Meet the tireless entrepreneur who squatted at AOL
news.cnet.com
news.cnet.com
...after pivoting and focusing solely on letting teachers share lesson plans, Simons said he was able to score $50,000 in seed funding from Ulu Ventures and Silicon Valley VC Paul Sherer.
Now, Simons said, he's looking to raise an additional $500,000.
So is Simons just a kid with a particularly honed entrepreneurial spirit?
Exactly when did the definition of entrepreneur change from "build a sustainable business that provides value to its customers" to "survive long enough for the next round of investment"?
I admire Eric for his tenacity (most others would have quit long ago), but I'd much rather hear about when he actually sells something.
It's lesson number #1 (don't use your employer's computer off-hours when working on your own projects) for people that try to build something outside their company's influence.
(I think the answer in this case is: I didn't take any action to receive the heat. Now the question is: why can't I legally decrypt satellite TV that's being blasted through my brain 24/7?)
Purchasing equipment that significantly enhances your ability to decrypt the signal (eg: a pre-programmed or altered smart card) is where you run into issues.
Additionally, unauthorized decryption of a copyrighted program or movie is a violation of the DMCA, 17 USC 1201(a)(1): "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
Or they could keep him tied up in court trying to argue his way out of it.
The only reason why he is going to make it out of this okay is the bad press that AOL would get for going after him.
If he used AOL computers (which it sounds like he didn't) they may or may not have grounds for a case but this is really stretching it.
Hard to believe that this isn't also some kind of tort or trespass of which AOL could bring charges against him or stake a claim should he have some future gain from activities done at their expense (as nominal as that is).
I'm surprised they are treating it the way they are other than the obvious negative publicity that would ensue.
I mean if someone stayed for months in a department store overnight I don't think they would laugh it off or it might attract others to do the same.
Negative publicity can be a very strong motivator.
It feels like not a week goes by that 'the internet' learns about some yahoo suing some other guy for shaky reasons, and becoming infamous as a result.
Soon after that the yahoo has to change his name and move to Tijuana.
But yes, I think you're right. The negative backlash that AOL would get for attacking this kid vastly outweighs any sort of benefit they'd get. Now, this is all about spin and PR.
The response from the AOL spokesperson makes it seem like they are taking the incident in good humour:
"It was always our intention to facilitate entrepreneurialism in the Palo Alto office -- we just didn't expect it to work so well."
California law protects individual side projects extremely well. I am not a lawyer, I could be wrong, but I believe these concerns are absolutely irrelevant in California. Relevant elsewhere, but not here.
2870. (a) Any provision in an employment agreement which provides that
an employee shall assign, or offer to assign, any of his or her rights
in an invention to his or her employer shall not apply to an invention
that the employee developed entirely on his or her own time without
using the employer's equipment, supplies, facilities ...
I'm not a lawyer either, but that was always the advice I've been given.
Now this kid was just dumb. By using AOL resources without permission he now has all sorts of potential issues. Probably the only thing that kept him out of jail was the good will of AOL.
And when his website opens up it plays "You've Got Mail" which proves it.
An employment contract usually stipulates that all work done while being paid by the employer is work for hire, unless otherwise stipulated. In this case, no such contract exists. Intellectual property is default owned by the creator unless explicitly transferred otherwise.
There's a claim to be made here on trespassing and possibly illegal use of resources, which can be recovered through small claims. But there's really very little case to be made that the IP created through the trespass and use of resources somehow transfer to AOL simply by reason of their ownership of the infrastructure.
Rather, it's about the optimistic spirit, the emotional strength, and ultimately the endurance to keep going even when it's so hard you don't want to get up out of bed.
If you figure this part of entrepreneurship out, as Eric has, you can probably build something amazing.
Entrepreneurship is about building a business, and people have demonstrated they can do that even if they're a pessimist, lack emotional strength, or have any kind of endurance.
And perhaps he was just taking tips from RMS, who squatted his MIT office for years after officially quitting to work on GNU.
