2008 December | Scrame

December 14, 2008

Don Mueller lives.

Filed under: Technology — scrame @ 7:27 am

On october 31st, 2008, AOL did the brave thing of turning off their homepages. This was a brilliant move for many reasons. The first is that these pages weren’t generating any revenue, though I have a hard time believing they ever did. Secondly, since they weren’t generating revenue, the traffic must have been a burden, but again, given the sophistication of most of the pages, and the fact that they hadnt been updated in years, also makes it seem specious.

Sadly, the internet is full of works of folk art that all live at the behest of loser companies like AOL. What if the lourve cancelled art pieces because they weren’t updated as frequently as a pro-ana’s myspace blog. The mona lisa would have been burned within 6 months. Not enough revenue, I think.

Regardless, I love the early internet, there is nothing truer in this modern life than honesty, and earnestly trying to create something.

One web site, that I found inspiring, for my own reasons, was Don Muellers homepage, which was hosted at AOL homepages, and they decided to turn off entirely, without notifying the people who were still paying $15 a month to subscribe through them.

Big mistake AOL, you’ve always sucked, but you sucked because you overcharged regular people for simple services and internet access, and never bothered about quality. Now, in fear of the recession you have betrayed the only people that actually liked you.

So you suck even harder.

I saw the news, of course the techies and folk knew about it far in advance, much further than the people who paid and relied on the service, and actually made AOL into the company that they once were.

AOL, you are pathetic, the only thing you might have done right was make Jim and Mark richer through netscape, and hopefully JWZ and the rest of the engineers. You let a bunch of people drive on the internet without etiquette licenses, and the few that bothered to make something through your crippled tools, and pay you to this day, you have turned your back on.

You are the reaso n eric raymond says not to trust webapps.

You have ruined the ambitions and hobbies of your own customers in hopes of turning profits from markets you do not understand.

And the worst of it is, you have removed a significant piece of internet history. You tried to play the role of the agent, or the museum, but now when you trim the fat, you cut out honest work by earnest people, and try to pretend that the early web, the real web, the one you built your fortune on, the ones who actually cashed in on those millions of AOL mailers, you have shut them out in the cold.

And you think you will find a new home? A new profit?

To Don Mueller, Mensan, whom I have used in inspiration of many a site (at least the yellow background): I am not an AOL subscriber, so I did get the notice of your site going away, I took as best a rip that I could, and it lives here, in all its glory (bullshit AOL ads included for now):

[link]

If you can provide me with a larger profile picture, want me to take it down, or want your own copy of it (those dicks at AOL probably made you make it with their crappy tools too, and didnt give you a copy), please contact me at[ scrame at scrame dot com ].

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December 7, 2008

I failed at nanowrimo this year.

Filed under: Errata,nanowrimo — scrame @ 8:55 pm

Not too bad, but I had to leave the country on the 21st. I was 25,000 words into it, but wrecked the formatting posting what was there. If I can be assed to actually get it together Ill post the rest, but as usual, it wasnt very good.

Though its not really about being good, its more of an excersize in typing and reaching a large goal with an inflexible deadline.

Scrame

December 14, 2008

Don Mueller lives.

December 7, 2008

I failed at nanowrimo this year.

A long overdue comment on the evolution of dance.