse complaints and billing disputes. In my case, we used a hacked version of RADIUS that told us the username of the user logging on, the CID info (when available), and the IP leased to that user. Each ISP handles abuse and billing problems differently, but they tend to learn pretty quickly (usually by being blacklisted by another ISP) that it is in their best interests to at least keep the information listed above.
wow, if you weren't so pissed off at me, I wouldn't have responded, but since you resorted to insults, I'm inclined too...
/. hippies forget is that contract law does *NOT* supercede all other forms of law. Just because you sign an agreement, you are not bound to that agreement if the terms infringe upon local or federal laws. This was a *FREE* copy, so why shouldn't it get distributed for free? The copyright owner distributed it for free? If they didn't want people watching it for free why did they send it to this guy? He isn't an employee of the studio in question... He is simply an old guy with a vote, a vote they need, so he gets a perk.
RTFA, obatining the screeners meant signing an agreement, in effect a license agreement (like the GPL).
You may not believe this, but I did read the article and one thing all you YRO
And please don't try to ascribe people's unethical behaviour to some sort of protest over movie quality. If a movie is bad, you don't go see it, period. That is not license to obtain an unlawful copy. That kind of reasoning is childish, narcisistic, and anti-social. If all movies suck, you don't go to any, and you certainly do not obtain unlawful copies.
I haven't seen the movie, I didn't download the movie and I probably won't see it until it shows up on the Starz channel. However, by sending these free copies out to Oscar voters, they are trying to sway them toward this movie for a prestigious award. I believe the movies should win awards on their own merit. If you had RTFA, you will remember that getting an Oscar means more sales. Although not illegal, this practice seems deplorable to me. Do you see that the film execs are playing timing/perk games with the voters so that people will be duped into viewing the film earlier than they might otherwise? I do believe I have every right to pronounce that I disapprove... In fact, you might take a second to RTFP that I had earlier, all I said was that it is *ironic*. I never at any point said that this guy shouldn't be punished. However, you think I need to 'Grow up' based on a three-sentence comment that I thought it was ironic that a free copy was posted in a free forum. I implore you to Get Literate. Maybe if you could read, I'd consider adhering to your standards of maturity.
There is no moral reason to obtain unlawful copies of music, movies, software, what have you. The motive is greed pure and simple.
I had to keep arguing, but are you telling me that listening to the radio is greedy? I mean, I've never paid the radio stations a dime, but I've been known to listen once in a while. What about watching a movie on a non-cable TV network? You can get plenty of media for free, and the thing that people need to realize is that you can't use a copyright when you want to, but ignore it when it suits you. The door shouldn't swing both ways. The current situation might not reflect my point to well, but I believe that if you allow a song to be played on the radio, you are giving the public the right to listen to it whenever/however they want. Now, my opinion isn't the law, but according to Martin Luther King Jr. 'civil disobedience' is a worthwhile protesting method.
And the oft quoted argument of try and buy, is worse than useless. That kind of arrangement requires trust. Why should the MPAA or RIAA or anyone else trust you? If they could trust you the problem wouldn't be as pandemic as it is.
I don't understand how you inferred that I have ever downloaded a movie from the 'net. In fact, I don't even have broadband at home! I am posting from work where I get a few free minutes every once in a while. Not nearly enough time to download movies and watch them. In fact if you think I am against paying for videos, I wish I could show you the library of children's videos I have at home (Barney, Blues Clues, Wiggles, Thomas the Tank Engine) for my kids and the small library of DVDs (all Matrix, Harry Potter, and LOTR available currently). However, I k
Sorry, I don't think I made my point clearly... The film execs spend too much time playing games close to the oscars nowadays rather than just releasing as many good movies as they can. Am I the only one that noticed that the time of year dictates what type of movies will be in the theatres? Summer means blockbuster action flicks (since the teenagers are out of school), and the end of the year brings all the good movies that I would have paid for earlier in the year (since the oscars will be coming up and we want those movies fresh on your mind).
All I am saying is that if they weren't playing that game with the Oscar-worthy movies, the videos wouldn't be necessary for the screeners. The movies that are good enough to win the awards would get seen at some point since word-of-mouth is still a valid form of marketing.
The MPAA sends out *free* copies of their films, one of said *free* copies makes it onto the Internet where the general public can consume for free. Now the MPAA is upset?