[edit] And apologies for being unnecessarily obtuse earlier, one of the precepts for ethics in medicine is the phrase "First, do no harm", which is what I was obliquely blathering on about. So rather than being very different questions, the concept of harm is firmly tied to many of our concepts of ethical behaviour.
"Do no harm" isn't as clear cut as that. You have to do harm all the time as a doctor - the question is what is the lesser harm? Would you rather have a few broken ribs, or a heart that isn't beating. Either way, you're causing harm. Most people would rather you crack a few ribs though.
(BTW, that phrase actually isn't part of the Hippocratic Oath [1][2])
Here's a different example. Is burning a religious text (Bible, Koran, etc...) ethical? What if it is in private? Is anyone harmed? Many people would consider this an unethical act, even if no one was around to see it. And if no one would see it (and thus be offended), where is the harm?
Another example: Imagine Alice is in a wheelchair and is shopping. She accidentally drops her phone on the floor. At that moment, Eve walks by, notices Alice struggling, and yet does nothing. Eve continues walking on her way. Did Eve cause Alice harm? Alice was already in trouble, and Eve didn't do anything help. However, Eve didn't do anything to cause Alice's problems. So you can't really claim that Eve harmed Alice, even though many would question her inaction.
This is just to point out that the concepts of harm and ethics aren't necessarily linked. But that is really moot in this case, because no one can really claim that this kid caused AOL no harm. It may just be really small in monetary terms.
[1] http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2011/06/harm-part-hippocratic-oa... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath
I know, but it is part of the standard medical code of ethics.
The original Hippocratic oath is a bit crap anyway, as it bans teaching any medical knowledge to ordinary people.
Spain (and many other countries) decided that they would rather be opt-out, so by default you've consented. This is actually a great example of the power of defaults to affect an outcome. Because of this out-out, the number of donations increases significantly.
I'd be more interested to know what happens to foreigners. I suspect that they aren't treated as consenting, but I don't know.
Comparing this to RMS isn't fair either. Everyone knew RMS was staying at the university -- his postal address was literally the desk he worked at.
Just as this guy stole quietly doesn't mean he didn't steal. He has raised $70k in funding and then has gone on to steal at least $2,000 from AOL. This isn't just unethical, it's illegal.
It's a kooky story nothing else.
However, I do agree that he saved over $2,000, since he saved the difference between what it would have cost him to purchase his food and perks at market price elsewhere and what they actually cost.
He broke a rule, probably a few laws, but no person was harmed or in any way negatively affected, it is certainly not 'blatantly unethical'
The benefit to AOL is that they got a ton of good press for supporting young hackers. This is the first I've heard of the Imagine K 12 incubator, and I'm glad somebody's tackling this. AOL was smart to laugh it off in the press; this is the first positive thought I've had about them this decade.
The only variable cost is the food he ate which was probably negligible all things considered.
I'm not saying these are large costs, but the degree of harm isn't an excuse.
I suspect the AOL PR people are throwing a party that somebody managed to use "young" or "entrepreneur" in the same article with the word "AOL".
Also, degree of harm is certainly relevant. E.g. "No harm, no foul."
I'm not saying it was morally flawless, by the way. It was definitely somewhere between scrappy and duplicitous. And it was probably criminal if AOL really cared. I'm just saying that they don't actually care.
As a way to check, note that AOL opened these offices to other startups for free: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_14/b42220432...
The definitions I've looked at do tend to say the entrepreneur takes on financial risk. He may not have done that.
I'm glad AOL has a sense of humor about this. But you can be sure that this incident will create additional requirements and restrictions for the [honest] entrepreneurs who still remain in the building.
The security staff in question was probably reprimanded for their failure to detect the interloper -- he abused the trust he had gained by previously becoming a "known" face.
You do what you have to do, ethically, to succeed.
