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Nullsoft: The death of the last maverick tech company (2004)

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Re: Nullsoft: The death of the last maverick tech company (2004)

#161

Post by bitwize »

sametmax wrote: post #75
nikcub wrote: post #35

Despite the "change the world.. break the rules, etc." rhetoric, Silicon Valley couldn't be more different today. I find it hard to imagine a Google employee releasing an ad blocker[0], or Popcorn Time raising a Series A round, or startups shipping crypto that breaks the law, or a startup selling offensive security software (there's a reason that business has been pushed overseas) Today, startups that push the bounda…

I often read stuff like that. "Now you couldn't do it like they did it before". "You wouldn't be able to get away with the same jokes today." Or "You wouldn't be able to publish the same story today." I agree that time changes, but this is discarding the merits of those who did it then. Believe it or not, at that time it was not easy either. The people that did it had huge balls. Geeks were considered less that nothi…

> Geeks were considered less that nothing by society.

Please shitcan the hyperbole and grow some perspective. Until geeks are systematically denied fundamental civil rights, until their very lives are routinely under threat because of who they are, they have nothing on the average gay person, let alone the average Muslim, black, or transsexual person.

By the standards of society, most geeks enjoy very privileged lives indeed. They just lack the social wherewithal to play by society's rules.

Re: Nullsoft: The death of the last maverick tech company (2004)

#162

Post by aidenn0 »

anjc wrote: post #144
aidenn0 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you reencode to lower bitrates you can likely store just as much on the iPhone as you did in the winamp days; when I was using winamp, I bought the largest drive I could afford for video encoding; it was 6GB.

Good point. 128kbps was more than enough for me in those days. 160 was hedonistic.

Half my original MP3 collection was 96kbps 128kbps was "high quality".

Re: Nullsoft: The death of the last maverick tech company (2004)

#163

Post by sengork »

unexpected wrote: post #122
nikcub wrote: post #35

Despite the "change the world.. break the rules, etc." rhetoric, Silicon Valley couldn't be more different today. I find it hard to imagine a Google employee releasing an ad blocker[0], or Popcorn Time raising a Series A round, or startups shipping crypto that breaks the law, or a startup selling offensive security software (there's a reason that business has been pushed overseas) Today, startups that push the bounda…

your statement is very powerful, but I think the sentiment that you describe - "projects that disregard the rules" and "push the boundaries on bad laws" could apply to Uber and AirBnB? Also, projects like Plex, Kodi, Radarr, CouchPotato, - these projects still exist. They're not companies, like Nullsoft was, but they are definitely projects! The late 90's was a wild time in MP3-land. Does anyone else remember: 1) Son…

Glad to see Sonique being remembered by someone other than myself!

Re: Nullsoft: The death of the last maverick tech company (2004)

#164

Post by stuaxo »

joering2 wrote: post #41
ethbro wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A generation who can't imagine the novelty of performing a first search on Napster or Direct Connect. Magic!

Audiogalaxy. Was always impressed how easy it was to find 320kbit versions or even some extremely rare songs...

Will we ever see something as good as it again? It would be tricky, but surely not impossible.

Re: Nullsoft: The death of the last maverick tech company (2004)

#165

Post by mdpopescu »

madeofpalk wrote: post #152
mdpopescu wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any examples where they did that purely on the market, without benefiting from regulatory capture?

Typical 'vice' companies? Gambling and cigarettes, oil? 'Big Pharma'? Does heath insurance count as 'regulatory capture'?

Gambling and cigarettes - lots of satisfied customers.

Big pharma - regulatory capture. Health insurance - mostly regulatory capture in the US.

Re: Nullsoft: The death of the last maverick tech company (2004)

#166

Post by mdpopescu »

xiaoma wrote: post #118
mdpopescu wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking about the opposite of what I said. My implication was 1 billion USD revenue => benefiting everybody Yours is Benefiting everybody => 1 billion USD revenue I stand by the first but not by the second.

