Ikonboard » Printable Version of Topic » America Oncrack Goes Too Far

Forum: The Classroom
Topic: America Oncrack Goes Too Far
started by: TheTaxMan

Posted by TheTaxMan on Feb. 07 2002,21:52

And apparently an update has been released, but fucking still...growl...

As a good lot of you probably already know, AOL no longer works with Trillian. You can general find AOL's excuse for being a bunch of dick heads < here >. I'm so fucking pissed. Everytime someone releases good all in one software, some company comes up with an excuse to shut it down or neuter it beyond belief. I'm so pissed.

Posted by Non on Feb. 07 2002,22:05

Solution: Trillian puts in a disclaimer that tells ppl "AOL does not recomend this IM client due to possible user security problems. Use at your own risk."

Posted by Wiley on Feb. 07 2002,23:27

So basically if I were to provide a media service for somebody (let's say a television show) and not require the viewers to pay anything for the show as long as they were ok with commercials (or banner ads) then you people would think it would be ok if somebody took my show that was produced in my studios with my actors and passed it off as their own show using their own commercials in place of mine?
Of course AOL is going to try and stop Trillian, they'd be stupid as hell not to. AOL provides the users, network bandwidth, servers, security and buddy lists and then Trillian repackages the user interface and gets the commercial audience? They're not being assholes, it's just smart business ...protect your market share. If I'm AOL then I have an audience of 25million users that I busted my ass and mailed out billions of CDs for. Why would I risk letting some upstart come along and take my 25million advertising windows away? Trillian's plan is not to "give the people better communication", it's mission is to control the highly marketable advertising windows of the collective IM communities. 25million from AOL, 3million from MSN, all the ICQ ..then sell screen time to advertisers ....with very little expense to them.
Just a side note, did you know that AOL bought their instant messenger software from it's creator for 700 million dollars? Knowing that isn't it clear why they need to keep it as profitable to them as possible?

Posted by Non on Feb. 07 2002,23:34

I had no idea IM's were so profitable... I agree with AOL (/me shudders) on this one. Trillian may be better but if they want to take over they need to get their own servers...

Posted by Hellraiser on Feb. 08 2002,00:03

Except for one thing: they're not your actors. They're everyday people like you and me.

Posted by Non on Feb. 08 2002,00:06

"actors"? are you talking about the ppl that made trillian?

Posted by ic0n0 on Feb. 08 2002,00:27

woohoo

Posted by sHuoReNviOLiN on Feb. 08 2002,01:03

Quote

But as an AOL spokeswoman pointed out, in order to use such a system, a user has to tell the software his AIM username and password, which is an inherently dangerous practice.

o_0

Posted by Wiley on Feb. 08 2002,01:50

Quote (Non @ 07 Feb. 2002,15:34)

I had no idea IM's were so profitable...

You put any form of potential advertising in front of a few million people and you won't have time to count the cash that flows in.

Posted by RadioActive on Feb. 08 2002,03:19

what i think is the only reason AOL has any right to defend themselves is due to the fact that trillian is making profit at their expence.
for example icq ried to shut down miranda or block it off they would be total asshole, cuz software is nonprofitable and open source. but from what i heard so far trillian has ads, so that changes everything. if trillian makes profit from this, then aol is right to shut try and stop them.

Posted by Spydir on Feb. 08 2002,03:24

umm... I totally agree wiley, about the business sense of things, but you're making it sound like trillian has advertisements. it doesn't. It is however NOT displaying AOL's ad's... if that's what you were saying, i'm just stupid and not reading it right and thought you were saying that not only was it not displaying AOL's, but it was also displaying it's own..

I've used it for a few months now, and I really like it. I do think it's pretty fucked up that AOL is doing that, but they have the complete right to. Doesn't make a difference, cuz it all sucks ass anyways.

Posted by richard on Feb. 08 2002,03:35

Wiley, in all due respect...that is a fucking lousy opinion. These software giants are always thinking locally, not globally. It's always "gimmee gimmee gimmee!" It's time for AOL to grow up, and stop being domineering arseholes.

When Edison invented the lightbulb, he ddn't corner the market on artificial light.