They've actually been profiled as a reasonable company that invests in the future. How many people reading this article know AOL as "that company that first sent me discs in the mail" and previously thought AOL as a dead company?
AOL gets free, positive press showing that they're not dead, they're investing in the future, and that they're reasonable. The positive spin this article gives them is worth every penny of resources spent.
The best thing they can do at this point is put a positive spin on it, but ...
> The positive spin this article gives them is worth every penny of resources spent.
Not your decision to make for AOL. AOL will spin this, but post-facto justification ("see, it's not that bad -- they made good on my theft!") does not an ethical decision make.
I pointed out that it was my opinion that the cost of the resources that Eric used was less than the cost of genuine, positive press.
I also did not declare his actions ethical. I responded to your claim that AOL has been embarrassed.
AOL responded appropriately (not pressing charges, just kindly requiring him to not sleep/live there anymore), and was able to respond to the press inquiry with a lighthearted statement that fits the narrative of the article. The article presents AOL not only as having reasonable management, but also as a place to work with great benefits (food, showers, gym, startup incubators, friendly environment).
AOL is where Yahoo will be in 5 years: they have nowhere to go but up in terms of public reputation and mindshare.
Somebody abused their fairly standard SV corporate perks, they responded without bringing in the police.
At the end of the day, my subjective impression is that their startup interests brought in an immature, ethically-challenged entrepreneur who is stuck in the money-raising cycle, and accordingly AOL has been dragged into the press because of something stupid he did.
That isn't a particularly positive narrative, but I can see how people that are more comfortable with Eric's failure of ethics can see it as a cool story of "hustling" entrepreneurship.
By the way, all AOL has to do now is to chastise a bit the security people and to make sure the security rounds do cover the whole floor plan. Nothing more, nothing less. I hardly see that as suffering for the other startups in the building.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
Sure, if one person does this, AOL is no worse off, but if everyone adopts this attitude, it will have an adverse effect.
I'm flabbergasted that you can applaud him for this. It's like a former bank employee stealing money from the vault, because someone forgot to take away his badge.
Maybe you are this upset because you fear it will affect you personally?
Though, companies like AOL or Google could totally make this a legit practice by asking for 2% or something of any startup that comes out of it.
So while AOL may not be worse off for having someone sleeping on their couch IN THIS CASE, you can bet that the hammer will come down on the rest of us in the building. From AOL's perspective, it could just as easily have been a homeless person with psychological issues. Honest entrepreneurs will suffer because of this.
It really couldn't have been a homeless person with psychological issues, he would have been noticed and likely wouldn't have made it into the initial incubator.
Anyway, it is more complicated than the arguments I have been witnessing here today and I just regret that I am not in good shape to give adequate voice to the idea that society needs to come up with a more enlightened means to address ..the whole kit and kaboodle.
On the other hand, an obviously talented young developer who is starving in Silicon Valley may need to take an internship that pays $80K+ per year.
I'm not seeing the parallels.
Let's say his aging mother died and he continued to cash her Social Security checks for a year, to continue to pursue his dream, would you consider it unethical? The federal government certainly has the money, and he is tenaciously pursuing his dream.
I agree with you that there are situations in which it's ethical to steal from someone who can afford it, but what parent said was that the latter condition doesn't guarantee it to be automatically ethical, implying that grandparent's assertion that the theft was ethical because AOL could afford it was fallacious.
The assumption the companies has is that the building is clear each night. Having a person there could be an issue simply if there is a fire or other event and emergency personnel involved. In no way can any responsible company tolerate this type of stowaway.
FWIW, from a firefighter's perspective, I can assure you that - in the event of a fire - the fire department does not assume a building is clear just because it's the middle of the night or whatever. There are any number of reasons why people could be inside at 2:00am, 3:00am, etc. Maintenance work being done, facilities people cleaning, cheating executives banging their mistresses on their desk, etc., etc. In the case of a working fire, a primary search is going to be done (conditions permitting) anyway.