You said: "A is the definition of B" I said: "Here are some Bs that are not A" If you had said the definition of a kangaroo was "a big marsupial from Australia" and I pointed out many kangroos that weren't actually big marsupials from Australia, It would suggest that the definition was flawed.

> You said: "A is the definition of B" > I said: "Here are some Bs that are not A"

Yes, and I pointed out that the two are unrelated.

> If you had said the definition of a kangaroo was "a big marsupial from Australia" and I pointed out many kangroos that weren't actually big marsupials from Australia, It would suggest that the definition was flawed.

If I had said that the definition of an A (kangaroo) is a B (big marsupial), and you pointed out that many As (kangaroos) aren't Bs (big marsupials), I would have been proven wrong.

However, I said A (companies making a billion dollars in revenue) implies B (they benefit a lot of people) and you pointed out some Bs (companies benefiting everyone) that aren't As (companies making a billion dollars in revenue), which is irrelevant.

This is basic logic, I learned it in fifth grade. A => B is not a commutative operation.

Re: Nullsoft: The death of the last maverick tech company (2004)

#168

Post by ionised »

mdpopescu wrote: post #56
csydas wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the criticism lobbied against AirBnB and Uber is for a reason, and the reason isn't the same "up-yours" attitude of past maverick tech companies. It's a little easier to buy the maverick attitude of something like gnutella when the author isn't getting close to billion dollar revenue yearly. It may seem a little strange, but the ethos is a bit easier to believe when you stay outside the system and benefit eve…

Making a billion dollars a year revenue is pretty much the definition of "benefiting everyone", except when you're a part of regulatory capture (which AirBnB and Uber are not... yet).

> Making a billion dollars a year revenue is pretty much the definition of "benefiting everyone"

Is this satire?

Re: Nullsoft: The death of the last maverick tech company (2004)

#169

Post by majkinetor »

derefr wrote: post #158
DonHopkins wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VLC's UI sucks so terribly, it's like they went WAY out of their way to make it sucks on purpose, and stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that there are any problems or ever consider fixing them. One example of many [1]: Type CMD-E (on Mac, or whatever the equivalent is on Windows) to get the video effects window. Select "Geometry". Now check "Magnification/Zoom". Notice how you get a picture-in-picture in the upper lef…

> Instead of improving usability for everyone, they're more interested in adding yet another obscure anime decoder feature so they can watch their AMV cartoon porn Mind you, FOSS is contributed to by people scratching their own itch. It's not so much that VLC has a lot of otaku developers; it's that a lot of people who watch (or subtitle) "AMV cartoon porn" see a problem with, or missing feature in, VLC, and think "I…

Its very hard to contribute patch to foss tool in general. There is no substitution for agile development team.

Re: Nullsoft: The death of the last maverick tech company (2004)

#170

Post by DonHopkins »

derefr wrote: post #158
DonHopkins wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VLC's UI sucks so terribly, it's like they went WAY out of their way to make it sucks on purpose, and stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that there are any problems or ever consider fixing them. One example of many [1]: Type CMD-E (on Mac, or whatever the equivalent is on Windows) to get the video effects window. Select "Geometry". Now check "Magnification/Zoom". Notice how you get a picture-in-picture in the upper lef…

> Instead of improving usability for everyone, they're more interested in adding yet another obscure anime decoder feature so they can watch their AMV cartoon porn Mind you, FOSS is contributed to by people scratching their own itch. It's not so much that VLC has a lot of otaku developers; it's that a lot of people who watch (or subtitle) "AMV cartoon porn" see a problem with, or missing feature in, VLC, and think "I…

It just puzzles me that out of eight bullet points summarizing the new features in VLC 2.1.5, one of them was "FOR ANIME FANS" and none of them were "FOR USABILITY". It's the contempt and dismissal that the developers show to usability bug reports when they brush them off and ignore them, which bewilders and frustrates me. Go read some of the discussion group postings and bug reports over the many years, and you will see what I mean. It's a deeply entrenched pattern of behavior.
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