On another note, if these guys were working harder to make their movies better, the voters would go out to see the movies on their own (without expecting free copies) and they wouldn't be in this situation.
You're probably right, but I do want to a make a few more points since my first post was just me spouting off my mouth against SCO.
Sales have been disappointing for a "boom year". Maybe SCO was a factor in that.
One of the great things about linux is that you can get it for free. It is very tricky for the companies I mentioned above to operate like a normal company since their primary products are available through other means some that don't include cost. However, let's take a look at the following accounting numbers:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=RHAT&annual
Despite some poor numbers in general, this is the most interesting to me:
Selling General and Administrative 51,666 57,739 93,678
You can see that RedHat did have a good year in sales. Despite all the obstacles and (IMO) poor management at RedHat, they are selling more than they have probably ever. Over 93 million in '03, that is quite a jump from 57.7 in '02.
If nobody believed them then they wouldn't have lawyers working at 2/3 their normal rates and banks giving them millions of dollars and analysts singing "rah rah SCO".
I remember a day when analysts sang "rah rah WorldComm" or "rah rah Enron". Stock analysts are like the movie critics of the investment world. They can easily be bought and the general public will usually trust the rest of the community's opinion before theirs.
I mean, other than the dolts that may actually be paying the licensing fees. But, I don't see any steep declines in RedHat, Suse, or Mandrake sales. People don't believe these guys and it will be a matter of time no before the press quits attending Darl and Co.'s press/phone conferences
I wouldn't say that Java's main advantage is compatablity with almost every platform
I would say that it is definitely one of Java's advantages. I think this feature is useful from the perspective that more small applications will be written by developers that may not be skilled with SQL coding. Many open source projects start out with one developer, and that single developer might not have an arsenal of skills. That is where this sort of thing helps out, that single developer will now be able to use his/her favorite host-language (if Java is his/her favorite host-language) to solve a SQL problem that he/she may not be capable of solving with SQL. Later on, if/when the project grows, the embedded Java may get removed, but at least something had been released, and the concept gets proven.
AHA! So you finally found an article to back up your point, however your math is still wrong... Your article talks about 846,000. I'm telling you that AOL has millions of subscribers. You think I am uninformed, but I am telling you (even though it is your choice to believe me or not), that I have access to both the billing systems databases and user account databases. That is the joy of working in a group that generates reports.
.com boom, but many times it is due to less marketing, or unsuccessful marketing campaigns. If all the sudden you receive less AOL CDs in the mail then normal, it could be that we aren't marketing as hard, so our normal churn surpasses our subscriber rate. It could be, maybe, just maybe, our marketing departments are trying to figure out how to get a hold of other markets currently and have laid off the narrowband marketing for a while.
So, I'll give you your >1 million accounts w/o arguing, just so that I can say I am arguing fairly... 25 million - 1 million still equals over 24 million customers. I don't even care about subscriber size, look at our quarterly reports: http://biz.yahoo.com/e/031107/twx10-q.html
Scroll it down to the part where we report on the quarterly revenue from AOL subscriptions, you'll see $ 1,892,000,000 for the quarter... Some quick math would show that it is around 25,277,000 and some change if all of them are paying ~25$ a month. If you are correct and AOL having millions of subscribers is indeed bullshit as you stated, then that would mean we would have less than 2,000,000 subscribers, let's say 1,999,999. That would mean that they each paid over 315$ a month for their service. Unlikely says I, I think that we do indeed have millions of subscribers, and that it is not bullshit.
You might point to restated reports in the past, but do you really think a company would lie on their financial reports during an SEC investigation? Any-who, back to my original point (that you have yet to prove is bullshit) AOL has millions of subscribers. It was a simple fact, that you challenged me on. I am still right, your articles mention a small number of accounts and used the number of accounts churned to make the article seem like big news... Read it close you'll see that they don't mention how many accounts of the 846k were the Sears accounts, if it had been a high enough number to be concerned with, they would have given the real number. Read closer and try to learn how to put on your BS detector before you believe everything in the news. As for your Forbes article, they are just proving one of my posts a while back, AOL is losing customers (no doubt to broadband and some low-cost outfits), but it will be a long time before our customer base is bled dry. We have had slow time periods in the past even during the
If you are truly interested, you can look around at some of our competition (MSN, SBC/Yahoo!) and count their subscriber numbers, you'll see that we have more than triple anyone else (even after your 'steep subscriber loss').
biased... probably, but you can't say it is meaningless, you are the moron that hasn't brought one fact to the table. If my arguments are meaningless, why would you say: you go ahead and content yourself with knowing that you were right ?