In no way can any responsible company tolerate this type of stowaway.
You're probably right, but I don't really think the reasons this is true have much to do with emergency scenarios. If anything, I'd lean more towards "what if the elevator was being repaired late at night, and the stowaway fell into an elevator shaft and plunged to his death?" and any potential liability that might come out of that.
Thank's for pointing that out. In retrospect I can see how assumptions similar to the one that I made can cause plenty of errors in emergency situations.
"a primary search is going to be done (conditions permitting) anyway."
I watched a docudrama on the Reagan assassination attempt last night. One of the mistakes they made I believe was assuming Reagan wasn't hit by a bullet because a) he seemed fine and said he hadn't been hit and b) the secret service said he wasn't hit.
While "a" would seem to be pretty valid info "b" was based on "a". After all you can't really see whether a bullet hits someone generally. So in keeping with your "primary search" with fires, they shouldn't have "assumed" the info they were getting was correct and fully checked him out much earlier. (And in fact I'm sure that is probably they way they would operate in the future learning from that mistake.)
I imagine there are AOL employees that work late, too, or fall asleep on the company couch.
AOL is going to get press out of this that am sure they will find worth the few months of squatting.
Also, entrepreneurs break rules in order to get stuff done. I applaud Eric and look forward to seeing him do well in the future.
That's AOL's decision to make. Not yours, not his.
> Also, entrepreneurs break rules in order to get stuff done.
Unethical people engage in unethical behavior (which is sometimes "breaking rules") in order to get stuff done.
Plenty of entrepreneurs do business honestly, and I'd rather read about them. I don't need a news story to tell me that behaving unethically can provide gains at a cost to others.
What unethical behavior are you referring to, and how have you demonstrated that Apple's success not only stemmed from such behavior, but could have only occurred through unethical means?
This cost the phone companies and was an illegal item that they sold on the "underground market"
If Steve didn't partner with Wozniak would Apple be around today? Doubt it.
Was this more immoral then sleeping on AOLs couches for a few months after your incubator ended? I would say so.
"Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. They're not Goody Two-Shoes type good. Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about observing proprieties. That's why I'd use the word naughty rather than evil. They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter. This quality may be redundant though; it may be implied by imagination." http://paulgraham.com/founders.html
It's fine to break unwritten rules of decorum, or question conventional wisdom. This is another thing all together.
2. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're a reasonable person, and you were merely exaggerating, but I don't even know what you're trying to say. Are you trying to say that in order to do great things, rules generally have to get broken...and therefore it's ok for entrepreneurs to do unethical things?
3. Consider reducing your consumption of entrepreneurship porn.
2) The world is rendered in shades of grey, and not all ethical issues carry equal weight. Some are worth sweating, some aren't. This one isn't, according to a representative of the victimized party itself.
3) Consider having a beer or two and giving the high horse a good night's sleep.
Many successful entrepreneurs engage in social hacking in some way. What the entrepreneur in this case did was both unethical and illegal.
Just because you have a key to someone's house doesn't mean you get to open their front door and sleep on their couch.
(since you apparently missed it the first time)
I see this fellow as no worse than, say, a telemarketer. In fact, that's probably a good analogy to draw... except that I typically get more annoyed at telemarketers who hijack my time and attention, than AOL management seems to be at the person who overstayed his welcome in their building.
It's possible that I'm only as sympathetic to him as I am because he committed his offense in the course of trying to create something. Telemarketers don't offend me because they're annoying and presumptuous, but because they're lazy and unnecessary. If every telemarketer dropped off the face of the earth tomorrow, life would go on for the rest of us. If every kid with a bit of hustle and debatable judgment dropped off the face of the earth, things would go downhill in a hurry.
Now, you might think that building an education startup is not an end that requires or warrants trespassing, and you're probably right. However, I hope that you would feel differently about trespassing as a means to protect oneself from a dangerous oncoming storm.