Posted by editor on Feb. 08 2002,03:57

errr, um, he didn't have to.

What Edison did was corner the market on electricity.

Remember Tesla? Imagine a life with out extension cords; but getting a good zolt off every doorknob isn't my idea of fun either.

Always interesting to see you around, RT.

Posted by veistran on Feb. 08 2002,04:45

if Edison had corned the market on electricity, we'd have a lot more power plants and everything would be running on DC.

Anyway, I doubt AOL is gonna be able to stop trillian, without stopping support for older clients and forcing them to use a newer client, and they won't do that because it's too many lusers potentially lost from the hassle and no guarantee that in a weeks time the trillian crew won't have figured it out.

Posted by editor on Feb. 08 2002,05:24

ya, got them reversed; guess this means Richard has a point!

it was Tesla who went for long distance AC and Edison who lied about how dangerous it really wasn't.

you win, RT.

Posted by veistran on Feb. 08 2002,05:41

Quote (editor @ 07 Feb. 2002,03:24)

ya, got them reversed; guess this means Richard has a point!

it was Tesla who went for long distance AC and Edison who lied about how dangerous it really wasn't.

you win, RT.

Anyway, yes, Tesla is the one who was the brains behind AC, but don't forget that Westinghouse was the money behind it and the true power behind it's adoption.

hehe, anyone seen the videos Edison made, electrocuting an elephant to make AC look bad?

Posted by ic0n0 on Feb. 08 2002,06:12

Did you know that tesla invented the radio long before Marconi even though Tesla get;s almost no credit for it. Tesla also died penniless.

Posted by veistran on Feb. 08 2002,06:23

Tesla pretty much gave a bunch of his patents to Westinghouse, he got $260K for patents worth a then(1907) $~12M.

And on that note, yes and Edison didn't invent the lightbulb, it was invented about ten years earlier by a brit I believe. He just managed to perfect it really. Avg light bulb life was 150hrs, he got it up to 1300hrs, modern lightbulbs get about 1500hrs.

Posted by Wiley on Feb. 08 2002,15:06

Quote (Spydir @ 07 Feb. 2002,19:24)

umm... I totally agree wiley, about the business sense of things, but you're making it sound like trillian has advertisements. it doesn't.

What it has is potential advertising space, which is sometimes just as good. At the peak of the internet boom it was said that a banner on Yahoo would get the same market penetration as a sixty second commercial run durring the Super Bowl, this is what drove investors to Yahoo ...even though they didn't charge any money to visitors or turn a profit in any way. Think about it, have you ever paid a dime to Yahoo? Has anybody you ever met paid them any money? So how come they were worth millions? Potential advertising has a value to it. Trillian can attract investors by telling them that their client is running on X amount of desktops and has that much advertising potential. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, I just wanted to play the devil's advocate here and give the business site of the story. Actually I'm suprised that I have not gotten flamed to death for defending AOL.
Next up, 101 reasons why Microsoft is your friend
/me ducks

Posted by ic0n0 on Feb. 08 2002,15:11

Some of Microsoft’s actions might be considered illegal whereas AOL is just a bunch of jerks there is a big deference.

Posted by Wiley on Feb. 08 2002,15:20

Quote (richard @ 07 Feb. 2002,19:35)

Of corse they are thinking "gimmee gimmee gimmee" they are one of the true great capitalist companies around. They are actually raising their prices and gaining market share while companies like NetZero try and give service away for free with no success. Like them or not AOL is really really good at what they do. So of corse they are trying to protect their assets (their userbase) from being hijacked by another company. To say that their userbase made up up users who signed up willingly with AOL should be made available to whoever wants them spits in the face of capitalism. Should Starbucks coffee be given out free to whoever wants it because Starbucks is not supporting the global coffee drinking community? Long story short, if you want 100% of the IM market then you gotta get out there and sign them all up with your service, if not you have NO claim to them.

Posted by TheTaxMan on Feb. 08 2002,16:10

Am I mistaken, or does trillian use the AOL servers. If yes, then AOL can still sell advertising space based on the numbers of trillian users becasue I really don't think potential advertisers are going to go through and subtract the Trillian users (if you can even differentiate by looking at some chart).