Look, you spouted out some anecdotal BS, you got called out, and you can't back it up with any facts. You can refuse to believe me, but it is similar to a child who thinks you can't see her because she has her eyes are closed. I am more informed on the topic than you are and you can't seem to let accept it... A real man would be able to accept defeat, but instead I feel like we are both living up to the following pic
My understanding was that they wanted to fit the client on to a floppy (remember the good old days of asking AOL if you could try their service, just so you could get some free floppies...). I don't know if they would be able to fit a dialer, configs and Firebird on a single floppy.
That's like arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin- it's meaningless.
Meaningless? No, arguing on the Internet is meaningless... Having millions of subscribers is significant! They are there now and will be there for at least a while longer.
In the meantime, the rest of us will analyze how well they can hold on to those customers- something that in the real world is meaningful.
Don't tell me that my argument was meaningless, I actually work for AOL. I didn't see any mention of your employment here. Your analysis doesn't mean shit to anyone I know, so you might as well be analyzing your angels on pinheads.
Google runs off commodity equipment, but there is a difference between running a cluster of linux machines with varyingly different hardware and running a heterogeneous environment of networking equipment. Each piece of equipment that comes from a different manufacturer will have a completely different CLI. Also, one of the things that commodity equipment skimps on is the monitoring facilities, if it doesn't support at least SNMP it will be difficult to monitor. With the commodity equipment that google is running, all of these details are abstracted by the Operating System. Where we can, we do use commodity equipment (web servers, etc.), but the kind of equipment I was referring to in my original post doesn't qualify.
Hey, I didn't claim to know what AOL's long-term plans were for dial-up, in fact, I concede that AOL is in big trouble if they can't find a better business model. However, you said that their subscriber base numbers were bullshit... I can tell you with confidence that it is not bullshit. They are huge, they may not be that way forever, but right now, and at least for a while longer, the AOL subscriber base is a force to be reckoned with.
call it as many times as you want, it doesn't make you right. You have never tried one of these AOL promotions have you? You insert the CD and it gets your billing information and verifies it before you are able to sign on. The billing system lets you slide for the first X hours (where X is the promotional number of hours, right now 1045 in the first month, or something like that), then starts billing you automatically. The people that claim to get free AOL are smart enough to cancel when the billing starts. This bicycling (using free time then canceling over and over again) has been shut down. This was the biggest dent in subscriber base thus far. It happened over a year ago that AOL made the concerted effort to put a stop to it, and they have done really well. The rest of the masses use their AOL casually from time to time and pay the 24.95$ a month without second thought.
You can deny it all you want, but it is a fact that AOL has more dial-up subscribers than any other ISP on the planet.
Well, there you go. Sounds like you didn't get screwed... You saw it coming and you sold, you weren't forced to lose any money, and you probably prospered more than most. Those of us that didn't read the indicators are to blame, not AOL.
I never said they would have fared worse... Check some of my other posts, I just said that they aren't solely to blame as everyone likes to do. I outline a few scenarios in another post. One is that the merger never happens. Two is that the merger happens, but stockholders get out at the right time. And three is what everyone complains about. You can find it here
You've changed your stance again!!?! Here is your original comment that I took offense to:
:)
/.? I did a few simple searches, but my guess is that no matter how hard I look, I won't find it. You are playing Monday morning quarterback and getting modded up for it... So be it.
but the real change came when the TW people found out that they got screwed in the merger and won a sucessful fight to take control of the company including the former AOL holdings
Here, I read 'TW people' as being Time Warner the company (employees, mgmt). You don't refer to the stockholders there...