I'm not sure if this is what you meant, but too often I hear people argue that if a certain means is immoral in one circumstance then it must be immoral in every circumstance. These people have the notion stuck in their heads that "the ends never justify the means." IMHO this viewpoint is far too reductionist to be universally valid.
I spent plenty of nights at the terminal and afternoons asleep on those couches; Eric's nighttime efforts will ensure that they wear evenly.
Eric: Welcome!
(AOL 1989-2001)
Just one quote: "I asked my friend Greg Robbins to help me. His contract in another division at Apple had just ended, so he told his manager that he would start reporting to me. She didn't ask who I was and let him keep his office and badge. In turn, I told people that I was reporting to him. Since that left no managers in the loop, we had no meetings and could be extremely productive."
If you have a spare 15 minutes you really should read this.
(Thanks so much for the link though, it was one of the most inspiring stories I've read this year)
Sure, the kid contravened plenty of rules and laws, but the level of focus to do 18ish hour days and maintain a lifestyle like that to achieve the goals? You don't get that everyday.
And lets be honest, he's not the first guy in the Valley to treat the rules with a loose interpretation.
We joked at Google that they really did want you to live there but their secops team would not let a non-employee do this.
However for a potential investor this is a great demonstration of how committed someone is to their idea, and their passion. I don't doubt for a moment that Eric will be successful at what ever he sets out to do, you can't buy that kind of focus.
I would reason to 'non-theft' based on an argument that AOL gave access to the building (badge) and provides services for people with access to the building, therefore giving access was tacit agreement to the use of the facilities. Other employees no doubt sleep there on occasion and that it also tacitly allowed. Therefore non-theft.
I would reason to the 'theft' conclusion that AOL provides services to incubators and to employees but does not explicitly extend employee benefits to incubator attendees. Using services and consumables that are provided to AOL employees is outside the scope of services offered to incubator participants. Therefore Theft.
Eric was aware of this grey area, clearly trying to stay outside the regular patrol of security, and thus actively trying to not force a resolution on the question of allowed or not allowed. His response when the resolution occurred appears to be 100% compliance.
If I were considering investing in Eric's activities I would consider both parts of that story, the first where he exploits a grey area and the second how he responds to being discovered.
In my experience it is people who take Eric's approach of interpreting grey areas in the most optimistic way until shown otherwise, and being 100% rule following on explicit rulings, are successful. There are thresholds of course, if there were signs that said "No one is allowed to sleep in this facility" or "At no time will anyone spend more than 12 out of 24 hrs in a day in this facility" or even more general guidelines that define a standard for defining 'living on site' and a express a prohibition against it. Something which might say "You would be considered to be living here if you spend more than 100 hrs a week or do more than 3 loads of laundry or sleep more than 12 hrs a week or eat more than 12 nominal meals at the facility" etc. AOL could call it out, but they haven't. And that leaves it open to interpretation.
In the business world that is sometimes called 'moxie' or 'stones' or any number of euphemisms and its generally respected.
What is not respected is explicit exploitation. So for example when I worked at Google the mini-kitchens all had refrigerators that were full of beverages. A small number of employees were found to be exploiting this 'perk'. An example of that which was given was an employee that prior to the weekend, would take an empty back pack and fill it with anywhere from 20 to 50 beverages to take home. That was 'theft' in the sense that the intention was for the beverages to be enjoyed at work not at home, even if you were working from home. But it was theft because of the quantity not because of the taking. Taking one beverage to drink while riding the shuttle home? Not a problem although you were not 'technically' at work any more.
I think Eric intentionally interpreted the situation in a way that would support his actions, and recognized that those actions might not be completely inline with the intent, and waited for AOL to express its intent. I don't think he ever believed AOL would 'endorse' his living on campus while he worked on his startup (incubator participation not withstanding) but I could see a case for it being an open question if not explicitly disallowed.
