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AIM will shut down after 20 years

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Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#271

Post by amptorn »

sgift wrote: post #94
snarf21 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is hard to move the ball forward when you reorg every year and have minor layoffs almost every year to keep OIBDA moving in the right direction so the execs get larger bonuses. So many people were in self preservation mode with no interest in anything that was "risky" and might put their bonus at risk. Similar things happened with how they managed MapQuest. Also, if you think they missed a chance on AIM, it is not…

> It is hard to move the ball forward when you reorg every year and have minor layoffs almost every year to keep OIBDA moving in the right direction so the execs get larger bonuses. Is there a an established term for this already? If not I'd like to call it stock market disease due to the usual reason for it.

"Capitalism"

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#272

Post by SapphireSun »

SapphireSun wrote: post #236
manigandham wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t require that all. If anything, we are now seeing the opposite where top companies with considerable resources are remaining agile and innovative, effectively out-competing many new startups.

You're right... for now. We're seeing incredible concentration of wealth. Eventually they will become lazy and overly bureaucratic. Google, Apple, and Facebook in particular made their mark by dismissing customer service and by not addressing customer complaints, creating a culture of the "one true way". That culture + monopoly status will create (and is creating) a toxic miasma.

Also, the big technology corps are fighting their lack of internal innovation by buying smaller competitors. The executives are well aware of company lifecycle theory.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#273

Post by PhasmaFelis »

menerva wrote: post #117
snarf21 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is hard to move the ball forward when you reorg every year and have minor layoffs almost every year to keep OIBDA moving in the right direction so the execs get larger bonuses. So many people were in self preservation mode with no interest in anything that was "risky" and might put their bonus at risk. Similar things happened with how they managed MapQuest. Also, if you think they missed a chance on AIM, it is not…

so isn't this capitalism working as it should? they literally killed their own golden goose with stupidity. why shouldn't others disrupt corrupt crap business?

I'm not sure who or what you're arguing against. It's a good thing when fuckup companies are replaced by better ones; that doesn't mean it's a good thing that companies keep fucking up.

Tangentially, publicly-traded companies are strongly incentivized to keep growing at all costs until they collapse under their own weight, rather than just finding a market and serving it well year after year. I dunno if capitalism is to blame specifically, but it certainly seems perverse.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#274

Post by rconti »

ChoGGi wrote: post #59

Back in the day I had to use a few different chat programs (AIM/ICQ/MSN), then came along Trillian, and I could just run the one program. I've since switched to Pidgin (or whatever they called themselves before the rename), it was quite nice not having to bother with all those separate programs. Now we have Discord/Slack/Whatsapp/A myriad of voice chat programs and I'm back where I started. Edit: For those curious, A…

Even just hearing the name Trillian makes me angry all over again. It had the worst UX on the planet. Its refusal to abide by any coherent set of OS/Window management standards made it miserable to use.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#275

Post by sonar_un »

_e wrote: post #98
santaclaus wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have my ICQ id The real important question is how many digits.

If I recall correctly, six digit icq id's were selling for thousands of dollars.

Wow, just logged into my 6 digit ICQ for the first time in years. I can’t believe I remembered my password.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#276

Post by wpietri »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #251
wpietri wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. Do you think investors are happy with how it turned out? Is there any significant interest group that's happy with how it turned out? If not, I'd have a hard time calling that smart. I get that the people with power may have maximized their personal short-term financial outcomes. Which is certainly one way to define smart. But it strikes me as a very narrow one. Look at Bezos, for example. He's spent the last co…

True. But aside from Amazon who has gotten away with that? Yes, it's a great example. But it's an outlier's outlier.

Toyota's another great example. They went from Japan's post-WWII decimation to the world's largest car company. They did it through an intense focus on increasing customer value and reducing waste. US automakers couldn't come close to matching their quality or effectiveness. This despite Toyota's attempts to teach them through efforts like NUMMI.

I think their unique culture has declined over time, but it was still powerful enough to give us the Prius. Now ubiquitous, at the time, it was revolutionary.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#277

Post by wpietri »

saint_fiasco wrote: post #222
wpietri wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. Do you think investors are happy with how it turned out? Is there any significant interest group that's happy with how it turned out? If not, I'd have a hard time calling that smart. I get that the people with power may have maximized their personal short-term financial outcomes. Which is certainly one way to define smart. But it strikes me as a very narrow one. Look at Bezos, for example. He's spent the last co…

It's not like investors keep investing in the same company all their lives. They are probably happy that AOL made so many millions, and they probably invested in something else when they stopped making so many millions. The execs are probably not as happy as the investors, but they are still somewhat isolated from the fate of each individual company via their golden parachutes, and they can find jobs as experienced e…

There are approximately a fixed number of shares out there for a company. When you say investors moved on, that's not exactly true; somebody bought those shares. Somebody took the losses as AOL declined. And although some investors surely were happy to move on, they would surely would have been happier if the stock kept doing well, if they didn't have to move on.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#278

Post by [deleted] »

WorldMaker wrote: post #68
lightedman wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, ICQ got merged into the AIM network after AOL acquired ICQ.

AOL never merged AIM and ICQ. They may have shared some server infrastructure at times, but the networks were always kept separate. I remember as a user of ICQ prior to AOL buying them [1] there was always fear that AOL would merge the two and make it the worst, lowest common denominator of the two. For a long time it felt like ICQ had the most features of the two. (Then eventually everyone was on AIM instead. Then e…

[deleted]

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#279

Post by Larrikin »

th1nkdifferent wrote: post #244
dredmorbius wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NIST guidelines are for a minimum length of 8 characters and a maximum length of no fewer than 64 characters . What is your basis for suggesting anything less than those guidelines is sufficient? https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/ https://qz.com/981941/the-us-standards-office-wants-to-do-aw...

You should try plotting ease of recall vs the size of password. You will quickly realize there is a long tail beyond 16 characters.

I consider it a good thing that I currently only know about 3-4 passwords and the rest are just unknown asterisks that get pasted in by my password manager.

Re: AIM will shut down after 20 years

#280

Post by azernik »

sgift wrote: post #94
snarf21 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is hard to move the ball forward when you reorg every year and have minor layoffs almost every year to keep OIBDA moving in the right direction so the execs get larger bonuses. So many people were in self preservation mode with no interest in anything that was "risky" and might put their bonus at risk. Similar things happened with how they managed MapQuest. Also, if you think they missed a chance on AIM, it is not…

> It is hard to move the ball forward when you reorg every year and have minor layoffs almost every year to keep OIBDA moving in the right direction so the execs get larger bonuses. Is there a an established term for this already? If not I'd like to call it stock market disease due to the usual reason for it.

Quarterly Capitalism.
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