If you are concerned for the welfare of the stockholders of TW, I can sympathize, except that I lost a ton too, but I didn't panic sell. I don't think AOL will bounce back any time soon, but I also don't blame them for riding the same bubble that everyone else rode. Let's not forget that the shareholders that 'did get screwed' (with your emphasis) could have sold if they took a look at AOL's books and saw the outrageous P/E, and OPS. I mean, during the bubble, everyone ignored even these fundamental stock value indicators, I continue to hold my stance from another post, that if you (or any shareholder for that matter) saw this tumble coming, you could have got out when TW stock was converted to 1.5 shares of AOL stock. If you had right then you would have prospered greatly. Only a few old-timers like my father, told us over and over again that it wouldn't last. Did I believe him? Well, I am still working for a living right ?
If you knew that this was such a bad deal, how come I don't see any of your posts in the original 'AOL merging with TW' articles on
Are you just spouting this stuff off? I mean, some of it makes sense, and I acknowledge it when it does, but *so* much of it doesn't.
;).
A Subscriber list can't compare as an asset to TW's Copyrights to Time Magizine, to Warener studios, to Turner Broadcasting.
With the exception of Warner Bros. Studios, these companies are based on subscriber base. How can you sell ad space without a large subscriber base? The millions of people AOL reaches through it's service, and the billions it reaches through it's properties (AIM, etc.). Goes further than the subscriber base of Time. The content of these channels is not so valuable, if no one is buying the magazines or watching CNN, which seems to be the case lately at no fault of AOL...
You are assuming that the present decline in AOL subscribers will stay at a static 5%. It won't it will increase as low cost dial ups eat at the subscriber list from below, and the cost of Broad Band access falls and eats at the subscriber list from above.
You didn't hear about AOL undercutting these guys did you? AOL will be able to throw their marketing power at their own low-cost ISP, and stem the exodus before it gets out of control. United Online has a small customer base, only a fraction of the total dialup market, broadband is a much formidable foe, especially with SBC/Yahoo! offering broadband at a rate only a few dollars more than standard AOL. But, even if the customer dropoff doesn't stay static, do you really think that everyone will dump AOL all at once? Show me an example of this happening to any subscription based service. AOL has time to find a way to compete with Broadband. If they don't, they will die, there is no doubt about that. What I am saying is that there is time for them to find this competitive product. It ain't over till the fat lady sings
The doctoring of the books you talk about was only a small percentage of the customer base. We called those accounts 'bicyclers.' We eliminated the bicyclers in '02. And, it didn't affected the books so drastically as you seem to think.
My point is that AOL has quite a bit of time before they close all the doors. And, my other point was that they didn't 'screw' TW in the merger, and if you still think they did, you have to admit, that it wasn't intentional.
Oh yeah, and another thing. AOL's stock has tumbled drastically, there is no denying that. But, there are a few things to note here. If TW had stayed TW, they had an inflated market cap, and their stock would have probably dropped to half of what it was at it's peak. That was the general decline looking at Disney and Viacom. That is scenario one.
I can't seem to find what TW traded at pre-merger, but I am sure it jumped when AOL mentioned buyout (that's what normally happens). But, after the merger, that stock is converted to AOL stock at what is thought a reasonable conversion rate. At this point in time, TW stakeholders have a choice, they can get out, or stay in. If they are getting out, they see things the way you do. Many people weren't trading heavily during the bubble because they hadn't forgotten the basic rules of accounting and investing, but these people were teased by other day traders at the time. Any-who, back to my point. The people who got out, would have fared the best of all my scenarios because they would have gotten a decent amount since the TW stock would have been inflated from both the bubble and the prospect of buyout.
Another scenario (which is the scenario that people claim that TW got screwed), is that people kept the AOL stock and watched it tumble. Now, my point is that this can't be blamed on AOL. If AOL was the only inflated stock at the time, then I could see your point. However, everyone's stock was bogusly high, especially in the tech sector! I remember hearing terms like 'The New Economy.' If AOL is at fault for this tumble why aren't companies like Yahoo! and Ebay being bashed on a daily basis? You might mention the accounting problems for the lack of bashing. Well, the accounting problems have been tracked down to one person in a high enough position to affect the bottom line. And before anyone asks, rest assured, that person is gone and AOL is recovering from it. But, anyone expecting AOL to pull a WorldCom will be waiting a while. There are many reasons why AOL will continue to exist, look for another post further down on the board by me for some of those reasons.
damn few real assets behind them ?????
You consider millions, I repeat, MILLIONS of customers damn few real assets?