If someone leveraged this kind of "moxie" in interpreting a gray area of a contract with our corporation, I'd hesitate to do business with them again -- they couldn't be trusted to ethically consider both sides of a moral/ethical/legal quandary and resolve those gray areas to our mutual benefit.
But to respond to this point: "I'd hesitate to do business with them again -- they couldn't be trusted to ethically consider both sides of a moral/ethical/legal quandary and resolve those gray areas to our mutual benefit."
When evaluating a series of events involving grey areas its always useful to try to understand the principles that are in play. Different sets of principles would lead you down two different paths.
You state your goal is to "resolve those gray areas to our mutual benefit." If you were an investor in Eric's startup you would see that his actions did exactly that, he resolved the grey area to the benefit of the startup which mutually benefits him and the investor. If he had been living for free in AOL's facility so that he could play Diablo III all day on their fast internet connection he would be resolving the grey area to benefit only himself.
So it seems that Eric's guiding principle is 'make the business successful.' And that is a good principle to invest in, but you have to consider 'at what cost.' And that is where people spend thousands of hours in business ethics classes. A typical ethics class might raise the question "Who was harmed?" and how. And the other party here is AOL, so it is up to AOL to determine how they would calculate the harm here. They could use a metric of "What would be different if this hadn't happened?" Would their network bill have changed? Would their food bill? Water bill? Since I've got visibility in to the way these things are costed I can tell you that no, there was probably zero difference in AOL's overall costs with Eric living there and had he not lived there. There was however potential liability on two counts, one the zoning laws don't allow for people to live in buildings zoned for commerce/industrial so AOL has a legal obligation to stop it when they find it, and two there is some injury liability if Eric managed to injure himself while living there. Some of that would be covered by their blanket policy on their facilities with respect to 'guests' and some they could be on the hook for if it could be proven that they knew he was living there and had done nothing about it. Since they clearly acted as soon as they became suspicious he was living there I don't think they incurred any legal liability at all.
Now Eric could use a similar line of reasoning to rationalize his action, I don't know one way or the other. I am just looking at the facts we know and observing what was at stake.
From a business perspective, if you have a potential partner who is focused on making the business successful you can be pretty sure they will resolve questions to your mutual benefit. On the other hand if they tend to resolve those questions to their personal benefit, without regard to the impact on the business then I agree they are not worth doing business with.
So what you really mean is:
"I prefer to work with people that resolve ethical questions according to my personal, subjective ethical standards."
It's not like ethics is some simple, black and white thing, where every question has an obvious "right" and "wrong" (or "good" and "bad" ) answer. If ethics weren't subject to debate and controversy and analysis, the field would have become completely stagnant centuries ago, with no new philosophical work being produced.
There's quite a bit of debate and philosophy on moral relativism, too. Which is the rhetorical baseball bat you're trying to apply here.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/uv/ends_dont_justify_means_among_hum...
E.g. your reasoning would call Robin Hood evil. My conscience would call Robin Hood good. A full game-tree analysis would require investigating whether wealth concentration is good or bad for the tech progress that will cause the Singularity.
If the district attorney's office in Santa Clara County wanted to, it is more likely than not that they could get a conviction for illegal lodging (misdemeanor).
If I were the district attorney, I'd tend to let something like this slide when the doer is as young as this guy is. It bothers me a little though that he is speaking openly about it to the press because that suggests that he has no shame about it. If he really has no shame at all about it, I would prefer that he be dragged into court.
If your reaction to this report is to excuse the behavior because the guy is an entrepreneur, I think your reaction is no better than, "It's OK because he's a member of our club."
I mention the risk of violating zoning laws below but I also asked a public defender their take on that aspect as well. They said pretty much that unless you could prove that AOL both knew and allowed this to occur, or could prove that they didn't actively try to discourage such things, you could not convict them of violating the rules. She related a case of a homeless person who was charged with loitering and the business was charged for allowing people to live at their facility in violation of zoning laws, but the case against the business was dismissed for lack of evidence that the business knew about the activity or allowed it. I expect AOL would use a similar defense in this case.