Posted by richard on Feb. 09 2002,08:08

Quote (Wiley @ 08 Feb. 2002,02:20)

Quote (richard @ 07 Feb. 2002,19:35)

Unfortunately, all of life is not about making a profit, and domineering bungholes like AOL often ruin the finer points, by trying to capitalize on things that should remain free -- like talking to people! Granted, a certiain amount of capitalism powers a healthy economy, but this...beyond what I consider reasonable. Then again, that's just me.

Posted by Hellraiser on Feb. 09 2002,16:36

Trillian doesn't have any ads in the software. If you used it you'd notice that.

Posted by Wiley on Feb. 09 2002,19:07

Quote (Hellraiser @ 09 Feb. 2002,08:36)

Trillian doesn't have any ads in the software. If you used it you'd notice that.

Quote

Unfortunately, all of life is not about making a profit...
...things that should remain free -- like talking to people!

Um ..for a corporation everything is about making a profit. And I agree talking to people should be free, I'm going to write that on my next telephone and cellular bills. I'm going write "life is not about making a profit you domineering bungholes" and maybe they will let me talk to my friends over their network for free ...what do you think?

Posted by Vigilante on Feb. 09 2002,19:34

Such condescension is not really warranted here, Wiley. We're all aware of how the system actually works; that doesn't mean we shouldn't shake our fists and mutter angrily at particularly odious injustices, since we can't do anything significant.

Posted by WrineX on Feb. 09 2002,23:25

speaking of this
i have an ICQ account, shouldn't i be able to add AIM users on my list in Trillian???

how is it done?

Posted by Vigilante on Feb. 09 2002,23:38

I expect you'd still need an account with every service you want to use via Trillian.

Posted by Spydir on Feb. 10 2002,02:40

yeah, you have to have an account for each service. Just a note though, trillian's irc isn't all that great. It's fine if you don't do a lot of IRC'ing, but if you're a IRC junkie like myself, no scripting support and super advanced irc command structure makes it score high on the lame-o-tron.

Posted by ic0n0 on Feb. 10 2002,06:05

I am a hardcore irc'er i have been on irc since 1994, when i was 12. irc has come along way and it is still free thank god, at least 90% of the servers are still free.

Posted by Spydir on Feb. 10 2002,18:44

the only ones that I can't get on are the ISP ones... and the ones run by the monkeys, but that's just because I tried to train them attack on command. "MONKEY! ATTACK!" and a little spider monkey jumps out of th ewall, runs up and punches you in in the genitals.

RIGHT IN THE MEAN BEAN MACHINE!!!

edit: when the fuck did I learn to not type right, again?

Posted by fatalbert on Feb. 10 2002,21:04

whoah...*shudder*
that's the last time I skip the whole first page of a topic and just start reading from the second page...
Spydey, you took < this > much too far, but if only makes me respect you more...

Posted by Spydir on Feb. 10 2002,21:25

yeah, I read that around 2 years ago. it's been the inspiration to a lot of my really bad jokes about monkeys.

Posted by ic0n0 on Feb. 10 2002,22:04

I have been inspired by zombo.com i mean you can do anything there!

Posted by fatalbert on Feb. 11 2002,01:31

yeah, ic0n0, about the newZletter, have you gotten any yet??
I sure haven't...

Posted by veistran on Feb. 11 2002,22:08

Quote (Wiley @ 08 Feb. 2002,17:07)

Again, it's potential advertising space we are talking about. Trillian can have ads tomorrow and you'd be looking at them, and their advertisers would be paying them. Yet AOL would be footing the bill for the network traffic.

Um ..for a corporation everything is about making a profit. And I agree talking to people should be free, I'm going to write that on my next telephone and cellular bills. I'm going write "life is not about making a profit you domineering bungholes" and maybe they will let me talk to my friends over their network for free ...what do you think?

In a sense yes, and no... AOL themselves have said that they believe instant messaging should be like e-mail. So one has to question their motives by trying to block someone who's trying to do just that with this client that works very well with all of the major messengers. And one could also say that if they really wanted to have a secure IM network they'd not let people connect to it from the internet. What it boils down to is AOL is being very Microsoftian in their attempt to be the king of IM.