Everyone forgets that this is real revenue... AOL has more paying customers than any other ISP on the planet. Last time I checked in the U.S. AOL was kicking the crap out of everyone (broadband providers included). There will be a continuing migration to broadband, but this will take a while. People like to keep their email address, and the mass exodus to broadband is only happening at about a 5% subscriber loss per year. By my math, that means AOL will still have customers for over twenty years. That gives them some time to find a new niche, or a slow death. Neither one has them dying overnight.
None of that affects the key part of my statement that the turn around in how AOL viewed Microsoft came After TW people stagged their revolt and took over management of the AOL holdings.
This isn't necessarily true. I work here at AOL and I remember when we started using the Gecko engine in another re-branded version of the AOL client (CompuServe). I was disappointed that we stuck with IE in the AOL client. However, it was asked in an All-Hands why we were suddenly happy with Microsoft. The answer was never clear, but I do remember that this decision came shortly after M$ settled with AOL over an old Netscape lawsuit to the tune of 750 million dollars. Up to that point, I think Netscape and Mozilla were just bargaining chips and backup plans. The TW big-wigs don't run the day-to-day decisions on implementation of technology. In fact they really don't care how we do what we do, just that we get it done. Before the lawsuit was settled, M$ was a foe, afterwards, we wanted to be friends again, which makes sense. The AOL mgmt was smart enough to figure it out on their own.
I agree with you, it was about corporate culture clash, I just hate hearing that AOL screwed TW.
I heard from a friend who works for AOL - their entire internal support staff is being moved offshore (to india).
;)
I actually do work for AOL, and I can clear this up a bit...
There was an attempt to open *one* Indian call center. The call centers for AOL in America have been very difficult to maintain, they have a 35% churn and this gets costly when you think about it from a maintenance and training perspective. Someone had the idea that maybe we could take advantage of the cheap labor in India (this was before many other organizations moved dev work to India, like in 2000). It didn't garner much press that we were opening a call center there. In fact, one of the guys that works here in my location went to India on a regular basis (three weeks out of every month).
I don't know when the call center was closed down, but I know that it ended up not working out the way it was planned. So, before everyone gets their panties in a bunch about moving some work to India, remember, that AOL did it before everyone starting griping about it, and when it wasn't working out, they pulled out and pushed the labor back to the US. The jobs that would have been lost pay $8 per hour with little to no benefits (phone tech support).
On another note, I saw a post above where someone is bashing AOL... He mentions commodity ISP equipment. Now, think about that for a second. Do you really think AOL could run its service off commodity equipment? We are talking about an ISP with over 20 million customers! They had over 35 million during their peak. I'd like to see this bozo run an operation that large with his commodity equipment. Just because you learned the name of some equipment on the tour of your local ISP's server room doesn't mean you'd know how to handle our load
but the real change came when the TW people found out that they got screwed in the merger
Why is it that every time someone uses a phrase similar to this one, they get modded up insightful? I am voiding my mod points right now to respond to this uninsightful BS.
TW was not a clear 'victim' in the merger... So the stock fell... Is that AOL's fault? Everyone's stock has fallen since the late 90s. If you think that the entertainment industry wasn't hit, take a look at the following graphs:
Disney
Viacom
So, just because the stock tumbles, it is AOL's fault? It looks to me that TW stock probably would have fallen just as well... Has anyone ever thought for just a second that maybe AOL was the victim? I mean, didn't TW accept the terms of the merger because they were in debt up to their neck? In fact IIUC, a great deal of AOLTW's current debt is left over from TW pre-merger. So the bubble burst before AOL could pay it down for them, does that make TW a victim (or a bunch of whiners)?
I have a vested interest in TW, but I don't think AOL bashing does any good. It also seems like this is just another case of people letting the press think for them, and not doing any research on their own.
One note I will make though, is that the AOL management was inexperienced compared to the TW management, and the company is in good hands now with the previous TW management in charge (Dick Parsons, et al.). But that doesn't mean it was a fight to push AOL mgmt out because AOL screwed TW, I think that the board just saw the value of TW mgmt experience and moved them up the ladder.
Soooooooooooo....
Today we like AOL?
/me checking lunar cycle, shift day of month by 3 bits....
Yes, I guess we do, thanks for clearing that up.