His security clearance was never revoked. Nobody directly informed him he couldn't sleep there. I'd say this is perfect 'grey area' since he didn't knowingly commit any crime and AOL didn't knowingly allow it.
It's not a grey area - he's just lucky people like him.
Entering into a search engine the phrases "California penal code" and "illegal lodging" should allow you to find the text of the law.
I learned about this law when someone I knew was charged with illegal lodging for sleeping in one of the building at Stanford long ago. (He pled no lo contendere, had no priors, and was fined $100.)
No offense, but I do not want to discuss it with you anymore.
Steve Jobs dropped out of college and attended classes free of charge. Would you argue that he should never have started Apple, despite getting a free ride on a few classes?
If I rob a gas station, steal a thousand dollars, and invest that into Las Vegas Sands when it's $1 / share in 2009, ride it up to $60, liquidate out, and then help children that are dying from cancer, surely it's perfectly OK given the benefit to society.
AOL is probably going to up their security because of this. It was something they should have done in the first place if Eric was allowed to do this the whole time. He's an entrepreneur, he got a few free meals and lifted some metal weights around at AOL's petty expense. I think people need to lighten up and appreciate the resilience and creativity, rather than scrutinize the individual who wasn't doing any real harm.
I heard from some Googlers that the company had considered building an apartment complex on or near the Mountain View campus. We joked that was Google building a "company town" and would pay employees with scrip that was only good at the company store.
Am I wrong for believing that?
The worst part is that I've seen attiudes subtly shift away from real entrepreneurial spirit and towards a "how do we make ourselves attractive to patrons" attitude.
It's a pragmatic choice, if you are going to be the subject of patronage and treated as such then you don't work on building a business you work on pleasing the patron so he and his friends will keep giving you money.
It's an unintended consequence of the very healthy VC/Angel ecosystem and consumer internet sites that are hard to monetize but still valued by the public. Maybe it's just a weird blip and not a big deal. But it's a direction that strikes me as unhealthy.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2000/11/27/2000_11_27_120_T...
* Reporter's fake job irks real dot-com: http://articles.cnn.com/2000-12-05/tech/reporter.irks.dot.co...
Kudos to David Tempkin for his response -- spot on. He recognized the situation for what it was, and responded most appropriately.
But here's the thing -- suppose he was instead sponging off a smaller, non-corporate, recently-funded, bootstrapped operation. Would everyone be calling him a go-getter? I'm guessing not, as the "theft" conversation would likely take a different tone.
What was the response? I can't find it in the article, would be interesting to see it.
Now I just need $50k or so.
And whenever I hear about them it is never in a technical context as in "check out this new database AOL techs created" it is more of "remember how AOL used to send people a ton of CDs?" or "Check out the statistics of people still using dial up"
I don't even remember what made them sort of quitely disappear from the radar? Was it broadband from cable companies and Verizon's Fios?
So I am wondering what do AOL tech people do there? Is it just maintenance to keep the dial-up server pool working?
Either way, good work!
@Support: Some users are having trouble accessing Twitter on the web. Our engineers are looking into it.
As I've similarly leeched for 2-3 weeks at my companies infrastructure with 5 china shop shirts/undies/pants, I relate and kudo you.
I think Gates and Jobs spent nights at places they were working at, leveraging off free to use, latest technology.
His startup idea is great. There are variations out there already but maybe this story and network will turn this into something successful.
I think it's almost possible to read this poem in the voice of AOL talking to Eric Simons.
However his behaviour is just shameful. I guess the end, justify the means ...
Still I don't like it, one bit.
Computing, we still use VB6 for coursework, Chemistry, everything is photocopied with ye olde dates on
Props to him for attempting to introduce variety into lesson plans, thankfully, today is the last day of copying out photocopy masters from a whiteboard onto paper
Also reminds me of Half Baked and the guy on the couch.
"Eric was always on time, never late for work."