Blech, I hate this style of journalism. I gave up reading while slogging through the guy's entire personal history. I never even got to the meat of the article. (I suppose the style works for bio-centric publications like Rolling Stone, though.)
Could anyone post a synopsis of why the guy is supposedly dangerous?
AOL paid him $100 million for winamp, and he refused to sell out to the point of placing a desktop icon for aol during the install. Version 3.0 became bloated, and so v2.9 was released as a more stream lined version. Some other projects like gnutella were announced but AOL as a corporation dragged their feet and he released the packages on his own, which caused them no end of pain.
Hmm... gnutella was dangerous, I suppose, but certainly not "most dangerous". Sounds like it must have just been a PR puff piece to promote his latest software. (Not that Rolling Stone would ever become the tool of a press agent.)
I too am curious why this was posted being that it's 4 years old.
"The Most Dangerous Geek in the World" ?!?! Where did they get that from? Free spirited? Sure. But how is he dangerous in the slightest?
While I admire his free spirited nature I don't admire his hypocracy. If AOL was that much of an idea crusher/non-innovator why didn't he leave and launch his ideas? Instead he chooses a manner that is disrespectful and possibly illegal.
He worked for a company that was / is clearly floundering. He told them clearly that they needed to change things. And they ignored him. They labelled him a troublemaker.
He tried to help the company, and they declined that help. He tried to push the company, and they ignored that as well. The way I see it, this is the demise of AOL in a nutshell.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 26.1 ms ] threadCould anyone post a synopsis of why the guy is supposedly dangerous?
"The Most Dangerous Geek in the World" ?!?! Where did they get that from? Free spirited? Sure. But how is he dangerous in the slightest?
While I admire his free spirited nature I don't admire his hypocracy. If AOL was that much of an idea crusher/non-innovator why didn't he leave and launch his ideas? Instead he chooses a manner that is disrespectful and possibly illegal.
He worked for a company that was / is clearly floundering. He told them clearly that they needed to change things. And they ignored him. They labelled him a troublemaker.
He tried to help the company, and they declined that help. He tried to push the company, and they ignored that as well. The way I see it, this is the demise of AOL in a nutshell.
4 years old or not, this is a good story.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/...